My partner recently bought a newer Subaru. It’s great, and when we looked it up we saw it had remote start. Turns out it’s behind a subscription. When I found that out I essentially wrote off Subaru as a brand for my future car purchases. Catch me driving my 2017 civic into the ground before I pay a freaking subscription for basic vehicle functionality
You won't have any options for non garbage vehicles pretty soon. It's more profitable to sell you garbage and than sell you the maintenance on the above mentioned garbage while getting a steady trickle of revenue for ad impressions.
Ford pulled focus/fiesta lineup from US ignoring great sales (despite widely known DCT issues) just so they can focus on selling the garbage SUVs and pickups, highest margin cars. But hey, no CAFE regulations to follow, can pollute as much as you want.
Jeep quality is a joke - they would've been sued out of existence with trucks like that in Europe. When I first saw the Jeep Gladiator photo I through it was a joke/meme.
Corporations do truly control everything in US. They'll sell you garbage overpriced trucks, convince you to feel happy about them and laught all the way to the bank while raking cash for all "dealer maintenance" required to keep such garbage on the roads. And then they lock down all the maintenance behind encryption so you can't replace a battery without going to the dealer for the unlock code.
Please speedrun your late stage capitalism asap, it's getting harder and harder to watch
Technically you are correct, practically you will get into question of "who pays for the internet in the car?" and if customer refuses to pay (like in VAG case) then you will have just a car without an internet.
great sales yeah (7bn+) but those dsp6 recalls on the fiesta cost ford about 2 billion.
id buy another one. (in manual.)
i dont know how many other gen5 fiesta owners would walk down the aisle with that car again tho
i think the dsp’s kind of cool. still have a 2011 in a barn somewhere. its on engine #2 and transmission #2 at 124,000 and thats not even counting all the bad grounds, bad caps, electrical squirrels ive been able to track down and fix. it wasnt that bad to deal with, but i totally empathize with anyone who doesnt remember theirs fondly or want to go out and get another one just like it
I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?"
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy.
Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.
I highly doubt the overworked service center employees were wasting your time, they probably were just as annoyed as you were that your car was sitting in a service bay longer than expected.
Do you really think that a dealership would tie up a service bay to keep you captive?
Service is where dealers make their money. You’re convinced that manufacturers will sell data to insurance companies yet believe that dealers will sacrifice hours of profit. That doesn’t work out.
Stellantis makes some of the most unreliable vehicles in the world and charges a small fortune for them. I predicted they'd be out of business a year ago but apparently somebody keeps buying them.
Just when you think Stellantis couldn't do anything worse...
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
For those unfamiliar and confused, Stellantis is the mega corporation formed from the merge of Chrysler and Fiat that owns Jeep, Dodge, Peugeot, Opel, and many other brands.
The screen doesn't have to be obnoxious like this, though. A Chevy van has a small screen embedded in the rear view mirror, which is impossible to see when not in reverse.
Oh really? My current car is over 20 years old so I'm way out of the loop. I guess I'll hope for options with smaller screens that control fewer of the functions.
To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs.
I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
My 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware carriage someday
What if, instead of just attempting to retreat into a shrinking world that will eventually disappear, we all collectively worked together to fix things?
Arbitration is still a pretty big money sink for them. If enough people do it then it becomes a problem for them. There have been instances of companies reinstating normal class action lawsuits back into their EULAs because it turned out that forced arbitration wasn't a magical wonderland of cost cutting for them after all. Forced arbitration and especially when they have a clause that forbids class-action arbitration can turn into a huge liability for them even if they nominally win every instance.
The fundamental financial maneuver of the modern world is to take modest risks of modest loss and financially engineer it into a smaller risk of much, much larger loss, with a higher expected loss (risk*size) in the end after the engineering than before. Forced arbitration (and especially when class arbitration is banned) is that manuever in the legal sphere. It isn't a ticket out of the risk entirely, it's shoving that risk under the rug and making it net larger. If you and a few hundred of your closest friends put their minds to it you can trigger that smaller-chance-of-larger-disaster scenario and all you have to do is file... you don't even have to win.
I won't deny it's an uphill battle but the forced arbitration clauses can be turned to consumer's advantage with relatively modest coordination, you just need to get enough annoyed people together.
(I can't help you with this one, I don't have a car with this problem. Your few hundred closest friends will need standing.)
Readit News
Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them away?"
Deleted Comment
You and I understand the word "basic" differently.
I wish they'd offer a lifetime purchase option--but maybe they learned from the 2g remote start debacle not to rely on technology they don't control
I’d understand a complaint for heated seats subscription, but not for remote start.
Ford pulled focus/fiesta lineup from US ignoring great sales (despite widely known DCT issues) just so they can focus on selling the garbage SUVs and pickups, highest margin cars. But hey, no CAFE regulations to follow, can pollute as much as you want.
Jeep quality is a joke - they would've been sued out of existence with trucks like that in Europe. When I first saw the Jeep Gladiator photo I through it was a joke/meme.
Corporations do truly control everything in US. They'll sell you garbage overpriced trucks, convince you to feel happy about them and laught all the way to the bank while raking cash for all "dealer maintenance" required to keep such garbage on the roads. And then they lock down all the maintenance behind encryption so you can't replace a battery without going to the dealer for the unlock code.
Please speedrun your late stage capitalism asap, it's getting harder and harder to watch
You know, when the matrix movie came out, humans as batteries seemed ludicrous, obviously a joke! it's not that unrealistic or funny now.
id buy another one. (in manual.)
i dont know how many other gen5 fiesta owners would walk down the aisle with that car again tho
i think the dsp’s kind of cool. still have a 2011 in a barn somewhere. its on engine #2 and transmission #2 at 124,000 and thats not even counting all the bad grounds, bad caps, electrical squirrels ive been able to track down and fix. it wasnt that bad to deal with, but i totally empathize with anyone who doesnt remember theirs fondly or want to go out and get another one just like it
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.
I can't speak to whether or whither they sell the data, but they are 100% tracking your location and vehicle events
Service is where dealers make their money. You’re convinced that manufacturers will sell data to insurance companies yet believe that dealers will sacrifice hours of profit. That doesn’t work out.
Deleted Comment
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
"Mild hybrid" typically refers to a vehicle with a passively-charged battery pack, not a PHEV that has any material amount of electric-only range.
The jokes write themselves in 2025
I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
- radiator replaced
- water pump replaced
- AC repaired (twice)
- suspension rebuilt
And that's considered to be a "good" truck? Good lord I'm happy we don't get such garbage sold here in Europe
Cost roughly $150K
You call the number, maybe let it ring one time, and hang up. You did your part to opt out.
Then you sue them.
The fundamental financial maneuver of the modern world is to take modest risks of modest loss and financially engineer it into a smaller risk of much, much larger loss, with a higher expected loss (risk*size) in the end after the engineering than before. Forced arbitration (and especially when class arbitration is banned) is that manuever in the legal sphere. It isn't a ticket out of the risk entirely, it's shoving that risk under the rug and making it net larger. If you and a few hundred of your closest friends put their minds to it you can trigger that smaller-chance-of-larger-disaster scenario and all you have to do is file... you don't even have to win.
I won't deny it's an uphill battle but the forced arbitration clauses can be turned to consumer's advantage with relatively modest coordination, you just need to get enough annoyed people together.
(I can't help you with this one, I don't have a car with this problem. Your few hundred closest friends will need standing.)