> Software-locked features that need to be activated by the owner paying or subscribing to a service are becoming increasingly popular in the auto industry.
Sorry, WHAT? People should absolutely boycott companies that try to squeeze bucks in this miserable way.
You better be ok with building your own car then, because every major player is adding subscriptions for various features. Remote start and remote lock/unlock are the most common, along with satellite radio.
I could give companies a pass for features that require continuous maintenance from them, like remote unlock (properly secured servers). But there was a car company that tried to sell you your own seat warmers, which definitely crosses my barrier.
The seats get warm by running Javascript single page apps which need to be served from the servers, and frequently updated by the company's front end developers to use newer frameworks that make them get even hotter
big tech is trying to erase this concept from the consumer mind. Assuming someone tried to do everything legally (not pirating) when was the last time anyone "owned" anything. Music, Movies, TV shows, Software, you don't own any of it you are simply paying for server space.
It’s a point repeated practically infinite times daily on this website and any other tech community. It’s not a revelation deserving of accolades. It’s the nerd equivalent of “lower taxes!” at a political rally. This entire back and forth where all participants are clearly on the same side and are clearly regurgitating all the talking points of their shared ideology isn’t a conversation, it’s people patting eachother on the back.
Amazingly, this corporate desire goes back more than a hundred years. Edison cylinders had a "shrink-wrap" license trying to control what people did with the recordings they bought: https://www.flickr.com/photos/59414209@N00/5072909557/
I would say that it seems like it's time for some new legislation that supports consumer freedom. But given the state of American politics, I can only hope that Europe will do some pioneering work on this.
Option A: A vehicle that lacks the hardware for heated seats, heated steering wheel, and driver assist that costs $25,000 to produce and that you pay $25,000 for. If you want these items next year, you have to buy a new vehicle.
Option B: A vehicle that includes the hardware for heated seats, heated steering wheel, and driver assist that costs $27,000 to produce. You can pay $25,000 now and those features aren’t enabled. But next year you can enable them for a nominal fee. Or you can pay $30,000 now and there are enabled for life. Or $27,000 now and a $500/year subscription fee that you can later cancel.
If not having two separate designs and production lines means less cost to make that a reality, that seems like a reasonable trade off to me.
Features that need servers — which all remote ones do — have a running cost, so it's fine for them to be a subscription. However, paying to use the hardware you already have installed on your car, like heated seats or smart headlights, is absolutely not fine.
Or having an older car. Personally this concept doesn't bother me; I'd just not pay for the features. Many old cars have features locked behind buying the physical button to activate them. Hackers find their ways around that, and now it's becoming harder to hack. Fine, whatever. But I just don't trust the crappy software they increasingly put into new cars, so I'm riding out my old one for now.
People overreact to this. If this didn't exist, they would just manufacture cars the old way where multiple version of the same car are produced at high and low prices. I have seen no evidence provided this actually increases the total price of a high feature car. This might actually lower the average price paid because of the economies of scale achieved by making fewer different versions of the same car. Resale value can increase as well, since the person buying your car can get the features they want, even if you didn't originally purchase those features.
It strikes me as a far more fundamental shift: up until now I buy something and I own it. In the future I will effectively be renting part of my car. Instead of a one time payment I’m now I’m now required to make monthly payments until the day I stop using my car. That’s a massive difference.
Unless it’s something that requires the car manufacturer to also spend money on an ongoing basis (e.g. a cell data connection or something) it strikes me as absolutely immoral that these companies are going to band together and force this arrangement upon us.
I'm not overreacting to this. I'm absolutely tired to learn that subscriptions are being pushed everywhere. Having to pay for something that is already in a vehicle is insulting to me. Car manufacturers should sell cars, not subscriptions of ANY kind. What's going to be tomorrow? Will I have to subscribe to a service to actually let my speakers emit sound despite that I have payed for them? Ridiculous today, a business tomorrow.
Any country with even half decent consumer protection would stop your imagined slippery slope scenario. You bought the speakers, as speakers? Then they need to operate like speakers, unless it was clear ahead of time that more is needed.
Software locking like this is bad for environmental / waste reasons. All of this complaining about there being a disconnect between what you willingly paid for and what the physical hardware components in the product you receive can technically do, is just a nerd’s argument. I agree with it. Subscriptions suck when there’s no ongoing cost to the seller. But I’m not going to pretend that this is some moral crusade, or be as emotionally invested as you quite obviously are.
You have pretty strong opinions for somebody who has admittedly seen no evidence either way.
Personally, I think it's a terrible idea in that it further changes the relationship between buyers and sellers toward a relationship of long-term exploitation. It takes the notion of enshittification [1] and extends it into the realm of physical goods.
In an ideal world we could just give everyone those features if they didn’t cost any extra to add instead of creating an artificial pricing structure to get more money out of people. Maybe it can’t work that way but making people’s lives worse just to punish them for paying less in order to incentivise them to pay more, rather than as compensation to the company for doing more work, seems wrong
But they do cost extra to add. Heating coils and controllers aren't free. Doing it this way has real benefits.
1. Lower total cost of manufacturing (which should be passed on to consumers as lower purchase price).
2. The cost of this hardware is only paid for those who value it.
3. You can add these features later (maybe your budget is tight when you bought the car but want to add it later).
I am definitely not a fan of the subscription model for hardware features, but I think that locking features to the customers paying for it is a logical way to make these features available for less cost. If the unlock is one-time and reliable (doesn't rely on some external service to validate your subscription) then I don't have a fundamental problem with it.
I don't think providing a cheaper model is "punish[ing] them for paying less". It is making the car accessible to a wider audience. If the cheapest model included heated seats, self driving and more then they base price would be higher and the car would be less accessible.
Doesn't the same sort of apply to eg. Microsoft should give you access to all of their existing software titles when you buy an xbox? It's not like you paying for Flight Sim now compensates them for doing more work.
Sorry, WHAT? People should absolutely boycott companies that try to squeeze bucks in this miserable way.