I work at a (small) automotive OEM. I do see another side to this.
The engineering for ‘options’ can be very expensive, all the additional tooling, engineering of two versions, testing & validation, diagnostics, etc. - it can be millions in overhead, above and beyond the cost of the resulting parts that go into a car.
Therefore, it might be cheaper to just make one high-end version, with all options, but enable certain things in software on demand. If you chose not to buy the software enabled features, even though they exist in hardware in your car, you have not paid for all the additional engineering for those features - enabling the OEM to sell the same vehicle at different price points to a larger segment of potential customers. Customers may still choose to purchase features after the sale of the car, if they realize they should have purchased an option to begin with.
It’s not intuitive. You feel like you’ve paid for the feature - but you really haven’t. You got the HW for free(ish) - you actually pay for it when it’s enabled. As a consumer, I don’t like it, but I understand the economic reasoning.
If the engine development costs were extremely high (which they usually are), having different performance options, controlled through software, allows you to spread the cost of development across more customers because of the price spread. If a customer wants more power, they only have to upgrade via a software purchase. It’s about lowering engineering costs, when everyone isn’t paying for all the hardware features in terms of the engineering behind them.
Some good points. There is a difference, however, between buying something once, and having to buy the same thing again and again and again.
This is why I will never buy another Adobe product.
This is similar to what I think they do with calculators. The chip does all the functions. The keys do what the consumer paid for.
40 years ago, a coworker found he could do square roots even though there was no such key on his calculator by pressing three keys simultaneously. I’ve always wondered what he was doing when he found this.
Or better yet, they will just buy another product. There will always be a competitor that is hungry for that business.