My feeling about it is...screw the car manufacturers/dealers. I'll buy a car out of a junkyard and fix it before I'd buy new under those conditions.
Posted on 02/06/2022 9:39:03 AM PST by yesthatjallen
How would you feel about paying $5 each month for the ability to lock and unlock your car from a distance through an app? What about a $25-per-month charge for advanced cruise control or $10 to access heated seats? What if those charges continued long after your car was paid off?
As vehicles become increasingly connected to the internet, car companies aim to rake in billions by having customers pay monthly or annual subscriptions to access certain features. Not content with the relatively low-margin business of building and selling cars, automakers are eager to pull down Silicon Valley-style profits. But unlike with Netflix, you won't be able to use your ex-girlfriend's uncle's login in your new BMW.
For automakers, the advantage of this model is clear. Not only do they get a stream of recurring revenue for years after an initial purchase, they can hope to maintain a longer-term relationship with the customer and build brand loyalty, said Kristin Kolodge, an analyst at JD Power.
This approach can also allow carmakers to streamline manufacturing by building cars to more uniform specifications, Mark Wakefield, who runs the automotive and industrial practice at the consulting firm AlixPartners, told Insider. Down the line, owners can add on the features they want à la carte.
It's all made possible by the advent of over-the-air software updates, which were pioneered by Tesla around a decade ago and are now entering the mainstream. Today's vehicles are more internet-connected and computerized than ever before, meaning car companies can reach deep inside a vehicle to add new capabilities and tweak things from a distance.
SNIP
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
My feeling about it is...screw the car manufacturers/dealers. I'll buy a car out of a junkyard and fix it before I'd buy new under those conditions.
I could see paying a monthly support fee for updates to automated driving technology, but not for heated seats.
= = =
But what if the seats also vibrated?
Hackers are rubbing their hands in anxious anticipation to dig into this one. The hack app will be posted within a month.
I read somewhere that starting in 2025, that all new vehicles will have some kind of remotely-activated shutdown capability. SO IF Big Brother doesn’t like you, he can just shut your vehicle off.
way back in the day when IBM card sorters were a big deal, you could buy a basic model and later on pay big bucks for an upgrade to speed up card sorting ... to do the upgrade, IBM would send out a technician who would unlock a belt cover and shift a drive belt that connected a pair of step pulleys one or more steps depending upon what upgrade was paid for, and then relock the cover ... upgrade completed ...
honda dealer wanted a thousand bucks to replace the upstream and downstream oxygen sensors ... went on rockauto and bought the EXACT sensors honda themselves uses for about $15.00 each, and a special slotted socket from amazon that fits around the sensor wire and did the whole job myself in about 45 minutes from start to finish ...
“we could afford this crap but I won’t do it out of principle.... “
i NEVER buy subscription anything except for health, hazard, and state-mandated liability insurance ... subscription fees add up and unless you keep very close track, they’re basically forever ... subscription fees are essentially a parasitic draw on your income or savings ...
I knew a futurist who predicted it years ago. They saw what computer companies did with software and hardware and wanted to make cares disposable like computers..
All the consumers advocates from the 70s and 80s now save the squid.
Give away the razor, sell the blades.
Yes. Disconnect the antenna.
You actually don’t think that the car is not hooked up in real time to the mother ship?
They are way ahead of you
Even if you consider these features to be accessories, it wont stop with the “luxury features.”
The entire industry needs a reaffirmation that people have rights, since computers allow companies to control people’s lives and livelihoods. We’re in the age where what the internet allows shouldn’t always be encouraged and even should be resisted as a community.
Private possession of property and the right to do what you want with what you own is a foundation block to actual capitalism, not socialism.
That is what i try and do.
And everyone laughed at the vehicles in Mad Max and asked “in what type of world would they have vehicles such as that?”.
This is how. There will be a great demand for parts (and mechanics) for the older vehicles and people will be building their own.
No active cell link, no phoning home to the mother ship. Unicorns don’t transport the info back and forth.
Next thing ya know, TP will come with tiered subscription rates.
How many revolutions per day?
NO thanks.
If it has that on board help system it phones home
I could not possibly care less. I do without all that junk today and will for as long as I can.
Complexity removes reliability.
Microsoft is coming out with Office 2021 which is a one time purchase as I bet they found people do not want to pay yet another monthly charge as they would do with Office 365.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/what-s-the-difference-between-microsoft-365-and-office-2021-ed447ebf-6060-46f9-9e90-a239bd27eb96
They also have Office for the web which is free.
The price of cars are way to high now. There must be a car company that would have a base model where you could plug in a module if you wanted other features but for what?
A car is for driving to where you want to go. You do not need any other features but an engine and 4 tires.
I do not see paying for radio or seat warmer or gps map when you already have a cell phone with a bluetooth connection and can buy seat warmer or a/c seat cushions.
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