Oh look, another reason not to buy BMW, I'll just add it to the other 456788656752 reasons.
The problem is that once one manufacturer starts doing this, they'll all do it, so you won't even have the option of buying a new car without a subscription.
I'm so gonna install Linux on my future car
'What do you mean the car is missing a driver?? Im sitting right here!'
In Lemmy, Linux is always the answer.
If they'll let you.
It probably already runs Linux, just hack it
I'd sooner hack the car
I’m glad my current car is a 2015 Mazda. It’s recent enough to have a touch screen and Bluetooth, but not so recent that it’s got an LTE/5G radio that can phone home and let them sell my driving data to insurance companies or force subscription payments on me. When I get my next car in a decade or so, hopefully I can import a cheap Chinese EV that’s either easy to jailbreak, or doesn’t have any of that bullshit included.
I was a BMW mechanic from 2009-2012. I can't believe anyone buys them after what I've seen. The engines are all made of plastic and start to literally crumble to pieces and leak oil from absolutely everywhere after ~70k miles. We had to have customers sign disclosures on these cars because inevitably they would just crumble to pieces when we went in to replace one part and we'd end up having to replace others to reassemble it. Or we would pressure-test the cooling system to find a leak and end up creating several more.
On their V8s there's a plastic cooling tube that runs from front to back on the engine. The tube itself is like $10 but you had to disassemble the entire engine to access it so it would cost several thousand $ in labor.
We eventually started selling an aftermarket CNC aluminum one that was threaded and expanded into the hole. We would just beat the old one out with a hammer and thread the new one in in a couple hours and they'd never have that problem again. Why BMW couldn't think of that is beyond me. The people who did made buckets of money selling aluminum tubes for hundreds of dollars just because they could.
You might expect cost cutting like that from a Kia or something but not from a car that's advertised as a premium brand and sold at premium prices.
You're literally just paying more for less.
The Buick 3800 had a tube like that on top, it would crack from thermal stresses and piss out hot coolant. There was an aluminum aftermarket replacement like you describe but it was Dorman and a cheap fix. Buick also addressed the problem in later versions. I miss that engine.
BMW's are pure over engineered garbage.
I used to own a W124 series Benz (bought used for 5% of sticker price, I ain't no fauntelroy). Nearly everything on it was redundant or excessively skookum.
When systems that weren't as rugged started going down, like the vacuum controllers for doors or the 4matic computer etc, the car still worked safely with reduced convenience. A few minor design flaws like the wiring harness but that's it. Room to work under the hood, too.
It was built in '93 when the engineers still ran the company.
Current main driver is the super reliable '03 CRV.
I love my bmw plug in hybrid. I don’t see myself ever paying for a subscription though. Maybe if it comes with pizza, but even then it’s unlikely.
Oh look, another reason not to buy BMW a CAR
Yeah I'll just sprout wings and fly everywhere.
Please do if possible.
Seriously tho, was it so hard to understand that i was pointing out that all big car companies are starting to do this?
If this is a reason not to buy a BMW then its a reason not to buy any modern car. Which it is imo.
The problem is a huge number of cars were removed and destroyed which would otherwise have been in the used market. It's a big reason why even used cars are priced so high. Buying used isn't what it used to be.
And they want to do it again not because it helped anyone get a car but because it let them make the prices so stupidly high.
I agree that new cars suck but they're removing the stocks of used cars that would be worth buying at any price and at our expense.
Agree with that yep, its also already been shown years ago that modding used cars into electric cars is totally doable, economic and saves fuckloads of resources. Same thing happening with tractors too btw. Lots of farmers are buying up old tractors because they can actually repair them on site when they break down. With modern ones they have to wait for some asshole from john deer to come in with a debugging laptop to do the exact same thing for lots of money and downtime.
a NEW car
ftfy then
While this is completely true, it's a bit tone-deaf. Fuck cars, but many people barely have a choice because their public transport consists of a handful of busses that come once an hour and nothing is close by.
As an aside, I spend a whopping total of about $1/day (edit Australian $, so less USD) on maintenance and electricity for my electric cargo bike. I go about 17 km each way to work and the funny thing is it's only about 10 mins longer than driving, lol
Imagine a bus coming once an hour... try only twice a day for the entire county... early morning and late night.
💀 where is this?
.... Re-read before I sent. I thought this said country, lol.
Yikes, why even have a bus at that point?
Yeah i know many people dont really have much of a choice, see the thread nex to your comment. I was more intending to talk shit about modern cars that all seem to have this shit.
If once you do not succeed, just try again next year. They tried and backtracked putting heated seats behind a paywall not even a year ago see here.
Unless laws are made to make this fundamentally illegal, they'll just keep pushing until it sticks. And once one manufacturer succeeds, they'll all follow.
Since 2019 you have to pay 800$ a year to have your bmw use adaptive drive, 150$ to use the app.
We are pirating car suspension now holy shit
You wouldn’t download a car
You wouldn't download a configuration profile for your cars suspension!
People stealing owners' property will be sent to the gulag!
TPB go brrrrrrrrrr
I would actually. A 1967 Shelby Cobra kit car if I had a choice.
Lmk if you find out how
M2, pls
Brick it by bios update:)))
This sure as fuck isn't the best timeline, but it does have its moments
😂😂😂 good ol' pirate bay
Next up, Anti-lock brakes as a Subscription Service. ASS.
Haha.. connection to server cannot be established. Suspension resetting to default.
This is extra hilarious in the face of the crib manufacturer that just decided to subscription paywall basic functions of their crib.. or the slow cooker... And that's just this week.
Game manufacturers pulling the plug on games they sold removing the servers yanking the games.
And now people think that you can buy a product that is going to last longer and costs several orders of magnitude more.. and you can only hope that the manufacturer can be bothered to:
Keep the service safe and secure.
Have it be reliable.
Maintain it operational for the actual lifespan of the car (not some MBA's definition of economic lifespan or something).
Not fuck with you on the price. (We're not shutting down the servers, but the price will be 50 a month and 5 euros per adjustment).
But the sale case is easy.. lease car drivers. This way they can enjoy premium functions not incorporated into the sale price of the car. I hope the IRS that taxes these things sees through this ploy and taxes the vehicles for installed functions wether you pay for them or not. Saw this happen with Tesla's.. taxed based on their initial price.. and then the user added 15k of functions after a day.. and the tax was still based on the original sticker price.
At least in the case of games, the servers are an ongoing expense that adds value to the game. I want to play against other people online and provide by that costs ongoing expenses.
Oh you think this feature will function locally.. I'll bet this goes from their app to their servers first to verify subscription and then to your car. Someone needs to pay for the subscription verification platform.
In theory most subscription services provide additional content as time goes on. This only provides a capability that already exists on the car.
Scummy practices that should be outlawed, like retail stores raising prices just before a big sale so they can slap "80% off!" on their stuff.
EU is at least trying to do something about that. As of last year stores are required to display the cheapest price they've had for an item in the past three months when they have something on sale.
Not all stores comply, and of course they try to get around these by the usual shenanigans, like basically the same product being available from the manufacturer with two slightly different item codes.
Edit: I think I was mistaken, and it's 30 days, not 3 months
Got it, don't buy cars built after 2010.
Import something old and fun! Cars from smaller countries have lower mileage and can be cheap because they aren't as valuable as a comparable car from the US. It isn't hard to find a 25 year old car with about 50,000 miles on it.
JDM cars are especially nice now because of how weak the YEN is. Look outside the popular JDM cars and there are tons of things with easy to find parts for dirt cheap.
Or hell, get a not top trim of a popular model, and you can get something cheap. Want a station wagon built on the same platform as the Nissan Skyline? The Automatic Stageas are cheaper because tuners don't want them because they're an automatic and don't have a turbo, which makes them slower, but also more reliable.
Nissan Rasheens with the 1500cc engine are easy to maintain and have an engine that was used in some American cars, get the first true AWD CUV for about $5000 plus import fees.
Another cheap option is a Toyota Caldina, get a reliable awd station wagon with a nice interior for 7 or 8 grand including import fees. (Avoid the 2000ish GTT version with a turbo, turbo manifold is prone to warping on that engine and said manifold is hard to find in the US as those engines generally didnt sell in the US)
Edit: looks like Caldinas have gone up in price recently.
Where are you finding things like this? What's parts availability like?
Carfromjapan.com has the best search features I've found, once you know what you're looking for https://www.goo-net-exchange.com/ is also nice because they translate the car condition sheets.
Parts availability depends on the car.
For the Rasheen for example most of the engine parts can be found at any parts store for the 1500 and 2000 cc engine versions cause those engines were also in American cars though the 2000cc engine is far more common. I've also found English websites that are easy to order just about any parts you want for a Rasheen including body panels.
Amazon is also nice for finding parts, I was able to find parts for a SR18DE engine on Amazon and that engine was never sold in America. So you can just buy the parts yourself then take the car to a local mechanic for the work.
Once you find something that interests you just Google that car name parts and you can usually find someone talking online about how owning that car has been for them.
The best listings also have video of the car running so you can hear if something is off with it.
I used picknbuy24 to get a Nissan Tiida for $1200 USD with like 25k miles. Parts are normally the same as they are on already imported models.
How did Customs let it through? It has to have DOT spec stuff in the US. I don't know about more than 25 years old.
Probably safe up to 2016 as long as it's not luxury brand
One of our cars is a 2016 GM and I just unscrewed the cell antenna instead of ripping out the cell module. Tracking disabled, or at least unreliable. The subscription nav is useless and easy to ignore. I would like to figure out how to prevent the siriusxm ads built into the infotainment system, still.
I look forward to better infotainment hacks down the road.
Not necessarily. My 2015 SEAT (for folks in the North America: That's basically Volkswagen) is one of the latest cars that do not completely fuck you over. TPMS is passive, so you don't need expensive sensors. You can also update the maps on your own (OK, here they pull you over if you don't know the simple trick). Parts are also cheap.
no, SEAT IS VW
👍
I own a Seat Ibiza 2021. To me it's one of the last Ibiza to give value for your money. Totally reliable vehicles.
big oil licking their lips and nodding their heads
Are there any electric cars that aren't glorified smartphones on wheels? Something a grandma can drive without ending up in the wrong menu.
My wife used to drive an electric Smart Car for her work. It had a range of 60 miles (less in the winter), and she called it a glorified golf cart. But it was perfect for the 20 or so miles she’d drive each day.
The Bolt is ok. It has a screen and Android Auto and stuff, but I only use it for Android Auto navigation and energy stats when I'm curious. For pretty much everything else, there are good ol' fashioned buttons.
Oh, it does have OnStar and some stuff associated with that, but GM discontinued the worst of it after a class action lawsuit.
Got it, thanks
Well done BMW. Anything that leads to more people cycling instead of driving is a good thing in my book.
People won't switch from driving to cycling over this. They'll just pick one of the several dozen other car manufacturers.
I suspect most BMW owners won't care too much. Like they'll find it annoying but still buy/lease the car anyway.
until every manufacturer implements it
What if the cycling option is a really REALLY good bike?
If the bike does the biking completely for me, has hvac, reclining seats, can do 65mph down the highway and can take care of my morning wood taking into account remaining travel time, I'd be interested. That indeed would be a really good bike.
Nobody's gonna abandon cars as a whole over this, the same they wouldn't abandon bicycles as a whole over some other outrageously monetized luxury feature they could live without.
Sorry, your bicycle's gear selector is locked into a single gear until you pay your subscription for the other gears.
Fucking LOL'd at this. Genuinely not sure if this is satire.
Thanks :)
Anyone that buys a car that has shit like this is a fool.
True, however we must fight this because otherwise, when you need to buy a car, there won't be an option without a shitty subscription attached
Remember that some of is live in shitty cities with bad or no alternative ways of moving around
I agree totally, but I don't think it will matter with new vehicles. They're going to track you and spay on you more than your phone. I will forever drive old stuff. I'm a mechanic so that's a super easy option for me. I won't own anything new enough to spy on me, my car will be MY car.
100%, I am not a mechanic but I like auto work and have learned most of the basics. It is not really enough to own an older car forever but it should help out to some extent.
If you ever think you're in over your head, just remember, It's just nuts and bolts.
The article implies nobody even knew it already had this functionality. I'm sure the customers weren't told either.
I've heard for years that BMW was doing shit like this. Heated seats is what it started with. Toyota did it with remote start but I think they backed down after the outrage.
"The pressure eased off a little when they ended subscriptions tied to heated seats, but the Internet rage machine has come back for vengeance."
lol. It's not vengeance or rage, its simply the fact that making someone pay for something they already own is dumb.
These cars already cost more than my life, how can they ask for more money.
Because the people who buy them have it and BMW can get more out of them. The real problem is that they’ll buy it, and other manufacturers will see “hey, it’s a successful model and additional revenue generation!”
Because people with no self respect will pay them.
You know it's just a matter of time before this shit starts being applied to budget cars.
...I really hope the tech crowd is working on jailbreaking this garbage.
We try. We also pivot to open source to try and regain control because it's the only way. We even share our passions with those who ask.
You folks just roll your eyes and put more money on their hands.
This "tech crowd" and "you folks" dichotomy is not helpful at all. Tell people how they can help, volunteer, donate etc, don't wedge gaps between the same class fighting against the same ruling class. I'm a software engineer. I write open source software. I get that it's tiring and you can see the worst in people when doing it, but we're going to have to be better than that if we want to change things.
And for those reading like the top commenter, don't sit on your hands and wait for "tech folks" to figure stuff out. It's us vs. corporate greed, not "us hoping the tech folks save us from corporate greed" or "us tech folks being badgered like we should be some saviors against corporate greed." Write your representatives to tell them this isn't ok. Be mindful in your selection when you purchase a vehicle. Ask your tech savvy friends and family what you can do to help. You aren't helpless in this, and as OP said, just sitting and waiting for something to be fixed or changed doesn't help the overall goal.
I wrote it as a tongue in cheek against the OP that said "..I really hope the tech crowd is working on jailbreaking this garbage".
Surprise surprise, that comment is sitting with 49 upvotes 1 downvote, mine that you admonish is on 27 upvotes 13 downvotes.
This kind of proves the point. The "tech crowd" doesn't owe you anything. Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world, you don't know how much of my personal and professional life I have spent fully on open source.
Get up your feet and talk with your family, representatitives. Legislate this shit away. Nobody accepts food products that dont have a recipe or with unknown ingredients. Nobody accepts engineering projects without plans. Demand open source and interoperability.
dismissing our warnings as some nerd turf wars for decades aint helping anyone either.
no amount of talking to normies will fix this because you would rather listen to the corporations. and this precedes any form of action.
What exactly do you propose the "normies" do? Is there some non-corporation making road-worthy cars? No? Let me guess, you want a family of 5 to bike 2 hours to the nearest school/park/grocery store in the snow on rural roads with no shoulder just to avoid paying a corporation? Take the nonexistent train?
who suggested bikes?
let me just say this: if facebook were known to be doing the shit it does today in 2002, it wouldnt have fucking flied, because normies trusted people more than they did corporations. throw away the notion we are powerless against corporations.
no need to make up that huge strawman when you could have properly read what i bothered to type out.
That would be the ultimate way to stop this. Let them put the hardware in, and then not make a cent off it, because a third party enables it for the customer.
FUCK these out of control capitalists jesus christ.
Why is this bad in a nutshell.
A) The only way to control access to this feature is to lock down and phone home. If it doesn't phone home then when someone figures out a way around your present security its possible for someone to sell said features forever. Such DRM could hurt repeatability by accident or more likely on purpose.
B) There is no reason to fail open so even if BMW is still chugging when they stop taking your cars phone calls and retires those servers you get no more feature.
C) The amount spent over the lifespan of a car wherein people opt to take care of their valuable asset absolutely dwarfs the cost able to be extracted up front
D) This functionality opens the door to a hacker not just turning off your features but turning off your car. This includes state sponsored attackers and people who are just generally pissed off at the geopolitical actions of your country of origin. If you are in the US that is a lot of fucking people.
E) Product segmentation on average increases the amount you can extract per user. Allowing segmentation by features turn on or off in software by the month it allows far greater segmentation with no reasonable expectation that the baseline will be lower. This means the lowest end user of a model pays the same for even less. The median user pays somewhat more and the max user pays a LOT more.
F) This means wholly paid for used cars now come with a car payment to the manufacturer.
Now there are half a hundred people on the boards of these companies and 338M of us in the US. 449M in the EU. There is no reason to allow this misfeature to continue to be a thing in our markets. If automakers don't like those restrictions any one of them can opt to most of the most valuable markets in the world and find their fortunes exclusively in China while their competitors eat their former marketshare.
Forgot one that was mentioned up-thread, which was that even if you don't pay for the fancy suspension you will still have to pay for fancy suspension parts if they break.
Fantastic point
C and e don’t sound like bad things
At least not bad enough for the company not to do it
All of it is a reason for people to vote not to allow it. This can be accomplished federally or via initiatives in states. If a handful states comprising 30-50% of the pop wont allow it then it will be dead.
Seems like forcing liability would be more successful
More successful or more beneficial?
Forcing the company to be liable for the data they collect would be more likely to stop them from doing it than trying to outlaw them collecting it
No it wouldn't because poor people can trivially be kept out of court all kinds of ways from binding arbitration to half assed enforcement. As a rule if you want someone to NOT do something you have to tell them they can't do it!
No it wouldn’t because elected officials don’t represent poor people
But we’re talking about buying new BMWs anyway. Your logic was just too stupid to not laugh at
The problem is there is no reason to suspect that a lucrative strategy doesn't spread to other manufacturers and indeed segments.
And it will be long established before it effects the poor
By which time it will be normalized. How about we fix it now.
In what way does the suspension require regular servicing or an online connection to a server to function? That would be the only reason to offer it as an ongoing service cost.
Otherwise, you're just paying extra for something already in your car, not for an actual service, which would make no sense?
What next, paint ongoing service fees for having wheels? Not even for ensuring they're regularly replaced, serviced, or repaired, just for the ability to use them at all....
Active suspension is software, just like Photoshop is. You need to pay subscription fee for Photoshop now, and BMW wants a subscription fee for their active suspension software too. Rent seeking and Enshittification.
Except that you have to have special way more expensive shocks to have adaptive suspension compared to fixed. It's like being sold an I3 CPU for the price of an I9 cpu while being told you can pay a subscription to upgrade to the full performance
Btw, Intel has tried this practice before, and I believe still is doing it for some Xeons.
Intel is a unique name with unique products globally, who the fuck is BMW globally?
That's not an excuse for Intel to be shady...
And BMW is one of the most valuable car brands out there. I don't get why you're pretending that BMW is some unknown entity. Unfortunately, many people will swallow BMW's bullshit.
I feel like in this case it's more like everyone gets sold i9 hardware, but can choose to pay the i3 price for it with locked out features, then decide later to pay the subscription to unlock the i7 or i9 performance. It has advantages for the manufacturer in that there are fewer options to account for at build time and additional revenue later on. I still think it's a terrible model that should be summarily rejected by customers, but I see why they are trying it.
Yeah they're totally not charging you for the expensive suspension they're installing in your car in the hopes that you'll pay a subscription to use it. 100% not included in the price, clearly no one would ever do that
Nobody is giving away i9 hardware at i3 prices otherwise everyone would buy the cheapest model and part it out for massive profit.
At least with Photoshop (as bad as the model is), at least they are actually running the software and storing and backing up the associated data for it.
With the car, it's all local to the car without BMW having to incur any expense for that functionality to keep going.
Id probably be angrier if this was some company making econoboxes, but if enshitification wants to target the cars of the rich, fuckin' go for it.
The people driving those cars are probably closer to you than to the BMW CEO. They're the same price as what trucks sell for these days and at some point they'll reach the second-hand market and their price comes down quick.
True. I just bought a 1-year-old 330i, and it's less than my wife's Kia SUV (We live in Michigan, have three kids and two dogs, so it makes sense for us to have one big bus that can go off-road, else we'd have something smaller and electric). The BMW also costs far less than a pickup truck of the same age and mileage. US manufacturers have been transitioning out of the business of making sedans for years, because they're not popular here. It is just a sea of SUVs and pickup trucks.
I do have a subscription to all kinds of "connected car" crap for the first year, but I'm going to turn all of that junk off when I make some other modifications later this year. I think the subscription is actually pretty cheap, but I just don't want a bunch of spyware reporting back my location and speed.
Yeah, but they're idiots
...
Lulz
"I didn't think that they would eventually come for me!?"
We long left the era where we "own" things that we buy. As everything is a computer now it has become very simple to control stuff that remotely that was working on its own before.
So the answer to "why would do this" is simply: "Because they can".
Every tiny decision is guided by increasing profit. No matter the side effects (short or long term ). Because with many shareholders administering pressure to maximize profits there's only one way to go (even if it's a dumb and shortsighted decision) maximizing profits NOW. If you are not doing that because you can see that increasing profits now will hurt profits in the future then you are hindering the project. You have to increase profits now, because if you are not then your competitor is doing it and that is a problem.
If you are not going with the project you will be out of a job sooner or later. Then someone will take over that will make the decision you couldn't do.
This is a race to the bottom. Morals, integrity, honesty, responsibility and foresight are only obstacles in this logic (because the competition is not bound by them which gains them an advantage).
It's simply cheaper now to build everything in the car always and run an operating system that manages all these things and can control what you are doing in your car.
Cory Doctorow held a great keynote about this some ~10-ish years (?) ago with the title "The coming war on general computation" where he explained the side effects of putting DRM in every stupid appliance.
The side effect here is that we cannot hack our cars to switch on the heated seats (or whatever other feature BMW is not allowing us to use for free) because of DRM. It is not "our" car, even though we bought it.
This is a side effect of deregulation of both corporations and the stock market. I think that we're going to see the pendulum swing towards more regulation and consumer-friendly policies here in the US. I don't see that lasting for the long-term, though. There are too many vulnerabilities in the political system that allow asshole billionaires to manipulate it.
it's not the system that is the problem, it's the lack of class consciousness, in America the rich have it, but not the working class
I didn't wake up this morning with the knowledge that I'm about to move to Pennsylvania and convert to being Amish.
“We’re pivoting from serving peasants to fleecing rich dumbasses that subscribe and pay monthly fees for features built into the car.”
And they’ll make money doing it. Because there will never be a shortage of people with more money than sense.
eh, rich people car shop as well, and there is plenty of competition in that market. of course some people will still opt for BMW, we just have to hope enough go elsewhere to make them lose marketshare. but... it's not looking good so far.
Ngl, i don't see how bmw gets any sales when Mercedes exists. If you are actually rich a Mercedes is almost objectively the better vehicle, if you are just trying to show off the Mercedes is a better status symbol too.
When you need fitgirl to help you with your car.
Or an Empress. Just stay off the Telegram channel FFS.
Idk, it's almost entertaining watching her lose her mind.
If I want drama I'll get a Husky.... Otherwise I'll pass.
Sure, but a husky will tear up your couch.
But I'll still love it.
Fuxking legend
They tried this with heated seats and no one wanted it, what made them think would we accept this?
German car makers have become such a joke in the last decade...
The level of subscriptions has become insane
Wow, even a stopped clock is right twice a day I guess
They would make turn signals a subscription service but they won't ever get any money from that.
I'd hoped that BMW (and the rest of the automotive industry) would have learned from the subscription heated seats debacle.
Oh well, no Beemers for me.
We already pay shitty spare parts subscription for the shitty cars they make.
BMW dances in bare ass in front of Chinese erect cock.
Should be a nottheonion article
Or aboringdystopia
You wouldn't download a Car.
Yes. Yes I would.
This is why I don't mourn Western car companies getting slaughtered by Chinese EVs. They can't really provide value by nickel and diming customers with subscriptions for components already installed on their privacy-invading overpriced cars.
One of the reasons electric cars were able to outcompete ICE-specialized companies is because they undercut on all sorts of nice to haves like buttons and pieces that they forgo by using a screen, wifi, updates, beta testing.
But they don't pass on those cost savings to you. They are even sold as luxury products. They even take the carbon credits. That's bullshit if you are serious about mainstream adoption.
ICEs are doing all of that shit now too. The truth is ICEs are fucking overpriced and manufacturers didn't want to lose money.
You do realize all car companies do scummy things? BYD along with others uses parts serialization so you can't install any parts unless BYD installs it for you an updates the software to take the new serial number.
I think you're thinking of Xiaomi, Louis Rossman did a video assuming they were doing Apple-style serialization but all it was doing was blocking installation of self-driving if the headlights weren't standard. It wasn't DRMing brake pads or preventing buying headlights from a junkyard, there was a functional reason.
With each company that gets away with doing this crap, the more companies will add these artificial locks to the products that they sell.
If there isn't legal protections for consumers, it won't be long before there are no consumer friendly options available to buy.
I didn't realize they were like Apple. Is there a source you have I could check out?
I’m never buying a BMW again. I had an electric i3 which had an inverter (charger) failure. BMW wanted €12k to fix it. Thankfully an independent offered to do it for 4K. But BMW still wanted 3K just to plug it in and authenticate the new block. Nothing else, just “bless” it. Made the fix cost-prohibitive so we just had to scrap the car. The battery, which most people fear, was fine on this 8 year old car.
Luxury car dealers do that all the time. The Volvo dealership quoted me $2800 to get my car to pass inspection, about $1500 of which was just tires.
I got a set of tires from Costco for like $800, and then an independent mechanic said everything else was fine and charged me $100 for inspection and emissions.
I know, but in the past the independent dealers didn’t have to deal directly with BMW for fixes. Now with all the authentication needed you can’t just get a replacement part from anywhere any more. Similar to how Apple locked down its batteries, BMW is doing the same.
They can lock down their revenue potential, fine by me
Even 4k sounds utterly insane for an inverter, but maybe I am wrong on that. Insane. Yeah I won't be buying a BMW ever.
Inverter + install + testing. It’s deep in the car so a lot has to come out (I was told).
I see many more Teslas on the streets than BMWs in my country and in my city.
And I live in Europe.
Fuck you BMW, who the fuck are you and where you go:)))
Imagine suffering an accident and having to pay a plus because of a feature you can't even use on the parts you replace. I feel this is non-competitive bullshit that is following the trend Elon Musk started, although it probably started much earlier.
Elon? Dude, fuck Elon, but even Tesla's only recurring paid features are $9.99 for cell connection, which is super reasonable, and $100 for FSD which is super unnecessary unless you really want to take a nap while your car murders some kids. BMW is just insane.
take a nap while your car murders some kids
Tesla out here running real-life “trolley problem” demos.
So you purchase ordinary suspension but get active suspension that works exactly like ordinary suspension and cost like active suspension to service....
It's time we get legislation that gives the consumer access to all encryption key pairs used in the product they purchased.
(For you who don't know what encryption key pairs are used for: they are used for the software to know that a change order, like "activate suspension", is legit and therefore will be executed.)
No, we need to legislate that you should be able to use the hardware features that come with your vehicle without a subscription. What will the average consumer do with encryption keys? Even then, you'd need to decrypt and rewrite the ECU or other system that controls this hardware to run your own version, and if that doesn't work, you'd need to have hardware to manually intercept communications between the suspension and the system verifying your subscription, and intercept the signal to always send an ok signal.
The hardware has full functionality from day one.
The limitation is in what software you are using.
Active suspension is not a hardware feature, it's software collecting data from sensors and by analysing the data being able adjusting the suspension to "optimal performance".
Just because certain hardware can be controlled by software doesn't mean that you will get whatever software features you like to have.
BMW would claim that "BMW Smooth Comfortable Cloud Ride Software" is included free of charge with the purchase of a BMW.
BMW would also claim that they offer "BMW Hyper Advanced AI Premium Sensation Masculine Active Road Experience Pro Suspension" as an optional subscription for alpha males and people with too much money in their pockets.
The outcome of what you are suggesting will be a slight change in the phrasing of the product offering at the most.
With access to the keys, the owner can subscribe to the BMW solution, unlock the features in breach of the agreement with BMW by not subscribing or get a software solution for the car from another provider.
I never disagreed with that, I asked what the purpose of having an encryption key will be, you are creating some magical step between “subscribe to the software” and “don’t pay the bill” that doesn’t require modification of anything but somehow just requires encryption keys
In my experience there always someone willing to create everything from homebrew software to software activation. Especially if there's some money to make on it.
lol thanks for the downvote. So you’re asking the average consumer to pay the grey market to write aftermarket untested software for their vehicle that will replace the car manufacturers active suspension software on their vehicle, and can be activated as such because they now have access to the encryption keys. That was what I was trying to ask in the first place. Glad we cleared that up
We need a FOSS car....
Thanks, I gladly stick with my old non-BMW car!
Hardware As A Service (HAAS).
Hardware as Sold Service (HASS (german for hate))
Thanks, looked for this acronyme too.
So, you buy a car with all these features, but you don't pay for them. They are disabled by default. You jailbreak your car, everything works without paying extra, but then you realize, you broke your warranty.
Should be fine on a bmw, they will start breaking after the warranty
My warranty doesn't cover jack shit anyways.
Man, never thought I'd see the day that after market car crackz become an industry.
Soon, coming to a piracy site near you:
[RZR] BMW i3 crack - Full (Heated seats + suspension + AC unlock + headlight fixes)1.05b.rar
:))))) Amen!
Wouldn't mind those sweet tunes coming back though.
We've come full circle to downloading and running things with titles like:
"BMWaReZ_UnSUSSer+HeetSeeter-v4.20.69.appimage"
carwarez, websites that look like they came from the matrix with magnet links and mega links.
And can a car your rooted pass periodic inspection?
keep original backup, restore, restore new backup afterwards.
😎
Hire a third party to do your tune-ups, specificly one that is jailbreak and hack friendly.
I wish that someone sues when something breaks in the car that you didn't opt in for.
And... yet better, they get sued when something breaks that is in connection with a paid service and someone suspects that it's because they paid part caused it.
What ever happened to you buy a car and that’s it. No need for subscriptions to things like suspensions, steering wheels, running engines…. You know the things I bought.
And what happens when all the cars are like this? EAAS? (Enshittification As A Service)
BMW is always making headlines with this crap, are there any other brands doing this shit? I know Hyundai IONIQ has a free trial for you to be able to unlock your car and whatnot with an app, later they will do it subscription based.
Most manufacturers are doing this.
Most people don’t seem to care since they understand there are ongoing server and infrastructure costs.
My car's suspension should not need a server.
How else would they know that you've paid for it?
Not downvoting you, but what on earth would need a SQL server to use suspension? It would be far too slow for real-time applications, and this isn't a rolls royce engine on a jet generating 1tb of data a second when all sensors are active and logging.
This is a mall-mobile that someone will probably total in a power center parking lot in Arizona.
There is no justification for "server and infrastructure" for a fucking car. No part of a car should require a single penny of server costs over the entire lifespan.
I don’t get what you mean.
The app is intended to remote start your vehicle when you’re out of range of the key fob. I’m not sure how you’d propose that function works without servers and infrastructure.
This has nothing to do with an app.
But even ignoring that and pretending that that's some necessary feature, taking $10 out of the service price would pay for the actual costs for a hundred years, easy. It should be literally illegal to charge a subscription for that.
We start again with a strange Germany in Europe:)
Germany; don't do this please...
Just don't buy it
That strategy repeatedly fails, companies in the same market will see it extracting more profit and start doing it too.
Then don't buy their products either.
Just don't buy any car if they all do this in the future? People need a better answer, don't find comfort in "just don't buy it".
How about you just stop consoooming. There will always be cars without this and if there aren't: there are more sustainable modes of transportation anyways.
There's DRM in public trains now. It's not just cars, it's every industry with electronic device running software.
I can easily foresee the drm services or servers being shutdown, like the Microsoft music server....most you bought can no longer be used if moved.
Eventually they will "retire" this model and shut down servers. Making the car maybe driveable, but won't have stuff you paid for I bet.
Plus, eventually someone will unlock this with a hacked car software patch anyway.
Insurance company's will start testing for hacks and denying coverage.
Lol, good luck with that. I'll stuck with my dumb, subscription-less and app-less ebike. And still manage to beat cars due to insane traffic.
I really wish biking was more of an option in most of the us. Unfortunately the vast majority of cities in this country are car-centric strip mall wastelands. Nothing like having a 5 foot wide bike lane right next to a 65mph highway.
Well, at least we know you're not vegan.
You can tell because he's not mentioning it.
If I own the car it's my hardware to use. If I don't own that suspension then someone needs to collect their property from my car.
So, the car gets very expensive suspension, but to use the features you need a subscription? So if I don't want the active suspension feature, I am still stuck with the very expensive active suspension hardware...
Yeah, no, I'll stick with Subaru. Everything they make uses tech from the dinosaur age of motoring.
I actually think this is a great idea. Hear me out.
They fit the hardware that you can't touch while the Motor plan is active, but when the right to repair legislation kicks in, and we start debating whether we actually own the cars we buy, all these scumbag practices will mean that any car outside of the Motorplan should be able to run cracked OS's and everyone gets free BMW features on their cars after motorplan expires.
I vote they keep going for a bit, then they get their asses handed to them with out of maintenance plan service options and 3rd party features.
If all the cars are the same price I'll buy the one with the upgrade options and then not pay for them.
I'll buy the one without an internet connection to be checking if I am subscribed or not.
There are basic rules for coming up with these types of product subscriptions:
Is it something a large number of customers can't live without?
Is it something that costs money to support and continue developing? Subscriptions help defray that cost and loyal users are happy to keep it going.
Will the feature be actively used on a regular basis, going forward?
Now apply these to seat warmers, suspension adjustments, self-driving, or whatever else shows up in the future. If you don't hit all three, head back to the drawing board.
P.S.: This isn't limited to cars. It's equally true for any hardware product.
If I were a BMW customer, I'd be suspending my purchase of their rip-off vehicles.
When I said I wanted Forza in the car this isn't exactly what I was gaming for.
Bmw slowly becoming a really bad car
Bad Motor Vehicle
real
Slowly?
They stopped being good cars in 2004. Twenty years they've been shit, and people are still swallowing the gravy.
ohh
Put Germany out of its misery already
TPB go brrrrrrrrrr
I do love german cars, but now they just trolling. Not that I can afford a BMW, but would place a third mortgage on my house if only it wasn’t for the subscription. What next “subscription on your breaks has expired. Do you want AI to take it from here? Please download our app”
Yeah nah. I hope these car company keep adding subscriptions, it'll hopefully push people over the edge and hurt their sales. These cars are becoming unfix-able. I can't imagine how much it would cost to get this system fixed.
Software as a Suspension.
So you just go to a crack website and search for the suspension crack. A few months later while riding a very smooth ride over a thousand dinosaur corpses, your computer tells the car to steer to the right abruptly in the 75mph freeway.
Now, I can "kinda" see the rationale behind optional features on a car being either enabled via software or subscription. I believe the permanent enable price should be the same as if you added the hardware to the car as an option.
As to why this might make sense for a carmaker. In my work I've visited car manufacturers before, and from what I could see it's quite expensive and adds time to support the various options when building a car. You see they have the main production line, and units are pulled off the main line to fit the options at various points and then reinserted and this causes problems for efficiency and price per unit I think.
So, there's probably a cost saving to making the base car have all the options fitted and having a completely standardized production line. However, the expense is likely going to mean if they sold the base car at the usual base car price they would either lose money, or at the very least, the profit margin wouldn't be worthwhile.
However, if you know a certain percentage of people will want the options, and you can enable it with software later, it's possible building the hardware into every car as standard would work out overall cheaper. They might also be able to upsell to more people by making a subscription option, perhaps with maybe a free trial for the first say 3 months of ownership. That is, they turn everything on for 6 months for free, then revert you to the package you paid for. Hoping that you liked some of the features and will pay or subscribe to keep them.
What I don't like is when this stuff might become ONLY available as a subscription, the overall move toward subscription models for everything irks me a lot. I'd much prefer we still get to choose a package, and have the ability to upgrade later.
So I think my point is, the argument "the hardware is there anyway" doesn't really work, because they are likely going to install the hardware at a loss, on the assumption (backed up by their own numbers) they will sell enough to make a bigger profit overall.
They also likely bake into the numbers that a very small number of people will hack the car and enable the features anyway. The vast majority will not do this, though.
How does any of this benefit the buyer?
Asking for a friend lol
Well, I would say it SHOULD bring overall prices down. If the cost to build the top of the line model comes down to say the same as the mid-range model AND more people are say buying up. It means that competition would push overall prices down.
But of course not, it benefits the companies most, and given the choice of lower prices or more profit, they'll choose the profit every time.
If they go subscription only (because recurring revenue is the current business buzzword, so of course they will go subscription only) then overall cost for the life of the car will definitely be higher yet "feel" more affordable.
You're right that the idea has come from the mind boggling number of options in vehicles these days. The company I worked for recently had over a million different combinations, and making more physical parts standard fit saves them money.
However that saving is not passed on to the customer. The company pockets it all, and makes more money on top with the subscriptions.
So long story short... They do it for their own benefit. So why would any self respecting paying customer care about any of these reasons?
Pretty much how it always works with business.
yes so why should end user care about any of it besides price?
I don't think users should reward the behaviour. If they actually lost money because of these decisions, they would stop making those decisions.
But, we both know enough people will bend over and take it.
But, in terms of cost it can be a good move. It's just for us, it makes at best, no difference.
People act like subscriptions are a new thing for cars, and somehow mentally gloss over the fact that they have to physically go in to renew their energy subscription weekly, not to mention the quarterly, and bi-annual subscriptions for oil and various maintenance respectively.
Everything has always been a subscription, you're just a frog that's well done.
Don't get me started on your road subscription.
That kind of mental gymnastics gives me a headache.
They gave me the gold
The key differences is utilities you're paying for the generation & maintenance of key resources - without gas, water and electricity we wouldn't be able to survive. Road tax you're helping to pay for the renewal and upkeep of the road surface (among other local services)... Left alone the road will degrade & will become unusable.
Suspension as a Service is milking what should be a perpetual cost when purchasing the vehicle. If the hardware is already installed, it should be available for the owner to use. They're not paying for the upkeep of the vehicle, or even ensuring the suspension remains functional... All they've done is placed the function behind a pay wall. They can argue they're maintaining the software, but it's utter bullshit and I hate the fact this has become a norm within B2B (for example network appliances)
At least with luxury subscriptions such as Spotify, Netflix, NYT, etc you're getting access to their content, which they renew. Here you get access to something you should have had access to from day 1.
Nice, a reasonable reply! I'll bite.
So what seemed to be lost on people was that I'm not defending BMW in any way, but rather pointing out that there mere act of owning a car automatically signs you up for a number of subscriptions, notably: registration, insurance, and energy (gas or electric), but we've conditioned ourselves to thinking that somehow those aren't a subscription which is a delineation without a difference.
I cancelled my subscriptions btw, fuck cars.
I now primarily use the most superior form of transportation ever conceived: my feet.
I’m getting vibes of “Yet you participate in society. Curious!”
I think what hurts my brain besides the babbling, is the lack of citations.
Are you just trying to sound smart and in-the-know? Bruh, sources matter for such bold claims.
Just prodding the boiled frogs thinking they're still sous vide
Today I learned upkeep of heavy machinery is considered a subscription service.
I bet you think drinking water is a subscription service too.
You do literally get a monthly bill for it, so... yeah?
That's not a requirement. That's literally not a requirement. You used to be able to literally go down to a body of water and drink from it but like I said humans suck. If we didn't you'd still be able to do that.
There's nothing stopping lots of people from having a well dug either.
I bet you think drinking water is a subscription service too.
That probably isn't the example you want to use. I pay a monthly fee to get clean water pumped to my apartment, as do most people.
No offense but the reason you can't just have clean water anytime you like is because humans suck, not because it's a subscription service. I said what I said.
Bootlicker spotted
FuckCars enthusiast actually, something something... so far left you get your roads back
You just blow in from stupid town?
Gas oil need money to drill and refind from sources and car suspension does not, it maybe need to get a check up or replace once in a long while and not every months
Oh look, another reason not to buy BMW, I'll just add it to the other 456788656752 reasons.
The problem is that once one manufacturer starts doing this, they'll all do it, so you won't even have the option of buying a new car without a subscription.
I'm so gonna install Linux on my future car
'What do you mean the car is missing a driver?? Im sitting right here!'
In Lemmy, Linux is always the answer.
If they'll let you.
It probably already runs Linux, just hack it
I'd sooner hack the car
I’m glad my current car is a 2015 Mazda. It’s recent enough to have a touch screen and Bluetooth, but not so recent that it’s got an LTE/5G radio that can phone home and let them sell my driving data to insurance companies or force subscription payments on me. When I get my next car in a decade or so, hopefully I can import a cheap Chinese EV that’s either easy to jailbreak, or doesn’t have any of that bullshit included.
I was a BMW mechanic from 2009-2012. I can't believe anyone buys them after what I've seen. The engines are all made of plastic and start to literally crumble to pieces and leak oil from absolutely everywhere after ~70k miles. We had to have customers sign disclosures on these cars because inevitably they would just crumble to pieces when we went in to replace one part and we'd end up having to replace others to reassemble it. Or we would pressure-test the cooling system to find a leak and end up creating several more.
On their V8s there's a plastic cooling tube that runs from front to back on the engine. The tube itself is like $10 but you had to disassemble the entire engine to access it so it would cost several thousand $ in labor.
We eventually started selling an aftermarket CNC aluminum one that was threaded and expanded into the hole. We would just beat the old one out with a hammer and thread the new one in in a couple hours and they'd never have that problem again. Why BMW couldn't think of that is beyond me. The people who did made buckets of money selling aluminum tubes for hundreds of dollars just because they could.
You might expect cost cutting like that from a Kia or something but not from a car that's advertised as a premium brand and sold at premium prices.
You're literally just paying more for less.
The Buick 3800 had a tube like that on top, it would crack from thermal stresses and piss out hot coolant. There was an aluminum aftermarket replacement like you describe but it was Dorman and a cheap fix. Buick also addressed the problem in later versions. I miss that engine.
BMW's are pure over engineered garbage.
I used to own a W124 series Benz (bought used for 5% of sticker price, I ain't no fauntelroy). Nearly everything on it was redundant or excessively skookum.
When systems that weren't as rugged started going down, like the vacuum controllers for doors or the 4matic computer etc, the car still worked safely with reduced convenience. A few minor design flaws like the wiring harness but that's it. Room to work under the hood, too.
It was built in '93 when the engineers still ran the company.
Current main driver is the super reliable '03 CRV.
I love my bmw plug in hybrid. I don’t see myself ever paying for a subscription though. Maybe if it comes with pizza, but even then it’s unlikely.
Yeah I'll just sprout wings and fly everywhere.
Please do if possible.
Seriously tho, was it so hard to understand that i was pointing out that all big car companies are starting to do this?
If this is a reason not to buy a BMW then its a reason not to buy any modern car. Which it is imo.
The problem is a huge number of cars were removed and destroyed which would otherwise have been in the used market. It's a big reason why even used cars are priced so high. Buying used isn't what it used to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_Allowance_Rebate_System
And they want to do it again not because it helped anyone get a car but because it let them make the prices so stupidly high.
I agree that new cars suck but they're removing the stocks of used cars that would be worth buying at any price and at our expense.
Agree with that yep, its also already been shown years ago that modding used cars into electric cars is totally doable, economic and saves fuckloads of resources. Same thing happening with tractors too btw. Lots of farmers are buying up old tractors because they can actually repair them on site when they break down. With modern ones they have to wait for some asshole from john deer to come in with a debugging laptop to do the exact same thing for lots of money and downtime.
ftfy then
While this is completely true, it's a bit tone-deaf. Fuck cars, but many people barely have a choice because their public transport consists of a handful of busses that come once an hour and nothing is close by.
As an aside, I spend a whopping total of about $1/day (edit Australian $, so less USD) on maintenance and electricity for my electric cargo bike. I go about 17 km each way to work and the funny thing is it's only about 10 mins longer than driving, lol
Imagine a bus coming once an hour... try only twice a day for the entire county... early morning and late night.
💀 where is this?
.... Re-read before I sent. I thought this said country, lol.
Yikes, why even have a bus at that point?
Yeah i know many people dont really have much of a choice, see the thread nex to your comment. I was more intending to talk shit about modern cars that all seem to have this shit.
If once you do not succeed, just try again next year. They tried and backtracked putting heated seats behind a paywall not even a year ago see here.
Unless laws are made to make this fundamentally illegal, they'll just keep pushing until it sticks. And once one manufacturer succeeds, they'll all follow.
Since 2019 you have to pay 800$ a year to have your bmw use adaptive drive, 150$ to use the app.
We are pirating car suspension now holy shit
You wouldn’t download a car
You wouldn't download a configuration profile for your cars suspension!
People stealing owners' property will be sent to the gulag!
TPB go brrrrrrrrrr
I would actually. A 1967 Shelby Cobra kit car if I had a choice.
Lmk if you find out how
M2, pls
Brick it by bios update:)))
This sure as fuck isn't the best timeline, but it does have its moments
😂😂😂 good ol' pirate bay
Next up, Anti-lock brakes as a Subscription Service. ASS.
Haha.. connection to server cannot be established. Suspension resetting to default.
This is extra hilarious in the face of the crib manufacturer that just decided to subscription paywall basic functions of their crib.. or the slow cooker... And that's just this week.
Game manufacturers pulling the plug on games they sold removing the servers yanking the games.
And now people think that you can buy a product that is going to last longer and costs several orders of magnitude more.. and you can only hope that the manufacturer can be bothered to:
But the sale case is easy.. lease car drivers. This way they can enjoy premium functions not incorporated into the sale price of the car. I hope the IRS that taxes these things sees through this ploy and taxes the vehicles for installed functions wether you pay for them or not. Saw this happen with Tesla's.. taxed based on their initial price.. and then the user added 15k of functions after a day.. and the tax was still based on the original sticker price.
At least in the case of games, the servers are an ongoing expense that adds value to the game. I want to play against other people online and provide by that costs ongoing expenses.
Oh you think this feature will function locally.. I'll bet this goes from their app to their servers first to verify subscription and then to your car. Someone needs to pay for the subscription verification platform.
In theory most subscription services provide additional content as time goes on. This only provides a capability that already exists on the car.
Scummy practices that should be outlawed, like retail stores raising prices just before a big sale so they can slap "80% off!" on their stuff.
EU is at least trying to do something about that. As of last year stores are required to display the cheapest price they've had for an item in the past three months when they have something on sale. Not all stores comply, and of course they try to get around these by the usual shenanigans, like basically the same product being available from the manufacturer with two slightly different item codes.
Edit: I think I was mistaken, and it's 30 days, not 3 months
Got it, don't buy cars built after 2010.
Import something old and fun! Cars from smaller countries have lower mileage and can be cheap because they aren't as valuable as a comparable car from the US. It isn't hard to find a 25 year old car with about 50,000 miles on it.
JDM cars are especially nice now because of how weak the YEN is. Look outside the popular JDM cars and there are tons of things with easy to find parts for dirt cheap.
Or hell, get a not top trim of a popular model, and you can get something cheap. Want a station wagon built on the same platform as the Nissan Skyline? The Automatic Stageas are cheaper because tuners don't want them because they're an automatic and don't have a turbo, which makes them slower, but also more reliable.
Nissan Rasheens with the 1500cc engine are easy to maintain and have an engine that was used in some American cars, get the first true AWD CUV for about $5000 plus import fees.
Another cheap option is a Toyota Caldina, get a reliable awd station wagon with a nice interior for 7 or 8 grand including import fees. (Avoid the 2000ish GTT version with a turbo, turbo manifold is prone to warping on that engine and said manifold is hard to find in the US as those engines generally didnt sell in the US)
Edit: looks like Caldinas have gone up in price recently.
Where are you finding things like this? What's parts availability like?
Carfromjapan.com has the best search features I've found, once you know what you're looking for https://www.goo-net-exchange.com/ is also nice because they translate the car condition sheets.
Parts availability depends on the car. For the Rasheen for example most of the engine parts can be found at any parts store for the 1500 and 2000 cc engine versions cause those engines were also in American cars though the 2000cc engine is far more common. I've also found English websites that are easy to order just about any parts you want for a Rasheen including body panels.
Amazon is also nice for finding parts, I was able to find parts for a SR18DE engine on Amazon and that engine was never sold in America. So you can just buy the parts yourself then take the car to a local mechanic for the work.
Once you find something that interests you just Google that car name parts and you can usually find someone talking online about how owning that car has been for them.
The best listings also have video of the car running so you can hear if something is off with it.
I used picknbuy24 to get a Nissan Tiida for $1200 USD with like 25k miles. Parts are normally the same as they are on already imported models.
How did Customs let it through? It has to have DOT spec stuff in the US. I don't know about more than 25 years old.
Probably safe up to 2016 as long as it's not luxury brand
One of our cars is a 2016 GM and I just unscrewed the cell antenna instead of ripping out the cell module. Tracking disabled, or at least unreliable. The subscription nav is useless and easy to ignore. I would like to figure out how to prevent the siriusxm ads built into the infotainment system, still.
I look forward to better infotainment hacks down the road.
Not necessarily. My 2015 SEAT (for folks in the North America: That's basically Volkswagen) is one of the latest cars that do not completely fuck you over. TPMS is passive, so you don't need expensive sensors. You can also update the maps on your own (OK, here they pull you over if you don't know the simple trick). Parts are also cheap.
no, SEAT IS VW
👍
I own a Seat Ibiza 2021. To me it's one of the last Ibiza to give value for your money. Totally reliable vehicles.
big oil licking their lips and nodding their heads
Are there any electric cars that aren't glorified smartphones on wheels? Something a grandma can drive without ending up in the wrong menu.
My wife used to drive an electric Smart Car for her work. It had a range of 60 miles (less in the winter), and she called it a glorified golf cart. But it was perfect for the 20 or so miles she’d drive each day.
The Bolt is ok. It has a screen and Android Auto and stuff, but I only use it for Android Auto navigation and energy stats when I'm curious. For pretty much everything else, there are good ol' fashioned buttons.
Oh, it does have OnStar and some stuff associated with that, but GM discontinued the worst of it after a class action lawsuit.
Got it, thanks
Well done BMW. Anything that leads to more people cycling instead of driving is a good thing in my book.
People won't switch from driving to cycling over this. They'll just pick one of the several dozen other car manufacturers.
I suspect most BMW owners won't care too much. Like they'll find it annoying but still buy/lease the car anyway.
until every manufacturer implements it
What if the cycling option is a really REALLY good bike?
If the bike does the biking completely for me, has hvac, reclining seats, can do 65mph down the highway and can take care of my morning wood taking into account remaining travel time, I'd be interested. That indeed would be a really good bike.
Nobody's gonna abandon cars as a whole over this, the same they wouldn't abandon bicycles as a whole over some other outrageously monetized luxury feature they could live without.
Sorry, your bicycle's gear selector is locked into a single gear until you pay your subscription for the other gears.
Fucking LOL'd at this. Genuinely not sure if this is satire.
Thanks :)
Anyone that buys a car that has shit like this is a fool.
True, however we must fight this because otherwise, when you need to buy a car, there won't be an option without a shitty subscription attached
Remember that some of is live in shitty cities with bad or no alternative ways of moving around
I agree totally, but I don't think it will matter with new vehicles. They're going to track you and spay on you more than your phone. I will forever drive old stuff. I'm a mechanic so that's a super easy option for me. I won't own anything new enough to spy on me, my car will be MY car.
100%, I am not a mechanic but I like auto work and have learned most of the basics. It is not really enough to own an older car forever but it should help out to some extent.
If you ever think you're in over your head, just remember, It's just nuts and bolts.
The article implies nobody even knew it already had this functionality. I'm sure the customers weren't told either.
I've heard for years that BMW was doing shit like this. Heated seats is what it started with. Toyota did it with remote start but I think they backed down after the outrage.
"The pressure eased off a little when they ended subscriptions tied to heated seats, but the Internet rage machine has come back for vengeance."
lol. It's not vengeance or rage, its simply the fact that making someone pay for something they already own is dumb.
These cars already cost more than my life, how can they ask for more money.
Because the people who buy them have it and BMW can get more out of them. The real problem is that they’ll buy it, and other manufacturers will see “hey, it’s a successful model and additional revenue generation!”
Because people with no self respect will pay them.
You know it's just a matter of time before this shit starts being applied to budget cars.
...I really hope the tech crowd is working on jailbreaking this garbage.
We try. We also pivot to open source to try and regain control because it's the only way. We even share our passions with those who ask.
You folks just roll your eyes and put more money on their hands.
This "tech crowd" and "you folks" dichotomy is not helpful at all. Tell people how they can help, volunteer, donate etc, don't wedge gaps between the same class fighting against the same ruling class. I'm a software engineer. I write open source software. I get that it's tiring and you can see the worst in people when doing it, but we're going to have to be better than that if we want to change things.
And for those reading like the top commenter, don't sit on your hands and wait for "tech folks" to figure stuff out. It's us vs. corporate greed, not "us hoping the tech folks save us from corporate greed" or "us tech folks being badgered like we should be some saviors against corporate greed." Write your representatives to tell them this isn't ok. Be mindful in your selection when you purchase a vehicle. Ask your tech savvy friends and family what you can do to help. You aren't helpless in this, and as OP said, just sitting and waiting for something to be fixed or changed doesn't help the overall goal.
I wrote it as a tongue in cheek against the OP that said "..I really hope the tech crowd is working on jailbreaking this garbage".
Surprise surprise, that comment is sitting with 49 upvotes 1 downvote, mine that you admonish is on 27 upvotes 13 downvotes.
This kind of proves the point. The "tech crowd" doesn't owe you anything. Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world, you don't know how much of my personal and professional life I have spent fully on open source.
Get up your feet and talk with your family, representatitives. Legislate this shit away. Nobody accepts food products that dont have a recipe or with unknown ingredients. Nobody accepts engineering projects without plans. Demand open source and interoperability.
dismissing our warnings as some nerd turf wars for decades aint helping anyone either.
no amount of talking to normies will fix this because you would rather listen to the corporations. and this precedes any form of action.
What exactly do you propose the "normies" do? Is there some non-corporation making road-worthy cars? No? Let me guess, you want a family of 5 to bike 2 hours to the nearest school/park/grocery store in the snow on rural roads with no shoulder just to avoid paying a corporation? Take the nonexistent train?
who suggested bikes?
let me just say this: if facebook were known to be doing the shit it does today in 2002, it wouldnt have fucking flied, because normies trusted people more than they did corporations. throw away the notion we are powerless against corporations.
no need to make up that huge strawman when you could have properly read what i bothered to type out.
That would be the ultimate way to stop this. Let them put the hardware in, and then not make a cent off it, because a third party enables it for the customer.
FUCK these out of control capitalists jesus christ.
Why is this bad in a nutshell.
A) The only way to control access to this feature is to lock down and phone home. If it doesn't phone home then when someone figures out a way around your present security its possible for someone to sell said features forever. Such DRM could hurt repeatability by accident or more likely on purpose.
B) There is no reason to fail open so even if BMW is still chugging when they stop taking your cars phone calls and retires those servers you get no more feature.
C) The amount spent over the lifespan of a car wherein people opt to take care of their valuable asset absolutely dwarfs the cost able to be extracted up front
D) This functionality opens the door to a hacker not just turning off your features but turning off your car. This includes state sponsored attackers and people who are just generally pissed off at the geopolitical actions of your country of origin. If you are in the US that is a lot of fucking people.
E) Product segmentation on average increases the amount you can extract per user. Allowing segmentation by features turn on or off in software by the month it allows far greater segmentation with no reasonable expectation that the baseline will be lower. This means the lowest end user of a model pays the same for even less. The median user pays somewhat more and the max user pays a LOT more.
F) This means wholly paid for used cars now come with a car payment to the manufacturer.
Now there are half a hundred people on the boards of these companies and 338M of us in the US. 449M in the EU. There is no reason to allow this misfeature to continue to be a thing in our markets. If automakers don't like those restrictions any one of them can opt to most of the most valuable markets in the world and find their fortunes exclusively in China while their competitors eat their former marketshare.
Forgot one that was mentioned up-thread, which was that even if you don't pay for the fancy suspension you will still have to pay for fancy suspension parts if they break.
Fantastic point
C and e don’t sound like bad things
At least not bad enough for the company not to do it
All of it is a reason for people to vote not to allow it. This can be accomplished federally or via initiatives in states. If a handful states comprising 30-50% of the pop wont allow it then it will be dead.
Seems like forcing liability would be more successful
More successful or more beneficial?
Forcing the company to be liable for the data they collect would be more likely to stop them from doing it than trying to outlaw them collecting it
No it wouldn't because poor people can trivially be kept out of court all kinds of ways from binding arbitration to half assed enforcement. As a rule if you want someone to NOT do something you have to tell them they can't do it!
No it wouldn’t because elected officials don’t represent poor people
But we’re talking about buying new BMWs anyway. Your logic was just too stupid to not laugh at
The problem is there is no reason to suspect that a lucrative strategy doesn't spread to other manufacturers and indeed segments.
And it will be long established before it effects the poor
By which time it will be normalized. How about we fix it now.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/
So your previous argument was nonsense
In what way does the suspension require regular servicing or an online connection to a server to function? That would be the only reason to offer it as an ongoing service cost.
Otherwise, you're just paying extra for something already in your car, not for an actual service, which would make no sense?
What next, paint ongoing service fees for having wheels? Not even for ensuring they're regularly replaced, serviced, or repaired, just for the ability to use them at all....
Active suspension is software, just like Photoshop is. You need to pay subscription fee for Photoshop now, and BMW wants a subscription fee for their active suspension software too. Rent seeking and Enshittification.
Except that you have to have special way more expensive shocks to have adaptive suspension compared to fixed. It's like being sold an I3 CPU for the price of an I9 cpu while being told you can pay a subscription to upgrade to the full performance
Btw, Intel has tried this practice before, and I believe still is doing it for some Xeons.
Intel is a unique name with unique products globally, who the fuck is BMW globally?
That's not an excuse for Intel to be shady...
And BMW is one of the most valuable car brands out there. I don't get why you're pretending that BMW is some unknown entity. Unfortunately, many people will swallow BMW's bullshit.
I feel like in this case it's more like everyone gets sold i9 hardware, but can choose to pay the i3 price for it with locked out features, then decide later to pay the subscription to unlock the i7 or i9 performance. It has advantages for the manufacturer in that there are fewer options to account for at build time and additional revenue later on. I still think it's a terrible model that should be summarily rejected by customers, but I see why they are trying it.
Yeah they're totally not charging you for the expensive suspension they're installing in your car in the hopes that you'll pay a subscription to use it. 100% not included in the price, clearly no one would ever do that
Nobody is giving away i9 hardware at i3 prices otherwise everyone would buy the cheapest model and part it out for massive profit.
At least with Photoshop (as bad as the model is), at least they are actually running the software and storing and backing up the associated data for it.
With the car, it's all local to the car without BMW having to incur any expense for that functionality to keep going.
Id probably be angrier if this was some company making econoboxes, but if enshitification wants to target the cars of the rich, fuckin' go for it.
The people driving those cars are probably closer to you than to the BMW CEO. They're the same price as what trucks sell for these days and at some point they'll reach the second-hand market and their price comes down quick.
True. I just bought a 1-year-old 330i, and it's less than my wife's Kia SUV (We live in Michigan, have three kids and two dogs, so it makes sense for us to have one big bus that can go off-road, else we'd have something smaller and electric). The BMW also costs far less than a pickup truck of the same age and mileage. US manufacturers have been transitioning out of the business of making sedans for years, because they're not popular here. It is just a sea of SUVs and pickup trucks.
I do have a subscription to all kinds of "connected car" crap for the first year, but I'm going to turn all of that junk off when I make some other modifications later this year. I think the subscription is actually pretty cheap, but I just don't want a bunch of spyware reporting back my location and speed.
Yeah, but they're idiots
...
Lulz
"I didn't think that they would eventually come for me!?"
We long left the era where we "own" things that we buy. As everything is a computer now it has become very simple to control stuff that remotely that was working on its own before.
So the answer to "why would do this" is simply: "Because they can".
Every tiny decision is guided by increasing profit. No matter the side effects (short or long term ). Because with many shareholders administering pressure to maximize profits there's only one way to go (even if it's a dumb and shortsighted decision) maximizing profits NOW. If you are not doing that because you can see that increasing profits now will hurt profits in the future then you are hindering the project. You have to increase profits now, because if you are not then your competitor is doing it and that is a problem. If you are not going with the project you will be out of a job sooner or later. Then someone will take over that will make the decision you couldn't do.
This is a race to the bottom. Morals, integrity, honesty, responsibility and foresight are only obstacles in this logic (because the competition is not bound by them which gains them an advantage).
It's simply cheaper now to build everything in the car always and run an operating system that manages all these things and can control what you are doing in your car.
Cory Doctorow held a great keynote about this some ~10-ish years (?) ago with the title "The coming war on general computation" where he explained the side effects of putting DRM in every stupid appliance. The side effect here is that we cannot hack our cars to switch on the heated seats (or whatever other feature BMW is not allowing us to use for free) because of DRM. It is not "our" car, even though we bought it.
This is a side effect of deregulation of both corporations and the stock market. I think that we're going to see the pendulum swing towards more regulation and consumer-friendly policies here in the US. I don't see that lasting for the long-term, though. There are too many vulnerabilities in the political system that allow asshole billionaires to manipulate it.
it's not the system that is the problem, it's the lack of class consciousness, in America the rich have it, but not the working class
I didn't wake up this morning with the knowledge that I'm about to move to Pennsylvania and convert to being Amish.
“We’re pivoting from serving peasants to fleecing rich dumbasses that subscribe and pay monthly fees for features built into the car.”
And they’ll make money doing it. Because there will never be a shortage of people with more money than sense.
eh, rich people car shop as well, and there is plenty of competition in that market. of course some people will still opt for BMW, we just have to hope enough go elsewhere to make them lose marketshare. but... it's not looking good so far.
Ngl, i don't see how bmw gets any sales when Mercedes exists. If you are actually rich a Mercedes is almost objectively the better vehicle, if you are just trying to show off the Mercedes is a better status symbol too.
When you need fitgirl to help you with your car.
Or an Empress. Just stay off the Telegram channel FFS.
Idk, it's almost entertaining watching her lose her mind.
If I want drama I'll get a Husky.... Otherwise I'll pass.
Sure, but a husky will tear up your couch.
But I'll still love it.
Fuxking legend
They tried this with heated seats and no one wanted it, what made them think would we accept this?
German car makers have become such a joke in the last decade...
The level of subscriptions has become insane
Wow, even a stopped clock is right twice a day I guess
They would make turn signals a subscription service but they won't ever get any money from that.
I'd hoped that BMW (and the rest of the automotive industry) would have learned from the subscription heated seats debacle.
Oh well, no Beemers for me.
We already pay shitty spare parts subscription for the shitty cars they make.
BMW dances in bare ass in front of Chinese erect cock.
Should be a nottheonion article
Or aboringdystopia
You wouldn't download a Car.
Yes. Yes I would.
This is why I don't mourn Western car companies getting slaughtered by Chinese EVs. They can't really provide value by nickel and diming customers with subscriptions for components already installed on their privacy-invading overpriced cars.
One of the reasons electric cars were able to outcompete ICE-specialized companies is because they undercut on all sorts of nice to haves like buttons and pieces that they forgo by using a screen, wifi, updates, beta testing.
But they don't pass on those cost savings to you. They are even sold as luxury products. They even take the carbon credits. That's bullshit if you are serious about mainstream adoption.
ICEs are doing all of that shit now too. The truth is ICEs are fucking overpriced and manufacturers didn't want to lose money.
You do realize all car companies do scummy things? BYD along with others uses parts serialization so you can't install any parts unless BYD installs it for you an updates the software to take the new serial number.
I think you're thinking of Xiaomi, Louis Rossman did a video assuming they were doing Apple-style serialization but all it was doing was blocking installation of self-driving if the headlights weren't standard. It wasn't DRMing brake pads or preventing buying headlights from a junkyard, there was a functional reason.
With each company that gets away with doing this crap, the more companies will add these artificial locks to the products that they sell.
If there isn't legal protections for consumers, it won't be long before there are no consumer friendly options available to buy.
I didn't realize they were like Apple. Is there a source you have I could check out?
I’m never buying a BMW again. I had an electric i3 which had an inverter (charger) failure. BMW wanted €12k to fix it. Thankfully an independent offered to do it for 4K. But BMW still wanted 3K just to plug it in and authenticate the new block. Nothing else, just “bless” it. Made the fix cost-prohibitive so we just had to scrap the car. The battery, which most people fear, was fine on this 8 year old car.
Luxury car dealers do that all the time. The Volvo dealership quoted me $2800 to get my car to pass inspection, about $1500 of which was just tires.
I got a set of tires from Costco for like $800, and then an independent mechanic said everything else was fine and charged me $100 for inspection and emissions.
I know, but in the past the independent dealers didn’t have to deal directly with BMW for fixes. Now with all the authentication needed you can’t just get a replacement part from anywhere any more. Similar to how Apple locked down its batteries, BMW is doing the same.
They can lock down their revenue potential, fine by me
Even 4k sounds utterly insane for an inverter, but maybe I am wrong on that. Insane. Yeah I won't be buying a BMW ever.
Inverter + install + testing. It’s deep in the car so a lot has to come out (I was told).
I see many more Teslas on the streets than BMWs in my country and in my city.
And I live in Europe.
Fuck you BMW, who the fuck are you and where you go:)))
Imagine suffering an accident and having to pay a plus because of a feature you can't even use on the parts you replace. I feel this is non-competitive bullshit that is following the trend Elon Musk started, although it probably started much earlier.
Elon? Dude, fuck Elon, but even Tesla's only recurring paid features are $9.99 for cell connection, which is super reasonable, and $100 for FSD which is super unnecessary unless you really want to take a nap while your car murders some kids. BMW is just insane.
Tesla out here running real-life “trolley problem” demos.
So you purchase ordinary suspension but get active suspension that works exactly like ordinary suspension and cost like active suspension to service....
It's time we get legislation that gives the consumer access to all encryption key pairs used in the product they purchased.
(For you who don't know what encryption key pairs are used for: they are used for the software to know that a change order, like "activate suspension", is legit and therefore will be executed.)
No, we need to legislate that you should be able to use the hardware features that come with your vehicle without a subscription. What will the average consumer do with encryption keys? Even then, you'd need to decrypt and rewrite the ECU or other system that controls this hardware to run your own version, and if that doesn't work, you'd need to have hardware to manually intercept communications between the suspension and the system verifying your subscription, and intercept the signal to always send an ok signal.
The hardware has full functionality from day one. The limitation is in what software you are using.
Active suspension is not a hardware feature, it's software collecting data from sensors and by analysing the data being able adjusting the suspension to "optimal performance". Just because certain hardware can be controlled by software doesn't mean that you will get whatever software features you like to have.
BMW would claim that "BMW Smooth Comfortable Cloud Ride Software" is included free of charge with the purchase of a BMW.
BMW would also claim that they offer "BMW Hyper Advanced AI Premium Sensation Masculine Active Road Experience Pro Suspension" as an optional subscription for alpha males and people with too much money in their pockets.
The outcome of what you are suggesting will be a slight change in the phrasing of the product offering at the most.
With access to the keys, the owner can subscribe to the BMW solution, unlock the features in breach of the agreement with BMW by not subscribing or get a software solution for the car from another provider.
I never disagreed with that, I asked what the purpose of having an encryption key will be, you are creating some magical step between “subscribe to the software” and “don’t pay the bill” that doesn’t require modification of anything but somehow just requires encryption keys
In my experience there always someone willing to create everything from homebrew software to software activation. Especially if there's some money to make on it.
lol thanks for the downvote. So you’re asking the average consumer to pay the grey market to write aftermarket untested software for their vehicle that will replace the car manufacturers active suspension software on their vehicle, and can be activated as such because they now have access to the encryption keys. That was what I was trying to ask in the first place. Glad we cleared that up
We need a FOSS car....
Thanks, I gladly stick with my old non-BMW car!
Hardware As A Service (HAAS).
Hardware as Sold Service (HASS (german for hate))
Thanks, looked for this acronyme too.
So, you buy a car with all these features, but you don't pay for them. They are disabled by default. You jailbreak your car, everything works without paying extra, but then you realize, you broke your warranty.
Should be fine on a bmw, they will start breaking after the warranty
My warranty doesn't cover jack shit anyways.
Man, never thought I'd see the day that after market car crackz become an industry.
Soon, coming to a piracy site near you: [RZR] BMW i3 crack - Full (Heated seats + suspension + AC unlock + headlight fixes)1.05b.rar
:))))) Amen!
Wouldn't mind those sweet tunes coming back though.
We've come full circle to downloading and running things with titles like:
"BMWaReZ_UnSUSSer+HeetSeeter-v4.20.69.appimage"
carwarez, websites that look like they came from the matrix with magnet links and mega links.
And can a car your rooted pass periodic inspection?
keep original backup, restore, restore new backup afterwards.
😎
Hire a third party to do your tune-ups, specificly one that is jailbreak and hack friendly.
I wish that someone sues when something breaks in the car that you didn't opt in for.
And... yet better, they get sued when something breaks that is in connection with a paid service and someone suspects that it's because they paid part caused it.
What ever happened to you buy a car and that’s it. No need for subscriptions to things like suspensions, steering wheels, running engines…. You know the things I bought.
And what happens when all the cars are like this? EAAS? (Enshittification As A Service)
BMW is always making headlines with this crap, are there any other brands doing this shit? I know Hyundai IONIQ has a free trial for you to be able to unlock your car and whatnot with an app, later they will do it subscription based.
Most manufacturers are doing this.
Most people don’t seem to care since they understand there are ongoing server and infrastructure costs.
My car's suspension should not need a server.
How else would they know that you've paid for it?
Not downvoting you, but what on earth would need a SQL server to use suspension? It would be far too slow for real-time applications, and this isn't a rolls royce engine on a jet generating 1tb of data a second when all sensors are active and logging.
This is a mall-mobile that someone will probably total in a power center parking lot in Arizona.
There is no justification for "server and infrastructure" for a fucking car. No part of a car should require a single penny of server costs over the entire lifespan.
I don’t get what you mean.
The app is intended to remote start your vehicle when you’re out of range of the key fob. I’m not sure how you’d propose that function works without servers and infrastructure.
This has nothing to do with an app.
But even ignoring that and pretending that that's some necessary feature, taking $10 out of the service price would pay for the actual costs for a hundred years, easy. It should be literally illegal to charge a subscription for that.
We start again with a strange Germany in Europe:)
Germany; don't do this please...
Just don't buy it
That strategy repeatedly fails, companies in the same market will see it extracting more profit and start doing it too.
Then don't buy their products either.
Just don't buy any car if they all do this in the future? People need a better answer, don't find comfort in "just don't buy it".
How about you just stop consoooming. There will always be cars without this and if there aren't: there are more sustainable modes of transportation anyways.
There's DRM in public trains now. It's not just cars, it's every industry with electronic device running software.
I can easily foresee the drm services or servers being shutdown, like the Microsoft music server....most you bought can no longer be used if moved.
Eventually they will "retire" this model and shut down servers. Making the car maybe driveable, but won't have stuff you paid for I bet.
Plus, eventually someone will unlock this with a hacked car software patch anyway.
Insurance company's will start testing for hacks and denying coverage.
Lol, good luck with that. I'll stuck with my dumb, subscription-less and app-less ebike. And still manage to beat cars due to insane traffic.
I really wish biking was more of an option in most of the us. Unfortunately the vast majority of cities in this country are car-centric strip mall wastelands. Nothing like having a 5 foot wide bike lane right next to a 65mph highway.
Well, at least we know you're not vegan.
You can tell because he's not mentioning it.
If I own the car it's my hardware to use. If I don't own that suspension then someone needs to collect their property from my car.
Automatic headlight dimming, only €82 per year.
£100 in the UK
So, the car gets very expensive suspension, but to use the features you need a subscription? So if I don't want the active suspension feature, I am still stuck with the very expensive active suspension hardware...
Yeah, no, I'll stick with Subaru. Everything they make uses tech from the dinosaur age of motoring.
I actually think this is a great idea. Hear me out.
They fit the hardware that you can't touch while the Motor plan is active, but when the right to repair legislation kicks in, and we start debating whether we actually own the cars we buy, all these scumbag practices will mean that any car outside of the Motorplan should be able to run cracked OS's and everyone gets free BMW features on their cars after motorplan expires.
I vote they keep going for a bit, then they get their asses handed to them with out of maintenance plan service options and 3rd party features.
If all the cars are the same price I'll buy the one with the upgrade options and then not pay for them.
I'll buy the one without an internet connection to be checking if I am subscribed or not.
There are basic rules for coming up with these types of product subscriptions:
Now apply these to seat warmers, suspension adjustments, self-driving, or whatever else shows up in the future. If you don't hit all three, head back to the drawing board.
P.S.: This isn't limited to cars. It's equally true for any hardware product.
If I were a BMW customer, I'd be suspending my purchase of their rip-off vehicles.
When I said I wanted Forza in the car this isn't exactly what I was gaming for.
Bmw slowly becoming a really bad car
Bad Motor Vehicle
real
Slowly?
They stopped being good cars in 2004. Twenty years they've been shit, and people are still swallowing the gravy.
ohh
Put Germany out of its misery already
TPB go brrrrrrrrrr
I do love german cars, but now they just trolling. Not that I can afford a BMW, but would place a third mortgage on my house if only it wasn’t for the subscription. What next “subscription on your breaks has expired. Do you want AI to take it from here? Please download our app”
Yeah nah. I hope these car company keep adding subscriptions, it'll hopefully push people over the edge and hurt their sales. These cars are becoming unfix-able. I can't imagine how much it would cost to get this system fixed.
Software as a Suspension.
So you just go to a crack website and search for the suspension crack. A few months later while riding a very smooth ride over a thousand dinosaur corpses, your computer tells the car to steer to the right abruptly in the 75mph freeway.
Now, I can "kinda" see the rationale behind optional features on a car being either enabled via software or subscription. I believe the permanent enable price should be the same as if you added the hardware to the car as an option.
As to why this might make sense for a carmaker. In my work I've visited car manufacturers before, and from what I could see it's quite expensive and adds time to support the various options when building a car. You see they have the main production line, and units are pulled off the main line to fit the options at various points and then reinserted and this causes problems for efficiency and price per unit I think.
So, there's probably a cost saving to making the base car have all the options fitted and having a completely standardized production line. However, the expense is likely going to mean if they sold the base car at the usual base car price they would either lose money, or at the very least, the profit margin wouldn't be worthwhile.
However, if you know a certain percentage of people will want the options, and you can enable it with software later, it's possible building the hardware into every car as standard would work out overall cheaper. They might also be able to upsell to more people by making a subscription option, perhaps with maybe a free trial for the first say 3 months of ownership. That is, they turn everything on for 6 months for free, then revert you to the package you paid for. Hoping that you liked some of the features and will pay or subscribe to keep them.
What I don't like is when this stuff might become ONLY available as a subscription, the overall move toward subscription models for everything irks me a lot. I'd much prefer we still get to choose a package, and have the ability to upgrade later.
So I think my point is, the argument "the hardware is there anyway" doesn't really work, because they are likely going to install the hardware at a loss, on the assumption (backed up by their own numbers) they will sell enough to make a bigger profit overall.
They also likely bake into the numbers that a very small number of people will hack the car and enable the features anyway. The vast majority will not do this, though.
How does any of this benefit the buyer?
Asking for a friend lol
Well, I would say it SHOULD bring overall prices down. If the cost to build the top of the line model comes down to say the same as the mid-range model AND more people are say buying up. It means that competition would push overall prices down.
But of course not, it benefits the companies most, and given the choice of lower prices or more profit, they'll choose the profit every time.
If they go subscription only (because recurring revenue is the current business buzzword, so of course they will go subscription only) then overall cost for the life of the car will definitely be higher yet "feel" more affordable.
You're right that the idea has come from the mind boggling number of options in vehicles these days. The company I worked for recently had over a million different combinations, and making more physical parts standard fit saves them money.
However that saving is not passed on to the customer. The company pockets it all, and makes more money on top with the subscriptions.
So long story short... They do it for their own benefit. So why would any self respecting paying customer care about any of these reasons?
Pretty much how it always works with business.
yes so why should end user care about any of it besides price?
I don't think users should reward the behaviour. If they actually lost money because of these decisions, they would stop making those decisions.
But, we both know enough people will bend over and take it.
But, in terms of cost it can be a good move. It's just for us, it makes at best, no difference.
People act like subscriptions are a new thing for cars, and somehow mentally gloss over the fact that they have to physically go in to renew their energy subscription weekly, not to mention the quarterly, and bi-annual subscriptions for oil and various maintenance respectively.
Everything has always been a subscription, you're just a frog that's well done.
Don't get me started on your road subscription.
That kind of mental gymnastics gives me a headache.
They gave me the gold
The key differences is utilities you're paying for the generation & maintenance of key resources - without gas, water and electricity we wouldn't be able to survive. Road tax you're helping to pay for the renewal and upkeep of the road surface (among other local services)... Left alone the road will degrade & will become unusable.
Suspension as a Service is milking what should be a perpetual cost when purchasing the vehicle. If the hardware is already installed, it should be available for the owner to use. They're not paying for the upkeep of the vehicle, or even ensuring the suspension remains functional... All they've done is placed the function behind a pay wall. They can argue they're maintaining the software, but it's utter bullshit and I hate the fact this has become a norm within B2B (for example network appliances)
At least with luxury subscriptions such as Spotify, Netflix, NYT, etc you're getting access to their content, which they renew. Here you get access to something you should have had access to from day 1.
Nice, a reasonable reply! I'll bite.
So what seemed to be lost on people was that I'm not defending BMW in any way, but rather pointing out that there mere act of owning a car automatically signs you up for a number of subscriptions, notably: registration, insurance, and energy (gas or electric), but we've conditioned ourselves to thinking that somehow those aren't a subscription which is a delineation without a difference.
I cancelled my subscriptions btw, fuck cars.
I now primarily use the most superior form of transportation ever conceived: my feet.
I’m getting vibes of “Yet you participate in society. Curious!”
I think what hurts my brain besides the babbling, is the lack of citations.
Are you just trying to sound smart and in-the-know? Bruh, sources matter for such bold claims.
Just prodding the boiled frogs thinking they're still sous vide
Today I learned upkeep of heavy machinery is considered a subscription service.
I bet you think drinking water is a subscription service too.
You do literally get a monthly bill for it, so... yeah?
That's not a requirement. That's literally not a requirement. You used to be able to literally go down to a body of water and drink from it but like I said humans suck. If we didn't you'd still be able to do that.
There's nothing stopping lots of people from having a well dug either.
That probably isn't the example you want to use. I pay a monthly fee to get clean water pumped to my apartment, as do most people.
No offense but the reason you can't just have clean water anytime you like is because humans suck, not because it's a subscription service. I said what I said.
Bootlicker spotted
FuckCars enthusiast actually, something something... so far left you get your roads back
You just blow in from stupid town?
Gas oil need money to drill and refind from sources and car suspension does not, it maybe need to get a check up or replace once in a long while and not every months