And people buy this?
I am beyond incredulous and want to pinch myself. Offering Apple/Android play as subscription was bad enough and an automatic deal-breaker, but this is just ludicrous.
Like, it makes sense to a lot of people. BMW loves this, corporate fleets love this. But as it slowly becomes standard we all lose.
Also, Tesla sold exactly this for a while(don't know if they still do) to hit their $35k promise of a Model 3 - the car had heated seats installed, but you had to pay a one time $1000 fee to Tesla to unlock them.
No one in a fleet vehicle pays for their own 'upgrades', man.
DLC on cars and people are here defending it, I lost my shit over games doing it. We went from pay once for the game, maybe another expansion thay doubled your vanilla game. Now every company nickles and dimes us to death. Does no one remember banks being shit on for that in the 80s-90s?
>>My 2009 328i has heated seats I've never once had to pay to activate.
Yes, what's your point?
>>No one in a fleet vehicle pays for their own 'upgrades', man.
In modern 2021+ and higher BMW models in the US, they do, man. That is literally BMW's payment model on NEW cars. Don't know why you'd assume I'm talking about a 2009 model.
>>DLC on cars and people are here defending it
So far I had like 40 replies to my comment with maybe one or two people defending the practice. Is it really worth getting upset over it(the people commenting, not the practice)?
Future 1:
I'm working for a company and I buy the heated seats upgrade.
Eight months later I'm looking at moving to another company and I'll lose that value. Maybe that affects my decision.
So I'm paying for my own employer-lock-in loyalty perks? Am I a moron? No, so I negotiate away part of my salary, or my healthcare, to have the nicer car.
Future 2:
You get heated seats on certain luxury car brands as long as you have an American Express platinum. Just like airport lounge access.
I'd bet on Future 2.
They're both dystopian.
But I can also totally see situations where if the choice is between say....a Ford Mondeo or a BMW 3-series, the company can go "you can get the BMW, but we're not paying anything for options - if you want them, that's on you".
>>Eight months later I'm looking at moving to another company and I'll lose that value. Maybe that affects my decision.
If it's a subscription, then that value is lost anyway. You can probably get a partial refund for the unused months before you return the car.
Another poster said it's a $300 one-time payment. So you're losing that when you leave. Figure on a bunch of options and it's a lot of money.
I'd want it tied to me, not the vehicle. I paid for heated seats on my last BMW. You're charging me again? For DLC?
If I could pay for heated seats forever I could see it. It's just software, you're putting the same seats in every car, now we have a value.
So of course that will never happen.
Heated seats are a pretty standard upgrade that people will pay for, so I'm not sure that it makes much difference whether it's a physical upgrade or a software unlock, and there are valid reasons Tesla might choose a software unlock.
But charging a subscription fee on heated seats on a non-rental car is outrageous.
Does the 1000 USD upgrade buy the feature or merely enable it for the time that the owner owns the car?
However, I still see selling features as a software upgrade strictly as an alternative means* of selling upgrades. So the upgrade should be tied to the car, not the owner. The added bonus here would be that a second owner could unlock features that the initial owner didn't want.
*i.e. Tesla might decide it's better just to put the heated seats in all cars rather than manufacturing cars with and without.
On the current Model 3 SR+, the rear seats are not heated, but you can pay to have the software unlock them. Its a few hundred dollars, I think.
For both the Model 3 LR and the Y LR, there is an available one time $2k USD upgrade to provide enhanced acceleration.
And obviously, the "FSD" package is a software fee that generally requires no hardware changes. It does get you access to some new hardware, though if needed.
But I think people see this differently if it is a one time fee vs a subscription fee.
…or maybe that was your point?
It annoys me to no end because it means you are paying(in the cost of the car) to have all of this advanced tech in the car, but you can't use it without subscription. What if I get a modder to enable it anyway? Am I now a criminal? What about the environmental impact of lugging around hardware that you don't want or need, just in case you or the next owner wants it?
So what exactly is the problem here?
Isn't having the choice between several options a good thing from consumer point of view? Isn't extracting more money a whole point of company to exist?
I suppose I have an ideological problem with cars being sold this way. I see them as something that you own entirely once you paid for them. The idea that the car physically has heated seats installed but you can't switch them on without paying a fee to BMW is literally offensive to me on some higher level.
I don't know how to explain this better, I just don't want to live in a world where we buy things but never actualy own them. Yes, I am aware that computers and their software has operated like this for a long time now - doesn't mean that I accept this in cars.
>>Isn't having the choice between several options a good thing from consumer point of view?
To use another example - imagine if property developers built only 6-bed houses to streamline their construction process, but 4 out of these bedrooms were walled up and inaccessible by default. But hey, don't worry, you can pay an annual fee to the developer to unlock these bedrooms! Surely that's great for customers, because you only pay for what you need. Kid moved out to college and you no longer need their bedroom? Stop paying the extra fee, some guys will come over and brick up the door again. Isn't consumer choice great?
My point is - consumer choice isn't always the best outcome for everyone, including consumers. And I believe this is a false choice anyway, because BMW isn't aiming to offer this as a $500 one-time unlock OR $100 annual fee - it's just the annual subscription. Just like you can't just buy a standalone copy of Photoshop anymore, it's been replaced with a subscription model entirely.
>>Isn't extracting more money a whole point of company to exist?
I mean, it can be, but in a capitalist competitive market hopefully there will be competition that doesn't do that - and if it actively turns people away from buying BMW products then this whole idea fails at its intended purpose - can't extract more money from your customers if people don't become your customers in the first place.
Even a rental car doesn’t quite match, since you are in a particular car.
It could improve availability of those features because a rental company could order a fleet with those features on all cars in their fleet and then customers who want it would be able to pay the surcharge, instead of being constrained by the portion of the fleet with those features installed.
Of course it would likely just be used as a way to increase rental car prices.
A company will aim to charge the most it can to its customers.
If they can increase the rental prices without extra features, then they can charge even more for extra features.
Ultimately it comes down to the business's own calculus of costs, prices, and demand.
Sell something without the extra costs and will people pay more? In the housing sector in the UK that's certainly not the case -- people didn't value freehold over leasehold until lots of media coverage, despite the information being right there for all to see.
In a situation where there's a monopoly/cartel, the consumer that actually looks at the total costs and benefits can lose out because there aren't enough knowlegable customers to make an old fashioned business viable, but in industries with low barriers to entry and low network effects it's not a problem.
In the above comment you seemed to suggest that companies would already be charging more for rental cars if they could.
So I pointed out that consumers might be willing to pay more for a rental in return for a higher perceived value in the form of extra features being enabled.
It's as if you bought your house, but had one room walled off with the developer saying "for only $100 a month, we will open that room up for you! isn't that great? you only pay for it if you need the extra space!"
Except that obviously the room is there whether you pay the subscription or not, you paid for it in the cost of the house.
You are assuming demand is equal for all of those. It might be in some places, but not others.
For someone who only occasionally needs heated seats, this is value adding.
I agree that forcing everyone into a subscription is coercive. But there are a lot of people for whom the flexibility of a subscription creates more value than it costs. Rejecting it ex ante because of its financing model is overly simplistic.
With heated seats the hardware to provide the functionality was either fitted or not, once it leaves the factory it's static and so it seems pretty unreasonable to me to charge an ongoing fee for the privilege.
A world where my car gets micro-transactions to turn on the AC or heaters etc scares me.
Why wouldn’t this apply to an autonomous driving service?
There’s a cost to VW to keep that system running. They have to staff SWEs that can write security patches, have to maintain outdated methods to update the software, etc.
And this isn’t really optional for VW to do it as if there’s a problem on a 2000 pound vehicle moving at 60 miles per hour things can get deadly quickly. For example what if there was a way to get into the car’s computer via the map software that was last updated 4 years ago? Maybe a hacker could then turn off power steering? Yes that is a hypothetical but there’s always problems with software and they need to get fixed when the consequences of not fixing them are high.
Like, going back to my maps example - if I never pay VW for a map upgrade, my 10 year old satnav system will absolutely mislead me and try to direct me in places which could be potentially dangerous. And like....so what? The system that was installed from the factory still works, that's the point.
These current systems that we have are all just glorified cruise control systems - and whatever you have in your latest Merc/BMW/Audi/Volvo/whatever will continue to work until the car itself falls apart. As far as I can see VW isn't proposing anything different - other than the payment scheme for it.
Also, as for hacking risk - this is a massive risk on nearly all new vehicles on the road today and very little is being done to address it. VW charging for autonomous driving capability has little to do with that.
And to add another example - there's a famous case where a woman's car has caused $180M worth of damage, as it has caught fire while being transported inside a cargo ship. Turns out there was an outstanding recall on that vehicle due to....fire risk. So initially insurers wanted to put all blame on her, since she didn't have the vehicle fixed despite the recall. But they all got nowhere, because there isn't currently any law that says you have to get your vehicle fixed when a recall is issued. Similarily, the manufacturer isn't obliged by law to make sure any recall is followed, so they were off the hook as well.
What I mean to say is that these hypothetical situations are interesting to talk about, but with the current state of tech and law none of it is an actual concern.
Also, they'll probably need a liability insurance for cases when their autonomous car inevitably gets in a situation where it has to choose between killing it's passengers or killing someone outside the car.
Of course, they could offer a pricing model where all that is paid up front, but I doubt it would be very attractive.
Unlike with say housing, which sits on land which appreciates in value at a rate and has a high cost of moving (monetary and personal), a typical car for the majority of people is a means to an end which just sits their and deprecates. The cost of changing to a new car is a few minutes reprogramming the radio and seats.
Ultimately what most people want is transportation which costs a reliable x¢ per mile at a given level of convienience, reliability and comfort.
Cars are hardly a winner takes all business or one with little competition - there's at least a dozen major manufacturers.
If your self-driving system requires some centralised service to operate properly, it can hardly be fully autonomous under all conditions. How can it react immediately to an emergency situation if it's not running locally?
And if you're not talking about that but just ongoing development work and making updates available after the sale, there's nothing that means that has to be a mandatory service. Either the original version works properly or it doesn't (and in this case, if it doesn't, it shouldn't be allowed on the roads and the regulators should eat the vendors alive). Any subsequent updates that somehow improve the "quality" of the system could be made available at an extra charge, just like new products or new versions of software in a million other contexts, without any need for compulsory ongoing payments where the system stops working if the customer stops paying.
If a car company would charge me per day for heated seats, that would work for me, I don't use them that often. If they make me pay per year and they're installed in the car already... They've given me a nice electronics challenge, which adds value?
If VW spends 700 million on making self driving they want to get more then that back. They can do so by charging everyone 10k more for the car, but it would make the car expensive and decrease sales volume requiring an even higher price. Or they can come up with some other model where users with less budget pay less while those that can afford it pay more. In that case you need to make it so that those that pay more get more benefits, and their idea for that is charging by hours of usage.
I'm not sure I'm happy with that as a customer, but the model isn't crazy.
Therein lies the rub.
It's the HN community that have created this. If I have an EC2 VM, I have to pay Amazon a micro-transaction for every dns request they serve and every time I as much as ping my box
I don’t understand this argument. Would it feel different if you had to install the FooBar component to get it to work? That the act of having to do something physically can then justify the additional cost?
I’m all for a rental market like this. It no longer means that in the used car market there’s 100 different cars of model XYZ to look at as there’s 2^n different combinations of options to consider. All of that model are the same and then you unlock features.
Short answer.
No, not really; a manufacturer can't simply lump the price of all the unused stuff onto the base price. It would hand the low end to their competitors.
Longer answer.
Assuming that the manufacturers are not operating as a cartel (which is a different discussion), a manufacturer simply adding the total cost of all non-activated equipment and services onto the base price would be competitive suicide in the low(er)-end market. So no sane manufacturer would ever do that - they don't need to.
Instead, as long as the manufacturer's cost reductions through simplified design, production, inventory etc., plus the upselling revenue are greater than the additional hardware and licensing costs. Then they can, at least in theory, include heated seats, air conditioning, self-driving and whatever extra crap they like for no, or very little, additional initial outlay to the base model purchaser.
Of course, purchasers (and the planet) will pay for it in degraded acceleration, braking and fuel economy if extra weight is involved. Perhaps I'm pessimistic, but given the number of pointless SUVs and Trucks on the roads, it's hard to imagine that'd be a concern to the average purchaser.
While binning goes on with desktop and commodity server processors, by and large manufacturers can't play too many games with building in unused capacity.
However, at the high-end, especially mainframes, you absolutely have features like capacity on demand and pricing by workload and there was even more of this sort of thing in the past.
No, for someone who only has a 3 year lease on a BMW, this may be value adding (or value subtracting).
The money you save by not paying for heated seats when you buy the BMW does not go into your pocket when you sell the BMW without heated seats, as whoever buys the BMW from you will pay less for a BMW in which heated seats are free than one in which heated seats cost $100/year.
For a car with a 20 year life, you'd profit if 1 year of heated seat rental costs less than 1/20 the price of heated seats if bought up front. This is true whether you own the car for 1 year or 3 years or 20 years. It does not matter how long you personally plan on owning the car.
It does not matter who sells the car. What matters is whether:
(the price of used car with heated seats that must be paid for) - (the money already made from renting out heated seats) > (price of a used car with heated seats that are free)
The identity of the seller does not alter this equation at all, nor can it flip a loss to a gain.