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Comment by donmcronald | Hacker News Reader

There were people in a thread on Reddit saying they have cars with $40/month of subscription services. That seems absolutely insane to me.

My family buys used cars, usually in the 3-5 year old range, we do our own repair work, and drive everything for 10-15 years. It's usually close to 15 than 10. We drive them until they drop.

I figured it out one day and the lifetime TCO has been about $100/month per vehicle.

We really, really need legislation that says advertised features can't require an ongoing subscription. The whole scheme of giving the original buyer a "free trial" that lasts long enough that they'll sell the vehicle is just a tactic to seek rent in the secondhand market. The thing is, there are a lot of people buying second hand because they don't have money to waste.

How do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps if the bootstraps require a subscription you can't afford?

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I use a similar strategy of targeting 2 to 4 year old used cars in good condition, and then swapping out when they get around 10 years or 100k. It's worked quite well for me.

I have no idea what I'm going to do next time I'm in the market for a car, because every trend I see in the industry is stuff I do not want. And it's not just cars. It's freakin' everything. I don't need a touch screen on my fridge. Like that joke tweet from a decade ago, I feel like it's just a matter of years before all the couches on the market are wifi connected.

I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things from 1990 or older running.

I just went through this, buying a car to replace the one I'd had for 13 years. Oh man, I had no idea how terrible the car industry had gotten; it was every bit as bad as you're fearing.

I had a slight preference for an automatic transmission but ended up looking mostly at manuals since those often lack a few of the "modern" anti-features. I wish I had better advice to give, the experience honestly bummed me out quite a bit.

I too dread this.

My current car's getting to about the number of kms that I usually sell at.

With covid making secondhand cars expensive for some weird reason, and all these terrible modern car trends, I just haven't been able to bring myself to "upgrade".

Honestly, take the money you'd spend to upgrade and instead overhaul the car. Need new front seat upholstery? Some new plastic end pieces? Maybe an engine rebuild? It probably won't cost more than a new(ish) car, maybe even cheaper.

Good idea, it's looking very much like I might end up going that way.

There's nothing compelling me to get a newer car, except for engine wear.

Yeah, I hear this. I like driving a manual because I find it almost meditative. I've done some rally clinics so not to brag but I know what I'm doing with it and double clutch, heel toe, routinely. It's like a little mini game to be as smooth and precise as possible at it every time I drive, and I like that.

The dual clutch automatics that are in better cars today are legit pretty amazing tech, but, it just doesn't fit my vibe so to speak. In any case, I'm quite sure my next car is going to be pure electric so it may not even have a transmission, or if it does it'll be a two speed automatic you don't control. Meh.

> I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things from 1990 or older running.

I'm at the point where I'm considering physically disabling the radios in my appliances.

"Error: cannot start (no connectivity). Please call a licensed repair technician to service your vehicle."

In case you're not aware, this is a thing that's happened (well, without the error message, I assume)

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/zipcar-int...

Too helpful. More like "Failed with error 0xC0000005".

That's a real error Windows 11 gave me this week. I know, never install a Windows version less than two years old. It's been so long I forgot.

As if any Windows or in general Microsoft product gives useful error messages.

Hex error codes, or generic "Something went wrong" errors are the norm at Microsoft.

Not quite as bad, but when I tried out a car in 2008 with Ford/Microsoft's SYNC system (voice interface), there were cases where pressing an unconfigured button would disable the sound system until you restarted the engine. See number 8:

http://blog.tyrannyofthemouse.com/2008/07/setting-sync-strai...

Also, whenever the power goes out, I always express thanks that the toilets still work, and they didn't introduce some npm-style pointless dependency.

'In the land of internet-connected devices, the man with the soldering iron is king.'

> How do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps if the bootstraps require a subscription you can't afford?

Can't have those upstarts worming their way into elite circles now, can we? I thought you'd understand. Once a poor, always a poor, you know.

There's a rather depressing trend of this sort of stuff lately, and a lot of it is coming from people who claim they care about lower income classes - but then conveniently just so happen to do things that are the opposite of what they claim to support. When called on it, you mutter "unintended consequences," "nobody could have foreseen that," and shut the mic off for anyone who predicted exactly what just happened.

Who would have thought the revolution won't be sponsored by Toyota or Pepsi? The corporate SJW movement is all marketing, it's really depressing to see it work on people.

It was started by gates and buffett "the giving pledge" they are now a decade into giving their fortune away and are comicallty richer than when they started. That kind of hipocracy tends to flow top down and now we are seeing the results.

We really, really need legislation that says advertised features can't require an ongoing subscription.

All that is needed is for the advertising to be required to make it clear which features require an ongoing subscription.

I don't see the problem for the used car market - if anything, the fact some features won't be functional without a subscription ought to depress the used price of the car. If you take it to an extreme - say, a car that requires a daily payment to run at all - you'd find that the market price of such a vehicle wouldn't be far above the scrap value.

I fully expect that, assuming we get to autonomous driving someday, either the system or the entire car will only be available as subscription services. It just won't work any other way given the manufacturer will be on the hook for the proper maintenance and updating of a safety critical system.

And it probably applies even more broadly as things that were historically just hardware have an increasingly large software component.

> We really, really need legislation that says advertised features can't require an ongoing subscription

I recently bought a new car. All of the things on the window sticker that required a subscription said "(subscription required)". Is this not enough?

Or are you talking about things like TV/Internet/Radio advertising?

I'm totally on the same page. After my millionaire frugal friend told me he managed $88/mo TCO, I've been chasing that target nonstop

That’s impressive. We’re around $100/mo for everything excluding fuel on our 2005 CR-V, bought by us in 2011. It’s going to have to last several more years to get down under $90/mo. (If your friend said that 10 years ago, I guess I’m under that already.)

10 year old Toyota Prius is going to be roughly $45/mo TCO for registration, insurance, and minimal maintenance. Depreciation is probably another $40/mth. I'm pretty sure that and a Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf (for low range reqs) is the best you can do.

Time will tell, but in theory the Volts should last a really long time also. The generator only directly powers the drivetrain at highway speeds, and in the gen-1 they were really conservative with allowed pure electric range on the battery.

I'm planning to drive mine until it dies, and suspect that salty winter Midwestern roads will render it unsafe/broken before anything else does.

I ponder the same thing. On My Jeep all that nonsense is tied explicitly to the radio. If you yank the 4G modem out, it's all as good as gone - though then the GPS map feature doesn't work either. If I replace the radio entirely I gain control, but lose the auto emergency braking system. That's unfortunate lol.

Luckily no required monthly services. I have no interest in a car with that.

It seems there is a market there for people like you and your family: removing/disabling/hacking the DRM on those used cars.

The market is already there. I have a 2010 Mercedes C180 and the car suddenly wouldn't start. Turns out it has an coded electronic steering lock which talks to the electronic ignition and won't enable the car if the lock doesn't disengage. Of course the steering lock itself failed - turns out this is a design flaw. Would have cost way too much money to transport the car to the Mercedes dealer at the only time the dealer would accept it for repair and then have them replace it. Turns out there's a thriving market in folks who will come to your house, completely remove the steering lock, and replace it with an emulator that just pretends to unlock when its told to.

Not defending Toyota, their model is abusive, however your comparison is not accurate/fair. The TCO is just parts/raw material costs, your time and skill are very expensive!.

For me, even if I had to pop the hood of the car I need a mechanic, that is probably a couple of hundred to start with, and add anything he says I need to buy whether I actually I need to or not, it can quickly add up.

It is like me saying why pay for managed email or website hosting, when I can run those myself for much cheaper, even if my time was not a factor, I cannot compare those costs I would have to costs for someone without the skills needed .

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