New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions | Hacker News Reader

New Jersey legislators aim to ban most in-car subscriptions

thedrive.com

338 pointstoomuchtodo158 comments

This is a great step. Subscriptions errode first sale protections by subscription-gating physical objects, allowing OEMs a work-around to first-sale doctrine. If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.

It's interesting NJ included self-driving in the subscription ban. These require significant overhead in compute, engineering resources and greatly impact safety, and if Tesla's pricing is any indication of overall market, FSD will cost a pretty penny.

If full self-driving was offered at 10k up front for the life of the car, or $80/mo, I would imagine many buyers of lower-end vehicles would prefer a subscription.

wouldnt that 10k be amortized into the car payment for a similar monthly cost?

Assistance systems like Honda, Subaru, Toyota and others offer have no ongoing costs. The systems are static - the only updates would be TSBs or recalls.

An actual self-drove system should eventually get to that point. We only see frequent software updates today because the systems are barely more then public betas.

> The systems are static ... We only see frequent software updates today because the systems are barely more then public betas.

No absolutely not. FSD models are going to need continuous updates. All real-world models exhibit "model drift". Over time most models perform less well. Real world models are monitored and retrained when needed.

Example would be when a city, state or country changes a road sign or introduces a new road sign, so a strange looking vehicle like a CyberTruck starts making an appearance on the road.

Or simply the maps the car needs to rely on to find your route to your destination...

Road sign designs don't change very often. No way consumers should be forced into a perpetual monthly subscription for something that probably needs updates every 5 years or so. Not sure how it should work long-term, but a monthly subscription for a mature system sounds wrong to me.

If the FSD relies on published maps to work, it's already doomed. Road layouts change way too frequently (sometimes temporary, for construction) for that to be a requirement.

It also shouldn't really matter what kind of vehicle are out there.

If I see some weird looking car I've never seen before, I just treat it like every other car.

Except a driver assistance system might think it's a plastic bag or a mirage and not a car at all.

You might be surprised the first time, but the next time you see one you'll treat it like any other car, because you're always learning.

These systems separate the learning phase (training the model) from the acting phase, so to do the same as you they need to be able to retrain on new data occasionally as well.

Nobody's FSD can depend on map data for road signs since those can change by the hour; eg road out, construction, etc. Vision for signs is probably fine when fused with map data. But more generally, there are all kinds of road situations that need a general solution and not a map one.

I think the next step is to spin off a separate company for FSD. Take media for example. Your Toyota may be compatible with SiriusXM, Pandora, Spotify, etc, but none of these are "built in". The solution to FSD is to "commoditize" the FSD service in the same way. Your new Tesla is "compatible" with the "third" party FSD service that just so happens to only be "compatible" with your Tesla. Nobody would reasonably expect a SiriusXM subscription to come for free for the lifetime of their vehicle, and if FSD is split off into a commoditized third party, it have the same expectation.

You’ve described openpilot from comma.ai

I think you'd run into lawsuits about being anticompetitive if your car was only compatible with one FSD provider also owned by you.

Do first sale protections apply to physical things? I thought first sale was an intellectual property / copyright thing.

It absolutely applies to physical things. If I buy a widget you sell, I can do anything I want with it, including resell it.

Yup. Most recently, see Impression Products, Inc v Lexmark where the Supreme Court held that the initial sale of cartridges exhausted lexmarks patent rights and thus couldn't prevent 3rd parties from refilling.

It feels odd to me that you call you that buyers often prefer subscriptions because of their ability to spread out costs over the life of a product, after starting out claiming that this is a “great step”.

If a company wants to sell me a car where the power windows are a $10/mo subscription, that’s a crappy idea and I’m not going to buy a car, but I don’t think trying to sell it should be illegal.

> If you buy something, you should own it, and be able to fix it, scrap it, re-sell it, whatever you want.

Why? If I have a car, and I enter into an agreement with you about the sale of the car, then the terms of the agreement are completely arbitrary, for the two of us to decide, and something both parties must consent to. If you don't want a car with optional subscriptions, don't buy a car with optional subscriptions.

As if individual consumers have any ability to negotiate contracts. This is a main case for what government regulations are for. When the individual consumer doesn’t have ability to negotiate and companies are abusing something, then the individuals can only go to the their elected representatives to get it remedied. If the company doesn’t like the rules they can let some other company step in.

You have. You're just not willing to pay for it. You also have the option to walk away.

"This is a main case for what government regulations are for." - No. There is no cost to be internalized here.

Super Cruise, which is arguably better than what Tesla has, costs $25/mo.

Tesla’s $200 monthly price is probably there to make the $15k upfront price look like a better value, for people who don’t compare to the competition. Tesla seems to have a lot of pricing power because people really want a Tesla in particular.

Super cruise requires a very high end trim to even purchase the super cruise package. You can get FSD on the lowest model 3 specs. FSD is ridiculously priced though, it’s just not a reasonable comparison on the monthly fee.

Model 3 with Enhanced Autopilot: 53k

Model 3 with FSD: 62k

Bolt EUV with Super Cruise: 38k

Super Cruise on the Bolt EUV is not comparable to Tesla Enhanced AP or FSD. It can't even change lanes for you, you have to manually do it[1]. It also is restricted to a specific set of highways. It's comparable to Tesla's basic Autopilot, which is included for free with all Tesla models and has no subscription required. Super Cruise at least for Chevy EV's is traffic aware cruise control + lane-keeping + driver monitoring, that's it. Tesla's are still more expensive than the Bolt though, there's no question about that. But Chevrolet also had to recall every single Bolt ever made due to battery issues [2], including 2022 models. So I can't imagine anyone is in line to actually buy a Bolt now. Many parking garages even have signs that say you can't park there with a Chevy Bolt.

[1] https://www.chevrolet.com/electric/s3/uploads/chevrolet/supe...

[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/recall-all-chevy-bolt-v...

[3] https://insideevs.com/news/543282/parking-lots-ban-chevy-bol...

Paying monthly is also a good option for people who want to try it out, or for people who only want it when they have long road trips planned.

Go New Jersey! Now get Texas and California on board so car companies don't bother offering these in the country at all

Aren't they suing California now for having "too strict" of emissions regulations because California's position in the marketplace makes it so that their rules become de facto law of the land? If that goes through, I'm not really sure if California can do really any automotive regulation that other states won't like.

At least with something like this, it would be relatively simple for the manufacturers to just enable the functionality based on where the car is sold.

Can't do anything like that with emissions regulations.

You totally can. VW's emissions cheating scandal was about the ECU firmware tuning the engine for lower emissions when it detected an emissions test and then switching back to tuning for performance the rest of the time. No reason you couldn't do the same but based on location.

I can see them attempting that, but it'll give legislatures in other states an incentive to make it law as well, simply from the view of "look they're treating us different" which usually pissed people off more than when everyone is treated shitty but equally.

Kia and Subaru do that in Massachusetts with some features (remote start). They blame "right to repair" laws we have on the books..

https://www.techdirt.com/2022/02/07/kia-subaru-disable-usefu...

If they can sue someone over growing their own wheat, they can sue over just about anything with even a tenuous link to commercial activity.

Wickard v. Filburn was about the federal legislature's jurisdiction under the Commerce Clause: https://matthewminer.name/law/briefs/2L/1st+Semester/LAW+531...

Presumably automakers are suing California for the inverse thereof—the Dormant Commerce Clause—à la Southern Pacific Co. v. Arizona, saying such authority is actually reserved exclusively to the federal government as an exception to states' general police powers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

Commerce clause has been abused to hell and back.

Peoples heads will fall off if the Supreme Court starts undoing all its prior decisions that rely on it.

Filburn grew wheat for sale and in excess of the production controls, intending to profit from the wheat he sold while also maintaining his own supply.

The connection to interstate commerce was based on the totality of the wheat he grew, not just the excess portion of it that he claimed wasn't part of interstate commerce. And notably, despite all FUD to the contrary, subsistence farming of wheat for personal/non-commercial consumption was legal at the time. That's why they had there was a threshold in the first place; to protect non-commercial wheat farming.

The Supreme Court just heard arguments in National Pork Producers Council v. Ross [1], which is challenging California's law that pork sold in California must follow certain animal welfare / health & safety standards. A big debate is over whether it was genuinely a health & safety standard versus a purely 'moralistic' law that is seeking to de-facto regulate other states.

The issue is called the "Dormant Commerce Clause" [2], which is the idea that one state can't place "undue burdens" on interstate commerce. California can't just ban all imports from Texas, or vice versa. But courts have generally upheld health and safety laws, like California's car emissions laws or Hawaii's very strict agricultural products import restrictions --- but only if it is narrowly-tailored and there is a compelling state interest. Hawaii has a very compelling state interest in keeping its unique biodiversity, while California has a compelling state interest in keeping the valley of asphalt known as Los Angeles free of smog. There isn't really a good bright line test or definition in existing precedent of what "compelling state interest" means when it must be balanced against "balkanization" [3] by these kinds of laws, so many are hoping SCOTUS uses this case to make a clear definition.

But it is likely that this kind of law would be seen more as a morality regulation than health and safety. California argued that it was not an attempt to legislate moral issues in other states, but more of a health and safety regulation:

> Mongan [California state solicitor] pushed back on some of the hypotheticals about state laws that would condition the sale of products on a company’s general health care or labor practices. He told Barrett that Proposition 12 is “focused on the production of goods that are coming into” California, rather than on company-wide policies. “I think we would all recognize,” Mongan said, that it would be problematic if states can condition the sales of those products on restrictions of wholly unrelated out-of-state purchasers.” [3]

[1] https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/national-pork-pr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormant_Commerce_Clause

[3] https://www.scotusblog.com/2022/10/california-law-on-sale-of...

I think this is great, and though I agree that determining whether there is an "on-going cost to the manufacturer" will be a gray area that automakers will try to game, I think that's a solvable problem.

The heated seats example is a great one. There is no reason for this not be a one-time charge.

On the other hand, I think it's fair to offer autopilot/"full self driving" on a subscription, or at least the upgrades as a subscription. Clearly there is a large ongoing cost to continually improve self-driving capabilities, and it seems reasonable to me to have a pricing model that reflects that.

> On the other hand, I think it's fair to offer autopilot/"full self driving" on a subscription, or at least the upgrades as a subscription.

Agree with your overall point. However, this probably isn’t feasible considering most companies will follow Tesla’s FSD upgrade model.

Autopilot / FSD upgrades are often more safety than feature related. Allowing people to opt out of upgrades but keep their older FSD just means a bunch of vehicles on the road with depreciated safety features.

Allowing people to opt out of upgrades but keep their older FSD just means a bunch of vehicles on the road with depreciated safety features.

...which is perfectly fine and has been the status quo since the beginning of the automotive era --- vehicles only need to meet the safety requirements when they were manufactured.

Not perfectly fine in the context of “move fast and break things” software dev cycle used for safety critical things like auto pilot. Out of date auto pilot versions are going to have vulnerabilities and bugs (known and unknown) that will likely cause death, destruction, etc. on public roads

known and unknown) that will likely cause death, destruction, etc. on public roads

...and so do human brains...

As long as the driver is still liable, I don't see a problem.

> The heated seats example is a great one. There is no reason for this not be a one-time charge.

if you're referring to BMW, the heated seats are still available as a one time charge. they're just also available as a subscription if you didn't option then upfront. heated seats seem like a weird fit for the subscription model, but as long as the upfront purchase option is reasonably priced, I don't really see the issue with this.

The issue is you already paid for the heating element in the seats when you bought the car, and you are driving it around as dead weight (however small). You own the heater outright, they are gatekeeping your ability to use it.

That has nothing to do with subscriptions. The manufacturer could still sell you the car with the heater disabled, make you drive around with the dead weight, and charge you a one-time fee to unlock it. That would be perfectly acceptable under this law.

Under this law that's fine sure. But how far do they go with this plan? Do they cost up each part of the car and allow you to use only that bit. And when you have bought enough of a car it can then serve as your transport?

The desired rule is hard to pin down though isn't it? But subscriptions, DLC, DRM etc all grate on consumers as not quite right somehow.

That's been happening for ... decades? It's not unusual that the "heated seats" option just gets you a button, the heating elements are often installed regardless.

This is also true of CPU's, GPU's, etc etc that have cores disabled.

Sometimes they are are disabled because they failed tests, but other times they are disabled to fulfill demand in a different segment.

The issue is you already paid for the heating element in the seats when you bought the car

Not necessarily - it's possible the cost of that item in the BOM is separated and offset only against the expected revenue from those paying specifically to have it.

Anyway, here's how I'd split this baby: BMW can charge to enable the heated seats in whatever way they want, but the consumer is also allowed to modchip their car to enable the heated seats without paying if they want.

The issue is it's a physical option that is being turned on and off remotely, not a software ML / continuous model type of service like full self-driving. The latter requires continuous updating and there's an ecosystem of training it. Heated seats existed for decades, BMW added a software option to disable it. That's completely different.

And it's not OK. How many monthly add-on costs can be snuck into the subscription model?

Maybe the wording should be ambiguous like "high crimes and misdemeanors" so manufacturers honor the intent of the law.

Good. I'm tired of every single industry becoming a bunch of rent-seeking vampires trying to nickel and dime me to death.

> if an automaker or other associated party can prove that it costs money to maintain the feature and/or service in question, then it'd be legally allowed. This would include services like OnStar and such.

While I don't disagree with the exception here, I think they should outlaw mandatory subscriptions... like OnStar, which GM has started to add to most of their cars. It's not in the MSRP, but it's a required cost at the dealer.

> I think they should outlaw mandatory subscriptions

Agreed! Mandatory subscriptions are outrageous.

I think it still works for that. In the OnStar case you have the option to decline the service, but you still need to pay for it. That would likely run afoul of the requirement that it has ongoing costs to support the service.

So I think this law would force automakers to either back-off or include it in the MSRP.

> you have the option to decline the service, but you still need to pay for it

That's not how "declining a service" should work. How about I don't pay for it and then I don't get the service!

No one is forcing you to buy that car mode. Many cars don’t have mandatory subscriptions.

No one is forced to buy any car, including ones with subscriptions for heated seats. That isn't really a useful argument.

Mandatory subscriptions take what might be the "ideal" car for a particular consumer, and add in an extra (in this case) $1500 cost for something you do not want. It should 100% be the buyer's choice if they want to prepay 3 years worth of an "optional" subscription.

It's better for consumers of something that external like an internet service is not forced upon you when buying a vehicle. There's no downside to consumers if it's optional - but it makes otherwise good options for vehicles worse.

Now apply this argument to ads on smart TVs. Oh wait...

Recurring revenue business models are really appealing and companies are happy to take a short term hit in sales in order to increase their recurring revenue. Add to that the fact that people choose cars for all kinds of irrational reasons and I cynically expect car subscriptions, including mandatory subscriptions, to become the norm within a decade.

>"Now apply this argument to ads on smart TVs."

I'd love that. But sadly I can't vote with my wallet because virtually every television is a Smart TV nowadays. I would gladly pay more for a TV if I could find one that wasn't bundled with all the extraneous stuff. Especially one that isn't designed to be a sign in a fast food restaurant.

> sadly I can't vote with my wallet because virtually every television is a Smart TV nowadays

I think you missed the point. It was saying that subscriptions on car features will phase in from "optional" to "ubiquitous" just like Smart TVs did.

> if an automaker [...] can prove

What is the standard of proof? And how is maintenance defined? If you haven't released an update in over a year, is that acceptable?

So what's the fundamental principle here, and why does it only apply to car companies? Just because you can make a law that way, it follows a principle you respect?

I'm not concluding my opinion on either side of this right now. I just am lately skeptical of the number of laws and movements we have that are justified "because I agree with this particular outcome" but aren't sustainable principles to run a society off of (without constantly having to create exceptions). Even if I like that I'm not being "gouged" in NJ, is the principle behind this right?

Is the principle, "you shouldn't be charged for something that a company has already built and put in the product"? Or "we don't like paying for something that seems like you should physically have control over"?

If it's the first one, how does this not apply to subscription models in general? Tons of companies have stuff they've already built and put in what the customer could conceivably already access without charge. Printer ink, locked CPU cores, how about private areas of venues that you have to pay extra to access? Software that a company has already developed but doesn't "cost them anything" to keep offering to you aside from a login barrier. First class seats on airplanes. Doesn't this all follow the same principle?

On the second principle, why is this specially deserving of interference / protection in what customers are willing to pay or tolerate? Why don't they pass a law about not being "gouged" on extra storage on my iPhone costing $100 more? The memory is already in there, why should I be forced to pay extra to unlock it? (or similar analogy)

Cars are often one of the most, if not the most, expensive purchases people will make in their lives. It's not unreasonable to me to have extra protections for those purchases.

Not charging extra for heated seats is an important basic customer protection?

Individually, no, but as part of the overall trend of in-car subscriptions for these kind of features, yes.

Cars, like houses, are in a special class of purchases that we as a society have decided need extra consumer protections because of the high cost involved.

Not only that, a car is basically a requirement for life in the US. With a complete lack of decent public transportation in the majority of the US, couples with a lack of walkable communities, a car is virtually required.

Anybody who disagrees, try living in the Phoenix metro with a family without a car. Good luck buying groceries, getting to the doctor, etc...

For the same reasons that car buyers enjoy more consumer protections than purchasers of most other goods. Because cars are incredibly expensive, are necessary for life in America, and because there's huge incentives for manufacturers and dealers to screw the buyers.

I have mixed feelings on this. On one hand the idea of subscriptions for components that are physically present in the car and don't require ongoing cost by the manufacturer to support them is annoying. On the other hand I think that there could be some advantages to that model. The costs of cars seem to going up considerably because of all the advanced features. If it is possible to standardize some of the manufacturing process to reduce cost and control access to items with software that could be a win. It would also be nice to have the ability to try features out in your real live before deciding if you want them. Or it could allow drivers to add features for short periods of time. It might not make sense to buy heated seats if you live in Florida, but are travelling to Colorado for a ski vacation paying $10 to unlock if for a month might an awesome feature.

I think the middle ground would be to require manufacturers to offer a lifetime unlock option for any feature that could be subscribed to without an ongoing maintenance cost.

Does create an interesting problem of if your vehicle is out of warranty and you buy the heated seats package shouldn't they responsible to fix the heated seats if they're not working.

> If it is possible to standardize some of the manufacturing process to reduce cost and control access to items with software that could be a win.

I think if you believe any savings will end up with consumers and not manufacturers, you'll likely find the manufacturers are happy to prove you wrong.

I challenge you to find a single example of introducing subscriptions reducing costs

Driver assistance systems for example. I don't want to pay for those features, but if I don't get them when I configure the car it's going to be much harder to sell the car a few years later. If those features can be activated later on, I won't lose money when I'll sell my car. So it reduces the initial cost of the car and then I also get a better resale value.

It’s already priced in. You’re just paying more for the features you aren’t using.

You enable them as an upgrade, for additional fee. Just like you update maps on rarely used in-car navigation system.

The law seems to allow software unlocking, just not subscriptions.

>The costs of cars seem to going up considerably because of all the advanced features.

Or Maybe they could just not add all those features? Crazy, I know.

"Costing money to maintain feature" is a great criteria for legal subscriptions. Could it be applied more broadly than in the car industry?

Mainly targeting subscriptions to enable seat warmers for example. That's something becoming more common that has zero cost to the manufacturer past vehicle delivery.

Oh but the butt heat license server will cost them money!

So after 15 years they will deprecate the service. Probably in the middle of the winter.

This is fantastic, I only hope it actually happens and other jurisdictions follow.

KTM motorcycles owned by Pierer mobility, a 1.7 billion dollar company have just started pulling this nonsense.

Their latest motorcycle has “Demo mode”. Demo mode means when you purchase the motorcycle it works for 1500km then you get locked out of functionality that is built in and worked at time of purchase. You only get the previous built in functionality back if you pay KTM more money for a software key to unlock it again.

https://www.motorcyclenews.com/news/new-bikes/ktm-890-advent...

People sure seem to love government overreach when they think it works in their favor.

The economics behind one-time vs subscription pricing is very far removed from the responsibility of a New Jersey bureaucrat. Let Ford and BMW and Tesla figure it out for themselves. If people really do hate it as much as the article and the lawmakers seem to suggest, they will simply not buy it.

Your first sentence is interesting. If government represents the will of the people then it would not be overreach.

If a government is acting beyond its constitutionally-mandated boundaries then it is absolutely overreach, regardless of whether 1% or 99% of people support its decisions.

Constitutionally mandated boundaries are coming from the people. So if 99% support it, then it is not an overreach.

> If people really do hate it as much as the article and the lawmakers seem to suggest, they will simply not buy it.

Just like the people that hated that Apple was removing the headphone jack, they'll just not buy it.

Oh wait, they still did.

And now Androids are losing the headphone jack, too.

The viewpoint of just letting the market decide is naive and assumes consumers are rational, behave in their own best interests, and will always vote with their wallet, when the reality is they don't. They'll bitch and moan while still forking over their cash, signaling that they'll accept it. Other car companies see this model is successful and join in.

Apple did research and made a business decision that worked out in their favor. Are you saying that the government should have passed a law saying that iPhones must include the headphone jack?

It's interesting to see this coming from NJ, which is also automotively noteworthy for being the only state where self-service at the gas station is prohibited.

wow good point. always weird having to fuel when driving through nj.

Speaking from experience, while it may take a bit longer at the gas station to get filled up, you get quite used to it.

Also parts of Oregon, iirc.

In Belgium, home shitrooms are considered as a premium feature... You have to pay monthly fee to use them or you can get locked outside (or inside) without notice, even if you own your house.

Seriously, nobody said a thing when HP started to do it with their printers. And everybody jumped in the wagon when we started proposing such a thing as SaaS, IaaS and so on.

Apple App Store recommandations is 90% filled with subscription apps very few people actually use or like. Don't get me started with these pay to win games were you have to buy 'coins' or 'diamonds' to spend in the game if you don't want to wait 24h for a building or wathever before you can continue playing.

I have consulted prices for a remote virtual desktop instance for malware analysis et reverse engineering training (I don't trust home virtual machine) on Azure...

I have nothing again MSFT and think it's a company which still produces real value for its consumers on many fronts (as opposed as WeWork, for example). But the price they ask for a remote machine with very low specs is stagering. How a manager could decently believe it's a good idea to give away in 6 or 12 months the same money you could use to buy enterprise level hardware with 5x specs ?

"No officer, my turn signal isn't broken, I'm just behind on my TurnSignalXM payments."

Can we add XM radio to the list?

I bought a new car and they keep calling and send mail to my house far too frequently.

I've told them NO around a dozen times..

They are bordering on harassment.

Just because you put some receiver in my car doesn't mean you can constantly contact me. I never asked for it and they should take no for an answer.

Rather than simply saying No tell them to put you on their do not call list.

Saying that is useless in many situations, but for a company like XM Radio that you haven’t done business with they really need to follow those rules.

Some companies have notoriously desperate pesterering. I've opted out of XM Radio and Spectrum solicitation multiple times. It doesn't seem to stick.

You must explicitly use the words “Put me on your do not call list.”

It’s dumb, but “If you want a telemarketer to stop calling you, do not say “Quit calling me” or “Don’t call me again.” In some companies, Reps are informed under strict guidelines to only delete records if the customer specifically requests they do so. Telemarketers are only required to put you on the “Do Not Call” list if you SPECIFICALLY request to be put on it.

https://consumerist.com/2007/08/27/to-get-telemarketers-to-s...

Again, depends on the country and the laws of that nation.

I'm Canadian: https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/phone/telemarketing/reg.htm

you don't need to use specific terms and they have 14 days to stop calling you. in my case they continued to call and so i used the "complaint and enforcement" numbers on that page and reported them.

have not been contacted since.

Ahh, I thought XM was a US only company but they apparently only cover US and Canada.

As i posted above, if you are in Canada you can file a complaint with the government. This is how i finally got them to stop.

In 2016 I had bought a new car and it came with an XM Radio trial. I wanted to know what satellite radio was all about, even though I figured it was a dying technology getting replaced by music streaming. After deciding it wasn't going to be worth the money, I cancelled my trial.

Yeah, it was a mistake.

I was getting calls, but never answered them. I changed my number in my account and the calls stopped.

But I was getting 1-2 pieces of mail PER WEEK from them trying to bring me back.

At first, I was like "you dumbasses want to waste money sending me this much mail, have at it", but eventually it got tiring and I followed the directions in the mail to opt out of the marketing.

But seriously, I do have to wonder how much money they are burning spamming the shit out of peoples' physical mailboxes trying to get subscribers.

I think the only people that spammed me worse than XM Radio was SoFi while I still had student loans.

I have several problems with services like XM.

1) when i bought the car i don't recall consenting to have my contact information provided to XM??

2) They don't seem to take "NO" for an answer.

I'm located in Canada and eventually filed a report with the government and they finally stopped.

I tend to agree for heated seats, but not for driver assistance. I think there will be a chilling effect - New Jersey customers might be forced to pay upfront for driver assistance features that residents of other jurisdictions could pay for on a monthly basis.

You're saying that only New Jersey is doing this for New Jersey-specific reasons. No other state's legislature thinks it's entirely bullshit. Yeah, that's definitely a smart, informed understanding of how each state's legislature works and is motivated and not at all a stupid took-Econ-101-before-I-developed-common-sense take. Totally agree. Chilling effects.

It would take the company extra legal work to figure out if they can offer a driver assistance subscription in New Jersey or not.

Perhaps New Jersey customers would have to wait longer than others for the whole product (because there is too much complexity in having a NJ-specific SKU)..

I prefer to be able to choose which payment mode I want (by using a credit card or line of credit) instead of being railroaded into monthly payments. Subscriptions also never end. You never "pay off" your heated seat subscription.

The bill should specify that "on-going cost to the manufacturer" absolutely does not include software, so as to forestall bogus "updates" and also to prevent security updates being an excuse.

I am gonna stick to my 2008 toyota for as long as I can.

Car manufacturers have been into planned obsolescence for a long while and now they want to continuously charge me for their crap.

Vote with your wallet!

As a NJ resident, it is good to see that we are doing something that may be a good thing. I am already tired of cars being too expensive with too many unnecessary gadgets while the engines are becoming more plastic.

So if NJ residents now need to pay a lump sum to get the same features, this means more sales tax money going to the state. I can see why legislators want to get behind this.

Not a fan of subscriptions, but it's good to be aware what politicians are getting out of the deal.

Politicians get paid the same whether the state collects a bit more money from car sales or not. It's not like every excess tax dollar ends up in their pocket. Indeed, it's far more likely that car companies will want to lobby (AKA bribe) individual politicians to stop a law like this.

I don't get it. People seem to think that if you ban this practice, you'll get the premium package for free. That's not going to be the case.

Currently, you can pay for heated seats all up-front or via a monthly subscription. This proposed legislation prevents you from paying for it via a monthly subscription. So automakers will stop allowing you to do that. All you've done is limit customer choices.

Good, it shouldn't be an option. Killing the subscription model for cars in the crib prevents the subscription model from eventually being your only choice one day.

Price discrimination often allows producers to capture more of the surplus for complicated reasons that mostly boil down to the fact that they are the party with more information.

A limit on complicated pricing models likely results in some deadweight loss, but may result in higher aggregate consumer surplus.

Choice isn't everything.

Price discrimination works fine without subscriptions. They can charge $1000 for heated seats one time rather than monthly. This is entirely orthogonal.

Uh... If you have more pricing options, you get more price discrimination. It's not entirely orthogonal.

Nope. The cost of the hardware is always necessarily still passed on to the customer before they even pay for the subscription to "unlock" it. It's double dipping.

It makes no sense to gamble that upsells will be successful in exchange for a more competitive price. There's guaranteed loss with that idea.

The components pre-installed must cost something and it's not possible for the manufacturer to get that money back unless they both installed inferior junk nobody wants and then baked it into the price.

> The cost of the hardware is always necessarily still passed on to the customer before they even pay for the subscription to "unlock" it.

That's not true. Razors are the canonical example of a product sold below cost, there are many others.

> The components pre-installed must cost something

They must cost something, but there's also a significant cost to creating multiple SKU's, and that cost is likely more than the cost of the heated seats.

On my Jeep Grand Cherokee, without checking I wagered the wiring harness would be the same across the models without heated seats (mine) and with (the junkyard leather seat package I bought). I was surprised to learn I was wrong.

> That's not true. Razors are the canonical example of a product sold below cost, there are many others.

Trivially wrong. Heated seats are not required for a vehicle to function.

> People seem to think that if you ban this practice, you'll get the premium package for free.

No, no one thinks that. What people do think is that if they buy it, they will own it, and it will be theirs. Not a rental from a megacorp whose auth servers shit the bed on the coldest day of the year.

The good news is I can not pay for heated seats, and then run my own wire to get it.. it won't look as nice, but it will work

UNAUTHORIZED VOLTAGE DISCHARGE DETECTED

SYSTEM SAFETY MECHANISMS ENGAGED

car is now inoperable

Right to repair laws would help here.

Right to modify, which is slightly different from right to repair. The latter would only require it legal to restore the original, arguably user-hostile configuration.

Just because you've paid a lump sum doesn't mean that terrible servers aren't involved every time you start your car -- they could just be checking the perma-status of your purchase every time ("for security purposes").

> prevents you from paying for it via a monthly subscription

And why in tarnation would I pay monthly for something that has a fixed cost to the manufacturer?

I would happily pay $10/mo for 5 months a year for the 4 years I expected to own the car rather than $250-500 to buy heated seats.

I don’t care about someone else’s costs; I care about the value I get and the price I’m asked to pay. If someone else makes a profit because they structure the deal smartly, good for them.

The problem is that you're still paying some subset of that $250-500 (in addition to the subscription fee), because in order to offer the subscription option to anyone, they have to include the hardware in every car, even if a particular owner decided not to buy the subscription. The carmaker has to defray that cost somehow, and that means every car gets a little bit more expensive up front, regardless of whether or not you pay for the subscription.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if you're not permitted to buy the subscription on a month-by-month basis, and instead have to buy it in 6-month or 12-month chunks. Maybe some carmakers don't do this, but they can, and some will.

I really doubt the per-unit hardware cost to install heated seats is anywhere near what they cost to option. it's not a complex technology, and plenty of cheap cars come with them standard. the manufacturer might even break even on the additional parts cost by only making one kind of seat. or they might make up for it by increasing the margin in some other option that you may or may not choose. who knows?

Supporting your point: Two-seat aftermarket kits are around $50. I installed one (driver’s side only) in our CR-V and it’s well-worth the time to do so in New England. (If your seat-floorpan bolts aren't too rusty, it was a leisurely 60-90 minute job and would be 30-45 minutes to do the second one.)

Doesn't seem wise.

a) spend $250-500 to buy heated seats, which you will sell in 4 years with some portion of that $250-500 as a premium added to the sale price of the car, or

b) spend $200 (and the overhead on managing the bill for 4 years) on heated seat rent, and in four years you can sell the option to someone else to pay $10/mo, assuming the company decides to allow that option to be transferred rather than refuse in order to damage the sales of lightly used vehicles.

> And why in tarnation would I pay monthly for something that has a fixed cost to the manufacturer?

There is a broad equivalence between capex and opex.

I find subscriptions distasteful, but I can still acknowledge that, depending on the price, they may be reasonable compared to ownership.

This makes sense when the cost of the product is much higher than what you're able to afford. Like leasing a car

But paying a monthly fee for heated seats is just ridiculous.

Subscription services are a technology for carmakers to practice price discrimination.[1] Price discrimination reallocates consumer surplus to carmakers. It is not good for you unless you're a carmaker.

Without subscription services, they only have the option of limiting heated seats to certain trims. If you want heated seats, you can buy one of those trims. But that trim probably comes with other features, too, that contribute to your surplus as a consumer.

With subscription services, they can force you to pay for everything feature-by-feature. This is worse for you, better for them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination

This is false. Price discrimination is good for consumers that opt out. In the absence of price discrimination the price ends up somewhere in between, which is worse for customers that would have paid less.

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