The point is to find the most innocuous thing that you would accept at time of purchase and then make the majority of customers pay for that more often and longer than anybody at the time of purchase thinks about.
It's similar to the marketing for payday loans. People are not entirely rational actors.
If you could make double the normal sales price of the car in revenue, and the car stops working if the customer ceases to pay, then if you don't mind the occasional customer service public meltdown on social media, then as a car manufacturer you are welcome to scheme away.
As a smarter than average customer, you are wise to the scam, and hope that the scheming of the car companies is not effective on the general public.
Also subscriptions are awesome for car manufacturers for accelerating planned obsolescence. Why should there be any resale value to your car anyway, if they could figure out a way to either 1) make the new owner pay for the car again in subscriptions or 2) make your car near worthless after you initially own it, then from their perspective this is the most brilliant thing they have ever thought of! ;)
It does seem anticompetitive though so maybe there are antitrust and interoperability angles?
How about "no subscriptions on titled property"
Compare to a heated seat. They are some of the simplest circuits out there. Apply 12V and it will heat up a nichrome alloy wire. Same way a cigarette lighter works.
It's never RICO until it is. But it's never RICO.
Auto loan rates are about 7% p/a.
On a 5 year loan of $589, you'd pay $700 including interest. Plus you might recoup some of that when you sell the car.
A monthly subscription for the same period would cost $1740.
Wordt lease offenders I've seen so far: bikes. You repay it in about a year.
Of course, for things like heated seats, the question is whether or not they've actually reduced the price of the car to account for the additional post-sale revenue. For Tesla, the Model 3 started out at $35k so heated seats being an additional charge at first made a lot of sense, but as it crept well over $40k for the standard range/RWD version, it started to look like a money grab and IIRC it was the 2022 refresh that removed the heated seat post-purchase requirement on the RWD trim.
"Heated seats" is just a piece of wire put into seat, some $1 (probably less) micro to turn it off and on and some $0.1 sensor.
I wouldn't be surprised if even few % of buyers buying that would cover for having to fit extra (and not have separate SKU for heater-less seats)
Of course, barring legal discovery or a leaked email we'd never know.