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Comment by reorder9695 | Hacker News Reader

Seriously people selling a product at a fair price and that being that is a centuries old thing, why does everything need to be a subscription now just because it's possible?

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Because a project manager somewhere can make a metric go up and get a promotion by doing it

Because some assholes manage to convince everybody that being only motivated by money benefits everyone.

There is a lifetime “subscription” option which is a lump sum payment and stays with the car even after being sold.

Still something distasteful about it but not quite as vampiric

"lifetime"

What do you want to imply with this pithy reply? It's for the life of the car and is not bound to an owner.

There’s no single universal legal definition of “lifetime” for products — it’s vague and often depends on the warranty’s own wording. It can mean the buyer’s lifetime, the product’s “useful life,” or as long as the manufacturer supports it. Courts usually interpret it based on context and disclosures.

If they can enable it remotely, then they can disable it remotely at any time. The actual lifetime is up to them, and I guarantee the terms of service give them latitude to disable it under certain circumstances. Legally, “lifetime” is never as black and white as the layman might expect.

That's what the article says, and it might be true. But it is very strange to describe a one-off purchase as a subscription, lifetime or otherwise. You can't be certain of exactly what the deal is without seeing the actual contract.

This isn't exactly centuries ago, but my dad started a company selling a widget in the 90s; their business plan was to charge not just for the widget, but a yearly cost for having the widget installed at all. I remember thinking this was weird even back then, but apparently that was the only way the company could have been profitable - if they sold the widgets for a flat fee, eventually everyplace the widget could be used would be used, and they'd run out of money, except occasionally replacing broken widgets.

The company ended up folding either way.

Cause there is consumer surplus out there to be eaten and return more profits to shareholders.

I wouldn't mind boosting my car when we need to go for a road trip and bring it back to a cheaper/smaller engine for everyday drive.

Of course, if you have a car 2.0+cc and 150HPs why would you care. But the opposite can be useful.

That is fine. Your car has the ability to do that, great.

Why should you have to pay money each time you want to move that slider?

Because customers tolerate it. Volkswagen would stop doing this tomorrow if there was a full boycott.

Because consumers willing to pay anyway.

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