These sort of shenanigans for even basic lanekeeping makes a very strong case for more open source solutions like comma
Screw the subscriptions. I don't care how much the shareholders want them.
Agreed. The investor requirements of any company mean nothing to me as the consumer.
This is an example of what I am talking about.
It's a silly example, but you can think of it as buying a house and the ceiling lights requiring a subscription to turn on.
As an aside, I wonder how long this can keep up before it begins affecting laws around theft and property damage if the person operating, storing, insuring, and maintaining the physical objects don't contractually own them. Is Mercedes a victim if the LKAS camera gets damaged or stolen, rather than you?
Are you sure they bought the ML Models?
The Hardware is inside because it's required for the emergency lane keeping, but I wouldn't be surprised if the OEMs would have a deal with the supplier where they are paid more if this feature gets enabled
Every young adult I know uses a subscription for everything I used to buy. Even though they own the device on which they consume it.
Spotify for cd's, Netflix-Disney-Amazon for vhs and dvd's, Udemy-Masterclass for books.
Equivalently, a Spotify premium subscription in 2000 would be a little under $7.
I guarantee that if you asked young adults in 2000 if they would be interested in a subscription that lets them listen to nearly everything available on CD, at any time, as often as they wished, for $7/month they would have been ecstatic.
Same for DVDs, which were typically in the $20-25 range for new releases in 2000. They would not have been quite as happy as they would have been with Spotify because of the way video is split among several streaming services, but it would still be seen as a tremendous improvement.
Although even if the devices stop getting updates, that makes them on par with most built in car software and lane assist stuff which never gets updated in the car's life anyway.
I too thought it would be nice on long drives, but really it hasn't made that much difference. Like everyone I speed on the freeway, but not as much as everyone else, so it rarely has to actually adapt. :-)
The place I've found it makes a huge difference is stop and go or near stop and go traffic. You can't set it to a speed below 20 mph, but if the car it is following goes below that it keeps working all the way down to 0 mph. (You don't have to be going 20 mph to set it. You can set it if you are going above something like 3 or 4 mph, or if you are stopped and there is a stopped car ahead of and it thinks you are on a street. It just sets the speed to 20 mph when you set it under those circumstances).
If the car ahead starts moving again within a few seconds it will automatically follow. If longer it will beep once when the car ahead starts moving and show a message about the lead car leaving. Tapping the accelerator or flicking the cruise control speed adjust switch on the steering wheel will resume following.
Not all adaptive cruise control systems work all the way down to 0 mph. Some cut off well above that. Some only work down to 0 mph on higher trims.
Making sure I get one that does is now on my "must have" requirements for any future car.
The only point of cruise control is to take your foot off the peddle and to zone out and stop paying attention to how fast you're going. This is already Not Great to have in cars, but adding the same to the steering wheel, making drivers feel emboldened to look away, is probably a big part of the reason so many cars on the road today seem like they're being driven by deranged psychopaths; the drivers are actually tuned out doing other shit!
That was my original main complaint with Tesla and why I distrusted them so much before Elon publicly lost the plot.
Even with Autopilot it was clear to me they were far more willing to force the risks of their systems on all other drivers on the road then the legacy auto makers who were much more cautious about testing things extremely thoroughly first. All those early videos of people climbing in the backs of their cars while they were driving down the highway? To me that was proof they couldn’t be trusted with public safety.