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I don't think sane people are shopping for a new car every 3 years because their "infotainment" looks old. Such features IMHO are for the comparison shoppers wh

I don't think sane people are shopping for a new car every 3 years because their "infotainment" looks old. Such features IMHO are for the comparison shoppers who will compare competing cars side by side and can be pushed either way by tiniest gimmicks.

sokoloff 6y ago
There’s a valuable segment of car buyers who do change cars every 2, 3, or 4 years to always have the newest features. They often lease and are influenced in their overall decisions by the fact that cars do change. “I can’t have the old-looking tail lights and grill!” Manufacturers almost surely tailor some of their product plans with this in mind.
- pandaman 6y ago
  Sure, people who lease will get a new car every time the lease term is up, but I am skeptical they do it for the new gadgets. It looks like that not having to care about maintenance and wear&tear as well as financial incentives are the major reasons to lease. Besides, the cars being leased are mostly expensive ones, with OTA software updates, why manufacturers would do that if their plan was to make you buy a new car for the new features?
gambiting 6y ago
Well, one of the(but definitely not the main) reasons why I replaced my perfectly functional 2016 Mercedes Benz was that my model missed the ability to have Android Auto/CarPlay by literally 2 weeks of production. It was impossible to add later without an extremely expensive head unit replacement.
- pandaman 6y ago
  Replacing the head unit was more expensive than the money you lost on trading-in/selling the car?
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Absolutely. Any money put into modifications like these is essentially lost, you won't get even a fraction of it back when it comes to time to sell the car. The modified head unit plus labour to fit it was worth about 9 months of payments on that car, so doing it would have been nuts.
    - pandaman 6y ago
      So your German car depreciated less than 9 month of payments (supposedly on a 60 month loan with little down?) after being used? That's not my experience with German autos, was it some A-B Klasse that they don't sell in the US?
      - gambiting 6y ago
        GLA45 AMG, 4 year PCP, £400/month. I have actually beaten the depreciation by about £4000 at the end of the contract, sold the car and was left with a massive chunk of money to put towards the next car. Buying the head unit would have effectively wiped all of that money out because its value on sale would have been exactly zero(in fact it would have been negative, as the car would have been now modified which has to be reported to insurers increasing your premium and putting off potential buyers). It was absolutely not worth doing, in any conceivable scenario, not at the price Mercedes wanted for it. But once again, like I said in my first post - this wasn't anywhere near the main reason for changing the car, but I would lie if I said I wasn't looking forward to finally having access to Android Auto.
        pandaman 6y ago
        I am still uncertain how your calculus work. In the US, at least, if you buy a car and sell it the same day you are still out of sales tax (depends on location), various fees and the depreciation due to not having a clean title. On German cars this is about 20% of the cost (again, depends on location). I am sure a CLA45 (I suppose you mean that, not GLA) head unit with labor is less than $10K you'd lose on selling a $50K car (as you said, 9 payments of 400 pounds). So, as it seems, it could not be a possible reason for a sane person (lose 10K vs lose 4K + some insurance premiums in the range of few hundred bucks over the life of the car).

sokoloff 6y ago

There’s a valuable segment of car buyers who do change cars every 2, 3, or 4 years to always have the newest features. They often lease and are influenced in their overall decisions by the fact that cars do change. “I can’t have the old-looking tail lights and grill!” Manufacturers almost surely tailor some of their product plans with this in mind.

pandaman 6y ago
Sure, people who lease will get a new car every time the lease term is up, but I am skeptical they do it for the new gadgets. It looks like that not having to care about maintenance and wear&tear as well as financial incentives are the major reasons to lease. Besides, the cars being leased are mostly expensive ones, with OTA software updates, why manufacturers would do that if their plan was to make you buy a new car for the new features?

gambiting 6y ago

Well, one of the(but definitely not the main) reasons why I replaced my perfectly functional 2016 Mercedes Benz was that my model missed the ability to have Android Auto/CarPlay by literally 2 weeks of production. It was impossible to add later without an extremely expensive head unit replacement.

pandaman 6y ago
Replacing the head unit was more expensive than the money you lost on trading-in/selling the car?
- gambiting 6y ago
  Absolutely. Any money put into modifications like these is essentially lost, you won't get even a fraction of it back when it comes to time to sell the car. The modified head unit plus labour to fit it was worth about 9 months of payments on that car, so doing it would have been nuts.
  - pandaman 6y ago
    So your German car depreciated less than 9 month of payments (supposedly on a 60 month loan with little down?) after being used? That's not my experience with German autos, was it some A-B Klasse that they don't sell in the US?
    - gambiting 6y ago
      GLA45 AMG, 4 year PCP, £400/month. I have actually beaten the depreciation by about £4000 at the end of the contract, sold the car and was left with a massive chunk of money to put towards the next car. Buying the head unit would have effectively wiped all of that money out because its value on sale would have been exactly zero(in fact it would have been negative, as the car would have been now modified which has to be reported to insurers increasing your premium and putting off potential buyers). It was absolutely not worth doing, in any conceivable scenario, not at the price Mercedes wanted for it. But once again, like I said in my first post - this wasn't anywhere near the main reason for changing the car, but I would lie if I said I wasn't looking forward to finally having access to Android Auto.
      - pandaman 6y ago
        I am still uncertain how your calculus work. In the US, at least, if you buy a car and sell it the same day you are still out of sales tax (depends on location), various fees and the depreciation due to not having a clean title. On German cars this is about 20% of the cost (again, depends on location). I am sure a CLA45 (I suppose you mean that, not GLA) head unit with labor is less than $10K you'd lose on selling a $50K car (as you said, 9 payments of 400 pounds). So, as it seems, it could not be a possible reason for a sane person (lose 10K vs lose 4K + some insurance premiums in the range of few hundred bucks over the life of the car).