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I have yet to see how this thread will go but I imagine there will be some population that sees this as a malicious attack on 'right to repair'. My take from b
by stevecalifornia 5y ago
I have yet to see how this thread will go but I imagine there will be some population that sees this as a malicious attack on 'right to repair'. My take from behind the scenes on these kind of things is that this is likely 'until we have the tools and processes to handle the work stream originating from this one state in this one country, we should disable the feature'.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoWell if that's the case they really should have considered the optics better. Also, "who cares it's just one small state in one country" is not a very nice thing for a company to express either. Either way it's a bit of a middle finger to the affected customers IMO.
- kasey_junk 5y agoIt’s not a middle finger necessarily. While I have no automotive industry experience I’ve definitely been in situations where I was prohibited from being able to provide customer value adding capabilities to systems due to compliance issues, either lack of clarity of the requirements, added compliance costs making the feature untenable or compliance mandated deadlines not meeting estimated delivery times. It feels terrible to do but there isn’t much choice.
- mywittyname 5y agoI think, in this particular situation, it's more that Subaru themselves don't really know how to approach fixing these safety systems. From my experience these systems are fickle-beta-hot-garbage-heaps brand new. I bet they see right to repair bills as a way for the general public to gather evidence that they've known this all along. Of course, this doesn't really address the issue of people buying cars from out of state. But who knows, maybe we'll see "Massachusetts Cars" be a thing in the Subaru world for their lack of broken factory features.
- anothernewdude 5y agoWhen it came to screwing the customers they weren't left waiting to figure out how.
- csours 5y agoDisclosure: I work for GM, everything expressed here is solely my own opinion. I think people see car companies as a huge monolith with nearly limitless resources. I can see where this comes from, but those resources are split into silos, and those silos have limited capacity. Especially for companies like Subaru, which is actually pretty small comparatively. They may have done a cost-benefit analysis and decided that the investment was not worth the money they get from selling those option packages. --- On a broader level, I think right to repair can be perceived as a feature, but many executives have a default negative stance on openness. I think of it like the GM LS engine. If you're at all familiar with car modification, you've heard of the LS Swap - people changing the engine that came with their car for a larger, more powerful, more versatile GM V8 engine. The LS swap ecosystem grew because the engines were relatively cheap, relatively easy to work on, and relatively reliable (your mileage may vary). Imagine if GM executives had tried to lock down the engine swap environment.
- miohtama 5y agoThe variation of ”right to repair” was also what started the freedom of software movement in 80s and later led to the creation of Linux. If it’s your device then you should have 100% control over it.
- nickff 5y ago>"If it’s your device then you should have 100% control over it." Should you get the source code to all software running on it, along with all the relevant documentation and a right to modify it as you see fit? Without that, it's not really full control.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]