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Well if I could afford a Mercedes, they would be off my list now. With all these subscriptions and other crap being added to autos, seems I will be only buying
by jmclnx 4y ago
Well if I could afford a Mercedes, they would be off my list now.
With all these subscriptions and other crap being added to autos, seems I will be only buying very old cars. My current auto is pushing 20 years
- princevegeta89 4y agoExactly the reason I've always avoided European luxury cars. Imagine buying a full car for a hefty price and having to keep paying extra to use the features you already bought
- l33tman 4y agoLike Tesla might do with their upgraded autopilots and seat heating? They have also started talking about subscriptions for these, don't know if they actually have implemented it yet.. I think all luxury manufacturers will experiment with this unfortunately. Best you can do is don't buy into it...
- masklinn 4y agoHaven't they already done something along those lines where some options are per-owner and transferring the vehicle will remove the option?
- forgotpwd16 4y agoNo, but it's considered. What you may have heard is car returned and feature being removed when sold to someone else.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoIf you sell private party, or trade it to a non-Tesla dealership, then all options will follow the vehicle. If it ever gets back into Tesla's hands, they have the option to remove the features. There WAS a case where someone bought a used Tesla from a non-Tesla dealership that was sold with FSD and Tesla then removed the FSD, and there was a lot of outrage behind it, but like many cases of outrage, it was based on a misunderstanding. That car was never supposed to have FSD. There was a bug at some point that gave FSD to cars that weren't supposed to have it, and that car was sold before the bug was fixed, removing FSD, but the dealer sold it as having FSD because at the time, it did. Of course, IMO, Tesla should have just gone ahead and granted FSD in order to save face instead of generating a ton of negative PR and creating a massive amount of misconceptions.
- forgotpwd16 4y agoTesla already provides a faster acceleration software upgrade. Mercedes just copied them.
- 0x0 4y agoTesla's acceleration boost upgrade is a one-time fee though!
- poxrud 4y agoTesla also has a paid acceleration boost option in their app and its more expensive than $1200.
- calciphus 4y agoIt is a one-time $2000 upgrade on my car. Dunno about others, but the subscription being a "for the life of the vehicle" purchase seems like the lousy part of this deal.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y agoOnly available on the Model 3 LR AWD. And this wasn't a feature when it first came out, but I wonder if Tesla planned it from the beginning, or if it's something they decided to start offering only after people started noticing that the motors and battery on the LR AWD were the same as the Performance and started asking for a software unlock.
- poxrud 4y agoAvailable on Model Y LR as well
- vanviegen 4y agoI think there's a case to be made for autopilot subscriptions; once autopilot finally does what is says on the tin. These things require access to accurate and up-to-date road and traffic info, need updates to stay compliant with local regulations, and may (need to) include insurance. These are all factors that nudge towards a monthly subscription, instead of a one-time purchase. Once the seller goes bust, you wouldn't be able to use your 'purchase' anyhow.
- mh7 4y ago>These things require access to accurate and up-to-date road and traffic info Which they will probably steal from the regular drivers, so you will be effectively paying for your own data.
- type0 4y ago> I think all luxury manufacturers will experiment with this unfortunately. And not so luxury as well, they might start by giving you the features and financing that by playing/showing you the ads and giving the incentive to pay. I imagine in not so distant future even the microwaves for plebs will have ads.
- tmedina 4y agoYup, the costs for parts, maintenance and potential repairs for a lot of luxury cars has always been a running joke. Hard to use most of the features if you can't fix the car to run.
- r_singh 4y agoI totally agree. I just made a note on my phone today about how in future if there wasn’t some kind of a law to protect “owners” of hardware they “purchased” from cross promotion or added inconveniences due to upselling services I would be quite sad. For e.g. the experience of backing up your iPhone photographs to a external hard disk could be A LOT better if Apple was satisfied with the money they make from selling the device and didn’t want to sell us their iCloud service. I so hate growth at all cost mindset that is visible in every business these days. I wish investors would just get used to lower growth rates.
- HWR_14 4y agoBacking up iPhone photos to an external disk is pretty easy. It's not the happy path because most people cannot handle their own backups.
- plussed_reader 4y agoNot if you want to avoid itunes or icloud.
- simjnd 4y agoIf you have macOS you don't need either, just plug your iPhone open up "/Applications/Image Capture.app" and it will show your photos. You can select and drag and drop to a disk and delete them all from this app.
- lostlogin 4y agoHaving it happen automatically is what I was after, and that isn’t particularly easy to achieve. There must surely be a better way than my nasty hack, but I do now have automatic backups of iPhone photos onto a nas: A VM running macOS and a script. Open Photos.app and sync with ‘Download Originals’ checked. Quit Photos.app and rsync the folder ‘Originals’ out of the app bundle and onto a NAS. Once finished, reopen Photos.app. It’s quite horrible getting the script to run as permissions get tricky with chrontab, so I used Lingon X to schedule it.
- mod 4y agoI've already decided the same, and my current vehicle is a 2015, before they started this new wave of nonsense. I drive a truck. I think I'm going to get my favorite body style of F150 (late 70s/early 80s) and put a brand new engine in it, and whatever else it needs to make it 100%. I don't need any tech except one of those things that turns AUX into FM radio. When I bought this truck, it replaced a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 318,000 miles (512,000km). I can live without luxury. I'll miss my heated steering wheel, though.
- agentwiggles 4y agoAs a young man I used to drive a 1980s Ford Ranger. It had manual transmission, an AM/FM radio, shitty A/C, bare metal interior, crank windows, and a bent driveshaft that meant it could really only safely go about 50 mph. You had to carry a few gallons of water in the bed in case the radiator needed a refill. It was genuinely, with no sarcasm, my favorite vehicle I ever owned. It was mine and it felt like freedom. (Also, with no upholstery, no amount of smoking could stink it up, so an extra helping of freedom). I miss the shit out of that busted old pile of junk.
- ryanianian 4y agoSafety features and emissions regulations might put a dent in that as a long-term plan.
- mrguyorama 4y agoOld cars are nearly always grandfathered in to those kind of things. In my state we have yearly inspections, but they are waived if you have an """antique""" which is 25 years old or if you go through the work to get it certified as a "hot rod" type vehicle, IE a custom build.
- jws 4y agoFor someone considering this, to expound on I don't need any tech except… • depending on your era the radios are easily replaceable with something that has aux in and bluetooth. • towing insurance, the kind that actually pays for the tow, not the garbage my insurance includes which will pay part of a really expensive tow leaving you with more than you will find if you shop around. • a flexible schedule. • a greater than average tolerance for vehicular death. I use a 1990s F250HD when I need a truck, love it, can't stop to put fuel in it without someone coming over to talk truck stories. It has more miles on it than the Artemis space capsule. But, it does strand me from time to time (water pump bearing, transmission, instant total brake failure on a downhill grade into a contested intersection with 4 tons of boat on the hitch…) As much as I use it for its truck super power, I would be money ahead to sell it and just rent Home Depot/Menards truck for in town use and an Enterprise 3/4 ton for long distance towing. But, its "my truck", and I'll keep it until the next transmission or engine.
- Mikeb85 4y agoIt's alright, the quality of non-luxury makers has never been better and honestly, a top model Hyundai, Honda or Toyota is still pretty comfy and nice.
- jtbayly 4y agoBut what’s preventing those companies from adding subscription features?
- Mikeb85 4y agoThe notion of value plus their clientele. Same reason they currently offer luxury features for so cheap. They could poach a lot of business by simply not adding these things.
- wiredearp 4y agoExcept Toyota already came up with a subscription to start your car over on https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/12/22831105/toyota-subscription-remote-start-key-fob https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/12/22831105/toyota-subscrip...
- lp0_on_fire 4y agoI was ready to purchase a Rav4 this year but went with Ford instead precisely because of this. I have no reason to believe Ford won't _eventually_ follow suit but at least, for now, I don't have to pay to use the remote start.
- anonymousab 4y agoThey already do. A modern corolla will lose access to remote start after an initial free subscription period.
- StanislavPetrov 4y agoComfy and nice and also packed with "features" that monitor all manners of your activity to phone home and report. I don't want a car that has tires that spy on me and report my activity to the tire company.
- mike10921 4y agoI'm with you. Of course, if I already owned one I would be searching the net up and down on how to crack the feature without paying :)
- alexfromapex 4y agoSeems like something pretty easy to make an aftermarket "fix" for
- Eric_WVGG 4y agoWell there’s an upside. Automobiles in America should obviously be speed limited to 75mph, but that’s politically and commercially impossible. If this were normalized, we could sort of get better safety as a side-effect.
- more_corn 4y agoYeah, normal people largely do what they ought and rich idiots get to pay and get a pass. What a lovely future.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoIn the US, there's plenty of places with a speed limit of 80: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_States_by_jurisdiction#/media/File:US_Speed_Limits.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_the_United_Sta... And many more places with 75 - which people effectively treat as 80.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoThere are also private roads without speed limits.
- dfee 4y ago> Automobiles in America should obviously be speed limited to 75mph Why? There are speed limits greater than that in a few states. The flow of traffic in Southern California is often even faster.
- coryrc 4y ago> The flow of traffic in Southern California is often even faster. Which is exactly the problem GP wants to fix. I'm more worried about the growing pedestrian deaths since vehicles have no requirement, like in Europe, to be as safe as possible when hitting pedestrians.
- josephcsible 4y ago
- more_corn 4y agoMercedes used to have high resale value due to durability. They even commissioned an internal study (when deciding if they should cheap out to compete with companies like Nissan) the study found that car companies that have high resale values have higher profit margins. Locking quality behind a subscription is 100% incompatible with that pattern. Some short-sighted executives just sold Mercedes’ long-term future for a couple extra bucks. Just blacklist and ignore them, they’ll figure it out eventually.
- kennend3 4y agoThis is another great but underrated statement. Instead of endlessly debating if Mercedes should have done this or not, vote with your wallet. if you dont agree with what they did dont buy the product. If enough people dont buy it, they will change. it isnt like Mercedes has a lock on the market like you see in other areas.
- ren_engineer 4y agopre 2008 models are your best option, a bunch of privacy violating electronics have been mandated in the US since then. Many of them have confirmed backdoors if it wasn't for these regulations I think there would be a huge market for "dumb" cars that just have the essentials without a bunch of added stuff. Same goes for TVs, I' love to buy a dumb flat screen TV at this point seems like corporations are using dystopian sci-fi for ideas and inspiration rather than as something to avoid. Stuff like this a few years ago was literally parody material, now it's actually happening
- bitL 4y agoNobody is forcing you to plug a smart TV into Internet and no smart TV has the capability to talk to 5G free/marketing channels yet.
- zapdrive 4y agoSome TVs are known to look for open WiFi networks in order to connect to the internet and send data back home.
- rosnd 4y agoWhich ones? The vague "Some TVs" screams FUD. Past conversations about this on HN suggest that this is almost certainly a complete fabrication, not something that has actually been documented.
- 62951413 4y agoMy 2 yo car shows 47MPG and its safety features (e.g. adaptive cruise control and the ability to stay in lane) are more addictive than I expected. A 20 yo car strikes me as unrealistic extreme even though I drove my previous one for 10 years myself.
- m463 4y agoI think this might target you in a weird way. This will affect used car sales, maybe like used video games with activation codes and the like.
- sliken 4y agoI get it, however unlike BMW's heated seats, increased performance can wear out parts of the car faster. Say a clutch that would normally last 7 years and costs $7,000 for parts/hours lasts half as long if users do regular full throttle accelerations to 60 MPH (like say an on ramp)?
- UltraViolence 4y agoThe EQS without this option is still a very desirable car, mind you. I suspect this is merely an experiment to see if people buy into this stuff (Hint: I believe they won't).
- kornhole 4y agoI could easily afford one, but I would rather buy and own a car than have to rent like this.