6 ms·

I literally just saw a BMW advertisement yesterday that says it comes with 8 years of adaptive cruise control/driver assist, which then disables itself after th

I literally just saw a BMW advertisement yesterday that says it comes with 8 years of adaptive cruise control/driver assist, which then disables itself after the timer runs out (presumably unless you pay to license it again).

megablast 3y ago
[flagged]
- LocalH 3y ago
  Abusive business practices are not "good" no matter whether they harm the people you dislike or not.
  - TheDong 3y ago
    The argument is about harm to the general populace, not about harm to a specific group they dislike. Are indoor smoking bans good? The justification is that second-hand smoke has significant negative impacts on the general populace. Are tabacco taxes good? They encourage the same thing that smoking bans do, a reduction in smoking leading to better health for the population. The parent commenter is just saying the same applies to cars. Cars cause a huge number of deaths, especially of pedestrians and cyclists, but also of other car users. They harm the general populace. Just like existing in the same room as someone smoking has health consequences for you, living in the same city as cars increases your chance of death. You can, of course, legitimately argue that capitalist competition isn't the right way to discourage it, but rather having the government levy additional taxes and fees would be better.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      Life causes all death. People should be free to drink, smoke, drive, and whatever else is "harmful" if they want. Part of freedom is tolerance for others doing things you don't like. Otherwise we're headed for authoritarian dystopia. ...which is ironic given the context here.
      - brewdad 3y ago
        Freedom does not allow you to harm others with impunity.
    - LocalH 3y ago
      > Are tabacco taxes good? They encourage the same thing that smoking bans do, a reduction in smoking leading to better health for the population. As a smoker, that is absolute bullshit. Exhorbitant tobacco taxes only piss off people who are going to buy the product anyway. They disproportionately punish poor people for being poor, and they don't put as much of a dent into the amount of smoking that happens as you think they do.
- nateabele 3y ago
  This is Hacker News. Please keep your religion out of the comments.
- gbear605 3y ago
  The end result is the same number of cars, that all have built in features that no one pays for and uses, causing more resource usage and waste but providing no one any value. It just hurts the environment but doesn’t convince anyone to switch away.
Auguste 3y ago
For a while now, the KTM motorcycle company has been selling bikes with a Demo Mode. For the first 1,500 km, you get access to all of the electronic features of your new bike; then they get disabled and you have to pay to re-enable them. https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/ktm-demo-mode https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/ktm-demo-mode
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
cactusfrog 3y ago
The good news is that no BMW is going to run for 8 years
- ronsor 3y ago
  Even if it does, whoever buys a BMW probably won't keep it for 8 years anyway.
  - thot_experiment 3y ago
    my K75 is older than me!
  - walrus01 3y ago
    Or they'll wish they didn't when they encounter a basic repair part that costs $3300
- somerandomqaguy 3y ago
  Toyota was trying to jump onto the bandwagon too. https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-... https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43636/toyota-reviewing-key-fob-remote-start-subscription-plan-after-massive-blowback https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43636/toyota-reviewing-key-fob... That said GM is dropping Android Auto and Apple Carplay from it's 2024 EVs, I assume to sell their own services. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-dropping-apple-carplay-and-android-auto-from-2024-evs/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-droppin... Klim also sells a motorcycle airbag vest that you can optionally purchase as a subscription rather then a one time purchase: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airbag-vest-will-stop-working-if-you-miss-a-payment https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airba... Ford's Commercial Division was talking about some 400,000 customers on it's subscription services though I'm not sure what those look like. Stellantis hasn't announced anything concrete yet but said it's expecting fairly large profits from it's software division. https://www.carscoops.com/2022/03/stellantis-targets-full-expansion-of-subscription-services-by-2030-generating-up-to-4-4-billion-revenue/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/03/stellantis-targets-full-ex... Like it or not, this is the trend the majority of the car world is going.
petesergeant 3y ago
I think I am in a minority group of 1 for thinking that features that are payable extras are a good thing, actually. I guess people who don't like it see it as losing features, and talk about _owning_ their vehicle, where I see it as the ability to fine-tune the cost of a vehicle depending on what features you do or do not want to license. With any luck, competition should end up giving a market price to each of these features, and you can just pay market price for what you want/need. In addition, the car should be easier to re-sell, as any options you cheaped out on, a secondary buyer can pay for if they want them.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Just to be clear, these features such as heated seats are already in your vehicle. You are just being charged monthly.. for hardware you already bought. "Car feature piracy" will be an interesting new world I suppose...
  - petesergeant 3y ago
    Sure, but this is a pretty well-established model for computers; if it's more economical for the company to install the hardware on every model, but only charge consumers who want to utilize it a premium, then I don't see the problem. Price competition should keep the market price for any feature reasonable.
    - usednet 3y ago
      Can you give some examples of computer hardware that are paywall locked?
      - jtc331 3y ago
        I don’t like the idea, but CPUs have long been an example (fused at the factory to disable cores, for example).
        I_am_uncreative 3y ago
labster 3y ago
It’s a little worrying that your anti-lock brake subscription might be cancelled due to credit card fraud, but what can you do? That’s I always prepay my DocWagon account.
vel0city 3y ago
If it's relying on something like detailed maps or something that need to be updated I could understand that; it costs money to rescan and keep that data up to date. If it's just the basic vision/radar adaptive cruise that's terrible like their heated seats. I bet it's the worse of those two things, knowing BMW.

megablast 3y ago

[flagged]

LocalH 3y ago
Abusive business practices are not "good" no matter whether they harm the people you dislike or not.
- TheDong 3y ago
  The argument is about harm to the general populace, not about harm to a specific group they dislike. Are indoor smoking bans good? The justification is that second-hand smoke has significant negative impacts on the general populace. Are tabacco taxes good? They encourage the same thing that smoking bans do, a reduction in smoking leading to better health for the population. The parent commenter is just saying the same applies to cars. Cars cause a huge number of deaths, especially of pedestrians and cyclists, but also of other car users. They harm the general populace. Just like existing in the same room as someone smoking has health consequences for you, living in the same city as cars increases your chance of death. You can, of course, legitimately argue that capitalist competition isn't the right way to discourage it, but rather having the government levy additional taxes and fees would be better.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Life causes all death. People should be free to drink, smoke, drive, and whatever else is "harmful" if they want. Part of freedom is tolerance for others doing things you don't like. Otherwise we're headed for authoritarian dystopia. ...which is ironic given the context here.
    - brewdad 3y ago
      Freedom does not allow you to harm others with impunity.
  - LocalH 3y ago
    > Are tabacco taxes good? They encourage the same thing that smoking bans do, a reduction in smoking leading to better health for the population. As a smoker, that is absolute bullshit. Exhorbitant tobacco taxes only piss off people who are going to buy the product anyway. They disproportionately punish poor people for being poor, and they don't put as much of a dent into the amount of smoking that happens as you think they do.
nateabele 3y ago
This is Hacker News. Please keep your religion out of the comments.
gbear605 3y ago
The end result is the same number of cars, that all have built in features that no one pays for and uses, causing more resource usage and waste but providing no one any value. It just hurts the environment but doesn’t convince anyone to switch away.

Auguste 3y ago

For a while now, the KTM motorcycle company has been selling bikes with a Demo Mode. For the first 1,500 km, you get access to all of the electronic features of your new bike; then they get disabled and you have to pay to re-enable them. https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/ktm-demo-mode https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/ktm-demo-mode

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

cactusfrog 3y ago

The good news is that no BMW is going to run for 8 years

ronsor 3y ago
Even if it does, whoever buys a BMW probably won't keep it for 8 years anyway.
- thot_experiment 3y ago
  my K75 is older than me!
- walrus01 3y ago
  Or they'll wish they didn't when they encounter a basic repair part that costs $3300
somerandomqaguy 3y ago
Toyota was trying to jump onto the bandwagon too. https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-... https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43636/toyota-reviewing-key-fob-remote-start-subscription-plan-after-massive-blowback https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43636/toyota-reviewing-key-fob... That said GM is dropping Android Auto and Apple Carplay from it's 2024 EVs, I assume to sell their own services. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-dropping-apple-carplay-and-android-auto-from-2024-evs/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/03/gm-confirms-its-droppin... Klim also sells a motorcycle airbag vest that you can optionally purchase as a subscription rather then a one time purchase: https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airbag-vest-will-stop-working-if-you-miss-a-payment https://www.vice.com/en/article/93yyyd/this-motorcycle-airba... Ford's Commercial Division was talking about some 400,000 customers on it's subscription services though I'm not sure what those look like. Stellantis hasn't announced anything concrete yet but said it's expecting fairly large profits from it's software division. https://www.carscoops.com/2022/03/stellantis-targets-full-expansion-of-subscription-services-by-2030-generating-up-to-4-4-billion-revenue/ https://www.carscoops.com/2022/03/stellantis-targets-full-ex... Like it or not, this is the trend the majority of the car world is going.

petesergeant 3y ago

I think I am in a minority group of 1 for thinking that features that are payable extras are a good thing, actually. I guess people who don't like it see it as losing features, and talk about _owning_ their vehicle, where I see it as the ability to fine-tune the cost of a vehicle depending on what features you do or do not want to license. With any luck, competition should end up giving a market price to each of these features, and you can just pay market price for what you want/need. In addition, the car should be easier to re-sell, as any options you cheaped out on, a secondary buyer can pay for if they want them.

vorpalhex 3y ago
Just to be clear, these features such as heated seats are already in your vehicle. You are just being charged monthly.. for hardware you already bought. "Car feature piracy" will be an interesting new world I suppose...
- petesergeant 3y ago
  Sure, but this is a pretty well-established model for computers; if it's more economical for the company to install the hardware on every model, but only charge consumers who want to utilize it a premium, then I don't see the problem. Price competition should keep the market price for any feature reasonable.
  - usednet 3y ago
    Can you give some examples of computer hardware that are paywall locked?
    - jtc331 3y ago
      I don’t like the idea, but CPUs have long been an example (fused at the factory to disable cores, for example).
      - I_am_uncreative 3y ago

labster 3y ago

It’s a little worrying that your anti-lock brake subscription might be cancelled due to credit card fraud, but what can you do? That’s I always prepay my DocWagon account.

vel0city 3y ago

If it's relying on something like detailed maps or something that need to be updated I could understand that; it costs money to rescan and keep that data up to date. If it's just the basic vision/radar adaptive cruise that's terrible like their heated seats. I bet it's the worse of those two things, knowing BMW.