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The thing that's annoying me right now is how Ford wants to sell you back features like their advanced cruise control and navigation systems. If my employment c
by owlbite 3y ago
The thing that's annoying me right now is how Ford wants to sell you back features like their advanced cruise control and navigation systems. If my employment contract didn't make things legally murky I'd totally be trying to replace this shit with something less user hostile.
Now I don't really want to be on the road where people are running random self driving algorithms they downloaded from the internets on their electric deathwagons, but the automakers rent seeking behavior seems to be driving us ever closer to that dystopian future.
- alemanek 3y agoI am personally more forgiving of software unlocks for things like ADAS systems. My thinking is that they incurred that as a large R&D cost not a per unit cost. So, having it be an add on allows me to not pay for it if I don’t want it. If they didn’t have this option you would still be paying for it but just a little less. The low end of the market would just be subsidizing your preference. Paying a subscription for hardware already shipped can die in a fire though.
- owlbite 3y agoFor things where there is a significant "cloud" type cost I am happy enough paying for that. But the software cost for the code in the car at the time of purchase should be covered by the cost of the car. It's not like there isn't an R&D cost in the hardware part of the car as well. If the concern is the lower part of the market subsidizing the upper part, just don't install the software and market it as included on those vehicles. Just make it an overpriced option like every other thing on the vehicle. (Aside: charging $80/year for a navigation system that is objectively worse than I can get for free on my phone, why would you expect me to pay that?)