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The really offensive part of this kind of thing is that you already paid for it. Like if you wanted to buy a regular car and you could get the engine with turbo

The really offensive part of this kind of thing is that you already paid for it. Like if you wanted to buy a regular car and you could get the engine with turbo then those are two different cars. The latter costing more because it has more/better stuff in it. This is all fine and good. In this case, all the cars have turbo and you pay to have it turned on or not. The cost of the turbo is in the cost of the normal car because the company would not sell it at a loss. You already paid for it, but aren't allow to use it. So you are driving around with this perfectly good and usable turbo that you paid for and can't use unless you paid some extra extortion money. This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. You should only be charged extra if it is in fact extra. Not something that is already there and withheld.

mk89 1y ago
As I said in other comments, this is already happening since years (and I mentioned Ford, but literally everyone else does it). Car manufacturers already give you the same powerful engine that you can't afford/don't want to buy and "shrink" it with SW. If you jailbreak it, you lose the warranty and bye bye insurance. You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't. You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that.
- AshamedCaptain 1y ago
  That is not true, and even TFA points at why that can't be true: to your insurance, to vehicle taxes, etc. you declare the power _of the installed engine_, not of whatever software interlocks you, your tax advisor, or the manufacturer have decided to install on it. TFA already says the car is registered at the maximum power level regardless of the actual software cap. So you are _quite literally_ paying for it, at least in terms of increased insurance and taxes.
  - tgaj 1y ago
    It is true, the performance of the engine depends on the version of the software - manufacturer declares that this engine with this software can achieve this maximum performance and the software can't be legally nad officially tuned or changed. Btw in my country tax depends on engine displacement so it doesn't really change anything.
    - AshamedCaptain 1y ago
      In most countries I know of (almost all of western EU), for electrical vehicles, you have to register the real maximum power output by the engine. If a software update allows you to increase that over the registered power, then you are in violation of motor vehicle codes and would need to a) pay a fine b) then update the registration, which is usually a $$$ process. If, like TFA, they register the power output as larger than the actual one in order to give room to these "unlocks", then you basically have a vehicle which can do less than what its registration says, which people tend to notice and riot about (you pay more taxes and insurance). In which country does the tax rate depend still only on volume?
      - mk89 1y ago
        You know that you can tune your engine right? And this is done with software that does ECU tuning. So in theory all cars are illegal? The issue is not that you can do it, the issue (as stated in the VW article) is how to update your car papers to reflect the changes. You do it illegally with your friends? You can't. VW does it through the subscription? (I guess) allowed. Don't ask me how, but when you buy such cars (with an engine that can support multiple configuration), you won't register your engine for something it is not. It's what's enabled to do. Simple example: you buy the ford ecoboost 1.0 100HPs. It won't be registered as the 150HPs model, although it's 100% the same hardware.
        AshamedCaptain 1y ago
        > You know that you can tune your engine right? And this is done with software that does ECU tuning. So in theory all cars are illegal? You know that you CANNOT tune your engine, without going through your state's motor vehicle department, right ?? If the manufacturer tunes the ECU via whatever method and as consequence lowers/raises the power, good for him, but the final maximum power number is what will appear on the registration, and only in case of huge negligence can he change it afterwards on sold cars. > The issue is not that you can do it, the issue (as stated in the VW article) is how to update your car papers to reflect the changes. You do it illegally with your friends? You can't. VW does it through the subscription? (I guess) allowed. As I have repeated in literally each one of the 3 messages I have written in this thread: TFA clearly says the register the car for the maximum unlocked power level. Which means you _are literally paying for the maximum power even if you don't unlock it_, in terms of insurance and tax. > you buy the ford ecoboost 1.0 100HPs. It won't be registered as the 150HPs model, although it's 100% the same hardware. That's unsourced bullshit. I'm not familiar with Ford US cars, but Wikipedia clearly lists that the different models _are differently sized_. But, even if it was true, and software was used as in the interlock mechanism, Ford would have to register these engines as with their maximum, unlocked power, and that's something people tend to notice.
- lurk2 1y ago
  > Car manufacturers already give you the same powerful engine that you can't afford/don't want to buy and "shrink" it with SW. If you jailbreak it, you lose the warranty and bye bye insurance. What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?
  - tgaj 1y ago
    To match the offer to the market - if the base engine is more powerful than the market standard at a given price then you can lower the power because the customer will not choose another car on that basis anyway. And you can take more money from enthusiasts.
    - lurk2 1y ago
      So if I’m understanding you correctly, the play here is: 1) Build engine with $market_leading_horsepower. 2) Throttle engine so that base models of a car have $market_leading_horsepower - $throttle_amount. 3) Price discrimination for enthusiasts removes the throttling back to the original $market_leading_horsepower while also saving the effort of having to design a faster engine. Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine? That is, would manufacturing a slower engine for the base model not be any cheaper than just building the fastest engine they can into all models?
      - sbarre 1y ago
        > Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine? There probably is but it's much less than the cost of having different engines for different performance specs of the same model of car (which is very common).
      - barrkel 1y ago
        Done right, a more powerful engine needs uprating of a bunch of other components - clutch, brakes, suspension, tyre profile, cooling, exhaust, air intake and so on. Almost certainly not a big deal with a 10% bump, but if it was a big bump, costs could be saved elsewhere in a less powerful vehicle.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't. I can think the way I want to think. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not paying more and getting less when that is what's happening! > You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that. Or I voice my opposition to this sort of bullshit in the hopes that enough like-minded people can gather enough force to make it change for the better.
  - mk89 1y ago
    From a manufacturer perspective it costs less to produce and test 1 engine type than 5. So it's questionable to me that you believe you're paying more. You're just getting better hardware, but it doesn't mean it would be cheaper it it was specifically crafted for your needs. (= I buy 100HP and my engine supports only 100HPs).
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
      In this sort of case my needs would be something like 'at least 100HP'. Then someone says we have this 150HP engine here that costs $X and we are going to charge you $X+markup for it (if they sold less than $X they would go out of business so for sure I will be paying for the full cost of the engine plus a mark-up). I say that's great, its better than my minimum requirements. Then they say, 'well actually, we are willfully sabotaging this engine with software so that it will never ever give you more than the minimum, but are still charging you for the full cost of its manufacture plus markup'. And I say, why would you deliberately make my engine worse. Just let me use it the way I want. And they say, because by sabotaging your engine we can make other people pay even more markup for the same engine. It's the philosophy that instead of charging more for making something better, we charge more for not making it worse. Like the mafia would charge you money to not bomb your small business.
      - pythonaut_16 1y ago
        It seems you're thinking of the "full cost of the engine" as like material + labor to produce 1 engine. So profit vs loss is equivalent to whether you pay more or less than the unit cost of 1 engine. Car manufacturer thinks of the cost of the engine as something like research + development + testing + sourcing + manufacturing lines + materials for all engines produced + labor for all engines produced. So for the manufacturer profits are total revenue of units sold minus total costs. To maximize profits they need to identify market segments and figure out the best way to sell into them, in some cases by selling one physical model at different price points. If a manufacturer only targeted your market segment with a model you wouldn't get a cheaper car, you'd most likely get roughly the same car for the same price. (Ignoring design/feature compromises made to try to address one model to multiple market segments) Not that I agree with VW or holding features behind a subscription. Just that we can understand the unit economics of why. And anyway subscriptions for hardware features are a different matter entirely.
- Melatonic 1y ago
  What cars is this true for and does it include all insurances ?
  - dfxm12 1y ago
    I was into sports cars more in the 90s, so my knowledge of this stuff today isn't great, but I mean it was at least true of most sports cars. Most famously the Nissan Skyline R34. The RB26DETT engine is known to have been under-tuned from the factory. You can get so much more horsepower out of it.
    - dylan604 1y ago
      This was the whole point of the grease monkey scene starting back in the 50s. You take the car from the dealer, and then start adding, tweaking to get every last bit of power from it. Take a set of twin single barrel carbs off to be replaced with a single four barrel. Add a better set of manifolds. Add better __________. Once computers were introduced for air/fuel mixing, fuel injection, and any of the other things it can do, there have been shops that specialize in tuning them to max out performance. Just watch any show on your favorite streaming platform about building/enhancing cars.
    - tmerc 1y ago
      That's different. Look up the gentleman's agreement for why, but every Japanese car from that era had 276hp on paper. The supra had close to 320 as sold. The skyline had a marked boost controller hose that you could remove part of and turn up boost for more power. None of this was to sell a higher power variant using the same parts but software locked. It was all to secretly continue the horsepower war while publicly sticking to the agreed limits.
  - delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
    It's true of all 'sub-models' of a given make and model. Consider the BMW G20 3-series petrol cars. Essentially all trims except the M340i have twin-turbo 2-litre inline-4 B48 engines. The engine output is tuned by the engine control unit (ECU, which is a bit of software running on an embedded computer) depending on the trim: 318i gets 115 kW, 320i is 125 kW, 330i is 190 kW. There are occasional hardware differences—typically the intake manifolds, radiators, and maybe belts, but the engine block is exactly the same across these trims—they're all B48. This is public knowledge; there is a detailed table on Wikipedia[1]. Engine 'tuning' is exactly tweaking numbers in the ECU. A stage 1 tune could involve mapping a 318i to a 320i or better without even popping the bonnet; just a laptop plugged into the OBD2 port above the driver's foot rest. Naturally, as mentioned by others, some of these tunes are less than legal, because the price, road tax, and other legalese surrounding motor vehicles are determined by the performance and fuel economy of the vehicle from the factory. A car is so computerised that nowadays there are plug-in 'chip tuners' that remap the ECU signals on-the-fly and just-in-time, and can be removed before inspections. It's not dissimilar to overclocking computer chips. This applies across all car makes, not just BMW and not even just European ones. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_3_Series_(G20)#Petrol_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_3_Series_(G20)#Petrol_engi...
- Buttons840 1y ago
  How can companies get away with doing extra work to make their products worse in a market with healthy competition? What does it mean when things that happen in a competitive market aren't happening?
  - GuB-42 1y ago
    They are doing less work. Designing a lower performance engine is harder and more expensive than producing more of the higher performance engine and limiting it. It works in the market because sellers sellers want to charge as much as buyers are ready to pay. People who want a powerful engine are ready to pay more, so make them pay more. The limited power option is sold at a lower but still profitable margin to those who don't want to pay for the extra. Market segmentation like this is seen everywhere. It is just that the subscription thing makes it particularly obvious.
    - Buttons840 1y ago
      Artificially limiting the engine is the extra work. In a competitive market artificial limitations would mean that you lose to a competitor. I should tell my personal background here: Half of what I'm arguing against is my own personal experience of having people tell me that free market competition rewards those who offer the best product at the lowest price. I'm saying this is a counter-example; and, yeah, I agree with you that similar counter-examples are seen everywhere.
      - nikau 1y ago
        Is hardly extra work, just a tune to reduce bust. From manufacturer point of view it makes sense, less boost is less stress on engine and less warranty claims.
        Buttons840 1y ago
        We're talking about paid subscriptions here though, setting all that up is extra work.
- snypher 1y ago
  I'd like to know specific examples of what you are referencing. I don't believe you have the correct interpretation of this.
- DennisP 1y ago
  Generally you don't have to lose your insurance just because you modify your car. You just have to let them know you're doing it, and probably pay a little more.
- monooso 1y ago
  > You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use.
  - RaftPeople 1y ago
    > You're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use. You only pay more if you want the extra capability, otherwise you pay less than what the person paid that did want the extra capability.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      Even if you don't pay the unlock, you're paying for the locked hardware.
- deleted 1y ago
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- altairprime 1y ago
  Insurance does not necessarily stop insuring modified cars. They do, however, require you to detail in depth your modifications and request a revised estimate of them. If your modification is “downloaded an Internet program and ran it to break the ECU lock”, they may be uncomfortable and either raise your premium or ask you to find another insurer. If instead it is “applied the attached two-byte change to the manufacturer-issued software after tracing all associated uses and determining that it exclusively activates a manufacturer-offered feature for the vehicle that is legal in my insured region(s)”, they’re probably not going to change your premium at all. Their job is to charge you a fee for the risk you pose to them, and the more effort you show in documenting and mitigating the risks of your mods, the more likely they are to be cool about it.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    Insurance in the US DGAF, you just can't come to them later when a tree falls on it saying it ought to be worth more because of your sick modz. I assume Europe is way worse and that you can't even change tire/rim size without permission.
    - altairprime 1y ago
      It varies per region, whether you’re increasing body dimensions or power and by how much, and if you’re prepared to install a roll cage (look up Lithuania’s rules!).
    - fc417fc802 1y ago
      More accurately, in the US they might or might not care. When you make a claim they might choose to investigate and they could deny your claim if they think it's ultimately your fault. You can also choose to ask them for permission in advance but that's (usually, AFAIU) entirely optional.
- tarsinge 1y ago
  If you’re talking about limiting the power through ECU it can be interesting for engine longevity. If I’m buying used I’d avoid the typical downsized turbo engine pushed to its limit and prefer the artificially limited one as it’ll have prevented the previous owners to have wear it out too much.
dpkirchner 1y ago
The turbo example would be especially egregious because it adds complexity to the engine. You're paying for the hardware and paying more for all engine related repairs in the future. The same goes for BMW's infamous heated seat subscription.
- reactordev 1y ago
  I wish the smartcar didn’t suck so bad. We need alternatives to this “turn them upside down and shake the coins from them” approach to cars. We kind of screwed ourselves here in US because you have to drive places, you can’t walk. Even big cities aren’t that walkable (with the exception of a dozen neighborhoods sprinkled about a half dozen cities).
  - Voultapher 1y ago
    > Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car's digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare – but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it's a dream they can't give up on. [...] > But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there's still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who've been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability? [...] Absolutely worth a read https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...
  - netsharc 1y ago
    Digital payments ruined everything... video games are ruined, apps are ruined, now cars are ruined. What next, fridges? "I see you bought ice cream. The optimal storage temperature is -18C, the cost to enable this mode is $5/week. Enable now?"
    - 1y ago
tomasGiden 1y ago
How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive? Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware? No, I see it as the opposite. I see it as Volkswagen simplifying production by limiting variability and giving you the option to get a less capable product at at a cheaper price. A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Does it matter? Now they can still buy a computer. Is that a bad thing?
- k4rli 1y ago
  It's not the same comparison at all. Part of the problem why IT people developing electric shitboxes has ruined the car industry.
- azalemeth 1y ago
  I personally think the answer to this is "yes” and have never bought any product that did this. I don't even do subscriptions. The turbo example is insane. It's literally unwanted dead weight probably slightly negatively affecting fuel economy.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Pure software is a bit different than hardware as copies are effectively zero cost. Same would go for e-books, music, etc. Not that they get a full free pass, these media can also engage in abusive practices. > Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware? Yes. Another example of the absurdity is if you want to buy half an apple and the store charges you enough to cover the costs of a full apple, then pull out a full apple and destroy half of it before handing it to you. Does that seem ok? Putting in extra effort to make something worse is bad. > A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Big difference between these two cases. If the two extra cores were faulty, then charging a lower price makes sense. Like paying less for used tires that have some wear on them. But taking a perfectly good chip and purposefully disabling two cores is like taking a belt sander to a new tire and then charging less.
dfxm12 1y ago
Price of a car is not a fixed thing. All prices are made up, including markups, so you can't say what you're specifically paying for or not. Also, companies commonly price things at a loss, often to entice you to buy some subscription along side it. This is about trapping people into paying a subscription forever. That's what is abusive. There's no need to make up other things on top of that. Thankfully, there are a lot of choices in this space.
- deleted 1y ago
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koonsolo 1y ago
> This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. I don't agree with this. Let's say they make 2 engines, one normal one and one powerful one. Customer pay different price points. Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine, and limit the possibilities for the lower price point (this is already happening). Now you come along and say "Illegal!". Now they have to sell this engine at the same price, which doesn't make sense in the market. So they are back to the inefficient way of producing 2 different engines for 2 different markets. Calling this "wasteful" is weird in my eyes. I'm not in the automotive industry, so I don't know all the details, and I might be wrong on the above reasoning, but this is what I got from it. 1 engine production line, serving 2 different price points.
- cactacea 1y ago
  > Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine Generally speaking gas/diesel engines are used across several models, mass market manufacturers aren't making bespoke engines for one specific vehicle trim that isn't used elsewhere. The overall direction is further standardization of platforms (esp with electric vehicles) but large companies like Toyota, Ford, etc. are going to have a variety of engines available for engineers to slot into vehicles to handle different use cases. I'm not terribly interested in counting but here's some examples of the variety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_engines > I'm not in the automotive industry, so I don't know all the details, and I might be wrong on the above reasoning, but this is what I got from it. I'm sorry but your speculation is pretty far off base and isn't based in fact.
  - koonsolo 1y ago
    > I'm sorry but your speculation is pretty far off base and isn't based in fact. So you claim VW is not selling the same engine to different market segments, and limiting it through software? If they do, why are they doing it?
- 1y ago
rahimnathwani 1y ago
Assume I am the same height and weight as a typical US 12 year old. Do you object to cinemas charging me a higher price than they do a child?
rahimnathwani 1y ago
You're looking at it from a cost allocation perspective. I don't agree with that perspective but, if I did, then I would wonder how the company should recoup sunk costs and fixed costs related to the turbo part. Should they charge all customers for that, or allow customers who don't want turbo to opt out of both the benefit of that feature, and also opt out of paying for the related R&D, extra capex and extra fixed costs?
dzhiurgis 1y ago
The thing with batteries you can overlock your VW to do a single use 1000HP, 100k km 500hp vehicle or 1 million mile 100HP vehicle. Asking users to pay at expense of increased chance of warranty claim makes perfect sense. Similarly Chinese EVs that advertise 1000 KW charging - unclear what is battery longevity at those c-rates.

mk89 1y ago

As I said in other comments, this is already happening since years (and I mentioned Ford, but literally everyone else does it). Car manufacturers already give you the same powerful engine that you can't afford/don't want to buy and "shrink" it with SW. If you jailbreak it, you lose the warranty and bye bye insurance. You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't. You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that.

AshamedCaptain 1y ago
That is not true, and even TFA points at why that can't be true: to your insurance, to vehicle taxes, etc. you declare the power _of the installed engine_, not of whatever software interlocks you, your tax advisor, or the manufacturer have decided to install on it. TFA already says the car is registered at the maximum power level regardless of the actual software cap. So you are _quite literally_ paying for it, at least in terms of increased insurance and taxes.
- tgaj 1y ago
  It is true, the performance of the engine depends on the version of the software - manufacturer declares that this engine with this software can achieve this maximum performance and the software can't be legally nad officially tuned or changed. Btw in my country tax depends on engine displacement so it doesn't really change anything.
  - AshamedCaptain 1y ago
    In most countries I know of (almost all of western EU), for electrical vehicles, you have to register the real maximum power output by the engine. If a software update allows you to increase that over the registered power, then you are in violation of motor vehicle codes and would need to a) pay a fine b) then update the registration, which is usually a $$$ process. If, like TFA, they register the power output as larger than the actual one in order to give room to these "unlocks", then you basically have a vehicle which can do less than what its registration says, which people tend to notice and riot about (you pay more taxes and insurance). In which country does the tax rate depend still only on volume?
    - mk89 1y ago
      You know that you can tune your engine right? And this is done with software that does ECU tuning. So in theory all cars are illegal? The issue is not that you can do it, the issue (as stated in the VW article) is how to update your car papers to reflect the changes. You do it illegally with your friends? You can't. VW does it through the subscription? (I guess) allowed. Don't ask me how, but when you buy such cars (with an engine that can support multiple configuration), you won't register your engine for something it is not. It's what's enabled to do. Simple example: you buy the ford ecoboost 1.0 100HPs. It won't be registered as the 150HPs model, although it's 100% the same hardware.
      - AshamedCaptain 1y ago
        > You know that you can tune your engine right? And this is done with software that does ECU tuning. So in theory all cars are illegal? You know that you CANNOT tune your engine, without going through your state's motor vehicle department, right ?? If the manufacturer tunes the ECU via whatever method and as consequence lowers/raises the power, good for him, but the final maximum power number is what will appear on the registration, and only in case of huge negligence can he change it afterwards on sold cars. > The issue is not that you can do it, the issue (as stated in the VW article) is how to update your car papers to reflect the changes. You do it illegally with your friends? You can't. VW does it through the subscription? (I guess) allowed. As I have repeated in literally each one of the 3 messages I have written in this thread: TFA clearly says the register the car for the maximum unlocked power level. Which means you _are literally paying for the maximum power even if you don't unlock it_, in terms of insurance and tax. > you buy the ford ecoboost 1.0 100HPs. It won't be registered as the 150HPs model, although it's 100% the same hardware. That's unsourced bullshit. I'm not familiar with Ford US cars, but Wikipedia clearly lists that the different models _are differently sized_. But, even if it was true, and software was used as in the interlock mechanism, Ford would have to register these engines as with their maximum, unlocked power, and that's something people tend to notice.
lurk2 1y ago
> Car manufacturers already give you the same powerful engine that you can't afford/don't want to buy and "shrink" it with SW. If you jailbreak it, you lose the warranty and bye bye insurance. What was the point of doing this prior to selling a subscription to unlock it?
- tgaj 1y ago
  To match the offer to the market - if the base engine is more powerful than the market standard at a given price then you can lower the power because the customer will not choose another car on that basis anyway. And you can take more money from enthusiasts.
  - lurk2 1y ago
    So if I’m understanding you correctly, the play here is: 1) Build engine with $market_leading_horsepower. 2) Throttle engine so that base models of a car have $market_leading_horsepower - $throttle_amount. 3) Price discrimination for enthusiasts removes the throttling back to the original $market_leading_horsepower while also saving the effort of having to design a faster engine. Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine? That is, would manufacturing a slower engine for the base model not be any cheaper than just building the fastest engine they can into all models?
    - sbarre 1y ago
      > Is there no extra cost associated with machining the faster engine? There probably is but it's much less than the cost of having different engines for different performance specs of the same model of car (which is very common).
    - barrkel 1y ago
      Done right, a more powerful engine needs uprating of a bunch of other components - clutch, brakes, suspension, tyre profile, cooling, exhaust, air intake and so on. Almost certainly not a big deal with a 10% bump, but if it was a big bump, costs could be saved elsewhere in a less powerful vehicle.
Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You should think that finally you can now enable more in your engine if you want to. Until today, you couldn't. I can think the way I want to think. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not paying more and getting less when that is what's happening! > You just had to know that your car is more powerful than the papers say and live with that. Or I voice my opposition to this sort of bullshit in the hopes that enough like-minded people can gather enough force to make it change for the better.
- mk89 1y ago
  From a manufacturer perspective it costs less to produce and test 1 engine type than 5. So it's questionable to me that you believe you're paying more. You're just getting better hardware, but it doesn't mean it would be cheaper it it was specifically crafted for your needs. (= I buy 100HP and my engine supports only 100HPs).
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    In this sort of case my needs would be something like 'at least 100HP'. Then someone says we have this 150HP engine here that costs $X and we are going to charge you $X+markup for it (if they sold less than $X they would go out of business so for sure I will be paying for the full cost of the engine plus a mark-up). I say that's great, its better than my minimum requirements. Then they say, 'well actually, we are willfully sabotaging this engine with software so that it will never ever give you more than the minimum, but are still charging you for the full cost of its manufacture plus markup'. And I say, why would you deliberately make my engine worse. Just let me use it the way I want. And they say, because by sabotaging your engine we can make other people pay even more markup for the same engine. It's the philosophy that instead of charging more for making something better, we charge more for not making it worse. Like the mafia would charge you money to not bomb your small business.
    - pythonaut_16 1y ago
      It seems you're thinking of the "full cost of the engine" as like material + labor to produce 1 engine. So profit vs loss is equivalent to whether you pay more or less than the unit cost of 1 engine. Car manufacturer thinks of the cost of the engine as something like research + development + testing + sourcing + manufacturing lines + materials for all engines produced + labor for all engines produced. So for the manufacturer profits are total revenue of units sold minus total costs. To maximize profits they need to identify market segments and figure out the best way to sell into them, in some cases by selling one physical model at different price points. If a manufacturer only targeted your market segment with a model you wouldn't get a cheaper car, you'd most likely get roughly the same car for the same price. (Ignoring design/feature compromises made to try to address one model to multiple market segments) Not that I agree with VW or holding features behind a subscription. Just that we can understand the unit economics of why. And anyway subscriptions for hardware features are a different matter entirely.
Melatonic 1y ago
What cars is this true for and does it include all insurances ?
- dfxm12 1y ago
  I was into sports cars more in the 90s, so my knowledge of this stuff today isn't great, but I mean it was at least true of most sports cars. Most famously the Nissan Skyline R34. The RB26DETT engine is known to have been under-tuned from the factory. You can get so much more horsepower out of it.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    This was the whole point of the grease monkey scene starting back in the 50s. You take the car from the dealer, and then start adding, tweaking to get every last bit of power from it. Take a set of twin single barrel carbs off to be replaced with a single four barrel. Add a better set of manifolds. Add better __________. Once computers were introduced for air/fuel mixing, fuel injection, and any of the other things it can do, there have been shops that specialize in tuning them to max out performance. Just watch any show on your favorite streaming platform about building/enhancing cars.
  - tmerc 1y ago
    That's different. Look up the gentleman's agreement for why, but every Japanese car from that era had 276hp on paper. The supra had close to 320 as sold. The skyline had a marked boost controller hose that you could remove part of and turn up boost for more power. None of this was to sell a higher power variant using the same parts but software locked. It was all to secretly continue the horsepower war while publicly sticking to the agreed limits.
- delta_p_delta_x 1y ago
  It's true of all 'sub-models' of a given make and model. Consider the BMW G20 3-series petrol cars. Essentially all trims except the M340i have twin-turbo 2-litre inline-4 B48 engines. The engine output is tuned by the engine control unit (ECU, which is a bit of software running on an embedded computer) depending on the trim: 318i gets 115 kW, 320i is 125 kW, 330i is 190 kW. There are occasional hardware differences—typically the intake manifolds, radiators, and maybe belts, but the engine block is exactly the same across these trims—they're all B48. This is public knowledge; there is a detailed table on Wikipedia[1]. Engine 'tuning' is exactly tweaking numbers in the ECU. A stage 1 tune could involve mapping a 318i to a 320i or better without even popping the bonnet; just a laptop plugged into the OBD2 port above the driver's foot rest. Naturally, as mentioned by others, some of these tunes are less than legal, because the price, road tax, and other legalese surrounding motor vehicles are determined by the performance and fuel economy of the vehicle from the factory. A car is so computerised that nowadays there are plug-in 'chip tuners' that remap the ECU signals on-the-fly and just-in-time, and can be removed before inspections. It's not dissimilar to overclocking computer chips. This applies across all car makes, not just BMW and not even just European ones. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_3_Series_(G20)#Petrol_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_3_Series_(G20)#Petrol_engi...
Buttons840 1y ago
How can companies get away with doing extra work to make their products worse in a market with healthy competition? What does it mean when things that happen in a competitive market aren't happening?
- GuB-42 1y ago
  They are doing less work. Designing a lower performance engine is harder and more expensive than producing more of the higher performance engine and limiting it. It works in the market because sellers sellers want to charge as much as buyers are ready to pay. People who want a powerful engine are ready to pay more, so make them pay more. The limited power option is sold at a lower but still profitable margin to those who don't want to pay for the extra. Market segmentation like this is seen everywhere. It is just that the subscription thing makes it particularly obvious.
  - Buttons840 1y ago
    Artificially limiting the engine is the extra work. In a competitive market artificial limitations would mean that you lose to a competitor. I should tell my personal background here: Half of what I'm arguing against is my own personal experience of having people tell me that free market competition rewards those who offer the best product at the lowest price. I'm saying this is a counter-example; and, yeah, I agree with you that similar counter-examples are seen everywhere.
    - nikau 1y ago
      Is hardly extra work, just a tune to reduce bust. From manufacturer point of view it makes sense, less boost is less stress on engine and less warranty claims.
      - Buttons840 1y ago
        We're talking about paid subscriptions here though, setting all that up is extra work.
snypher 1y ago
I'd like to know specific examples of what you are referencing. I don't believe you have the correct interpretation of this.
DennisP 1y ago
Generally you don't have to lose your insurance just because you modify your car. You just have to let them know you're doing it, and probably pay a little more.
monooso 1y ago
> You should not think that you're paying more for getting less. You're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use.
- RaftPeople 1y ago
  > You're paying more for something that you're not allowed to use. You only pay more if you want the extra capability, otherwise you pay less than what the person paid that did want the extra capability.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    Even if you don't pay the unlock, you're paying for the locked hardware.
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altairprime 1y ago
Insurance does not necessarily stop insuring modified cars. They do, however, require you to detail in depth your modifications and request a revised estimate of them. If your modification is “downloaded an Internet program and ran it to break the ECU lock”, they may be uncomfortable and either raise your premium or ask you to find another insurer. If instead it is “applied the attached two-byte change to the manufacturer-issued software after tracing all associated uses and determining that it exclusively activates a manufacturer-offered feature for the vehicle that is legal in my insured region(s)”, they’re probably not going to change your premium at all. Their job is to charge you a fee for the risk you pose to them, and the more effort you show in documenting and mitigating the risks of your mods, the more likely they are to be cool about it.
- potato3732842 1y ago
  Insurance in the US DGAF, you just can't come to them later when a tree falls on it saying it ought to be worth more because of your sick modz. I assume Europe is way worse and that you can't even change tire/rim size without permission.
  - altairprime 1y ago
    It varies per region, whether you’re increasing body dimensions or power and by how much, and if you’re prepared to install a roll cage (look up Lithuania’s rules!).
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    More accurately, in the US they might or might not care. When you make a claim they might choose to investigate and they could deny your claim if they think it's ultimately your fault. You can also choose to ask them for permission in advance but that's (usually, AFAIU) entirely optional.
tarsinge 1y ago
If you’re talking about limiting the power through ECU it can be interesting for engine longevity. If I’m buying used I’d avoid the typical downsized turbo engine pushed to its limit and prefer the artificially limited one as it’ll have prevented the previous owners to have wear it out too much.

dpkirchner 1y ago

The turbo example would be especially egregious because it adds complexity to the engine. You're paying for the hardware and paying more for all engine related repairs in the future. The same goes for BMW's infamous heated seat subscription.

reactordev 1y ago
I wish the smartcar didn’t suck so bad. We need alternatives to this “turn them upside down and shake the coins from them” approach to cars. We kind of screwed ourselves here in US because you have to drive places, you can’t walk. Even big cities aren’t that walkable (with the exception of a dozen neighborhoods sprinkled about a half dozen cities).
- Voultapher 1y ago
  > Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car's digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare – but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it's a dream they can't give up on. [...] > But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there's still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who've been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability? [...] Absolutely worth a read https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-de...
- netsharc 1y ago
  Digital payments ruined everything... video games are ruined, apps are ruined, now cars are ruined. What next, fridges? "I see you bought ice cream. The optimal storage temperature is -18C, the cost to enable this mode is $5/week. Enable now?"
  - 1y ago

tomasGiden 1y ago

How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive? Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware? No, I see it as the opposite. I see it as Volkswagen simplifying production by limiting variability and giving you the option to get a less capable product at at a cheaper price. A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Does it matter? Now they can still buy a computer. Is that a bad thing?

k4rli 1y ago
It's not the same comparison at all. Part of the problem why IT people developing electric shitboxes has ruined the car industry.
azalemeth 1y ago
I personally think the answer to this is "yes” and have never bought any product that did this. I don't even do subscriptions. The turbo example is insane. It's literally unwanted dead weight probably slightly negatively affecting fuel economy.
Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> How about in-app purchases and subscriptions? The code is already there. Is it abusive? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Pure software is a bit different than hardware as copies are effectively zero cost. Same would go for e-books, music, etc. Not that they get a full free pass, these media can also engage in abusive practices. > Is it abusive because it is tied to hardware? Yes. Another example of the absurdity is if you want to buy half an apple and the store charges you enough to cover the costs of a full apple, then pull out a full apple and destroy half of it before handing it to you. Does that seem ok? Putting in extra effort to make something worse is bad. > A 6 and a 8 core processor is probably the same die also and produced at the same cost. Maybe 2 cord were turned off because they were faulty or maybe they were turned off because some people don’t have the need and money for 8 cores. Big difference between these two cases. If the two extra cores were faulty, then charging a lower price makes sense. Like paying less for used tires that have some wear on them. But taking a perfectly good chip and purposefully disabling two cores is like taking a belt sander to a new tire and then charging less.

dfxm12 1y ago

Price of a car is not a fixed thing. All prices are made up, including markups, so you can't say what you're specifically paying for or not. Also, companies commonly price things at a loss, often to entice you to buy some subscription along side it. This is about trapping people into paying a subscription forever. That's what is abusive. There's no need to make up other things on top of that. Thankfully, there are a lot of choices in this space.

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koonsolo 1y ago

> This is abusive, wasteful, and should be illegal in my opinion. I don't agree with this. Let's say they make 2 engines, one normal one and one powerful one. Customer pay different price points. Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine, and limit the possibilities for the lower price point (this is already happening). Now you come along and say "Illegal!". Now they have to sell this engine at the same price, which doesn't make sense in the market. So they are back to the inefficient way of producing 2 different engines for 2 different markets. Calling this "wasteful" is weird in my eyes. I'm not in the automotive industry, so I don't know all the details, and I might be wrong on the above reasoning, but this is what I got from it. 1 engine production line, serving 2 different price points.

cactacea 1y ago
> Now it turns out that making 2 different engines is actually pretty wasteful, and it's way more efficient to make 1 engine Generally speaking gas/diesel engines are used across several models, mass market manufacturers aren't making bespoke engines for one specific vehicle trim that isn't used elsewhere. The overall direction is further standardization of platforms (esp with electric vehicles) but large companies like Toyota, Ford, etc. are going to have a variety of engines available for engineers to slot into vehicles to handle different use cases. I'm not terribly interested in counting but here's some examples of the variety: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_engines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ford_engines > I'm not in the automotive industry, so I don't know all the details, and I might be wrong on the above reasoning, but this is what I got from it. I'm sorry but your speculation is pretty far off base and isn't based in fact.
- koonsolo 1y ago
  > I'm sorry but your speculation is pretty far off base and isn't based in fact. So you claim VW is not selling the same engine to different market segments, and limiting it through software? If they do, why are they doing it?
1y ago

rahimnathwani 1y ago

Assume I am the same height and weight as a typical US 12 year old. Do you object to cinemas charging me a higher price than they do a child?

rahimnathwani 1y ago

You're looking at it from a cost allocation perspective. I don't agree with that perspective but, if I did, then I would wonder how the company should recoup sunk costs and fixed costs related to the turbo part. Should they charge all customers for that, or allow customers who don't want turbo to opt out of both the benefit of that feature, and also opt out of paying for the related R&D, extra capex and extra fixed costs?

dzhiurgis 1y ago

The thing with batteries you can overlock your VW to do a single use 1000HP, 100k km 500hp vehicle or 1 million mile 100HP vehicle. Asking users to pay at expense of increased chance of warranty claim makes perfect sense. Similarly Chinese EVs that advertise 1000 KW charging - unclear what is battery longevity at those c-rates.