Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
The best (worst) example I’ve seen in recent memory has been seat warmers. BMW and other manufacturers tried forcing a subscription on people just to use the seat warmers that are (1) already present in the car, (2) already wired up with buttons in place, and (3) cause no additional outlay of effort on the part of the manufacturer once they’re installed. There’s no valid reason to charge a subscription for something like that beyond straight greed.
It is like having a grandstand at a football stadium which costs extra to use. Do you resent that?
Do you resent the satellite TV example I gave earlier?
You don’t own the stadium, and you don’t own the satellite. So they’re really not the same as a car, which you do (nominally) own.
Satellite TV is a service that requires constant upkeep by the companies which costs money.
And your football stadium is a bad analogy.
I resent that the cost to the car company to install seat warmers is the actual installation of the seat warmers. Running them costs ME money in electricity generated by gasoline I bought. It costs them nothing to run them but i have to pay a subscription to use them on top of paying to power them?
The football grandstand continues to cost the owners in maintenance and space that they own. You pay for the privilege of using something that is not yours. I bought my car, I shouldn’t have to continue to pay for the privilege of using something I already own since the equipment is already there and doesn’t require any interaction with a remote service that would make sense to charge for (navigation, satellite radio, etc…)
OK I accept the analogies are not good equivalents.
It is not necessarily true that everyone has already paid for the seat warmer hardware. The car may cost the same as if it didn’t have the hardware installed. Certainly the owners were happy enough with the car price to buy it without seat warming option.
The manufacturer may find it cheaper to just install it for everyone and wear the cost in the hope that enough people will pay for the warmer to be enabled.
Of course it is possible that everyone pays for the hardware anyhow but it is not necessarily the case.
If you buy an object, you pay for all the components that come with that object. If they didn’t charge for all the components that’s on them. As others have said, heating elements don’t require any continued support from the manufacturer. It’s a button and some wires and a control module. Should they be charging for window defrosters too? There is literally 0 explanation for this that isn’t corporate greed.
It is necessarily the case. No company incurs the cost of making something, delivers it and then just hopes that someone pays for it. You literally can’t do business that way.
Of course you can do business that way. If the heating costs $x, and half the customers pay for it but $5x is charged then that is a profit.
The alternative would be to make two sets of cars (with and without heating). Or four sets of cars if another similar optional feature is shipped like this. Or 8 permutations if there are three features etc
It can certainly be cheaper to install them by default even if not all customers pay to enable them. ie it is mathematically possible that their system is cheapest for both the manufacturer and the consumer. The alternative would be no different for us cold-bummed drivers but possibly more expensive for the toasted-tush drivers.
Two sets of seats you mean. The car is the same. These days they don’t even have to blank out the buttons because it’s a touch screen anyway.
I already had heated + ventilated seats with the optional multi-contour (air based) cushions, but without the memory package, so they weren’t fully electric. Then there were the different materials available. Each of these things was an option, and there were more that I didn’t have that I probably didn’t know. Somehow they made a profit off the car. I also had the four zone climate control as opposed to the two zone, which was also an option over the manual air conditioning. There were a ton more options present and many missing (seriously, who tf optioned the sunroof, but not adaptive cruise???)
This was a 2003 car. No subscription, you just paid for the options you wanted. In fact the sunroof necessitated different body shells according to the parts catalog. How is THAT still an option? That makes for a lot more complexity than any other item being an option.
In 2025 I would expect heated seats to be standard in any car more expensive than the very base model Dacia. Super simple tech, very easy to make, and pretty much a necessity in some areas of the world, particularly where I live.
Two sets of cars, not seats. The seats would be pre installed. Dealers do not be assemble to taste (except for maybe small items like radio).
Chances are that the savings in doing it the current way are not passed on to the consumer but mathematically, technically they could be. Same like self-serve checkouts.
With software it is common to pay extra to unlock premium features. You don’t pay and then download those features. This is the same concept.
Uhh… You do realise that you can choose options when you order the car, right? There are enough options on some cars that if you wanted to stock every combo, you’d need billions of cars.
This is such a weird hill to die on for someone who claims to be pro-consumer
You make it sound like football team loyalty.
I am pro-fairness, not pro-consumer. I don’t think the consumers are justified in their entitlement in this case.
Ah my bad, despite having been coerced into a transportation economy that forces us to purchase multi-thousand dollar machines, I forgot to consider if we’re asking too much of automotive manufacturers when we request to not pay a premium for comfort that literally costs them nothing since they already sold it to us.
You wouldn’t have a warm seat anyhow if they only installed the seat for prepaid customers but it is possible that those customers would pay more because it would cost more to make two sets of cars. Or four sets if optional fancy suspension is done that way, or eight sets if you include digital radio, or sixteen if…
Much of the cost is R&D, not just the physical item.
Do you think all music should be free because it is already online and you downloading an album doesn’t cost the artist even one cent?