“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.” He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.” “I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.” In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. “You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door. “I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
With so many purchases to consider, and less and less time during which to do it, I wonder when we'll get to the point that there are companies that sell an entire "lifestyle". You make $30k/year? Here's our bronze subscription option. For $20,000/year we'll put you up in a spartanly furnished apartment and with a servicable car and you'll get your staple foods and toiletries delivered every other week. Whatever you have leftover after taxes is yours for saving or spending. Make $150k? The gold package costs $90k/year and includes a luxury apartment downtown, a Tesla and fresh vegetables shipped twice a week!
> In some markets, BMW owners may also be able to pay for "authentic" BMW engine sounds that will come through the car stereo. In many BMW cars today, the engine sound is augmented inside the cabin with pre-recorded sounds from the stereo. These are tuned to match the engine speed and performance so they sound like actual sounds coming directly from the engine. This is done so that the cabin can be quiet during normal driving but occupants can still experience engine sound when it's wanted, BMW executives have said.
I'm not going to go as far as to say we've stopped building useful things, but we really could be a post-scarcity society if we had our priorities right.
This would be amazing, and I would subscribe. It sounds like Basic Income.
Sure, but its not like a heated steering wheel should need software maintenance. It shouldn't even need software.
- Can it be repaired by someone other than the manufacturer? - Does it risk becoming a brick if their service shuts down? - Does it require a continuing subscription? - Can the manufacturer disable it without your sign-off?
I would consult such a resource, but I also think that if an influential product review site (e.g. wirecutter) were to specifically and consistently identify these aspects when making recommendations to buyers, eventually it might sway producers?
Tesla has made me believe that software 'eating' cars is the future because, by letting software take over capability from hardware, it allows for software updates to improve earlier models of cars, making them a better value long-term. The marginal cost of improving a car with a software update is essentially nil for the manufacturer.
With that low cost per unit to deploy a software update that improves the car, BMW choosing to hold it hostage and demanding a subscription fee is a bad look, even if it's efficient for them. Having the steering wheel already in the car with the necessary hardware (where the unit cost is for BMW) exposes it as being a feature cheap enough that they can throw the necessary hardware into every model.
Even if it made less economic sense, it would appear more valuable if you were able to go to a BMW dealership and have the steering wheel swapped out for one with heating enabled.
So every car already had the hardware, obviously because it would be more expensive for Tesla to produce two variants of seat elements.
I had never heard of this before so I asked if it wouldn't piss customers off to see that they were just paying for some guy to come in and enter a code and not to actually install anything physical. The answer was "it never has before." We'd been doing it for years by that point.
However, I think there’s potential in this idea to overall benefit the consumer.
The cost of options sometimes includes the fact that the carmaker has to provide a separate SKU. Does a heated seat cost a lot in raw materials? No, not at all, but a carmaker might have to lose time on the assembly line changing the line to build a different variant. Or the dealer might lose a sale if they don’t have the customer’s desired trim level in stock
Not only that, differentiating optional features are revolving more and more around software (e.g. autopilot).
As long as this doesn’t become confusing or excessively expensive for the customer, it could actually be a win-win.
Presumably, the base model could be cheaper, and the consumer could upgrade the car later. Or, the consumer could pay for subscription features when their job situation is good and cut them out down to basic transportation if it’s not so good.
The consumer would also not be stuck with options that they decide later that they don’t use often. Maybe they wouldn’t be stuck with entire options packages that they have to go with just to get the one thing they want.
The devil is always in the details, so it could go either way, it just depends how fair the pricing ends up being.
If you don’t think people will buy it, might I interest you in purchasing my new TV show for only $3 an episode? You’ll own it forever!
https://twocents.lifehacker.com/the-car-brands-with-the-high...
Actually, I think it might be good if the features suck.
Sort of like restaurants going out of business if they didn't make tasty food. (of course, restaurants have healthy competition, and ... when we used to go to restaurants)
That's a big assumption to make.
I see you haven't owned a new BMW. The Bluetooth on my Motorrad doesn't work with the most popular brand of Bluetooth helmet systems, and there's a running joke that RDC stands for Rarely Displays Correct.
Adding this layer of abstraction complicates things and puts an unnecessary burden on to the user to consider a complex pricing structure of what features they want for what duration of time.
Between healthcare, airlines, music, and now cars, it's becoming ridiculously complicated just to buy things. I don't like it when companies complicate their pricing models to eke out a few extra dollars from those consumers who haven't meticulously studied the pricing models to optimize their purchase; I have other things going on in my life.
no transponder no racing for you
But the idea of installing hardware, then charging a recurring fee to use it is just horrible. It's a sign of how capitalism is simply broken. It was one thing when IBM did it on their computers when there were a few hundred or perhaps a few thousand of them on the planet, but now we're intentionally using resources to make things that may never get used, with no consideration for the environmental impact?
So who's going to be running the "feature activation" servers for older models when they're no longer "supported" by BMW? Do we really think BMW will simply unlock the features on cars about to go out of "support", or do we think they'll lock everything off regardless of what people have paid?
This sort of rent-seeking is really terrible.
If you prepay for an update, but modify the car to not track you, it is my understanding that, network or no, it will not receive any service (including updates) from Tesla.
Correspondingly, they remotely disable functionality in your vehicle if you stop paying them.
I'm not sure of a better example of rent seeking.
