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Hyundai car requires $2000, app & internet access to fix your brakes - what the actual f (www.youtube.com)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the "right to repair" law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.

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[–] 25 points 11 months ago (26 children)

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.

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  • [+] [S] -30 points 11 months ago* (25 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 12 points 11 months ago (16 children)

    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...)

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  • [+] [S] -16 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (15 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    Of course it is possible that everyone pays for the hardware anyhow but it is not necessarily the case.

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Right. Consoles can't be sold at a loss and stores never sell things at a loss at a sale because they make it back with other products that are sold at the same time....

    It is very possible that if not enough people buy the subscription they will be at a loss.

    However, I understand it from a business standpoint.

    Cars are usually good quality now. They will probably last 15 years or more. Which means manufacturers are their own competition now. Not to mention that China is making some pretty cheap and impressive cars too.

    So how does a brand keep existing? Extracting more value out of the customers they have. And hope that this minor thing isn't enough to make them buy a different car. Or hope other brands do the same thing so it doesn't matter.

    I think on expensive brand cars, the buyers usually can afford a subscription. Odds are they also have a strong preference for a brand so they are not very likely to switch.

    So for a Mercedes, Audi, Bentley, BMW etc I understand why they think they can get away with it.

    I just hate it with a passion and will never ever go with it unless I literally don't have a choice. My car, I paid for it. Want me to pay extra to build an extra option? Fine, but it is a one time fee of the cost of building that option on the car. If it does not require anything that is a returning cost to the seller, I am not paying a returning fee.

    Vote with your wallet and the bullshit will eventually disappear.

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  • [–] [S] -4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Some of those options are easy to retrofit, others require assembling to order.

    There is a reason why odd colors cost more. If they could change the color with software but the base color was white, it would be fair to only charge those who wanted to employ the tech for a fancy color and let the others have it at the old price (even though both customers have the enabling tech on board).

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    None of these get retrofitted on new cars. They're literally built to order unless you buy a demo vehicle or an in-stock vehicle and those usually don't have a lot of variety anyway, they're meant for fleets more than anything.

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  • [–] 6 points 11 months ago

    I don’t see how you could possibly think it’s okay to sell something to someone while telling them oh but technically you didn’t buy everything inside it, that’s an extra fee.

    Come on you can’t be so broken you can’t see a clear scam right in front of you.

    It should be illegal and if any of our institutions had teeth it would be.

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  • [–] 11 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    This is such a weird hill to die on for someone who claims to be pro-consumer

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  • [+] [S] -8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [+] [S] -8 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    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?

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    I bought a car. That means I bought every piece in that car. You locking me out of the hardware i bought is me not owning my own car. You are not so dense you think artists that make music you didn’t buy yet are the same as the car manufacturer that sold you a physical car.

    You are not that stupid nor dense so quit wasting everyone’s time.

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  • [–] 9 points 11 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (5 children)

    It's absolutely nothing like that, my dude. There's no extra service being provided. The product has been manufactured and purchased. It'd be like buying a drill only to find out that you have to pay a fee to use the drill bits you already own, or buying a block of wood and being told that you have to pay the seller money to use the tools you already own to make it into whatever you're building.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 11 months ago* (4 children)

    That is not a good comparison because people don't buy the car expecting the seats to have the warming feature. It probably is even offered as an option that the customer rejected upon purchase.

    When I download software and pay for the basic tier it has the pro features built in anyhow. I can pay to unlock those pro features but I don't expect to use those features already just because I already have them.

    If I go to the football and the crowd is small enough to fit in the grandstand but only those who explicitly paid for it are allowed into the grandstand I don't complain about my entitlement.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    Whether they're expecting it or not, the hardware is there and there is no additional technical intervention necessary from the manufacturer necessary for it to function. A monthly fee for a button to turn on my seat warmers is idiotic. Your bizarre infatuation with comparing cars to stadiums is also as frustrating as it is nonsensical.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I would prefer you discussed the point rather than trying to bully me into agreeing.

    It is quite possible that the current seat warming arrangements are such that it ends up cheaper for those who want it (since it isn't custom installed physically) and is of no consequence to those who don't want it.

    If it was enabled for everyone the price of the car could conceivably go up for everyone. Admittedly that may not necessarily be how it works out but it is a possibility.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    It costs more to implement the hardware necessary to lock them behind a paywall in the first place, though. And I'm not bullying you by telling you that the comparison you're making between cars and stadiums is, in fact, utterly nonsensical. I'm not borrowing space in a stationary building for a set amount of time. I'm purchasing a product that already had the feature in the first place. If it's already there, it's already adding to the cost of the vehicle, and there is no additional cost to the manufacturer whether they use it or not. I've given you multiple examples of how this logic would look in other industries where there are actual parallels, but for some reason you keep coming back to the unbelievably fallacious idea that buying a car is somehow akin to renting a seat at a sports game. They are not the same, in case I wasn't being clear enough.

    The cost to install the hardware has already been paid. Fine. What extra monthly effort is required on the part of the manufacturer to ensure the continued functionality of the seat heater? The answer is NONE. Therefore, what right does the manufacturer have to demand a monthly payment for people to use the hardware which is, again, already fucking installed in the car they just spent $60,000+ on? It doesn't require server time. You're not hiring a dude to come out and warm up your seat with his butt every time you activate it. I repeat there is no continued cost to the manufacturer, therefore they have no justification for charging a monthly fee, and the only reason the price goes up is the extra hardware cost from installing the system that charges the monthly fee.

    I'm done with this conversation. Please seek help.

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