201 to 228 hp is just like an idiot tax. But of course it’s only a start. If customers accept it, they will put more and more behind a subscription.
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Well, I was planning on buying the new electric van they have, but this article has changed my mind. Same reason I won’t buy a Tesla or any other company that hides features of a fully purchased car behind a paywall. Fuck that mess and I will never support it.
My wife's 2017 Volkswagen, with only 160,000 very gentle km on it (100,000 miles) suddenly had a warning light come on. It seems that the sensor on the turbo charger had gone bad, but the only way to fix it is to replace the entire turbocharger, close to $5,000.
From what we have read, Volkswagens of this age start to have large numbers of very expensive repairs. Lesson learned, she got rid of the Volkswagen and bought a hyundai.
That’s bullshit. That vintage of VW has like two sensors on the turbo. They’re easy to get to and cost like $100 tops.
And $5,000 to replace a turbo is nuts. A new turbo can be around $1,500 but it’s less than six or eight hours of labor for a good mechanic.
I’m an idiot code monkey and I replaced mine in my garage in a weekend.
+1 to this. $5k is BS, Especially if we're talking USD, but this also sounds like classic VW making a simple repair a massive job, replacing unnecessary parts, charging exorbitant prices and throwing away perfectly good components that end up in landfill, and best part is in the end it probably wasn't even what they diagnosed to actually be the cause of the problem, dealerships love to fix symptoms, not causes. A good independent Euro specialist would have loved that job.
I had the VW dealer quote me $6,000 for a new turbo when the actually problem is probably a clogged catalytic converter.
Also they told me I put in the wrong turbo but it’s literally the same part number and manufacturer as the one I pulled out.
The price was $4-5,000 in Canadian dollars, so probably a bit over USD $3,000. And this came from my local mechanic, who sourced it from Volkswagen but also called around to scrapyards to see about just buying a sensor.
It's not like he had anything to gain. He actually recommended that we sell the car, and he knew that he would be losing business because my wife's new car is electric and he doesn't service those.
That makes a bit more sense, but buying direct from VW is where you spend all that money.
I got the same turbo from the same company that built my stock one for $900 Freedom Bucks. They’ve gone up in price a bit due to inflation and tariffs but are still a ton cheaper than “official” parts.
If you help me get Canadian asylum I’d be happy to swap it out for you.
I got news for you, I purchased a used Hyundai 2019 that has turbo, and the one thing wrong with it was the turbo. My father's a mechanic, so he said he would put it in, but I believe the cost for the part was around $500. Idk what a dealer would charge. He then told me that turbos, on average, only last about 100k anyway, so it's definitely a part that will most likely need replacing more than most sadly. Then, a month later, the entire car died, and the engine was bad... this was earlier this year, and my father again said he would do it, but a new engine takes time, which he doesn't have, so now I've been car less for 4 months, yay!
This new car had 93k on it. My last car (Nissan Sentra) lasted 19 years and 250k on it and only traded it in because we were nervous it could go at any time. Thanks for the great car, Hyundai!
Ads when you're driving, features you've paid for locked behind a paywall and overpriced repairs.. the future is here.
Hope suburu doesn't end up doing this, just bought one.
"You wouldn't download a car"
I own a 26 year old skoda 1.9 TDI 110 HP Without touching any hardware it can be remmaped to 140 hp, which is a setting used in an Audi A4 from that era. Replacing a couple of things, like injectors turbo and intercooler, it can go to 180-190, which was also offered for the same engine. I'm happy with the 110hp, the car drives fine, and the engine is relaxed, wich has helped its longevity
Give it a few weeks and some eastern European wizard will find a way to unlock it with ease and make it available to the masses
Personally i just drill holes in my ECU to install weatherproof connections to the BDM port so I can fiddle around with it myself in WinOLS. quite the learning curve though.
I just had to pay upwards of $700 to boost my VW’s horsepower.
By buying a Cobb Accessport
Do they have something for Mercedes?
I’m not sure. Everything I’ve found for Mercs replaced the ECU entirely
Are you dealing with diesel or petrol? Naturally aspirated petrol is pretty useless to tune, anything turbocharged has tuning potential, especially diesel where you can get ridiculous torque.
Seems like this scheme might save you money in countries where insurance is extremely expensive? Since car's official power figure is the original one.
I'm legitimately impressed that you managed to come up with a scenario where the cause of this silliness wasn't 100% corporate greed. I'll see if I can give it a go too:
We have P (provisional driver) plate restrictions here that limit power to weight... Possibly it could be a car you can drive on your P license without the subscription, then turn it on when you get your full license to enjoy 10% more power?
... I dunno I'm struggling.
This behaviour needs to die.
It’s not reasonable for companies to charge subscriptions to hardware that you own that require zero external connections.
The engine is not a connected component. There is zero reason it would ever be constrained by connected features.
Did you know that actually happens with jet engines for a long time now? Companies lease jet engines and they have licenses for a certain number of engines in different max outputs, they can even transfer between them like, one 100% engine got damaged so they they transfer the 100% license to an 80% engine while it is in maintenence (all numbers are made up but the idea is the same).
But yeah, shit is fucked.
That kind of makes sense in context, since for leasing it’s not their hardware and they’re probably doing accounting based on the amortized costs of using them
But no I did not know that and it is pretty cool
Even the transmissions in school buses have worked this way for more than two decades now. The Allison 2500-series is built with 6 gears (plus one reverse) but usually 6th gear is disabled in the software as users buy the 5-gear variant. The 6-gear variant is more expensive and 5-gear buyers can upgrade to that down the road if they want to - or you can crack it with widely-available software, something that many people in the skoolie community take advantage of.
At least 6th gear isn't a subscription service ... yet.
Considering that the purpose of that 6th gear would be to lower the fuel consumption, that means we have a bunch of buses running around burning more fuel and polluting more all in the name of more profits.
At least school buses spend a lot of time driving around at relatively low speeds so the lack of the extra gear probably has little real-world effect for most of the time, but still...
we have a bunch of buses running around burning more fuel and polluting more
An even worse factor is that EPA regulations governing diesel engine emissions specify allowed emissions in terms of horsepower-miles, which means that more powerful engines are allowed to emit more pollutants per mile. This has led to school buses becoming over-engined compared to what they used to be a few decades ago (in the '90s bus engines in the neighborhood of 200 hp were typical, now 350 hp is normal). This is good for lead-footed bus drivers and the people behind the buses (I guess), but not so good for the air. And of course EPA diesel regulations specify nothing about greenhouse gas emissions.
At least school buses have the intrinsic efficiencies of mass-transportation behind them. If parents were driving all these kids to school instead, the net emissions would be vastly worse. Of course most of these kids could walk or bicycle instead ...
You forgot this little point.
You own a non-exclusive, intransferable licence to use and operate said car.
Yes, you paid for it. But it's not really yours. You own its body. Someone else still owns its spirit. And they want a rent for you to be able to touch the spirit.
Why would they do that?
Obviously, becaude that shit flies. Why not do it? Money is money. And companies exist for it. Fuck morality. Fuck common sense. They only care about the little green lines.
Customer satisfaction?
Not even an afterthought.
In a sane world, everyone would think like you. I do, for one.
The problem is everyone else who doesn't. They'll put up with it, accept the thinly-veiled excuses, and the company will see "wow, we can do that now? Gee, these people are stoopid. Let's see how far we can take it.
Honestly, I see where they're coming from. Not that I support it. But it is a rational decision on their part.
In a sane world, the smart employee who came up with this would be fired promptly, because if the company were to carry this shit out, they'd get so much bad press it'd take over a decade to recover.
But alas, we don't live in a sane world and clearly enough consumers are either idiots or ignorant for this shit to fly.
I hate it so much. It's absolutely crazy how companies can be so anti consumer and get away with it because they market it well. Still can't have a decent group chat if someone's on an Apple device. That new car tracks you and sells the info, now you need to pay to unlock it's full potential. The new os is always online and shares your info non-stop, it'll continue to push it's privacy invading AI until you give up. You don't actually own that game you bought, it's a license and we can revoke it because fuck you.
I'm so fucking tired of being the weirdo because I stand by my morals and won't let them get away with fucking me over.
So I’m carrying around extra weight I don’t need if I don’t want the extra horse power?
So a software hack could unleash the extra power?
This has been true for decades with VW and other cars… I had my 2000 Jetta chipped and got all kinds of HP and torque. Some dude just plugged in a laptop, beep boop, vroom vroom. $600 please.
This just seems like VW cutting out those middlemen.
That's tuning, and that's different. There's tradeoffs with tuning besides the obvious more wear.
In many cases there’s no extra wear. I paid $800 for a Ford ecu update that improves engine output but also retains any warranty.
I bet this has more to do with emissions.
The id3 is electric though
In many cases there’s no extra wear
You can't change physics. More HP = more torque = more wear on the whole drive train. Also more boost = more stress on the turbo = it will fail sooner.
Also, back then, cars with the higher specced variant of the "same" engine almost always had mechanical upgrades compared to the lower specced engine: usually bigger brakes, a stronger clutch, and various other drive train components.
So while in many cases you could chip your car without much immediate harm, you were definitely cutting into various safety margins determined by automotive engineers who know much better than you and me.
Nah, some came with a little controller and you could change settings on the fly. The immediate benefit is better fuel economy on almost any mode. All it does is mess with the ecu within its limits. Doesn’t affect warranty and doesn’t cause any more wear.
They will probably just switch ECU maps when you pay their subscription, or they'll have a similar way to perform the same function. Using the accelerator more creates more wear too.
Its the same IMO, but instead of a go faster switch in the car, its remote controlled.
Nope. With tuning you can bypass the safety limits as well. You can easily tune the car to be unsafe or suffer extreme wear.
You can damage a car with bad tuning but that's not what he's saying. I think the manufacturer will create an ECU map that delivers safe power, and then they will create a map with less power and then deliver the car with the underperforming map. Then, when you pay, they change to the map with higher performance.
And I'm saying "you can have software A or software B(and only those choices - both approved by the manufacturer)", is not the same as tuning each individual setting and the freedom you have in doing so. Call it what it is, an alternate approved ECU map. Calling it a "tune" is giving them WAY too much credit and overshadows the main point: lack of control. This doesn't give you control, it takes away and charges you for the privilege.
People mentioning classic tuning are glossing over the fact that you typically also change parts to accommodate the new tune and the new limits you are pushing. This "new tune" doesn't do anything but allow the vehicle to do what it always could but was handicapped in software to charge you more for.
Stop bootlicking and call this scam what it is.
You're telling me to stop bootlicking? I just didn't like the way I interpreted your characterization of ECU tuning.
The major tradeoff being that environmental regulations being unhappy.
You probably made 10 times the EPA limit of NOx emissions though.
Funny enough, VW also got in a TON of trouble over (factory configuration) diesel cars cheating emissions testing.
I dont know if yours was a diesel, but those especially are known for being capable of remarkable power and fuel economy at the same time... IF you don't care about emissions!
Increased hp and torque while reducing efficiency. Good job.
I'm sure it's already being developed. Those guys don't fuck around
I eagerly await cars that require subscriptions for air conditioning, sound system access, etc.
Then again, it's german corporate software...there should be a hack for that in no time 🤡
What does Netflix have to do with it? They still kill your favorite shows, and overcharge with ads. The first two words were not necessary in this headline.
In France, VW cars are usually bought by our local rednecks. I would be curious to know who buys those cars in other countries.
I have a VW ID.4.
In NZ they have no internet connection, no subscriptions, basic driver assist features, made in Europe, not made by Tesla, and are (were?) as cheap as BYDs, MGs, and Model3s.
I love VW Golf.
My Mercedes has subscriptions for things like locking your car from the app or locating it 😂.
I don't think I know anyone with a VW made after 2013, I guess that's not going to change anytime soon now
I loathe the idea of a subscription, but you buy a car upfront knowing what specs you're getting.
If they want to unlock more power for a one time fee, that's fair game. It actually does have a cost incurred on them via increased wear and tear and warranty claims.
But it's gotta be a 1 time purchase and is lifetime of the car.
Also tough luck if you failed to secure it properly and someone jailbreaks it. It's their car they can do whatever the fuck they want to it.
Insurance and taxes declarations are going to be fun! Either you'll have to pay for the actual power of the engine (that you don't actually use), or you'll need to modify the documents after unlocking the feature.
What happens when you sell the car? Does it go back to factory features?
In older Tesla Model 3s if you sold it back to Tesla they'd revert it, but if you sold it private it wouldn't be reverted.
What happens when you sell the car? Does it go back to factory features?
I already said - But it’s gotta be a 1 time purchase and is lifetime of the car.
or you’ll need to modify the documents after unlocking the feature.
Usually when you unlock something it increases the value of the vehicle, and you need to let insurance know or the extra value won't be covered. This is already pretty normal in any kind of insurance if there's a change that can be considered material. If you don't let them know, they won't cover the cost of the altered/new item.
It actually does have a cost incurred on them via increased wear and tear and warranty claims.
The customer friendly way to deal with this would be put in a limiter, and write in the contract "Warranty void if limiter removed".
Not sure how well that would stand up in court as they can only void things if they can prove the alterations broke it.
So if you remove it and the warranty is 4 years 50k km, and it dies after 1 year, early wear and tear doesn't seem likely. But maybe closer to the 50k they could claim it somehow? Or maybe it'd work, I dunno. Just doesn't seem so clear cut.
Yay! Another company to boycott 👍
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