The German car-maker says its "optional power upgrade" is designed to give customers more choice.

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[–] 114 points 1 year ago (8 children)

This is despite a wider embrace of subscriptions in general…

I’m not sure this is the right conclusion. What seems like a “wider embrace of subscriptions” may be happening because subscriptions are becoming harder and harder to avoid. We don’t like them; they’re being forced on us. That’s an important difference.

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  • [–] [S] 59 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    I also think this is misusing the current statistics and drawing wrong conclusions.

    Nobody is asking for these kind of subscription models.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago*

    Whag do you mean? Of course they are... everyone likes not reciving what they paid for to only have to pay a monthly charge for it... just look at what people pay monthly for... they will so enjoy this... /s

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    In France, people who have VW cars are not the best or brightest drivers. It could work.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    In France, people who have VW cars are not the best or brightest drivers. It could work.

    FTFY

    VW are garbage, have been since, well, forever.

    70's VW factory replacement parts were so bad you'd get water pumps with incompletely drilled mount holes.

    Today, the electrics do dumb things like combine the AC control with the power window controls in a box in the drivers door. You know, an area that will deal with moisture.

    Drive down the road and note how often a VW has an entire taillight that doesn't work.

    Their electrics are shit. (Other brands have their own issues, American brands are only a little better, or worse, depending on the brand and model).

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  • [–] 62 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    The intent is to provide players owners with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes horsepower.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    They came for the Gamers, but I did not speak out because I was not a Gamer.

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  • [–] 122 points 1 year ago* (9 children)

    1999: "Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization."

    lol. 1999 was the best time for humanity; ridiculous!

    2025: Oh shit...

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  • [–] 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

    “We marveled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI.”

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    That’s why I live my life as if it were still the 90s…oh shit, am I in the matrix already?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (6 children)
  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Seriously. Why didn’t I take the blue pill?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    You guys were offered a blue pill???

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] 52 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    The future is a fucking farce.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Psych! You thought you were gonna get star trek style utopia, while we've been descending into fascist dystopia for several decades!?!

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'm still holding out hope for cyberpunk. At least it comes with skylines and cool back alley markets.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    And cybernetics that won't play adds in your brain until you have a seizure!. Seriously settings like cyberpunk and shadowrun are starting to look good by the standards of what we're heading for. (Shadowrun is also old enough that you could actually just barely survive on a part time job without sharing an appartment even in the dystopia)

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    The difference is whether there's any room outside the system to exist in, right? Can you jailbreak your implant? Can you live in a shitty illegal slum, or are they all carefully dispersed before they can begin?

    It's all about technologies of control. Ironically, the places seeing democratic backsliding are not the only or even the main ones developing and implementing them.

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Fuck that noise.

    What happens if the car goes out of range from the internet? Does the car just lose power the same way I can’t play Gamepass games offline?

    I already bought the car with the hardware in it. I will do what I want with it.

    My next car will be a 1995 Honda. I’m so tired of being tracked all the time.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You can play GamePass Ultimate games offline, though.

    No, I’m serious. I’m not arguing with you, I promise.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Oh I wasn’t aware. Each time I try to open a game before my Xbox connects to the internet, I get an error.

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  • [+] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)
  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I will never buy a vw again, that is a fact.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Skip all of those brands. Škoda too.

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  • [+] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)
  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yet people in my extended family keep buying them. They are people who are well off, too, so they could buy something nicer. They bought a trailer home for $30,000 to use for vacationing ffs, might as well invest in a nice car so they don't have to buy a new one every 3–5 years because it rusts to shit.

    This is partially my envy talking, but still, I don't get it. I have a nicer car and my household makes less. Makes no sense.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    When we start decent seeing vehicles at a decent price again

    These exist, they're just not in the USA. Look at what companies like BYD, MG, and Xiaomi are doing in practically every developed country except the USA. The entry-level BYD Dolphin EV is just under AU$30k (US$19k) in Australia, including taxes. Xiaomi have a sports car for around US$40k.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    When we start decent seeing vehicles to a decent price again,

    I don't know about the Volkswagen ID.3, but in general, I think that car prices have tended to come down slightly over the years. I was in a conversation earlier about car prices earlier (talking about how truck prices had greatly increased).

    If you go back 20 years, take a pretty plain-Jane standby, the Toyota Camry:

    https://www.kbb.com/toyota/camry/2005/

    2005 Toyota Camry pricing starts at $4,091 for the Camry LE Sedan 4D, which had a starting MSRP of $20,515 when new.

    That'd be $33,934.10 in 2025 dollars.

    A 2025 Camry has an MSRP of $28,700, about 15% lower.

    Pickup trucks


    which are considerably more expensive now in the US than they were a few decades back


    are an exception to this, but there are other factors going on there.

    EDIT: Though tariffs may wind up driving prices up.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I don't think this factors in things that have gone up significantly, such as cost of repair and maintenance. I think another easy thing to point to would be the amount of 84 month car loans, and how many people struggle to pay those. I will also point out in 2005 that wage inflation was much closer to keeping pace with overall inflation. It's easy to point to the one thing you did, but that misses the full picture imo.

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    [–] 38 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    This is way beyond "mildly infuriating". Shit should be illegal, it's terrible for progress and an epitome of greedy capitalist bullshit.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago

    Okay, it's high time for some serious regulatory intervention.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    This is so distopian it sounds like a joke

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    This company already has another scandal brewing, since 2005 they have been installing plastic engine parts, particularily the intake manifolds have been designed as a single use item to be replaced roughly every 3 years. Custom aluminum will run you $1000 for the part itself if you don't want to keep swapping plastic, not to mention the ridiculous labour costs as well. Avoid!

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    For $1000 you could get a small furnace for cintering, a regular 3D printer and some of that special PLA that has metal powder in it that you can print and then cinter into a solid metal piece (The PLA bakes off) and just make the fucking thing yourself.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    When buying isn't owning ..

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    You can get a lifetime subscription now, next year ‘we have reviewed customer choices and will be discontinuing the lifetime subscription’, so they can continue to milk their customers

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Just a life time subscription as this. See attachment.

    None

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    So... Volkswagen is the next target for hacking ?

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    How does this even work? It’s like they don’t realise they don’t own the car once it’s been sold. What’s to stop someone just hacking it and unlocking it?

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    What’s to stop someone just hacking it and unlocking it?

    I assume that they try to make that fairly difficult.

    I mean, modern cars are Internet-connected, have cell radios. If the vendor can maintain access to the car and can provide the initial trusted hardware, they can make it pretty unpleasant to modify the thing.

    You also don't need a 100% solution to make it financially work. Just need to make the level of inconvenience high enough that the bulk of people won't do it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    modern cars are Internet-connected

    This in itself is terrifying. It isn't like they are going to provide security updates for your car for decades. Unplug that modem, no reason for your car to be exposed to the internet.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    It’s like they don’t realise they don’t own the car once it’s been sold.

    They literally don't. This is nothing less than a war on property rights.

    What’s to stop someone just hacking it and unlocking it?

    The DMCA Anti-Circumvention Clause makes it a felony.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    If you hack it warranty becomes void and you're maybe in big insurance trouble if there's an accident or your battery catches fire in an underground parking garage. Basically similar to how banking apps etc keep people from trying to use alternatives to Android on their phone. The boundary isn't technical, it's legal.

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  • [+] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)
  • [–] [S] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Exactly. I actually own the vw id3. And I'm furious about it. I paid like 45000 euros. And now I need to buy soon an additional subscription, for.. to keep remote access available for enabling the airco via the app.

    So it's much more then just subscription for 'increase power'.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    The remote control is at least tolerable because VW does need to provide every car with cellular network connection and servers to make this happen.

    Car power is completely different because it's a one time change. If I'm their PR, I'll do something like: VW has successfully tested new performance settings for VW ID.3 that helps to improve acceleration and driving. Upgrade is available at authorized workshops (of course with cost).

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  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    The way the article frames it as "why pay for what you don't need" is so bad.

    Nah, you already paid for it, the part is physically in the motorcycle.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    The real question should be: why are vehicle manufacturers inclusing features that they can't afford to maintain after they have sold it to us? Maybe stop making everything internet-integrated. Nobody in their right mind should be forking over a subscription for something they just spent tens of thousands of dollars on.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago*

    features that they can’t afford to maintain

    That logic might work for GPS service, but the example in the article is a bike where the battery's discharge rate and capacity are limited by software, and those limits can be increased via software if you pay a subscription.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Someone should compile a list of currently produced car makes and models that are free to modify and repair without software locks on them

    I imagine it's a pretty short list.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If it's all software, that means that you can jailbreak it, just like a phone.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    German car industry has one foot in the grave. The German car industry lobbyist have successfully weakened or delayed many EU climate and sustainability initiatives. I fucking hope the German car industry collapses sooner than later and weaken Germany’s political power in the EU.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    German car industry has one foot in the grave.

    I think that all or close to it auto manufacturers have some form of subscription service now with monthly fees. It's not something specific to German manufacturers.

    randomly picks from this list of auto manufacturers

    Buick.

    https://www.buick.com/ownercenter/onstar/learn

    OnStar One Super Cruise

    for vehicles with Super Cruise

    $64.99/mo.

    Save up to 16% by choosing this plan

    OnStar Connect Plus

    • In-Vehicle Wi-Fi® Hotspot

    • Music

    • Podcasts

    • Audiobooks

    • News

    • Video Streaming (if properly equipped)

    • Games (if properly equipped)

    • Internet Browser (if properly equipped)

    Safety & Security

    • Stolen Vehicle Assistance

    • Safety Services

    • OnStar Guardian App

    • Roadside Assistance

    Super Cruise

    • Hands-Free Driver Assistance Technology

    • Turn Signal Activated Lane Change

    • Automatic Lane Change (if properly equipped)

    • Hands-Free Trailering (if properly equipped)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    I mean you picked an American car company. They've been garbage for decades, I've owned exactly one, a 90's Taurus, probably the most reliable American car we've seen in decades, and it just barely approaches Japanese cars for reliability and maintenance.

    I say this as someone who's worked on every brand of car, from the 1940's to today. You can't give me an American car (or German, or just European). I refuse to own anything other than Honda or Toyota any more. I'll sacrifice style and features for a vehicle that just works for 100-200k miles, or more.

    Buick has been a style-over-substance brand in the GM lineup since the 80's, at least. Not that any GM is particularly good, Buick just makes it worse with cheap gimmicks. Same with all Chrysler products.

    But yea, all brands include some nonsense today.

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    [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Car companies are parasites. America was built on trains and the investments into car infrastructure have paralleled US declines. Its just not an effecient use of public resources to build highways between cities.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Gonna go on youtube and let that Indian tech guy teach me how to jailbreak a Volkswagen.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    My favorite stereotypes are the race/STEM expert ones.

    South Asia - programming, IT.

    East Asia - Math

    East Europe - Electrical Engineering

    West Europe - High precision engineering and chemistry

    At least as far as YouTube tutorials go, it's basically cannon.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You're not giving more choice if it relies on you purposefully taking away things. That's called being predatory.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago

    I've always admired the iconic vehicles VW has produced, but this assures I'll never buy a VW.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago
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