Oh look, another reason not to buy BMW, I’ll just add it to the other 456788656752 reasons.
The problem is that once one manufacturer starts doing this, they’ll all do it, so you won’t even have the option of buying a new car without a subscription.
Name and shame, please. Also, did you get notified about all the subscriptions by the dealership? If yes, why did you still decide to buy it?
I’m glad my current car is a 2015 Mazda. It’s recent enough to have a touch screen and Bluetooth, but not so recent that it’s got an LTE/5G radio that can phone home and let them sell my driving data to insurance companies or force subscription payments on me. When I get my next car in a decade or so, hopefully I can import a cheap Chinese EV that’s either easy to jailbreak, or doesn’t have any of that bullshit included.
The Buick 3800 had a tube like that on top, it would crack from thermal stresses and piss out hot coolant. There was an aluminum aftermarket replacement like you describe but it was Dorman and a cheap fix. Buick also addressed the problem in later versions. I miss that engine.
I used to own a W124 series Benz (bought used for 5% of sticker price, I ain’t no fauntelroy). Nearly everything on it was redundant or excessively skookum.
When systems that weren’t as rugged started going down, like the vacuum controllers for doors or the 4matic computer etc, the car still worked safely with reduced convenience. A few minor design flaws like the wiring harness but that’s it. Room to work under the hood, too.
It was built in '93 when the engineers still ran the company.
Current main driver is the super reliable '03 CRV.
Please do if possible.
Seriously tho, was it so hard to understand that i was pointing out that all big car companies are starting to do this?
If this is a reason not to buy a BMW then its a reason not to buy any modern car. Which it is imo.
While this is completely true, it’s a bit tone-deaf. Fuck cars, but many people barely have a choice because their public transport consists of a handful of busses that come once an hour and nothing is close by.
As an aside, I spend a whopping total of about $1/day (edit Australian $, so less USD) on maintenance and electricity for my electric cargo bike. I go about 17 km each way to work and the funny thing is it’s only about 10 mins longer than driving, lol
Imagine a bus coming once an hour… try only twice a day for the entire county… early morning and late night.
If once you do not succeed, just try again next year. They tried and backtracked putting heated seats behind a paywall not even a year ago see here.
Unless laws are made to make this fundamentally illegal, they’ll just keep pushing until it sticks. And once one manufacturer succeeds, they’ll all follow.
We are pirating car suspension now holy shit
Next up, Anti-lock brakes as a Subscription Service. ASS.
Haha… connection to server cannot be established. Suspension resetting to default.
This is extra hilarious in the face of the crib manufacturer that just decided to subscription paywall basic functions of their crib… or the slow cooker… And that’s just this week.
Game manufacturers pulling the plug on games they sold removing the servers yanking the games.
And now people think that you can buy a product that is going to last longer and costs several orders of magnitude more… and you can only hope that the manufacturer can be bothered to:
- Keep the service safe and secure.
- Have it be reliable.
- Maintain it operational for the actual lifespan of the car (not some MBA’s definition of economic lifespan or something).
- Not fuck with you on the price. (We’re not shutting down the servers, but the price will be 50 a month and 5 euros per adjustment).
But the sale case is easy… lease car drivers. This way they can enjoy premium functions not incorporated into the sale price of the car. I hope the IRS that taxes these things sees through this ploy and taxes the vehicles for installed functions wether you pay for them or not. Saw this happen with Tesla’s… taxed based on their initial price… and then the user added 15k of functions after a day… and the tax was still based on the original sticker price.
At least in the case of games, the servers are an ongoing expense that adds value to the game. I want to play against other people online and provide by that costs ongoing expenses.
