Mildly Infuriating

According to a survey from S&P Global, some customers may be put off by the cost of in-car subscriptions for features such as connectivity, or by basic functions being split into paid tiers.

I don't have any particular objection to that. They can choose whatever pricing model they want, and it's just another number for the spreadsheet in valuing whatever they put on offer. However, I rather suspect that whatever DRM they have on this ties one more-closely to maintaining an Internet connection between the car and auto manufacturer, which I do care about from a privacy standpoint.

And I wonder what happens to one's subscription if one's car is no longer able to talk to current cell towers and thus the car can no longer validate that the user has paid the bill this month. Cars that relied on 2G cell network connectivity in the past lost their network connectivity when the cell networks took that down in the US. Maybe the feature is just gone forever. Maybe the manufacturer decides to be nice and just perma-unlock the functionality. shrugs Seems like kind of a substantial unknown and difference from the past, where one could just expect a car to keep working. People have not been very happy about live service games no longer working after a shutdown date. I kind of think that having one's automobile functionality go away might also be unpopular.

Another issue is that I rather suspect that there's nothing outside of maybe their reputation keeping a vendor from increasing their subscription fees. If you've already put the substantial purchase price into a car, it's not like you can readily switch away from it to a competitor. That's not a good situation for the consumer. You're buying something where if you want the functionality, you're paying the purchase price...plus some unknown future amount in fees. You're locked in to buying the functionality from your auto vendor; there's no form of competitive market at play once you've bought in.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captive_market

A captive market is a market where the potential consumers face a severely limited number of competitive suppliers; their only choices are to purchase what is available or to make no purchase at all. The term therefore applies to any market where there is a monopoly or oligopoly.

In theory, I imagine that an auto vendor with enough information about an individual

and Lord knows, they sure are working on gathering a lot

could do individualized pricing, charge the maximum for the functionality that any one individual will pay. That'd convert consumer surplus into producer surplus; it's a sensible move for a seller with a monopoly.