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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.
I also think this is misusing the current statistics and drawing wrong conclusions.
Nobody is asking for these kind of subscription models.
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
The intent is to provide ~~players~~ owners with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different ~~heroes~~ horsepower.
They came for the Gamers, but I did not speak out because I was not a Gamer.
Hey, we did speak out and most of us didn't shut up since. Fuck EA, VW, BMW, whoever tries to push microtransactions.
The future is a fucking farce.
Psych! You thought you were gonna get star trek style utopia, while we've been descending into fascist dystopia for several decades!?!
At this point, companies will do literally fucking anything, just to pad the numbers for the shareholder reports. The Volkswagen group can screw itself. When we start decent seeing vehicles at a decent price again, maybe we can resume this conversation. Everyone’s tired of plastic garbage for top dollar
I will never buy a vw again, that is a fact.
Skip all of those brands. Škoda too.
Škoda are a massive offender, in my eyes. No one here drives their cars, except for taxis, because they were cheap, comfortable enough, and no one cares if you beat one up. Now, they position themselves as some kind of a mid-range luxury brand, but the quality does not speak for itself whatsoever
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.
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.
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.
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.
Okay, it's high time for some serious regulatory intervention.
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.
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)
Is that subscription for OnStar or Super Cruise? One is a service with legitimate ongoing operating costs; the other is not.
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?
It's all proprietary code. But in theory you could unlock the full potential if not more. If you can recreate their software. Ideally then also open source it please.
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.
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.
This is grotesque. "More choice" is utter bollocks, they're insulting our intelligence with this, or maybe they're mocking us.
How about just let us get as much power as we can out of the car by pushing our foot down harder on the pedal.
This is a perfect example of "remove something, then sell it back to the customer".
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'.
I've always admired the iconic vehicles VW has produced, but this assures I'll never buy a VW.
You're not giving more choice if it relies on you purposefully taking away things. That's called being predatory.
Sandwiches for sale! Can't afford it? No problem! 30% discount. I'll just cut it and toss one of the halves in the trash for you.
Depending on your jurisdiction, your local commerce regulator might have a different opinion of the legality of this than VW, especially when they're taking away features you already paid for.
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.
The moment I bought my id3 they never informed me about this subscription model. Soon I also need to pay if I want to keep my app working for my car, like enabling the airco via the app.
I already paid around 45000 euros for this car. And now I suddenly also need to pay subscriptions? It's not only a subscription for 'increase power'.
15k? Price crashed like that? When I asked the price in 2020 they told me 45k and I laughed for weeks after that
The fact that they pay the sim card data plan for only the first three years from purchase was known from the beginning. I'm ok with paying but not the price they're asking. They're using a $10/year iot sim card for remote access, but want $150/year from the customer? LOL get fucked I would never pay that.
PS: how the remote air control works? I tried the Peugeot one and
Allowed activation only if battery was over 50% which is a stupid artificial limitations
Literally took 10 minutes to boot and 8 minutes to send the activation signal to the car. In that time I could go to activate it manually
A service like that isn't even worth $5/decade
You will own nothing and be... whatever, gonna talk here and there about this, spread the news, make them drown (as much as nobody me can do that)