The German car-maker says its “optional power upgrade” is designed to give customers more choice.
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.
You can bump 10 years ahead, my car doesn’t have tracking 😄
This is way beyond “mildly infuriating”. Shit should be illegal, it’s terrible for progress and an epitome of greedy capitalist bullshit.
Officially never buying a VW, BMW, Tesla, Or Mercedes. Who else tried this shit? Toyota, right?
I dunno if Toyota ever paywalled performance, but they definitely paywall features. My '15 Lexus requires a subscription service to use remote start. Its app based and relies on the car’s 2g cellular card so it doesn’t even work anymore.
My '24 Chevy does this, too. Lock, unlock and remote start apparently route through OnStar, so using those requires an OnStar subscription.
Yeah mine requires the Toyota Safety Connect or some such, I’m pretty sure it’s just their implementation of OnStar.
When buying isn’t owning …
designed to give customers more choice.
They are surely going to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.
Ah yes, selling me something that is already available but is just locked behind software. And then trying to frame that as somehow a good thing for customers. Just insulting.
Sadly, it’s been a good part of IBM’s business model for years. They call it Capacity on Demand.
Inactive processor cores and inactive memory units are resources that are included with your server, but are not available for use until you activate them.
I learned this when I moved into a corporate IT environment with Power servers. I couldn’t believe that some companies would pay a quarter of a million for a server that is intentionally stunted/limited unless you pay even more.
But cars are computers now. “Everything’s computer!”. So they will follow that subscription model.
I couldn’t believe that some companies would pay a quarter of a million for a server that is intentionally stunted/limited unless you pay even more.
Well, there is a reason AMD has been kicking ass in the server space lately. Mostly because Intel sat on their ass for a decade, but IBM scalping customers certainly provided a larger opening for AMD.
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.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I look forward to your list!
Gonna go on youtube and let that Indian tech guy teach me how to jailbreak a Volkswagen.
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.
Those guys have saved my ass countless times.
And this is why i’ll never own a vehicle with a cellular modem unless a jailbreak is already developed and there’s no regulatory/insurance issue with doing so.
They’ve had this before, but you’ve had to change chips. Was also hacked. Except that it was a one-off payment now upgraded to subscription.
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
Just a life time subscription as this. See attachment.
TomTom did this too. You paid them a life time fee and then they decided you had to start paying an additional fee every month.
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.
If it’s all software, that means that you can jailbreak it, just like a phone.
The racing world will have this cracked overnight.
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!
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.
That’s horrible! If people do that how will companies gouge customers?
Basically every car manufacturer pulls shit like this these days; good luck avoiding all of them.
If it’s specific to a certain model, that would be good info.
That said VW obviously sucks for pulling the stunt mentioned in the article, which applies to (all?) its electric models.
You don’t really see this with Toyota and Honda, just avoid any of the models that are joint venture with other companies.
WTF ?
