The German car-maker says its “optional power upgrade” is designed to give customers more choice.
When buying isn’t owning …
designed to give customers more choice.
They are surely going to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
Yeah, we’ve got more choice now.
I’m glad I used my freedom of choice to buy a different make.
