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submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[-] [email protected] 172 points 11 months ago

If all electric cars are just going to be subscription bullshit, I'm sorry, I won't be driving electric.

[-] [email protected] 98 points 11 months ago

Even ICE manufacturers have been including hardware that software disabled for a while

[-] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago

I got an OBDeleven for my 2015 GTI so I could unlock stuff and customize. Enabled rolling down the windows with the key fob, being able to display the engine oil temp in the dash and also setting the accelerator pedal curve to linear.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

What I didn't even know that was stuff you could even do

[-] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago

The accelerator curve is really cool. A lot of modern cars just have a sensor that detects your pedal position and a simple algorithm decides how much power to translate that into. It's like adjusting the mouse speed on a computer. Feels like you're driving a different car.

Having said that, the default curve is often the best curve. They put a lot more effort into getting it right than you would.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Kinda depends on the car. Volkswagen cars are pretty "hackable" with OBDeleven which is a wireless interface for the hilariously named "VAGCOM" protocol.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

OBDeleven

Hang on, have I being saying this wrong for years? I thought it was OBDII or OBD2 ?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

It is OBD2, OBDeleven is a Bluetooth dongle you plug into it

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Almost every car company does something similar and has as long as they've had on board computers.

VW/Audi/Porche are all the same company and generally share the same electronics. A lot of gauges and features are considered "premium" so they just disable them for VW branded vehicles. There's also regional feature lockouts; IIRC North American VW's can't have their fog-lights and headlights on at the same time but you can enable it through VAGCOM.

[-] falkerie71 14 points 11 months ago

Subscribe to enable your BMW seat heater! They definitely require periodic software updates and is absolutely NOT a blatant money grab

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

There are some manufacturers that do not do this garbage, or at least not often. I've heard good things about Hyundai specifically.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

For now they have customer goodwill to win back after nearly a decade of building cars that practically fell apart in a year or 2 in the late 00s and early 10s.

They'll catch up to the others in anti-consumer practices soon, but for now they're a good choice if you don't particularly care for performance or ride quality.

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[-] [email protected] 76 points 11 months ago

It won’t just be electric cars, it’ll be all new model cars from manufacturing companies. At least until ICE is phased out.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago

More like, until the Chinese weasel their way into the US market with cheaper-than-used cars to undercut the legacy auto makers. 10 years or so, it'll happen. And the big 3 will be begging for bailouts again. That is unless they smarten up and remember what made Ford what it is today.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago

remember what made Ford what it is today.

American can-do spirit, worker's rights, and throbbing fuckloads of antisemitism.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

I don't see that happening. The US puts large tariffs on imported cars to stifle competition. That's why if you look at Japanese cars in Japan or German cars in Germany they're often much cheaper and more powerful than their American counterparts.

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

German cars in Germany

German cars in Europe also seems to last pretty decently where as American-made German cars apparently keep falling apart after 5 years lol

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

They're already doing that in some parts of the world. Then when they get sizeable market share, they emulated what the previous car makers do. It's just not an improvement. It's more of the same, only the manufacturer is different.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

You know what Ford stands for, don't ya? It stands for 'Fix it again, Tony' hehehe.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

Yeah. GM's subscription nonsense is for their ice cars too. BMW's aborted seat heater thing was too.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

Cory Doctorow has written a great article about this phenomenon a few days ago: https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

Basically we move back to a feudalism world where you don't own anything anymore and you have to pay recurring rents. And as you don't own it they can fuck you over by increasing rents or disable features when you can't pay.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This is why I keep an oldish diesel car with no extra electronic features in my garage. No weird features, and can still run even without a battery.

Although, I think the reason I kept the car is because of my paranoia of an EMP event frying electronics.

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[-] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago

Have you seen the automotive industry as of late? This isn't a EV issue nor is it really new. We've had things like OnStar for years and the entire industry has started to chase the gaming industry's microtransaction BS for a while now.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/12/23204950/bmw-subscriptions-microtransactions-heated-seats-feature

https://www.thedrive.com/news/43329/toyota-made-its-key-fob-remote-start-into-a-subscription-service

The future looks like a potential live service hell scape for the auto industry EV or otherwise.

[-] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Everything is being ruined. It feels like hyperbole but I'm not sure it is.

[-] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yes, I know it's industry wide. What I'm saying is that with EV being the future of cars I don't want them all to be subscription based.

[-] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago

I have a Rivian and it works great with no subscription. The only thing you can add via Sub is a hotspot, which seems reasonable to me.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago

I'm okay with being charged a monthly subscription for something that has an ongoing cost, like mobile data. So long as I can still hotspot my phone and access 'premium connectivity' features over wifi, that is.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yeah about those 'premium connectivity features'... one of them is warning you that the road you're about to drive on has a traffic jam. And no, you can't have it use your phone's internet connection and you also can't do CarPlay or Android Auto.

For me real time traffic isn't a premium feature or an ad on. It's table stakes. And it should be free. Worse, not having it already almost makes your car hard to sell secondhand. Imagine what it'll be like several years ago when people start selling Rivians?

[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I agree, I do think they should allow both aa/cp, and wifi while driving so you can tether to your phones wifi. I'm not as doom about secondhand sales as you seem to be though.

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

At some point, there will be practically nothing else to drive...

[-] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago

All the more reason to support public transportation.

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[-] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Sure there will, always. Fix it yourself jalopies aren't going away. Get yourself a cheap-o used junker and mod it to be electric, if you can't or won't use ICE. DIY isn't just 3d printers and FOSS. Or get a bicycle and mod it into an e-bike.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

All these upgrades are one time payments for an upgrade, much like sales point dealer add-ons for conventional cars. However recently they did allow you to buy a monthly subscription to FSD. But the option to buy it outright was always there, and still remains.

this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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