Reply With QuoteHope Toyota takes it in the teeth for this.
Hope Toyota takes it in the teeth for this.
I still do not grasp attaching DLC to the keyfob as that has usually been the free method of doing everything and the app is what costs you money to do things. That is how OnStar works at least on GMs, You do not need it to do the keyfob functions.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
DLC isn't being attached to the keyfob - it's being attached to the control module that enables/disables remote start. It's just unfortunate that the signal from the keyfob is being routed through that control module, instead of just bypassing it entirely.Originally Posted by FilanFyretracker
That being said, even the ability of the keyfob to send a remote start command appears to be a surprise to (some of) the Toyota engineers, so it's not surprising that they didn't foresee this complication.
Weird situation.
Sounds like an accountant pretty high up the chain got an idea and didn't have anyone around to tell him how stupid of an idea that was.
BMW Clarifies Its Rules Around Subscription-Based Heated Seats (and It’s Not Quite What You Think)
Smart tech giveth and smart tech taketh away.
Clarifying building confusion, Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, aka BMW, released a statement that stresses the automaker will not offer heated seats on a subscription basis in the United States. BMW of North America doesn’t expect factory option purchase levels to change suddenly, so the policy will be in place for at least a few years. While BMW is selling heated seats for monthly fees in other countries, the luxury car company will still proffer a subscription-based app, ConnectedDrive Upgrades, on new U.S. vehicles.
The reason for the exclusion? U.S. BMW buyers will likely opt for heated seats upon purchase and there’s no need to build the infrastructure necessary for a subscription service.
“BMW customers in the USA demand a high level of equipment in their vehicles. Upgrades like heated seats are ordered on over 90% of the BMWs sold in the USA,” the vehicle company’s release said.
Monthly fees for front-seat heating cost roughly $15 in South Africa, $17 in Germany, $18 in the U.K., and $30 in New Zealand, according to BMW country websites. (Customers can pay for one month, one year, three years, or for unlimited service.) BMW faced quite a bit of social media heat on Reddit and Twitter. Dozens of posts criticized the car manufacturer for charging to keep rear ends warm.
“BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month. The auto industry is racing towards a future full of microtransactions,” Reddit user chrisdh79 posted.
The press release does assure buyers that, if purchased, heated seats will remain operational for the life of the vehicle. Looking at current prices and the potential for tacking on any number of streaming monthly services, those nickels and dimes can add up quickly. Staying up to date on technical workarounds from social users might help avoid monthly fees. Either way, the ancillary benefits of upgrades may be essential for drivers requiring certain safety and comfort elements.
The first two U.S. BMW ConnectedDrive Upgrades are a dash cam function called BMW Drive Recorder and a BMW Remote Engine Start, each available through download. (The BMW Drive Recorder engages the cameras needed for the dash cam to connect to advanced driver assist systems.)
BMW will encourage customers to explore new software-based features with a short-term trial and promote purchasing apps either for a time period or for the life of the vehicle. New car owners can test functionality with flexibility and decide if they want to lay down the extra outlay.
BMW’s U.S. website lists a manufacturer’s suggested retail price for a BMW 230i coupe at $36,350. This is BMW, though, so add-ons will ignite this price.
Of course US buyers expect demand high levels of equipment, Its our culture in America that if we spend a lot money we expect a lot in return. And brand image also brings expectation of features, Me for example I would expect a luxury car to come chock full of stuff, I mean fucking hell if a luxury feature like heated seats can come with my pickup truck it sure as fuck better come on a BMW or Mercedes Benz.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
Everybody wants to extract rents on everything they do because they can't imagine a business model that works without a constant stream of effort-free rental income.
My building is looking at the costs of installing EV chargers. The idea was that the electricity used would link to our individual units, so it'd just be a part of our normal electrical bill. What we got from strata council: a company that buys electricity from the provincial utility, then re-sells it to us to power the chargers. Because they get charged more if they try and buy at peak times, they have software in the chargers that "manage" the total output, keeping us from going over certain limits where additional charges would hit them (I think the cap works out to 3.5 kW per unit if all 60 are trying to use them, which is pathetic). They wish to charge us for the honor of using this software, to the tune of $20/month for each unit with a charger. For reference, an EV driving 50ish km's around town per day will incur roughly $25-$30 of electrical costs per month at standard B.C. Hydro rates. They want to almost double that bill with a mandatory charge.
Car companies want to make billions by charging monthly fees for features like heated seats — and electric cars makes it easier than ever
- Electric cars are less profitable for automakers than gas-powered ones.
- That means auto companies have to make up that margin elsewhere.
- Automakers could be looking to upsell EV-buyers with added features.
Pricey add-ons could start ruffling EV-buyer feathers — but automakers might struggle to survive without them, a new study said.
There's a simple reason why: EVs aren't very profitable for automakers — and certainly nowhere near how profitable gas-powered cars. A Ford executive recently told the Detroit Free Press its EVs won't be profitable until 2026. GM has said it won't make money on them until 2025. And Tesla didn't bring in a full year of profits until it had been running for over a decade.
But automakers say they are all-in on electric, so they'll have to make that up elsewhere. That could mean selling their customers on all sorts of things after-sale, like subscriptions and additional features or upgrades.
Automakers have been moving toward more pay-for features, anyway — though consumers haven't always responded well. BMW, for example, got backlash for a heated seats subscription. On the electric side, Mercedes is offering an add-on "acceleration increase." EV player Polestar also offers a horsepower upgrade, though for a one-time fee of $1,195.
"For automakers, because EVs aren't so profitable in the first place, the bigger gain is in… generating revenue from that customer month over month," Alex Oyler, director of North America for SBD Automotive, said.
Subscriptions and additional offerings post-initial transactions are part of why automakers are especially interested in leasing their EVs. If they can get consumers locked into an EV lease at a reasonable monthly payment, they could capitalize on that to later upsell them on more functionalities — made possible through over-the-air software updates — throughout the contract of the lease.
While consumers might need to warm up to the idea, the industry might not have much of a choice, according to Deloitte's recent future of automotive mobility to 2035 report. The consultancy estimates 50 to 60% of future profits might be at stake if companies keep going on with business as usual.
So major changes are in store as automakers navigate shifting consumer behaviors, industry headwinds, and especially, increasingly attractive competition.
"To be blunt, the price for inaction by industry players could be fatal, especially in an industry on the move in so many directions," the report said. Changes, including vehicle feature subscriptions "are expected to unlock a variety of new revenue streams."
A profitability crisis could also mean car-buying changes
Until now, only EV startups and Tesla have eliminated the dealer as a middleman and strictly use direct-to-consumer sales models. But even traditional automakers are considering the idea, driven by supply-constrained profitability gains and "a long-term trend toward tightening margins on vehicle sales," according to the Deloitte report — largely due to the EV transition.
"This looming threat adds pressure on the traditional dealer model and threatens to impact the bottom line," the report says. Automakers "are moving to create direct sales channels to forge relationships with the end customer."
Indeed, some are teasing the idea. Ford CEO Jim Farley, for example, has mentioned shifts in the company's go-to-market strategy for EVs, including more online sales — noting Tesla's model as a guidepost for getting more profit out of each EV.
I call bullshit on customers needing to warm to microtransactions in their cars, Customers do not have to warm to being nickel and dimed. Corporate world has to know one hard fact, the customer is ultimately who dictates how things work not Wall Street.
I do of course at least initially expect the companies to ignore the customer. EVs are optimal for the nickel and diming of customers because they are a much more integrated system on the computerization side of things, While gas powered cars are still in many ways nearly 100yrs old under the hood. Sure the engines are all computerized and we have computers in the cabin driving everything, But nothing stops a feature from being added by just tapping off the 12v power system that is there.
Also some US states are already talking about banning microtransactions in cars, Basically with laws that state if the hardware is there you cant lock it out. All it takes is a few big market states(population base wise) like say California, NJ and NY and they cant even threat to just not sell there.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
I'm not sure why we need legislation against non-compulsory subscriptions or microtransactions. If people don't want to pay for it, then don't pay for it.
I suspect the angle of the lawmakers is that if they are putting say the seat heating coils in the car and the button to turn them on, Than it should work when it rolls off the lot without any extra subscription.
Today we sail
On the Solar Rail
For there's much we just don't know
So farewell with a kiss
Then it's fast for the mist
Till we're sleeping in the cold below
I get what they're saying, but I'm having a hard time sympathizing with the view. Many companies in many industries provide price-differentiated levels of service or capabilities with the same delivery vehicle on the user end (e.g., ISPs, television providers, cloud storage, streaming services, airlines, to name a few) yet generally speaking, there haven't been prohibitions on any of it.
Heated seats aren't a service. There's probably some form of legal argument that charging for access to a good (or to not having the functionality of that good remotely crippled/disabled) is not a valid legal contract (or at least that it should not be).
I mean, if you extend this model, you could end up with a bed in which the spring compression settings are remotely controlled by the company. Upside is you get custom settings for your mattress. Downside is that the company can leave the springs fully compressed if you cancel your subscription.
They once said software and computing infrastructure weren't services. But it turns out anything can be a service.
Even cars. People already rent and lease whole cars, so it's not unreasonable to think that optional elements in cars can be subject to the same business model.
The article talks about mostly selling these subscription items to lease customers, where there's already a monthly payment to the dealership (in-house) or manufacturer. I think it would be a very tough sell to a purchaser, who would likely demand a significant part of the fees over the expected lifetime of the car be docked off the price up-front - and good luck trying to teach a random customer about discounting and net present value to drop that number to something reasonable. Or the customer just won't get the option, and the car companies will be in the position where they are providing an upgraded item on a car and not getting paid full value for it.
The lease model also has a fairly large flaw: leasing is attractive to customers where the vehicle has significant short-term depreciation. EVs aren't like that. They have long lifespans and seem to be holding short-term value exceptionally well on the used market. Hard to build a lease-based strategy when nobody wants to lease. I suppose the manufacturers could try to price the vehicles so high that leasing is the only practical option available, but between pricing themselves out of important government subsidies and customers just looking at the price (not the lease options) and deciding to get something else I feel like that's also a losing strategy.
I mean, none of that is true?
That's not the same business model though?Even cars. People already rent and lease whole cars, so it's not unreasonable to think that optional elements in cars can be subject to the same business model.
You might be right, but it's also something that the market itself can sort out. I just don't see the need for a legislative solution.
Yeah, a "Found On Road Dead" driving anywhere. I'll believe that when I see it!
Kidding aside, other than the whole self-driving thing, the thing that's furthest away from reality in this situation is a car that can lock you out of features that are also safety-related. A car that doesn't allow the windows to be adjusted? Or the seat? Lawsuit time, and that's going to eliminate the perceived advantages for Ford Credit of having such a system. Imagine someone who uses the car after their much-smaller spouse, can't adjust the seat back into the proper position, and ends up getting seriously injured or killed by the airbag deploying during an accident. And that's not even considering the security issue of having a car that could, theoretically, be hacked and bricked/driven away remotely.
Those push-to-lower, pull-to-raise buttons for your power windows? Made de facto standard by NHTSA after nine kids died from other designs over a ten year period, and an investigation found that it could be as many as a handful of kids dying to other designs every year. Less than one death per year, in a country of almost 300 million (at the time), was enough to prompt the creation of a rule banning something. And regulating this crap would be even easier than the button thing, because one of the biggest regulatory hurdles facing NHTSA is the requirement to take into account the costs to the industry to make their vehicles rules-compliant. For things like the power window button, that's usually accomplished by giving manufacturers enough lead time on the change that it's incorporated into normal product revision and redesign cycles. But this is supposed to be a feature that is included in every car and merely activated remotely. Unless the remote hacking thing turns into a legitimate problem, pulling it from vehicles is as simple as requiring all manufacturers to remotely disable the feature. They have to do that anyways for vehicles that aren't financed, so it's clearly something well within the normal capabilities of the manufacturer.
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