this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
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I agree that it's wrong, but I don't think, at least in the U.S., that there's any law against it. Like I said, HP does the exact same thing with their printers. I certainly would like for it to be illegal.
In Germany, BMW and VW both offer subscriptions for functionality already built into the car. BMW is notorious for their heated seat subscription here and the Mk8 Golf I leased for a while had a bunch of minor stuff pay-walled like automatic high beams, changing color of the interior ambient lighting, etc.
You can still outright buy those features but it’s totally insane to pay for something that’s already physically inside the car. And it’s not like these are budget brands that need to upsell a bunch of stuff to be profitable. A base Golf starts at €31k…
As for Tesla, at least where I am in the EU, there is only one feature offered as a subscription: a mobile network connection for the car. Keeping its SIM card active basically. That one makes sense, I'd say.
Then there are three "features" that you can buy outright after the fact: an "acceleration boost", that one is dodgy, and two levels of their auto-pilot/self-driving. The latter two currently do effectively nothing (especially in Europe that is also true for enhanced autopilot), so they are more or less an option to say "here have some money for future development" if you have too much...
No heating subscription or anything like that. I was going to say that I think the local laws seem to have at least discouraged them a bit, but BMW and VW are trying it too, so I don't know.
So I’ve been in discussions like this for equipment on trains. It functionally goes:
You paid for X. The hardware we plan to use for faster build supports X+Y. You can either:
I actually agree with the options prevented above. I just think that, as the owner, you should still have the right to reverse item 2 if you can figure out how. Especially if it’s out of warranty.