this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Technology
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Cars have always been a subscription model, albeit in quotes.
You want to drive somewhere? You’ll need fuel.
Have driven a certain amount of miles? You’ll need to service your car.
Driven even more? Replace tires.
Brakes.
Fossil cars was a money printing machine.
That’s why the margin on sales are so low, the dealerships and manufacturers make it up over the lifetime of the car.
Electric cars threatens that model and we see manufacturers scrambling for more ways to make money so they have a leg to stand on when service costs drop.
In the meantime Audi e-tron owners seems to have little issue paying $5-600 for an “inspection” and another $4-500 (in total) for service items, including replacing a “leakage canister” (IIRC).
And best of all. When your car is old enough you come back for more.
It’s not like car manufacturers can twist our arm and make us go all in on subscriptions.
It’s happening because people are ok with putting their money down that way.
If we weren’t it would all be a failed experiment and everything would go back to normal.
The funny thing is how some manufacturers actually offer value added services as a subscription, while others - looking at you BMW and Toyota - are trying to de-content the car to put things on subscription instead.
I’m fine with value added services, less so with seat-heaters as a service.
That’s the kind of thing that - down the line - ends up with “oh sorry, we turned the server off so you can’t ever have heated seats again”, or in the meantime “server was down so heated seats didn’t work for two weeks in the middle of winter”.