I thought that this video is interesting. Is it the future of getting us to pay more for a vehicle after the initial purchase price? What do you think?

 

My Subaru comes with a nifty phone app where I can start the car remotely, play with HVAC settings, locate my car, set speed alerts, boundary alerts, and the car can be disabled if stolen, etc. I really like the features and they are free for 3 years, after 3 years you need to pay a yearly fee to keep the system working. I may give it up at that point, I am really tired of every monthly fee I need to pay, you get nickle and dimed to death.

 

Mercedes is offering an extra 100 hp for $1,000 a year....

 

I likely will never own a car requiring this kind of stuff. I despise it with a passion. I have actually purchased one car new, ever. And it is a 2005 model . Even our 2013 Tacoma I bought used. I likely will focus on used cars for as long as possible. Partially because I hate having car payments for very long and partially because it is harder and harder for me to find new cars that interest me enough to spend new car pricing AND now have to start worrying about this 'Car features as a service" nonsense lol. I also really have a dislike for most Software as a service models, so it just carries right on over to cars that are designed this way.

The only way it will stop is if people refuse to buy it. But people just keep gobbling it up to the point we eventually will be paying much more money in monthly fees to use the products we already purchased. People complain and complain about big corps doing this type of thing, yet just eat it up when purchasing new products so I do not see it slowing down much to be honest.

 

Our Volvo, Land Rover, and Porsche all have apps, same as your Subaru that ours are free for a period as well. The Porsche app is fairly useless so I won't renew that one, but the Volvo and Rover ones are good for remote start and that's a definite plus during the winter. $99 per year isn't horrid, but I'm not about to start paying for using seat warmers, sunroof, etc as that is just a money grab.

 

maybe if they thought they could get more money from me, they would update my radio link in my cars to something current. almost all of my cars had a 3G cell phone interface which is now useless.
Although back in '07 time frame they offered an upgrade when they went from analog to digital networks and I couldn't see spending $2500 bucks for it.

 

Well on the flip side, eventually some other new tech will com out and they will sunset 4G and other platforms will have the same issue We develop IOT devices for other companies, so it is about time for the wave of "oh my GOD 3G fallback is going away and we have to redesign again!" customers to start showing up. Went through that wave back when 2G fallback was sunset years ago.

 

I hate debt with a deep and abiding passion. Allowing a third party to influence my life over debt has been a battle ever since my youth when I saw my mom and dad crying over how they were going to find the funds to pay for the mortgage and my sister's medications. I have not had a car loan since 1981 and I paid off my last mortgage 2001. These fees for features are nothing more than debt to me and I'll never let myself be captured by it. Never!

 

I don't even like traction control, don't want all this other crap on my car.

 

Stability control saved my arse a few months ago Rob. I was in my 2019 WRX at the time, and I was amazed by how it worked. I travel on this road that gets tons of construction dump trucks on it, I swear the road has a coefficient of friction near zero, it is so slippery even in the dry. I took a 90 degree corner in the wet in my WRX and the rear end slid out really bad as it was crossing over the yellow line. Stability control applied the brake to the driver rear wheel and the entire rear snapped back into my lane and I continued on seamlessly. It was so quick and smooth, it really saved me from going into oncoming traffic.