In the end, the KIA car company made its cars into subscription models, I really hate this because in the end the car we buy with our own money doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. Should we finally buy an old school car ? so as not to be affected by this subscription models or is there a way to crack the software installed in it ?
It’s not like older vehicles came with those features enabled by default. On my 15 year old pickup you can’t have any of that even if you paid for it. I think this is not quite the same as other brands that are locking you out of features like heated seats.
Pretty sure there were cars around 15 years ago with remote start, heated seats, and fancy ways to lock and unlock. No there weren’t phone apps, but nobody wanted that - key fobs worked just fine.
My 2021 jeep’s key fob has an unbelievable range and works fine. My wife’s ford does have a phone app, but it’s completely free.
This is nothing more than a money grab.
Not “start from anywhere” like this service is.
How is it different?
They programmed all the features. The technical systems are the same and all that is required for an unlock is them flipping a digital button. There is no real cost on their side to provide these features to non subscription customers too.
Who is paying for the internet connection to the car for non subscribers?
Whatever brand company the car is. They like to sell / use your data, conversations, location history, if you had sex in your car, etc.
So there is a cost to them.
Enjoy your double dipping car manufacturers!
Creating such features isn’t free. Why should they be given away for free? I find it perfectly acceptable that I as a customer can choose not to pay for features I wouldn’t want in the first place. It’s a bit different if this was about stuff like ABS, heated seats or electric windows.
Then include it in the base price and be done with it. Why do they put it in subscription? To mask the actual price and through this pull off a massive price increase for the customer.
So force customers to pay for it even if they don’t want the feature? How is that a better option? What you’re saying is make it more expensive for everyone.
150$/year, so about 1500$ over thelifespan of a car is far beyond what it costs to implement and maintain these features. If everyone would pay it in the base price it would maybe cost 100$ in total. So already the people paying the base subscription are getting ripped off.
Why not just make every model with leather seats, headrest monitors, parking sensors, adaptive headlights, walnut interior trim, carbon fibre hood, 4x4 etc. and just make every customer pay more even though given the chance many of them wouldn’t choose any of these?
That’s just insane. There’s a ton of people like me who doesn’t want most of this junk on their vehicles and would just much rather pay 15k less for the base model without any of it. Should smartphones come with a mandatory Spotify and Netflix subscribtions aswell?
Because these cost relevant money.
Do you know why BMW proposed the subscription for the seat heating? Because it was cheaper to just build it in than to alter it repeatedely during production.
But the board computer will be the same. Communication devices will be the same. The backend servers at KIA will be the same and running services for each car anyway.
There is no relevant cost associated with it.
So mandatory Spotify and Netflix for everyone? The hardware is already there so why not?