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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • 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…



  • Yeah, part of the reason cars back then were so serviceable was because they broke down all the time. A modern car with regular servicing can last very long mechanically. The amount of electronic creature comforts, safety devices etc. are often what drives up repair costs and lead to some cars becoming uneconomical to repair. Cracked windshield? That’ll be 1000 bucks because the rain sensor for your automatic wipers will have to be recalibrated. Dead headlight? $2000 because we can’t replace individual LEDs, have to take the front of the car of to replace the whole headlight assembly and calibrate the adaptive front lighting system so that it follows road curvature again.