Mildly Infuriating

1999: "Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization."

lol. 1999 was the best time for humanity; ridiculous!

2025: Oh shit...

This is despite a wider embrace of subscriptions in general…

I’m not sure this is the right conclusion. What seems like a “wider embrace of subscriptions” may be happening because subscriptions are becoming harder and harder to avoid. We don’t like them; they’re being forced on us. That’s an important difference.

The intent is to provide ~~players~~ owners with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different ~~heroes~~ horsepower.

The future is a fucking farce.

Ah yes, selling me something that is already available but is just locked behind software. And then trying to frame that as somehow a good thing for customers. Just insulting.

Fuck that noise.

What happens if the car goes out of range from the internet? Does the car just lose power the same way I can’t play Gamepass games offline?

I already bought the car with the hardware in it. I will do what I want with it.

My next car will be a 1995 Honda. I’m so tired of being tracked all the time.

At this point, companies will do literally fucking anything, just to pad the numbers for the shareholder reports. The Volkswagen group can screw itself. When we start decent seeing vehicles at a decent price again, maybe we can resume this conversation. Everyone’s tired of plastic garbage for top dollar

This is way beyond "mildly infuriating". Shit should be illegal, it's terrible for progress and an epitome of greedy capitalist bullshit.

Okay, it's high time for some serious regulatory intervention.

This is so distopian it sounds like a joke

Officially never buying a VW, BMW, Tesla, Or Mercedes. Who else tried this shit? Toyota, right?

German car industry has one foot in the grave. The German car industry lobbyist have successfully weakened or delayed many EU climate and sustainability initiatives. I fucking hope the German car industry collapses sooner than later and weaken Germany’s political power in the EU.

When buying isn't owning ..

This company already has another scandal brewing, since 2005 they have been installing plastic engine parts, particularily the intake manifolds have been designed as a single use item to be replaced roughly every 3 years. Custom aluminum will run you $1000 for the part itself if you don't want to keep swapping plastic, not to mention the ridiculous labour costs as well. Avoid!

So... Volkswagen is the next target for hacking ?

Car companies are parasites. America was built on trains and the investments into car infrastructure have paralleled US declines. Its just not an effecient use of public resources to build highways between cities.

You can get a lifetime subscription now, next year ‘we have reviewed customer choices and will be discontinuing the lifetime subscription’, so they can continue to milk their customers

How does this even work? It’s like they don’t realise they don’t own the car once it’s been sold. What’s to stop someone just hacking it and unlocking it?

This is grotesque. "More choice" is utter bollocks, they're insulting our intelligence with this, or maybe they're mocking us.

How about just let us get as much power as we can out of the car by pushing our foot down harder on the pedal.

This is a perfect example of "remove something, then sell it back to the customer".

Gonna go on youtube and let that Indian tech guy teach me how to jailbreak a Volkswagen.

Unfortunately, it was clear that everybody was going to follow suit after this:

https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/pay-to-unlock-features-tesla-style-gain-traction-in-motorcycling

designed to give customers more choice.

They are surely going to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Yeah, we've got more choice now.

I'm glad I used my freedom of choice to buy a different make.

Someone should compile a list of currently produced car makes and models that are free to modify and repair without software locks on them

I imagine it's a pretty short list.

If it's all software, that means that you can jailbreak it, just like a phone.

Unauthorized Bread

You're not giving more choice if it relies on you purposefully taking away things. That's called being predatory.