Paying subscription for stuff that you owned till now
 

Check this article out. Car manufacturers getting even greedier

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/car-c...131000075.html

That's awful. But I guess it'll become a popular service to physically permanently unlock these features on cars.

I thought the same as Jakeri. it will have a new business to unlock permanently but I guess cars will be constantly connected to the manufacturer through the mobile network, so to unlock permanently they should disconnect the connection between the car and the manufacturer.

I can imagine the manufacturer won't permit it and to force customers to not disconnect they will works with insurance and they will be able to say insurance is invalid while the vehicle is not connected to them

Unfortunately I think it will be our future and maybe worst than that

until today, with an obd interface and with the right tool you could unlock stuff, with online services it's getting nasty for privacy and rights.
I believe there's something similar that john deere is doing in america, the problem is that an angry farmer with a half million useless tool in the barn might not be a good long term customer.

It remembers me of the old times when mobile phones bloomed and telecom companies started charging customers extra fees to unlock them in order to use different operators... Years later they realised that keeping a customer is not "locking him" down but give better options/services than the other competitors... So, I guess it's a question of time until they realize it doesn't work this way..

A similar story happened on the low cost air companies: remember when RyanAir wanted to charge for using toilets :bathbaby:

Yeah it's already the case with Mercedes. You get a store in your car to buy androidauto/music subscription/ remote car control etc. It's starting to become a profitable business model for them