The shady practice of locking power behind a subscription

Subscriptions are hard to figure out. Just look at the streaming industry. Varying pricing, ads, no ads, HD, 4K, it's getting weird. The same thing is happening in the automotive industry. Every car manufacturer is trying to figure out for which 'extra' people are willing to pay for on a monthly basis. For now, that extra seems to be more power.

Multiple brands are already offering moar powah for a couple of euro's a month, and the latest is VW in the UK. It's charging ID-buyers 16,5 quid (about 20 euro's) a month to reach 'the full potential of their cars', as AutoExpress says.

To me it seems that framing the option to get more power totally the wrong way. It's been industry standard to pay more to get a more powerful model. Perfect example to me is the BMW 118d I drove around for almost a decade. That exact same car was available as a 120d, which just was less limited in de power department. If I wanted more horses, I had to pay up. Just not on a monthly basis, but all up front.

Granted: after that one time purchase, the power was always available in the car and I could resell it for a bit higher price. But this also came with a downside. If, at the point of purchase, I chose to not buy the moar powah, there was no way to get it after I got the car. (Yes, I know chiptuning is a thing.)

The framing in the old days always was: want more, pay more. And you should look at the option to get more power when you want it, in exactly the same way. The way AutoExpress and many other outlets are framing these subscriptions is the other way around and weird if you think about it. They're saying that, in this case VW, is limiting cars before they sell them SO they can later extort buyers to get more cash by unlocking the power the car should've had in the first place.

In that case I should sue BMW for selling me a BMW 118d which was intentionally limited in horsepower. They should've sold the 120d to me for the cheaper price. And it's not only the 118d I bought, I should get a refund for buying the most powerful version of the X1. I should've gotten the maximum power while only paying for the base model.

Get where I'm going? By looking at it from that perspective, subscriptions for more power don't make sense. In fact, I'd argue not any subscription would make sense. I want the best Netflix 4K experience without ads, but only pay for the ad-supported version.

Don't get me wrong, I'd very much like to live in that utopia in which corporations would just offer the best of the best at the absolute base price. But that is just not going to happen. You'll always have to pay more to get more. It doesn't matter if that is through a subscription or a one time purchase. In this case it's regrettably a subscription, which seems to be our future. 

In other news:

You know that Lucid Gravity we talked about a couple of days ago? Yes, that one. It has been presented and named the Gravity X. I got it right. It has wheels, a dash and extra lights. But it won't be built, unless you want it to be built. Lucid is asking for your honest reaction, so please give it to them.

Did you know carmaker BYD started out manufacturing batteries for many kinds of portable devices. In fact, there is a good chance you've had an iPhone with a battery made by BYD. Why am I telling you this? To make sense of this next part: BYD is trying to get foothold in the tablet market. You know, the one owned by Apple with a little slice going to Samsung, that one. BYD's tablet will work with an upcoming car model they've yet to introduce. And even before that I see so many issues with this integration. I already don't really like tablets in cars, let alone the twisty ones BYD introduced. And now removable ones? I'll pass.

There is only one person on this planet that thinks the Aston Martin Valkyrie looks boring. That man is called Ron, Supercar Ron to be exact. He took his hypercar to Monterey Car Week to show it off. But he must have had the feeling he wouldn't have gotten enough attention in the sea of Valkyries that he expected to show up. But Ron wouldn't be Ron if he didn't take it upon himself to fix that problem. So he got the hot glue gun out, ordered millions of rhinestones off Amazon and got to work (I may have made that last part up). The end result is, let's say, unique... Or as Ron puts it: bedazzling.