All of the features listed rely on external services and servers. I think it’s completely fair to put them behind a subscription. This example isn’t like the seat warmer subscription where you unlock hardware.
If you don’t like subscriptions, don’t buy them. You can still drive your car without all of this extra crap.
I think the remote start is through the Kia app, not the remote. I would imagine the idea is you can turn on the car and turn on the heat when it is cold outside so you can stay in your home a little bit longer.
yeah, the last 2 cars ive bought had this. no subscription, no app, and it works fine from the very nice remote that is also the key. maybe kia just sucks
By removing the feature from the remote and moving it to an app they turn a cost of a more complex remote into a profit of constant subscription money.
Based on the context of the other features, I assume this isn’t “start your car through your remote” but “use an app to start your car”. Same with all the other stuff.
Some manufacturers give this stuff out for free… for a while. There’s no money in giving away free services, so assume any internet operated service by any manufacturer can and will make you pay for a subscription.
“Usage data” for these types of features is completely worthless to anyone but car manufacturers, and KIA isn’t going to sell their own analytics to a competitor.
More likely, this data will be used to justify shutting down servers for certain old models of car when only a few people still use them.
You assume they are only collecting usage data with their apps, which is typically not the case. Some of them request every permission on your phone just to collect as much as they can.
It doesn’t matter where the data goes, or if it’s kept proprietary. Businesses wouldn’t collect metrics if it didn’t translate to dollar signs for them. It forms their business decisions.
And it not being shared with other businesses is only one point of concern from a privacy perspective. Another is that large corporations are hacked or otherwise infiltrated quite frequently, resulting in user data leaks.
Yeah my car has remote start. I can do it with no subscription with my remote. Additionally I can pay for OnStar and do it through the app. It also has heated seats and a heated steering wheel, and unlike some brands those aren’t locked behind a subscription since they are literally just vehicle hardware, not cloud services.
They make you use the app to get the advertised features. Hyundai/Kia are terrible about this.
Oh and the entire implementation is half-assed. I bought my Hyundai used and can’t even use the paid features because they won’t transfer the account to me.
I actually like Hyundai, but I will never again purchase one of their vehicles because of subscriptions and what I mentioned above.
My car offered a remote start on the key fob and even the dealer told me not to buy it because the range was so short. I ended up installing an after market Viper system that is cellular and costs ~$100 per year when I get 3 years at a time. So even the after market solutions have subscriptions. If you need a cell connection you have to pay for it
It plays on the classic consumer mindset of “if it’s an option, I need it!” Spoiler: you don’t need it. I understand you want those features, they’d be a nice luxury… but you don’t need them.
Servers on a KIA scale aren’t free. I’d rather see KIA put this stuff behind a subscription than give it away “for free” by making you pay for 10 years of service upfront, hiding these fees in their pricing.
The cost isn’t in the servers themselves or the bandwidth necessary to keep this shit running, it’s in the network people maintaining yet another rack of servers, the team of programmers kept around to update old APIs, the third party subscription fees to keep data up to date, and the customer support for when this shit breaks.
Maintaining the infrastructure needed for all the shite that modern cars are packed with, including the person cost of maintenance is not “pennies”. You don’t just spin up a EC2 instance and call it a day. You need infrastructure across multiple countries, service level agreements, people on-call to handle issues, account management with third-party downstream services, etc.
With that being said, you’ve already paid. You paid for the car, which costs an obscene amount already. If you own the car, you don’t need a separate payment for the software.
All of these functionalities can be provided by a simple WebSocket + REST server. The car connects to the WebSocket, and you can access these functionalities from your phone either with WebSockets or regular HTTP requests.
Cheapest servers with backend written in JS can easily handle thousands of WebSocket connections, and written in Go tens of thousands WebSocket connections. They would not ever need like over 100 of these servers GLOBALLY, which would cost them around $3000 monthly.
That’s the price of 60 subscriptions, which is freaking ridiculous.
Agreed, as long as they don’t go the BMW route and charge for heated seats, or the Toyota route and charge for remote start using the key fob.
Unless that “more” button is doing a lot of heavy lifting, this is basically paying for the Internet connection for your car to be able to connect to a phone app through Kia’s servers.
You’re excusing their asshole design of requiring the server in the first place. They never needed it before. It doesn’t make sense having to pay a subscription for a fucking car.
Only thing I can think of is subbing once then canceling. Download all the episodes while you were subbed. Do that once a year or so and you get a deal?
I feel like podcasts are too niche to have a scene that rips and uploads episodes.
Too niche and the people who are paying for premium podcast content also probably feel more like supporters of content creators then someone buying a big studio movie.
Do you walk into the dealer and state affirmatively “I am not buying a car here because I don’t want a subscription!” and then turn around and walk out?
Won’t matter. The company knows you don’t want this. They also know that enough other people will pay for it that it won’t matter. These subscriptions are not new. If people put their foot down and refused to pay for them they would go away, but the opposite it happening.
I just Googled and the 2024 Telluride has an MSRP of ~$55,000 in my area, used 2023 models are about ~$45,000.
Looking at an auto loan calculator, that’s between $700 and $900 per month with a 96 month 9% auto loan.
Point is, if you can afford the car you’re probably not worrying about the subscription except on principle. If you can afford the car and have principle concerns you’d probably buy a different car.
And anyone who would pay that much for a car is a gullible fool who doesn’t deserve to keep their money anyway, so that tracks, yeah. What a fucking waste.
I definitely agree, but I went with the option which would have the lowest monthly payment. On the other end local rates have a 36 month loan at 6.75%, but that’s $1,800 per month.
The example is the Telluride though? That’s the whole point. Of course any sane person would pick a cheaper car. For that matter why would you ever buy a brand new car?
I was initially skeptical but if they actually sold lossless, Blu-Ray quality rips of videos, I’d pay more than a few bucks per movie or show for that.
This would be awesome, but I just don’t see it happening this way. They have to work with the copyright holders who set those kinds of terms and who have the majority of the leverage in negotiating those terms. Unfortunately, I don’t see any reason this kind of deal would be made.
The business model is to force consumers to purchase and repurchase the same content over and over. Changing only the format, or distribution method, or platform of consumption. This kind of deal would undercut that business model.
First of all, take the HDD offline. That means power it off (Turn off your computer) and do not use it, by removing it AND unplugging GENTLY from your computer and putting it in a safe, dry non-vibrating place. If this drive is the only drive in your computer, you need to stop using that computer.
Second of all, you must purchase a new hard drive! Save up for it if you must, you must have a new Hard Drive or SSD to save the data.
Third, you must wait until you have purchased a new hard drive for the data. once you have done so, you can take your computer offline again, and reinstall/re-plug in your drive, then bring it back online and copy the data over to the new drive immediately!
the magnetic domains slowly relax. if you plug it in once or twice a decade, you can significantly reduce the changes of that happening to an extent that you lose data.
For the price of car it’s kinda cheap at first but the longer you used it became more & more expensive it was before you realize it
Imagine this scenario you bought the car for 100K + you pay for subscription for the car annually for 10$ + you had to pay for it’s maintenance at mechanic (things get broken the longer you used, you need to replace the broken part as soon as possible) + you had to pay your electricity or gasoline bills for fuel that car you used + emergency bills like towing the car, etc
No because this is only for connected services. All of those features work without any cost with the included remote. OP is expecting connected services for free for the life of the vehicle.
The Tesla works just fine without the app on your phone? You get a card that works as a key and don’t need a phone at all.
I’m assuming opening the car remotely means when you’re not near the car ( e.g.: at the office while that car is at home ). The touchscreen function isn’t nearly as horrible as you make it out to be, while I do agree a physical button is more practical in some cases.
Hyundai/Kia have also had their fair share of recent car troubles with recalls because they spontaneously catch fire wether you’re driving them or not.
Having said that I don’t really have an opinion on the brands. I know some people who drive it around and they all seem quite satisfied with the car. I’m sure they’re great cars :)
The jab @kia was only in jest. There are other brands who want to use subscriptions for things like seat heating, … Which I find a fecking awful evolution ( I’m looking at you bmw ).
IIRC you can also control it with the steering wheel without using the touch display as well.
If you press the button on the handle to trigger the wipers once. It will also bring up the menu on the screen ( bottom left ). You can then use the right wheel button on your steering wheel by pushing it left or right to move between off and auto with all the different speeds in between ( slower being near off and fast being near automatic ).
Source: I had a Tesla company car. Some things worked well. Other times the car felt quite cheap for being that expensive ( mainly interior and finishing ). The car paint seemed a lot thinner compared to European cars too. ( Company cars are common where I live, I’m not a rich big ass CEO )
Alternatively you can use the voice control as well apparently. I’ve only used the voice to initiate calls though
Don’t you think it’s interesting that even though the vast majority of car trips are a single person going less than a mile, every time someone brings up bikes the rebuttal is always “what if I need to move my family of 16 and their refrigerator 800 miles in freezing rain!?”
The US was built on rail. The infrastructure could be fixed. It’s a choice not to fix it. It would be better to put in energy to fixing this than creating an open source way to access a proprietary transit system. Infrastructure is the problem, car vendors are just exploiting it.
Edit: correction, 52% of trips in the US in 2021 were under 3 miles and 28% are under a mile according to US DoE (energy.gov/…/fotw-1230-march-21-2022-more-half-al…). 2% we’re over 50 miles. Over 60% were under 5 miles, which is still pretty easy with an eBike given functional infrastructure.
Yeah, but I’m not from the US, I’m from a small town in Europe, you can put “all that effort” in both places at the same time because they are 2 completelly different problems
They aren’t two completely different problems, they’re in direct opposition. Making cars more tolerable increases demand for cars. Improving mass transit and bike infrastructure decreases demand. One is sustainable, the other is not.
I think the term you mean is old car especially from before 2018
in the end old cars basically open source you can modified it whatever you want as long as not breaking regulations
piracy
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