Comment by rkagerer
5 days ago
Honda is setting itself up for failure on the second disruption sweeping the automotive industry: the software-defined vehicle (SDV), which has core capabilities that can be upgraded and improved over time.
No thank you. Not sure why the author frames this as a good thing. They've been bamboozled by the automakers and have got it backwards - you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled, then paying rent (or a fee) to turn them on. I'm much more likely to buy from a manufacturer that doesn't play these games.
Most people including the author think more software = premium/better. But as software engineers, we know better. That's not the case at all. More software = more control by everyone else except you. Manufacturers. Governments.
For this reason, I always avoid cars with big flashy LCD screens that are central to controlling the cars accessories like sunroof, AC and other electricals.
The other issue is support. So many models stop getting updates after 5 years. So, if there is a bug in that big screen, you have to live with it for the rest of the car's life.
Finally, there's the issue of privacy. Most manufacturers contract with analytics vendors to send your data back to them. You can't even turn it off. For example, MG (now chinese owned) has Adobe analytics embedded into their big screens. The only reason chinese love using Adobe over other vendors is because they aren't blocked in China. So that's usually a dead giveaway that your data is being sent back there.
What kind of data? You will be surprised.
1. How many people are inside the car at a given point (measuring laden weight)
2. What are your favorite spots (your home, office, restaurants, etc)
3. How many people live in your family (average laden weight over time)
4. Your favorite routes, highways
5. If you are married/have kids
6. If you're having an affair
7. Your annual income, monthly spend, estimated net worth
And a lot more data points that I can list here. Remember, they have access to additional data brokers to stitch a complete user profile about you too.
There is also the issue of longevity. Most people don't expect 20 year old laptops to keep working, but they expect 20 year old cars to keep working. The software defined vehicle is a disposable vehicle, and that means it better be cheap or someone is taking a depreciation bath.
That's because cars are fundamentally hardware products, not software products. Yes, software powers the heart of it (ECU), but it is just another "part" in a million other parts, not the main central selling point of the car.
So, if I buy an expensive hardware product for something that can significantly alter my net worth, it is not unreasonable to expect it to last a few decades.
The analogy for this would be the same as buying a property/house. Just because it has a smart home module in it, doesn't make it the central USP of the house - people invest millions into it for the location and size (area), not for the software it runs on.
However, what's happening today is software is being pushed as the central USP of the car, kind of like how they did with phones - and that's not a good thing and which enforces my belief further that we need less software inside hardware products, not more.
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It might surprising to you, but most people haven't already locked themselves into the apple prison
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Cars with 20yo computers do work tho.
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It's not only bug fixing. It's what happens to phones too: updates for a fixed number of years.
I don't see the point to pay a premium for a new car (it's not a tool for my work) so I always buy second hand. My Citroën C3 from 2016 never upgraded to the new backward incompatible Android auto from the late 2010s. I bought it in 2020 and I wasn't able to connect to it with my phone from 2019 which came with the new Android auto. BTW iPhones could connect. Last time I checked was 2024.
This particular problem is not important because I put my phone in a holder close to my wheel and I get a better navigator than my car could ever be with its 3 colors LCD panel, but cars can last much more than phones and stopping support at any time during their lifetime could be a problem. I understand that supporting a 2016 car in 2036 could be a problem too, so just give us the mechanical part with the firmware of engine, brakes etc and the usual knobs and buttons. Each passenger has a personal infotainment system in their hands and spend their time liking at it with earpieces in their ears. No need to duplicate that in the car.
I'm past 130k km now so I'll be looking for another second hand car a few years from now. I'm afraid that it will be from the middle of the worst period of the car dashboards. Maybe I'll be partially saved by looking at a low price point.
I don't understand how they can get away with this even. Imagine if they discover a root exploit in whatever old version of Android they're running.
Now if there's no update, people can just hack your car via the internet or Bluetooth. While your infotainment can't access the ICU usually, they're connected via Canbus which has zero provisions for security, and taking over your whole car is usually quite easy from this point, as many have demonstrated.
And even if there's a fix, you have to drive to the service center who might not even update your car for free.
I'm just surprised how this hasn't ended in disaster already.
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> Finally, there's the issue of privacy. Most manufacturers contract with analytics vendors to send your data back to them. You can't even turn it off.
You absolutely can. Pull the fuse of the cellular modem aka "telematics unit" or even completely remove it. Some vehicles don't have a separate fuse, in which case you will need to physically unplug the modem. Do your research and don't buy any car where this can't be done more or less painlessly.
Yeah unless its integrated into another module. Or you remove or unplug it, and suddenly it throws an annoying error because a module is missing. Or even your car goes into limp mode because of some kind of weird cascade failure.
There might be some cars this works on now, but it's going to be harder and harder to do over time as things get more integrated, and the more they realize they want that sweet location data money.
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Well thats a nice theory but do you yourself give guarantee to all models that they will keep working after such potentially destructive 'hack' ? I don't think so. Its trivial for manufacturer to make it stop working because of ie some security blah and just having a big warning on the screen to go to the repair shop.
So a typical internet advice - don't listen to it uncritically, or not at all.
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Any sites which describe this across models? What else do you lose out on?
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I was told by a car dealer service guy that if the touch screen went on the blink, the car would be totaled. (Since replacing it cost more than the car was worth.)
I've often thought the touch screen should be replaced by a socket that accepts an iPad, and put the auto custom software on that. Why reinvent the hardware?
> I've often thought the touch screen should be replaced by a socket that accepts an iPad,
The last thing I need is Apple spying on me when I am driving.
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€1500 or so for Tesla to replace the screen, cheaper in many other cars.
That’s nonsense. Tesla screen for example is $1800 Australian + GST.
Cheap? No. But not overly expensive all things considered.
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It doesn't have to be that way though. There's a bigger scam in the tech industry in general that says the path we're on is the only path we can be on.
More software doesn't have to mean less value for the customer. More software doesn't have to mean your tools and devices are spyware machines. That's just the lie we've been told.
Exactly! There's vastly more software available for Linux than there is for Windows and the Linux experience is vastly superior. It's a real-world example of "more software == better".
> It doesn't have to be that way though
I see this being repeated for years, yet it is that way. And it is because technical possibilities doesn't matter.
> But as software engineers, we know better.
As users we should also know better. All too often software is used to remove functionality from your things, or add unwanted ones. Even just adding ads. It's used as bait and switch and can make the thing you bought unfit for the job.
Car software comes with so many locks and it's intentionally made to not be serviceable by the user in any way. You can't tweak it, replace it, take one from another car. It's your car, the hardware part that does the same job is yours, but the software that replaces it isn't.
And at the end of the day almost no buyer buys a car for future promised software features. They buy it for existing features and new good ones are just welcome. If anything, the software is just used as an excuse to deliver a half baked product and have it bake over the years in the owner's hands, so at the end of the ownership maybe it's what was promised in the first place.
> Car software comes with so many locks and it's intentionally made to not be serviceable by the user in any way. You can't tweak it, replace it, take one from another car. It's your car, the hardware part that does the same job is yours, but the software that replaces it isn't.
This is such an underrated comment.
Telling that to normies would usually give me blanks stares and "nothing to hide" or "don't care" arguments.
My "but your situation my change" and "gov can turn bad" arguments never hit. People are terrible at projecting themselves. That's why climate change is so hard to fight. It's too far and abstract.
Humans need to feel concrete and awful pain to realize their mistake and learn.
But I'm hoping the Trump situation is going to cause that. Now that the US is at the brink of dictatorship (some might argue it's already there), maybe American citizens will realize that putting their entire life on a centralized platform, having non encrypted communications and spying devices everywhere is a terrible idea.
I'm not very optimistic though.
And even if they do, in 3 generations, they will have forgotten. I have no idea how to fix this.
That's why I have a dumb car, but added a tablet with maps and can bus connection (OBD-II) via bluetooth. All in my control. The OBD-II adapter is not visible. Did cost my about 50€.
Maybe that's because software that we use every day (websites, saas, etc) generally get better over time and it's still relatively cheap. Meanwhile cars still rely on things like an archaic check engine light rather than just tell you what's wrong with the car and an infotainment system that's worse than a circa 2012 iPad.
People feel that cars haven't really improved much in practical terms over the last 20 years. At least to the layman, they don't feel smoother, safer, more comfortable to drive. They just got more expensive, more cameras and crap like auto-start that no one asked for.
So at least the hope is to take some of the best parts of modern software manufacturing and apply it to the car. Tesla did this and is why it was the first successful car company that's been started in the past 50 years or so.
Cameras and auto start are both godsends and way better improvements than anything else including computerized features
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I thought more software meant I could write a little Lua and get the seat in the second preset position when I pressed the key fob in a particular way...
> More software = more control by everyone else except you. Manufacturers. Governments.
Also more unreliability, because software engineers often aren't real engineers.
> The other issue is support. So many models stop getting updates after 5 years. So, if there is a bug in that big screen, you have to live with it for the rest of the car's life.
The problem here is (probably) the internet, which gives management an excuse to slack on QA. If there was no chance to ever update the software, they'd probably do a better job. But now with the internet, they can say they'll just fix it in a patch later, but then never actually get around to doing that.
There ought to be a law that says car software may only be shipped on console-style non-flash ROM carts.
>you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled, then paying rent (or a fee) to turn them on.
This is very much not what "software-defined vehicle" means which itself is very much not the same thing as EVs. It's possible to criticize the explotative business practices you mentioned (or bad UI practices like moving everything to a touchscreen instead of physical buttons) without linking them to other issues that have no real relation beyond falling under the general category of "technology".
At a societal level, EVs are generally better than ICE cars. At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced. These two things can be true without endorsing automakers who charge and extra fee to activate the seat warmers that already exist in the vehicle.
That's all motherhood and apple pie, but I'm sorry: the reality that we live in and incentives at play are such that if a capability can be exploited, then it will be exploited to the detriment of the consumer. Full stop.
It's interesting how many complaints I see on HN that are framed as if they're complaints about a specific piece of technology when they are really complaints about capitalism. I'm all ears if you want to criticize our entire economic system, but I think it's silly to have that conversation specifically in the context of car software rather than at a societal level.
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This is a classic example of slippery slope fallacy, and not in the spirit of intellectual curiosity for which this forum exists
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cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment
Haed disagree. You've been bamboozled, too.
Recalls of any kind are a signal to me the vehicle shipped half-baked. I'd rather have the car with slightly older features that took a little longer to release, but got it right before leaving the factory floor. Or at least the one with sufficient isolation between safety-critical and convenience features that recalls like those you describe are low priority enough to not be urgent.
The reality is, and this is just a fact that all cars have recalls. And currently there are already lots of recalls that require software. Now you just have to go to the dealship.
At best you could argue, maybe the software is better because a bug is more expensive to fix. But that can also lead to low risk bugs not being fixed.
Either way, the solution is not to prevent update, but make the cost higher for companies if their software or their update causes anything safety critical to be wrong.
Regulation around having a separate update for security critical things might be reasonable on government level. But usually the update is not forced in if its mostly features.
> I'd rather have the car with slightly older features that took a little longer to release, but got it right before leaving the factory floor.
Yes, I too have only ever shipped perfect code without any bugs, especially with incredibly large and complex software systems involving dozens of teams. You just need to spend another week or two and you'll get it perfect every time!
Cars have had recalls since the Model T.
Why is this as downvoted as it is?
Man. HN. This goddamn platform
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> "At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update..."
If an over-the-air patch can have that kind of impact, then what happens if security is compromised and that power is used for ill?
When was the last time you worried about someone cutting your brakes? A lot of times these hypothetical fears are disconnected from reality. Security is important, but people generally don't engage in destruction for destruction's sake so improving default safety levels has been a clear net positive for society so far. Maybe I'm being shortshighted and a future security exploit will change that, but it's not something I currently fear as someone whose car gets occasional OTA updates.
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> At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
Experience with boxed versus updatable software, particularly video games, says otherwise. When it costs a lot for the manufacturer to fix defects, they put more emphasis on not having them in the first place. Otherwise we just just a parade of defects all the time. Even if it's minor things and never fixed, the user can adapt; that's not possible in the face of continuous updates.
in addition to partially complete on delivery, and "oh that feature is actually really popular, lets paywall it in the next release" and other nerfs.
> At a societal level, EVs are generally better than ICE cars.
Cite your sources, please
> cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
If a "recall" can be fixed via software, doesn't that mean just shitty software to begin with? And that usually happens only when a car is infested with tons of software - proving the exact opposite of why we need less software inside cars?
>Cite your sources, please
we need sources for the fact an electric motor, all other things being equal, is better than a combustion engine? If you agree that people in general value the health of their lungs that alone is sufficient reason.
It's also becoming quickly a question of geopolitical resilience, running your transport system on dinosaur juice coming from regions where people blow each other up is bad in particular if you happen to be Japanese automaker Honda
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The dev that has never shipped a bug must file the first cve
Cite your own sources that they're not. And maybe try to avoid the ten year old nonsense that's frequently floated as "evidence".
On recalls -- like the one that said that individual icons have to be slightly bigger? Yeah, shitty software.
Or the one that made Tesla annoy drivers with a smaller timeout? That was actually a safety issue --- people would turn off FSD to adjust something and then turn it back on again. Much, much less safe.
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>a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced
Maybe? At least in my experience, once the cost of patching buggy software goes down, it typically means that the people become more willing to ship software with more bugs with a fix it later attitude.
I'd go with "please download this file onto a usb key and run the update when you have a minute" over the car doing anything "automatically".
> At a societal level, cars that can automatically fix a "recall" with an over-the-air update are generally better than recalls that will wait to get fixed until an owner schedules an appointment to have the car serviced.
This doesn't have anything to do with EV vs ICE, but whether it has a over the air updates and whether the problem can be fixed with a software update or not. I expect car recalls are pretty well into the noise in terms of "societal level" problems too aren't they? Even if they were not I expect whole "software defined car" thing, whatever that really means, has not resulted in mechanical defects plummeting, but rather just more software defects. Although it is quite possible EVs have less defects in general than ICE cars I suppose.
How many software recalls did something other than fix a bug or derate something?
What happens if they screw up the update or a net error occurs? Will this wedge the entertainment system, motor logic or what?
I’ve never had a software-based danger on my hardware-based vehicles. As such, there is a whole class of recalls that I never needed: all the ones you tell me I’m missing out on.
I'm impressed that you're daily driving what must be a 30+ year old vehicle. What model? Most enthusiasts have another vehicle to keep the miles down and use when the antique needs maintenance.
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As far as I can tell, a software defined vehicle is one that has fewer computers in it for cost cutting reasons.
There’s an argument to be made that this allows better integration between subsystems, and therefore a better user experience.
We have a vehicle built this way. It is a death trap. Most of its safety issues can’t really be blamed on it using a new computer network technology. For instance, if it is dawn or dusk (so, commute hours) the vision systems get flaky and it likes to override steering and brakes to force itself into oncoming or merging traffic.
However, one issue is firmly due to it being a software defined vehicle.
If you are changing lanes with the turn signal on, and hit a bump while the passenger adjusts the stereo volume, they’ll accidentally turn the hazard lights on. Af that point the steering override will kick in and try to force abort the lane change.
A normal car wouldn’t be able to wire the hazards into the power steering subsystem, and also probably wouldn’t have the button be part of the radio control panel.
can you share what vehicle that is? i don't know why you wouldn't just name it in the post...
Looks like it's the F-150 Lightning. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47421383
I chalk it up to poorly designed software from a company where software isn't the core competency, rather than blaming the basic concept of putting software in a vehicle.
"Bad software is bad" doesn't have the same ring though...
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Jesus christ. This should be just forbidden. What car is this? I guess you wouldn't buy it again?
I appreciate your sentiment, and I agree with you in the hypothetical universe I think you’re imagining. But in this universe, that ship has long since sailed. Cars are software. They have been so for a long time. The only difference between a Tesla and an economy car from Stellantis is whether the software is well written or not.
My wife has a 2015 Jeep Cherokee. For its purpose It’s actually quite a nice vehicle, sending aside concerns of mechanical reliability. But it also has many annoyances, and EVERY single one of them (with no exceptions) are software-defined bugs or behaviours, and all could all be improved with software updates. But legacy order has never cared about improving software after you bought the car.
For all of Tesla’s many faults, they one of the first automakers where it feels like the software is not abandonware. It’s a positive trend and it’s nice to see a few other manufacturers following suit.
I'm afraid it's exactly the opposite -- Tesla has awful software, and no self discipline about adding more bloat. There is a lot of rigorously designed software in cars where you can't see it. Jeep is no one's idea of quality in any respect though.
Legacy brands do significantly improve software as the model evolves, and provide firmware updates to earlier models. The best car is probably the last one before a new platform step change.
Tesla has also pioneered putting large amounts of software in mission critical compute like instrument displays and touch screens, disregarding decades of careful evolution in HMI and TCB design. There is so much wrong with their cars without even touching their autonomy system, a proven killer.
I know enough about the software in BMW (NBT/OS7) and Audi (MIB2/MIB3) instrument cluster stacks to know there's at least as much complexity — if not substantially more — in many of the legacy brands. Not to mention the exponential complexity which comes from their highly modularised approach, where systems from a variety of external suppliers have to co-ordinate with each other.
By contrast, the Tesla software stack is (or appears to be based on a few minutes of research) shockingly straightforward considering its apparent complexity. Rather than being a hodge-podge of vendor software, it appears to be Qt-based software running within a Linux environment on Nvidia and/or Intel chipsets. Reviewers routinely praise the screen for being responsive and "iPad like". If there's a bloat issue, it'd be interesting to hear some specifics.
As for your quip about "decades of careful evolution in HMI and TCB design" you might have been right 20–30 years ago.
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> Tesla has awful software
Tell me you have zero experience with a Tesla without telling me you have zero experience with a Tesla
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I literally worked on building the next generation of handheld OBD devices (m68000 based) that techs used to reflash Toyota ECUs in 1997. Automakers can and do update software after the car has been sold. Before that, techs would need to swap EEPROMS.
It’s getting better, but even now many traditional automakers strictly limit software updates to bug fixes only. And they'll probably only fix the bug if there's a legal or sales incentive to do so.
My own car is a 2013 BMW 125i. Its software stack received a handful of very simple quality-of-life improvements in 2014. The clearest example is the on-screen volume overlay. As delivered, my car’s volume knob provided absolutely no visual feedback.
If you ask nicely, BMW dealership can update it. But that's not enough. The way BMW "codes" your vehicle after a software update means that any features introduced after its date of manufacture are disabled. So even after I had the dealer install newer software (to fix a crashing bug with navigation) the volume overlay didn’t appear. What I ended up having to do was "recode" the ECU with a new delivery date. Literally all I did was change the delivery date in a pirated copy of BMW E-Sys, push the change to the car, and the overlay appeared like magic.
You can do all the research in the world about a car, learn everything there is to know, and decide "this is worth my money". (Bait)
And then your car's manufacturer chooses to use the update mechanism to modify the center console screen to serve ads[1] while you're driving. (… and switch.)
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/subaru/comments/1p57ohp/these_ads_s...
That's pretty disgusting. Advertisers are so starved from attention they felt the need to distract drivers and cause accidents.
Advertisers need to be regulated.
Cars have software. But I don't think cars are software. Can I apply a software update to make my Honda Accord into Tesla or Dodge Ram?
> The only difference between a Tesla and an economy car from Stellantis is whether the software is well written or not.
Is that actually true? I mean, assume I have access to all software in the world and all IP lawyers got kidnapped by aliens - could I just write a software for Stellantis Economy to turn it into Tesla (or vice versa)? I don't think so.
> Cars have software. But I don't think cars are software. Can I apply a software update to make my Honda Accord into Tesla or Dodge Ram?
That's a disingenuously literal misinterpretation of what I said. I wasn't saying that a Tesla and some economy car are identical, only that they have in common the characteristic of being defined at their core by software. It should go without saying that software alone can't turn a Cherokee into a Model Y for the same reason that software alone can't turn a HomePod into an Apple Watch.
But there's an obvious difference between a good software experience and a poor one. Like in my wife's Cherokee, how the radio always turns on every time you start the car, no matter what you do. Like how the digital speedometer is completely concealed by any warning text that appears. Like how all window controls stop working as soon as any passenger opens their door after stopping the engine. This is all software, and I write this in response to rkagerer saying "no thank you" to cars getting meaningful software updates.
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> But in this universe, that ship has long since sailed.
No, you're combining "there can be updates" and "there will be subscriptions, always-online and enshittification" as if it wasn't splittable.
It is. It can. It will be.
As long as there are people making purchasing decisions, no ship will ever sail. This is just passive HN fatalism as we know and resent it; probably a survival tactic to not go insane in the SV (or any large corp).
Even for me (a software developer who reads these articles) it's really hard to actually know whether the software is any good. Are there unlockable features? Are there subscriptions with reasonable costs? What happens if I don't have a subscription? How often are updates shipped? What's the general consensus around the quality of the system as a whole?
It took decades for people to land on - in fairness some times very handwavy -generalizations like "Japanese cars are reliable", "German cars are well built", "French cars are...french".
All this is now on its head. The landscape changes very quickly and you don't even recognize the brands. A Chinese maker of vacuum cleaners might have sold more cars than VW in 2025 and yet you never heard of them. A reputable car manufacturer like Honda could be a complete novice when it comes to EVs and so on.
Even though software is extremely important for how cars work, we still don't have easy comparisons. It's mentioned in reviews/tests of cars, but it's mostly "Yeah it feels snappy and modern, 7/10" and no real meat in the comparison. I wish there was an WLTP comparison scheme for car software which made it easy to compare.
It depends on who controls the software. In the US, the DMCA says it ain't you.
Looking at most modern cars, I'm of the view that most of them are so fully whacked with the enshittification stick, that it's pretty hard for them to get even more enshittified without risking sales to actual normies. A very normie person in my extended family decided against an MG because she could tell how bad the software was — an impressive feat of enshittedness.
Right now I don't need a new car, but if I did, it would be a Tesla for literally no reason other than their track record of delivering substantial software updates to existing customers for free, with no subscription requirement and none of the usual dealership nonsense or corporate shenanigans.
It's techcrunch. The angle of software-everything has to be there.
Why honda is killing EVs is directly related to just how damn cheap Chinese EVs have become and how stupid Americans are when it comes to EV efficiency. Who the hell wants large vehicles for EV when the best solutions are small efficient vehicles with long drive times.
Americans distort the market and margins, and Honda was never in the large SUV game.
Americans in most of their country are besieged by massive SUVs and pickups.
Driving a tiny little Japanese/Chinese import in, say, Oklahoma is asking to get literally run over.
I get the trucks and SUV's where you need them. I live in a rural area and without ground clearance and 4x4, I literally wouldn't be able to visit my parents. But my daily driver is a Honda Civic. Because 75% of my driving is done on paved roads that are well maintained (except in the winter).
What kills me are the MASSIVE vehicles in the suburbs though. Why do you need a 3 ton suburban to drive around 2 kids on very clear, very well maintained streets? Why would you buy a 4x4 truck when the most off road you'll do is driving over wet leaves on your cul-de-sac in the fall?
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I've got a Mazda 3 and I don't worry about SUVs or trucks running over me. Drive sober and watch the road, don't use your phone. Do this and you reduce your risk of an accident by something absurd like 1000x.
The reason people love massive vehicles is because they're shitty drivers, they know they're shitty drivers, and they have no intention of changing. They want to text while driving and they want it to be the vehicle's responsibility to keep them alive when they go off the road or get run over by a train, or drift into the opposing lane. Keep your eyes peeled for these morons, keep your head on a swivel. If you're attentive you're already in the 90% percentile. Paying attention is better safety than even a seat belt.
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I don't disagree with your first statement but there is a huge range of cars in the Japanese market. They make the Toyota Land Cruiser and Nissan Patrol after all, smaller by American standards but the biggest cars most other countries will see.
> Honda was never in the large SUV game.
(The Honda Pilot and Honda Passport stare at you, with deep resentment)
I'm not sure what exactly pisses me off so much in this idea - after all, I am not upset by the existence of $Brand Basic, $Brand Premium, $Brand Luxury and $Brand Now-Everybody-Knows-You-Have-Money, each of which has different features and bells and whistles. But put it in one single box and charge me monthly rent to go from Basic to Premium - and it does feel wrong. Even if TCO of Premium comes out as lower over time. I don't know why exactly it feels that way but it looks like it feels that way to a lot of people. Maybe it's daily reminder that all the luxuries are right here, right under your fingers, if only you weren't so miserably poor? Or the constant necessity of begging somebody else for permission to use your own car (yes, car loans, but they feel different)? Not sure. But it feels like it's real, even if it's only in my head.
I think you've captured it perfectly with "Maybe it's daily reminder that all the luxuries are right here, right under your fingers, if only you weren't so miserably poor?"
The enshitification of the car.
I don't think the author is saying "subscriptions are good", more like "if Honda isn't even building the capability, they're not even in the game"
And bugs, and DRM, and mass surveillance, and giving the power to the state to abuse even more of the tech, and giving police super powers, and giving bad actors (terrorists, assassins) the abilities to kill you with a virus, and the general concentration of power that this implies.
This is a terrible idea, and that's why I have mixed feelings about the robo taxi. On one hand, it's a great resource-sharing tech. On the other hand, all of the above.
I think its a rational move for Honda. They cant compete with tesla et al on EVs or self driving. People buy honda for reliability and low TCO. The world is heading towards lower disposable income for maybe a decade. Honda is playing by strengths, market positioning appealing to a particular target audience and keeping its margins. It adds.
I don't know the author insinuated that. It sounded more like, we release the car now, and as engineers come up with new capabilities, they get rolled out over a software update. Case in point was my car received an update that pulled in weather data. That didn't exist in the UI originally, and they added it with time.
Also because SDVs actually come with half baked firmwares that make the ECU crash, throw down the CAN network, make lights and screens act up...
Who cares, because they are now connected to the internet and can be updated with links at effective speeds higher than 10kbps, and without having to go to the dealer.
Honda is going to be the "opt-out" on that future car. And if one defect - the mafia has to pay you to raise your prices to prevent mass-defection by the customers from what is essentially a defect by default car.
Honda is going to get kickbacks by the EV industry to be more expensive.
It doesn't have to be ethical. Honda is missing out on something profitable.
Ironically Honda announced its move, precisely to bandage the gaping $16 billion wound from EV reorganization and retooling.
Not really. Competitors shifting focus out of the space, combined with their being incredibly competitive in the space (they're known for making some of the most reliable engines), says to me they've found their product-market fit. They've got plenty of time to quietly reboot and have another crack at the EV game down the road.
This is one of those times I'll trust the judgement of the grey haired execs who actually have all the numbers, over the plucky young journalist who's just spouting an editorial opinion. (Nothing against the latter, I just think in this specific case they're naive and dead wrong).
Maybe, but customers DO want it, without realizing. I'm a decent DIYer, but I realize my wishes is not the same as a typical customer. Sadly, but customers vote with their wallets.
What core capabilities of a car need to be improved anyway ?
Exactly. I dont want the software and I dont want something that I paid $100k to be gated tomorrow by a software update or broken by it. Or the constant reporting on me to god knows who. Until this dumbass touch screen design idea gets removed from a car, I am not buying such a car. Even it means paying more in gas. Touch and SDV is the dumbest thing in a car. My motion is not to be tracked and for sale.
I love the new BMWs. Their software is shit tho.
"Download more HP" is the new "download more RAM".
I hate to break it to you, but unless you own a mainframe that allows you unlock more RAM (that is already physically installed), unlocking more HP via software is actually how tunning works; and it is mot a scam from the 90s where you buy TurboRAM or whatever snake oil was sold back then.
> you're buying a vehicle that already has the capabilities, but are disabled, then paying rent (or a fee) to turn them on. I'm much more likely to buy from a manufacturer that doesn't play these games.
Ongoing subscriptions for access to physical hardware features like seat warmers* seems obnoxious at first glance, but a fee is more reasonable and you might find that there aren’t many auto makers that don’t do this or aren’t planning on it. BTW there’s very little in software or electronics that doesn’t do this, and many other consumer products do too. What might be less visible is how often the hardware is included and made trivial for a dealer to upgrade but doesn’t have a remote software unlock. It’s the same thing and it’s been happening for decades, but gets less outrage.
You would have paid a fee for the feature if it wasn’t included. Focusing on features being there already and locked being somehow “bamboozles” isn’t necessarily the right way to frame this, even from a pro-consumer perspective. This practice of building the high end model and locking some features behind a paywall makes the design and manufacturing cheaper for everyone by having only one design. The paywall model suggests that the design costs are more important than the manufacturing or materials costs of these features. That’s absolutely true for software apps, and it’s accepted by and large and we don’t feel like that’s a skeezy game. It doesn’t surprise me at all that with manufacturing at a global scale, it makes more sense to build one model and lock some features with software.
Do think of the potential benefits we get from this model - overall lower prices (in theory) from simplified design and manufacturing; the ability to upgrade later after you buy (or even downgrade if you don’t like it and it’s a subscription).
* AFAIK the BMW seat warmers subscription was a rumor at one point, got a bunch of online uproar, but didn’t actually happen? I’m not sure if anyone has actually done this.
It's legal to cut the seat heater relay out of the circuit and wire it to your own, right?
Yes, as far as I know, and I hope so. Looks like BWM did try it, and rolled the program back after backlash. Maybe I recall it was hacked too?
I don't disagree in theory, but:
<START AI SLOP>
Manufacturing one hardware setup and charging separately for features is not the problem. The problem is charging ongoing rent for a feature that isn't an ongoing service. A seat heater doesn't use a server, need content updates, or create meaningful recurring costs for the manufacturer after the car is sold. It shifts the relationship from ownership to permission. It also creates bad incentives: features can be removed later, tied to accounts, complicated for second owners, or turned into endless monetization opportunities.
<END AI SLOP>
I agree with that. I don’t know what your prompt was, but I wasn’t arguing in favor of subscription access to hardware, I said flat upfront fee based upgrades make more sense, and I was only pointing out that market segmentation over a single physical product via software feature locks is a pretty common thing and it’s not necessarily a bad thing for consumers, there are some side benefits, some tradeoffs.
I’m not personally into paying subscription upgrades, I tend to avoid them. But the one case where I could see potential for consumer benefit is when there’s a choice between a high upfront fee or a low subscription price. I would assume a subscription price over time will cost more than the upfront fee. However, there’s an argument to be made for lower cost access, for smaller barrier to entry for the upgrade, especially if it can be discontinued if the customer doesn’t find enough value.
There was a motorcycle airbag jacket that offered this choice and was discussed on HN maybe a year or two ago. People were, of course, freaking out about a safety feature being tied to a subscription, and I can totally understand the fear, but the rhetoric around it didn’t match what the actual product offered, and the company was offering the choice between flat fee and monthly fee, not demanding a rent-seeking only option. Personally I think most of the ick feeling of a subscription idea goes away for me if it’s not the only option.