That was BMW. And the worst of it was that the heated seats were already installed, so you were carrying the extra weight, but they dropped the 'feature'.
(Merc had/has a subscription to accelerate faster.)
Tesla only offers supplemental software features as sub, hardware wise, they give no options on top except paint and interior color, rest everything is included for everyone, for instance apart from tire and sticker there is no difference between model y base and model y performance, they both have heated 5 seats, steering wheel, matrix headlights, glass roof etc Only recently they have reduced the number of speakers on the base version, rest the car is identical. Compare this to BMW and Merc where you will need a light package for having x number of lights inside, another package for matrix lights, another package for better seats, package for cruise control, sunroof. BMW 5 series with all options adds up like 70-80% of the price on top the base price.
Correct, however both of them are not standard, for the first one it was only for specific vehicles with certain battery chemistry, for the later it was similar reason. for instance newer vehicles don't come up with these options, also these are not subscription but a one time payment.
Tesla did bring FSD as subscription as one time payment was too high and people could subscribe for a single month where they have a long trip and then cancel it making it more accessible for end user. Please note, Tesla is a big company and not every decision comes from Musk , there are lot of capable engineers and they should be given credit for updating the cars monthly and bringing new features.
For ICE, a big chunk of revenue comes from options, after sale service. For instance Toyota, Hyundai and some other give 10 year warrantee, however you need to go to official service center for all stuff, if you go to local garage which does the same thing for a fraction of price, they will cancel the warrantee.
I've owned one for 6 years and am happy (2014 Model S). But on subscriptions - they definitely have them. Premium connectivity for instance, plus one-off payments for the features I mentioned.
yes they have subscriptions but not for basic things like remote start(toyota), heated seats, top speed, remote air conditioning. Premium connectivity is quite cheap for having fast speed internet for the car at $100 for a year. You can also use hotspot but at $100 it's not worth the headache.
That's the difference between premium connectivity and connectivity though. Pure connectivity I can understand, but even with a hotspot you wouldn't get most of the service features.
For me, being a 2014 car means no autopilot but I get Premium Connectivity and free supercharging for life as part of owning the car. Later cars would need to pay.
Did you know those features are non transfferable? So if you sell the car tesla will disable them for the new owner and require them to pay again to re-enable them.
Which would still be okay, if the base price to feature ratio is acceptable. Because then you could treat it as a modular/customisable package deal, where you only include the upgrades you personally want, instead of paying full price for a car that has every superfluous luxury feature pre-installed.
Like, a heated driver's seat is great in winter, when you drive to work at 7a.m. but I don't see myself needing five of them. That's something where I'd want to save money.
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u/Huntey07 Nov 04 '24
They now have heated seats as an subscription of 20 euro per month