A pirated car would just be a more free way to access the $10k/yr pay wall you live your life behind. Car-dominant infrastructure is vendor lock in.

Edit: fixed picture

  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
    3213·
    6 months ago

    These are things that need a subscription, though… These are remote features that require internet connectivity and application serving. Things that don’t just come with a one-time fee. These are actual services being provided by Kia or Hyundai. This isn’t the same as putting a hardware feature of your car behind an arbitrary pay wall.

    • seejur@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      6 months ago

      149 to send a ping to locate a car? For an API call to lock unlock? How many API calls are worth 149 per year? In which world?

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
      132·
      6 months ago

      Make the car cost £400 more, once, when it’s bought first hand. That will cover any costs for the lifetime of the vehicle. There you go, chuck the subscription in the sea.

    • voxel@sopuli.xyz
      74·
      6 months ago

      yeah, i agree. it costs them money so there’s little to no incentive to run that stuff for free.
      also the price is reasonable (about as much as a single Nano ec2 instance on aws + mobile plan that’s required to connect the car to the internet) and pretty much negligible when compared to amount of money you’ll be spending on that vehicle anyway.
      then there are privacy concerns tho. do you trust kia with knowledge of your exact car location, 24/7? (I’d assume it doesn’t connect to their servers without the subscription?)
      also that information (Exact location of all kia vehicles, with exact model numbers and registration information) seems like a goldmine for car thieves if leaked (or accessed by a third party.)
      also, fuck heated seat other hardware/local software subscriptions

    • XTornado@lemmy.ml
      2·
      6 months ago

      I see your point but the costs to most if not all of what they offer are minimal… And for sure most of that could be a single payment when buying the car, calculated an estimated usage during the estimated life of the car, they could just be part of the price of the car not even indicated.

      • MethodicalSpark@lemmy.world
        42·
        6 months ago

        The vast majority of people won’t know how to manage a server in their basement. It makes no sense to invest in this capability that will be utilized by an extremely small fraction of car buyers.

        I would very rarely advocate for a subscription service but this one makes as much sense as a mobile phone plan.