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Comment by prescriptivist | Hacker News Reader

Scrolling through this I see a fair amount of references to subscription products as a long term growth strategy. HN sentiment seems pretty positive about Rivian so I'm curious what folks here feel about that aspect of their business?

In particular if one juxtaposes that strategy against what I perceive to be a general anti John Deere sentiment around here vis-a-vie subscriptions and their always-on products.

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I think you have this backwards - subscription implies if it's broken that's their problem. John Deer if it breaks it's your problem because you own it but you can't fix it.

I don't think I have it backwards, but I may be wrong. My interpretation is that there is there is subscription cooked into how they understand the pricing and return (profit) of their product. Based off this document this is part of their long term strategy. You may quibble about the specifics but extracting money from their customers over time is cooked into their model and that does seem worth noting...

Some subscriptions say they own the product, but they cover any and all problems with the product and they'll service it and replace it and upgrade it etc. Other subscriptions say they own the product.... but nothing and you can't do anything either. That's the difference between the two.

Tesla is also focused on subscription services (more and more over time). I haven't heard much negative sentiment about them using the model other than from people who don't think certain features (notably self driving) are complete enough to sell.

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