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Comment by lloeki | Hacker News Reader

> set car prices based on unlock-able features, basically what Apple has achieved with M1 on Macs

Huh? it's not like you pay more for hardware that's always been present. You get exactly the same CPU from entry level M1 to fully specc'd M1. It's not like you could turn a M1 into a M1 Pro or a M1 Max by flicking a switch or blowing a fuse, because the hardware is just not there.

Compare that with BMW who builds and sells cars with heater seats that you software unlock, but the hardware is already there, which is ridiculous. At that point all cars could have it enabled and it would barely make a dent in the price as the uniform assembly line that produces economies of scale is already in place. This is what Mazda is doing, basically you have two, maybe three trim levels, sometimes only one, fully specc'd, and that's it.

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Sort of related. BMW has been doing something similar for some time. I bought a certified 2012 3 series back in 2013. New, the car had an optional package for something called Comfort and Convenience Package or something similar to that. It was mostly lighting - footwell ligting, door handles lights, some other stuff. That package was not purchased on the car I bought but all the actual lights were there and someone created a way to turn those things on using a bluetooth/OBDII connector and a laptop. I think the program was called BMW What App?? Not certain of that. Anyway, I added all the lighting stuff...

I hope people don't buy these subscriptions and auto manufacturers give up on them.

edit: words...

> auto manufacturers give up on them

Unlikely. 20+ years ago I was working for a manufacturer of high end office machines and they were doing the same thing. It's been popular for a long time, just now trickling down to consumer hardware.

The app is called Bimmercode ($50)

Intel are working on CPUs where you enable features after paying a license fee:

https://lwn.net/Articles/884876/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30394918

Companies are really trying to take money from everything now...

Raspberry PIs have had a similar thing with VC-1 and MPEG-2 decoding requiring a small fee for about a decade now. In this case, to cover the patent licensing cost so as to not add it into the base hardware, but paying a fee to unlock features resident in the hardware is not new in computing. (I realize there are likely other/older ones I'm sure, but that was the first in my mind)

Raspberry probably isn't profiting from it though, they're legally obliged to do it, and they are also trying to make their hardware cheap as possible, so making it optional in a device like RPi makes sense.

I don't think the big players have the same intentions though.

Yes and even with MPEG-2 patent expired, they are still offering that https://codecs.raspberrypi.com/mpeg-2-license-key/ so not sure how that cost breaks down today.

IBM been doing that with their CPU's for a while. Current flavour of doing it is bannered under capacity on demand - https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/power8?topic=features-capacity-d...

In the field of physically-large CPUs I don't find this surprising. DEC 10's came in a wide range of models, and a KA10 variant for example could be field upgraded to a better variant, e.g. certain byte-access instructions added to extract bytes from 36-bit words, hardware floating point, and so on could be added. A technician would come and stick in some boards and wire-wrap them to the rest of the machine, and the machine's owner would pay for that. I only know of this with IBM and DEC but I would not be surprised if all the expensive machines were field-upgrade-able.

Yes the whole pay extra to unlock a feature that is already there is a big erk and whilst I can see both sides of the coin, it still has an edge too it that erks.

I shudder self driving cars and the prospect that companies would pay to nudge driver routes past their shops is perhaps another future concern, one in which would be a bit evil. Just as well some companies say they will do no evil, though non spring to mind thesedays.

Still, in tech the earliest type of paying to unlock a feature goes back to the 60's iirc and some storage drive that you would pay to upgrade and entailed an engineer comming out and flipping a dip switch to enable the extra capacity. Think it was some ICL kit, though was such a long time ago and never personaly experienced that beyond past down anicdotes.

It makes perfect sense for BMW, if indeed it's more expensive to make 800 cars with heated seats plus 200 without, over 1000 with heated seats (standardized).

Thanks to JIT and JIS, just-in-sequence the 200 non-heated once actually are cheaper. They cannot be sold as Seats as a service, nor can they be re-sold with heated seats after their leasing period ended. So all the SaaS model has to do is geberating enough profit to off set the higher cost of heated seats installed but not paid for. After that the re-sale value, for BMW, is higher and this whole stunt is a net positive for BMW.

> make 800 cars with heated seats plus 200 without, over 1000 with heated seats (standardized)

At that point you can spread the cost over 1000 instead of keep selling 800 at a higher price to cover for the 200. I also guess Pareto goes the other way (200 heated + 800 non-heated), which only makes it worse.

The fact that it doesn't make sense to the buyers should factor into whether it makese sense for the manufacturer. I would feel uncomfortable knowing I'm unnecessarily driving around a subsystem that's ultimately going to end up in the landfill unused. Unless I bite the bullet and agree to a recurring fee. Sure, many won't know or care, but then you're actively selecting for a less discerning clientele.

> I would feel uncomfortable knowing I'm unnecessarily driving around a subsystem that's ultimately going to end up in the landfill unused

Person from Minnesota drives their car down to Florida and sells it. Buyer has no need for the car's heated seats & steering wheel, so it goes unused. Are you saying this is a problem?

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