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Oh look if you buy a "modern" car that has a "cool-screen" and useless features, it costs you money to update that shit.

How cool. New business opportunities for the traders. Since you can't really make these boxes on wheels more useful than they already are, now they are adding more and more useless "Features". That's the incentive in a trade-based society.

#TradeRuinsEverything #capitalism #money #cars

#Capitalism #money #cars #TradeRuinsEverything
in reply to Tio

Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK
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those look like basemaps for the navi, which are outsourced to TomTom (who at the same time have managed to enshittify the otherwise reasonable standalone satnavs by using poor quality batteries in later models)
in reply to Tio

metal gear remembrance
metal gear remembrance
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to be entirely fair, satnav companies have been doing this since the early 2000s at least, it's just that with modern cars the manufacturers can cut out the middle man there and just run the annual update racket themselves instead.

The far more dodgy aspect is that eg. BMW lock features like remote heating (so you can turn the heating in your car on in winter from your house so the car's warm by the time you get in) behind a literal monthly subscription

in reply to metal gear remembrance

metal gear remembrance
metal gear remembrance
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like with maps they'll be licensing the map data from someone else and passing the cost on (and of course that in itself is a Capitalism Problem), but for things like letting you turn on the heating via an app it's just pure greed
in reply to metal gear remembrance

Tio
Tio
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Yes indeed. This is just an example, but since the navigation is perhaps the central point of such a screen, and can be useful, it is ridiculous that you have to pay to update it. Because if you do not update, then it becomes entirely useless. All of those GPS modules, the hardware, and everything else. Pointless.
in reply to Tio

Mark
Mark
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Should have got a Kia, they provide the map updates for free.
in reply to Mark

Tio
Tio
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I suspect that's "for now".... but I had no clue about these. This is a car my parents bought and honestly didn't consider the GPS to be that important since you can use the phone for nav anyway. But thanks for the headsup I had no clue.
in reply to Tio

metal gear remembrance
metal gear remembrance
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@mark I would quite like to swap out my current dinosaur burner for an FEV at some point but also even this car which is almost a decade old now has an infuriating amount of extremely locked-in technology about it and :angery:

like what are the chances that EVs don't even have DIN form factor dashboard computers anymore so you just straight up *can't* switch the manufacturer's audio/satnav system with one that isn't, as they say, a physical instantiation of a business model

@Mark
in reply to metal gear remembrance

metal gear remembrance
metal gear remembrance
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@mark like on this car I could buy an aftermarket fascia and just stick a 2-DIN Android radio thing in there to have OpenStreetMap and a Subsonic client to use with my home server and connect a reversing camera that doesn't cost hundreds because the manufacturer radio will only work with the manufacturer's cameras

and somehow I highly doubt any of that is possible on a modern FEV

@Mark
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