More and more car manufacturers these days are becoming interested in the recurring revenue model, with Volkswagen’s ID.3 BEV being the latest to have an optional ‘motor power upgrade’ that you can pay for either monthly or with a ‘lifetime’ payment.
As the BBC reports, this option is now available in the UK, with customers offered the option to pay £16.50 per month or £165 annually, or opt to shell out £649 for what is reportedly a ‘car lifetime’ subscription.
It appears that this subscription service has been in the works for a while already, with it being offered first last year in countries like Denmark, following which it appears to be rolled out in other countries too. The software unlock changes the maximum motor output from 150 kW to 170 kW, which some users report as being noticeable.
Regardless of whether you find this to be a good deal, the concept of Car-As-A-Service (CAAS) has becoming increasingly prevalent, with the BBC article referencing BMW’s heated seats subscription and Mercedes’ acceleration subscription. Considering that all the hardware is already in the car that you purportedly purchased, this is sure to rub people the wrong way, not to mention that from a car tuning perspective this seems to suggest that third-party tuners don’t need to apply.
Thanks to [Robert Piston] for the tip.
Really – people are hacking cars as long as cars are a thing. How hard can it be to buy the cheapest model and bypass all the subscription nonsense with modified software? Probably harder than Rigol oscilloscope, but i bet not impossible. Game console manufacturers are at war with hackers for a long time now and so far they always lost.
True, but bricking a console one thing. Bricking a car is a whole otherer story.
WHEN dear HAD, when will we get an edit function?
Never. But we get vertical videos now.
This,
And an ability to login so user credentials don’t have to be entered every time a post is made.
Please?
I disagree with both of you.
However, I DO want for replies to go to the place your are replying.
And that used to work, so that it so often doesn’t work anymore must be an ‘improvement’ then.
I think you can log in with WordPress and stay logged in — as far as the credentials go. That shouldn’t expire.
Editing: we still have not found a plugin that’ll work with anonymity, still allow edits, and pass a security audit. We’ve gotten 2/3, though! If anyone knows of a good one: editor@hackaday.com
Please don’t allow edits. If someone can’t take the extra time to read through what they wrote the first time, it probably doesn’t really need corrected. And once people start editing what they wrote, later replies and comments never make sense.
Well but console is just single board with CPU and stuff. Car is much more so you will most likely never brick “car” just some of it’s many subsystems, replacement of which is always much cheaper the the whole car.
“replacement of which is always much cheaper the the whole car.”
Citation needed. Often times the board/module is available at the dealer, and with dealer shop rates and special diagnostic equipment needed to ‘code’ it, the price can easily surpass a good used replacement car 🤷🏼♂️. The real problem might be “cheap credit”. Junkyards are full of cars that got a fender bender, or a bill of $2,000 to fix the air conditioning, and now are headed to be crushed.
Hacking EV’s is easier though – one electric motor looks very much like another in control terms, so swapping motor controllers or motors or even battery packs around between vehicles is far simpler than transplanting modern ICE engines with their highly complex control systems and miles of plumbing.
Also VW being kings of re-using platforms there will be millions of vehicles from 5 different manufacturers all running the same motor/controller/battery architecture just with slightly different parameters, and as such a massive surface for hacking.
VW just released the most efficient (and powerful) electric motor. Munroe Live did a teardown. Might be the hot rod motor of the future
The most powerful electric motor ever?
Nonsense.
The most powerful electric motor is the size of a ship.
Be aware.
Electric motors have been really good for some time.
Gains in efficiency are fractions of a percent.
See also ‘How to lie with statistics’.
Only buy air cooled German cars.
Are the electric VWs water cooled?
If so, hard NO.
The thing with a car beyond the crazy expense if you do bork it in a way you can’t recover is the warranty and liability if you have any problems with your very expensive box on wheels – actually putting your hacked car on the road, even if the hack amounts to nothing more than a stock manufacturer configuration enabled just without paying them for it could be legally problematic for you if anything ever happens.
Also many of these vehicles if not all of them will come with over the air updates, if your car isn’t stock you could either miss out on the update that stops thieves trivially stealling your car, or worse have the update logic still in place and try to work but brick the vehicle because it wasn’t in a stock state…
The solution here has to be buy and maintain older cars, build your own, or go looking for a company that still respects the customer and buy that one, even if the vehicle is otherwise less impressive.
In the EU, Euro 7 standards will require tamper proofing of vehicle software and confirmation by vehicle inspectors so you’re unlikely to get away with running your hacked vehicle on the road unless you can put it back into a stock state for the inspection.
VW is champion is this (dieselgate)
A lot of jurisdictions are now coming up with (or starting to enforce existing) legislation that makes it illegal to break software locks, and even more so to provide information on how to do so to others.
Look to see whats going on where you live and write to your representatives about this.
At least in the US, it’s unusual to actually “break” the software. Much more common is to insert some analog electronics, or a uC with A/D and D/A ports, between the car and the computer(s). The most common and simplest “hack” is to intercept the coolant temperature signal and cause the computer to think the car hasn’t warmed up yet. This will increase fuel flow, disable cylinder shutdown, and disable engine stop-start. This can usually be done with nothing more than a resistor in series with the engine coolant temperature sensor. Honda Odyssey owners have been doing this for a decade now. Mustang owners were doing this in the 90s.
On this VW, I would be looking for shunt resistors used to measure inverter current (and these shunts are likely to look like short little copper buss bars) and “messing with” the signal they try to send back to the computer. Otherwise, the voltage drop across the motor might be what is being measured and that can be subverted as well. You might want to look for things measuring motor winding temperatures – their signals may need to be “corrected” as well.
Best of all, if VW pooped out over the air some kind of tamper detecting code, all it would see is a 100% stock computer and firmware.
But I wouldn’t worry about even that. VW’s software development “efforts” have been so comically bad they’ve resorted to paying Rivian several billion dollars to license theirs. Given automotive engineering timescales, it’ll be a while before any decent firmware rolls out of Wolfsburg.
Oh yeah, messing with current sensing for a multiples of 10kW motor ist totally not insane…
Oh Noooo.
Multiples of 13 ponies!
Definitely ‘insane’.
Have you ever met a ‘racer’?
The only thing stopping them from running fuel/ox mixes cribbed from ‘Ignition’ is availability and valve life.
IIRC there as an exotic fuel F1 era that was kinda crazy, but I’m talking about on the street.
You can bet there are already street e-cars w plates and inspections running light rail motors and double battery packs.
A console has to run a variety of software a car not so much. Also you can make it so the firmware is tailored to a specific VIN number so one firmware image won’t work with another car. There are all sorts of nasty tricks you can do to lock down a system that are not practical on a console. Even if you are able to hack it. Don’t plan on going to the dealership ever again.
Ok as a reply to many here in this thread
I am in Europe.
1) Road legality – nobody checks software after crash – it just don’t happen – only thing that is checked is if the car has valid inspection certificate
2) Technical means to stop hacking – depends on how expensive the subscription is, if it makes sense, ways can be fund – even if that requires replacing chips with burned fuses, that refuse to boot something not signed bu correct certificate (see for example how Tegra boot process works and what is the difference between locked / unlocked chips)
3) Inspection – well after seeing what can pass inspections and how to do that – if you want to, it is possible, there is always a way – also nobody checks software now. Cars with modified maps in their ECUs pass just fine – no problems. Completely removed DPF? Well lets say it’s harder, but possible as well (should absolutely not be possible, but is).
4) Dealership – oh don’t even get me started on that – i bought my last car new – 4 years warranty – and i am happy it is over now – its bigger PITA to go to dealership for warranty (for which they will do everything possible, including blatant lies to claim this and that is not covered) than to go somewhere else and pay cash to get something fixed. Dealerships are absolute hell.
And last OTA – oh my got – this should be illegal. Plain and simple – OTA for cars should be illegal. Maybe infotainment, ok fine – but anything else just NO. It creates culture, where you start shipping software like it is mobile app. That is BAD.
To summarize – i will do everything but pay subscription for anything, that already has the hardware in and is just soft locked. One time unlock i may consider – will not like it but may consider – subscription? NEVER. It is not a service, it doesn’t create recurring expenses on the side of manufacturer. And i know it is inevitable – many people are willing to do that so the corporations will force that on everybody. There is no way to stop it, only way is to get around it.
As time goes on, the options available on the new car market become less and less interesting – cars that are too complex with special parts and software to be repaired at home, cars that cost too much to buy, cars that won’t hold value on the second hand market. Cars that cannot pass MOT inspection if there’s a 1 cm bump in the bottom pan, because it’s off-specs according to the manufacturer battery safety guidelines – and which costs a whole battery replacement.
Not to mention the nanny devices like speed limiters that shout at you for going over the limit and throttle you down if you refuse to do it yourself, while the speed limit was read wrong by the camera or not kept up to date in the GPS database, that require a ten-step process to disable every time you start the car, and “lane assists” that try to kill you by steering you in front of an oncoming truck because the shoulder markings were unclear.
I don’t want to own a car like that. As conventional cars are getting older and harder to find a good one, there simply isn’t any option left. To limit the damage, I will eventually have to give up owning a car. Then I will use uber, taxi, or car share rentals, or regular rentals if absolutely necessary.
It will suck, but buying a car would suck even more.
“1) Road legality – nobody checks software after crash – it just don’t happen – only thing that is checked is if the car has valid inspection certificate”
that’s not remotely true. a tesla in coral gables crashed after traversing a small hump in the road (the crown of a cross street) at 90mph. and then an almost identical crash happened 2 miles from my home. and in both cases, the crash reconstruction people used the software on the car to report its throttle activity and speed in the seconds leading up to the fatalities. it seems like even though the mode of crash is now well-known, and even though it’s happening frequently in podunk nowherevilles like my home town, they are still investigating the software. just as a pro forma step when filling out a bunch of DOT forms whenever there’s a dead body.
now, they aren’t necessarily looking to ensure it is stock software…but they are certainly going to ask questions about how it has been tampered with if the new software doesn’t cough up the logs in the same way. and as it becomes “a thing” — as cars become more computerized and as features like “speed limit following” are added and then bypassed — it’s going to become a central part of every investigation.
Coral Gables is in Florida and he’s talking about Europe.
The US has a whole culture of ambulance chasing and big lawsuits, so there’s an incentive to figure out who’s guilty so the lawyers can rip them apart. The cost of the investigation falls on the losing party. In Europe nobody cares, because going to court typically costs more than you’ll get out of it anyways, so there’s no grand crash reconstructions and investigative teams unless it’s a matter of high public interest.
As long as the car passes official inspection (corrupt or otherwise), it’s assumed to have been “safe” at the time of crash and you’d have to push and bully the bureaucrats and officials to get anyone to investigate. Otherwise it’s just “s**t happens, deal with it.”
CAAS looks like something created by mobsters on a CAR-tel meeting.
On the bright side, this means there’s more things for us to hack for free upgrades, a bit like a Siglent/Rigol scope.
I still absolutely hate it though.
Except your Rigol / Siglent cannot hit and kill bystanders if you brick it.
Brick my VW and it wont either
On test equipment it makes some sense – a huge amount of the cost of them is the calibration and certification they will perform, selling the same hardware without that cheaper is just logical for all involved. If you can’t afford or don’t need the calibrated platform you can still have decent hardware, and should you push it beyond the level it was sold as handling any errors are your problem.
The stuff they are doing this rent seeking on in cars however really does not – maybe you could justify an extra cost to the 100% identical hardware platform if they were unlocking a really higher wear and tear super aggressive sport mode that actually would cost the company more as they are offering 30 years of ‘free’ servicing and battery replacement on their EV’s or something – likely going to be taking you for a ride pricewise still, but at least then there is some justification and service for the price.
It would make sense in theory, but…
It’s just about selling the same product at different prices to different people to maximize profits.
If the customers were completely unaware of what other people are paying, the company could ask from each and every customer the maximum price they’re willing to pay. That’s kinda like what people do on crowdfunding platforms (e.g. Patreon) where the product is essentially the same for all, but you can choose your “level of support” to get some nominal perks like “early access” or “watch me draw” that don’t really add anything of value or demand any extra work.
When the customers are perfectly aware of what other people are paying – because the prices are static and public – there would be only one optimum price that maximizes price x sales volume, and that leaves a sizeable portion of the potential market untapped.
That is why the company has to make an excuse to sell the same product to different people at different prices, by offering some nominal perks that don’t add anything to the cost of making the product, and don’t really add anything of value to the customer either – it’s just that they need to believe they need the expensive option, or they don’t care because someone else is paying (e.g. the government in some research institute).
“which some users report as being noticeable” — so the same phenomenon as people claiming their overpriced Monster cables were worth the money because they don’t want to admit they were ripped off?
It is 13.3%, so it should be noticeable, but in reality how much it is needed for a average car driver if you already have 150KW, which is not a small value.
Those who want it, can still pay, it is normal for years, you had the same engines with many power outputs and you needed to pay for more. You may look it the same way.
If it was just a software switch then it was always awful and should have been destroyed from orbit.
Its just even more obvious now that its clearly just a simple software switch and its still evil.
Rent-seeking European manufacturers struggling to remain profitable seem to be hell bent on losing the last shred of their business to cheap Chinese manufacturers. If a strong EU-China automotive tariff is implemented then expect CaaS to go away, but car prices will increase as well.
Long past time for someone to develop and open-source car.
I agree for the most part but I think it will be subsystems first.
It wouldn’t be street-legal. Even if it met all functional requirements, there are bureaucratic process requirements. There are even good reasons for the process requirements, though there has been enough regulatory capture that good reasons are irrelevant to the foreseeable future. With software, there is usually at least a carve out to permit open source, or a protocol won’t be adopted. That cultural change hasn’t fully happened in hardware, let alone in regulatory agencies. Being a test case in hardware — let alone something considered safety-related — will not be cheap.
“It wouldnt be street legal. Even if it met all functional requirements, there are bureaucratic process requirements.”
Thats not necessarily the case in all locales. In the US, at least, the regulatory hurdles of an OpenSource car would be minimal unless you were attempting to manufacture and sell them. The requirements for homebuilt automobiles arent a significant obstacle in most states.
I built RQRileys Trimagnum with a goldwing powerplant, Welding the frame from tubestock, and fabricating the body from foam and fiberglass. Ive titled and plated several street legal sandrails over the years. I helped my brother build a lotus inspired Locost.
Passing a state inspection is usually just a matter of properly lighting, equipment, and clearances as long as you live in a state/region that doesnt do emissions testing.
Can’t EU do something about this CaaS BS?
Subscription based engine performance, with a motor that “starts” with the push of a button. Flip-flopping mirrors that are more likely to fail then normal mirrors more costly to replace and show object that are closer than the appear. A vehicle of which every iteration of the model contains more plastic that bends when you touch it, unless it’s very cold, then it just breaks. Hidden camera’s behind the company logo that constantly amaze/annoy the driver behind it at every traffic stop because it’s flipping the logo up/down to enable a clear view for the camera. Crazy blinding headlights of which one shuts of when taking a corner. Look silly and nobody knows the true advantage of this. Fancy rims (or caps) that are just a tienie wienie wider than the tire so that eventually you’ll scrape them against the edge of the pavement during parking leaving a very visible scratch that’s unfixable. Nice and comfy adjustable seats, hard top, safety glass everywhere. Disc brakes on all the wheels. Windshield wipers, with an interval, adjustable. You can even wet your windows to clean them with those wipers when it doesn’t rain and some models even have this for the rear window as well.
And all in a shiny white package so that you’ll see all the dirt all year round even if you just returned from the car wash. All those fancy features nobody really needs and makes a car less feel like a car.
As you might understand, I’m not ready yet to give up my model T yet, I just adjust very slowly to any form of automotive progress.
I still miss being able to roll down a car window, rather than relying on an unreliable electric motor and interface. But the fancy stuff works well enough for the first buyer, especially if they are the sort of repeat customer who doesn’t keep the car for long. Alas, I don’t see a practical solution to these misaligned incentives.
I despise subscription anything. Subscriptions are death by a thousand cuts. Anything I can’t purchase directly is a hard sell.
so youll opt to shell out the £649
If I pick the £649 option but lease the car. Is it a subscription again? :thinkingface:
I might shell out the 649 but only if it couldn’t be turned off by someone other than me.
Yes, a leased car is on a subscription plan.
Or the £0 option…
see what I dont get is if there is a £649 one time fee,
How is that any different than choosing to pay the extra fee for an optional turbocharger for a bit more power on an IC car?
Electric motors are almost always capable of quite a bit more power output than the stated rating. Theyre intentionally underpowered to reduce failure rates. People have used CRV IMAs which are only rated for 10kw by honda at 40-50kw in several diy EV conversions.
The difference is that one gets you additional hardware installed and the other is just software gimping of the car.
What’s all the fuss? You can also buy the 170kw version up front in one payment just like any other option on the MEB platform. Or even if you buy the newer models 2nd hand. If the previous owner had that option, it stays with the vehicle.
Speaking as a Cupra Born owner, the platform has really matured with the current 5.x software.
Probably because they’ll eventually use the “just a license” excuse to steal more money from you to keep it lifetime or not.
We’ve already seen that exact thing happen with SAAS products killing lifetime software.
This isn’t just about one car—it’s emblematic of a broader issue. Electronic devices are now deeply embedded in every corner of society, and we’re sliding down a slippery slope to hell. When you buy something, it should be yours. Not leased, not remotely controlled, not subject to someone else’s terms. Ownership means possession, and possession means control. Anything less is a quiet erosion of autonomy.
https://youtu.be/Lgh8e0dW0eQ
where did all the comments go?
Good question. :Thinking Face: Some things are too close to home to have out in the open I guess…
This is why I don’t buy new cars and will fight tooth and nail to never own an EV.
You fool. If you think this is exclusive to EVs then you aren’t thinking. All cars are rolling computers now.
I am far from a fool. I can make my own ECU that will make the engine run. It might not meet emissions but I can get it drivable.
A fool is someone who buys a car with a component like a battery that that will last about ten years then cost more than the car is worth to replace it.
You should listen to Louis Rossmann tear apart this self-destructive mindset.
We cannot keep going, “your dumb for buying X, shoulda got Y if you didn’t want to get screwed”. It just let’s those companies get off and the users blamed, then that wedge allows more companies to do it until it gets you too.
If your car doesn’t pass emissions then it’s entirely possible for you to find trouble with the law. So even your option is a non-starter.
If we reject the idea that we should be voting with our wallets on the free market, we’re either capitulating entirely, or adopting the idea that we should be voting by government instead.
And the latter idea is terrible because it invites more crony capitalism, where the government makes regulations to control the corporations and then the corporations take over the government to ignore your vote and install favorable to them regulations instead.
Well you clearly have been fooled by oil industry in believing that the batteries need replacing after ten years.
No lithium battery I’ve ever owned has lasted more time.
But oh, the “new ones are better”. Yes, that’s what they said ten years ago.
It looks more like they’re trying to use the knowledge they got from the old VW emissions scandal to play a little trick on the government and the taxman. Your car will be stuck in low emissions mode until you pay for the upgrade, so presumably liable to lower levels of the various emissions based European car taxes. How will governments in turn react? Accept it? Insist that cars are liable for further tax when upgraded? In which case whose responsibility is it to inform them of the change? Or treat all cars sold as having the higher potential power? Is the upgrade even legal in California?
Its an EV, how bad can the emissions get? Will it refuse to drive through a Taco Bell drive thru in low emissions mode?
How bad can the emissions get? Depends if it catches on fire or not.
I think this development also needs to be viewed in the context of the fact that more and more private individuals are LEASING cars instead of BUYING them. “Car-as-a-Service” is already the trend of the times. Buying a new car and paying cash, to drive it until it literally falls apart – that’s becoming increasingly rare for new car purchases. It will, of course, be interesting to see how these vehicles fare on the used market …
but whether you lease or buy, the cost per month/year is roughly the same
Leasing is more expensive, because you’re paying a middle man.
have you done the math?
It’s just not possible for it to cost less, when there’s two companies instead of one demanding profit for themselves, and the government demanding taxes out of both, and you.
Company A sells the car to company B, which lends the car to you. You pay company B’s expenses, wages, and profits, when you could be paying company A directly and skip all that. Even if B can get the car from A cheaper, this is offset by the fact that a leasing company cannot lend you old broken cars, so they have to keep replacing their fleet faster than regular car buyers would, and therefore spend more money on A, which means you’re paying more money to B.
It’s easy to just look at the leasing prices. The companies generally charge you the price of the car over 5 years, and if you keep leasing you end up paying double the price of the car over 10 years.
There are times when leasing is much cheaper. But as the saying goes, when a business does something that doesn’t make sense, the explanation is usually fraud or taxes. (Don’t rule out negligence/incompetence, but car leasing has gone on long enough at enough scale that those start to be driven out.)
That is of course the point: they don’t.
The used car market is not profitable to the car manufacturers because old cars compete with new cars for sales. For the car manufacturers, if they could destroy every car that is older than the mandatory warranties, they would, so they could sell new cars. The only problem is that new cars cost so much that only 15-20% of the market can afford them.
So, if they can drop the up-front cost to consumers by selling cars as service, they can sell people more new cars, and it doesn’t matter that the cars don’t last past 8-10 years because such cars don’t contribute to the bottom line of the company anyhow.
I think you can log in with WordPress and stay logged in — as far as the credentials go. That shouldn’t expire.
Editing: we still have not found a plugin that’ll work with anonymity, still allow edits, and pass a security audit. We’ve gotten 2/3, though! If anyone knows of a good one: editor@hackaday.com
Philip K Dick anecdotally predicted a future where appliances require fees and wont work without payment. The appliances also act as AI debt collectors.
And there’s Cory Doctorow’s novella “Unauthorized Bread” describing a future in which the toaster that’s built into your subsidized apartment will only work with the toaster company’s overpriced loaves.
Ugly car, and an even worse business model.
Glad I got my VWs back when VWs were sane. Won’t make the mistake of acquiring one of these monsters :-)…
The “pay a flat fee for a software unlock of some extra horsepower” has been around for quite a while. However, I don’t like the precedent of making a subscription out of it. Subscription fees make sense for something that delivers new content (e.g. satellite radio or cable TV), but not for hardware functions.
My 18 Camry lost Remote Start function from the keyfob after I missed subscription payments.
This is the endgame for personal transport. Don’t own the car, just pay for the ride, like the world prior to 1910 or so when urban vehicle ownership was uncommon.
That said if I pay to own something I don’t want someone remotely sabotaging or even interrogating it for any reason.
Most people ranting about EVs don’t realize that pubic transport is usually cheaper and more effiicient.
But ultimately useless if it doesn’t go to where the passenger wants to go.
“Usually cheaper” implies I have to walk between stops.
“public transport — cheaper or efficient” … But not convenient to get from here to there, or to fishing spot, back country, or available when I want to get to work, or back and forth to next town, load up the bed with plywood, or load up some R/C planes and head to the flying field, or haul gun stuff to our gun club, or .. ….. You see, just not practical for things people do.
That depends entirely in which part of the world you are in. Where I am (Greenwashing Sweden) it’s invariably cheaper to drive than to take public transport as a single person. Add a passenger and there’s no way public transport can compete. Obviously this is ignoring investment and maintenance costs for the car, but in my and most other car owners cases here you own a car because you need it, not because it’s fun to have.
Or in other words if I didn’t work somewhere where public transport is completely unavailable, whilst I live somewhere where public transport is expensive but mostly works well despite the authorities doing their best to ‘improve’ services by chopping routes, then owning a car would be a burden and unnecessary luxury. Helps that I got the most economical car available in 2012, and there hasn’t been a better one since thanks to Euro 6 regs…
It costs me 12 cents per km to drive my car. It costs me 2.50 to take the bus, regardless of distance.
If I take the bus downtown and back, it costs about 40-50 cents per km depending on where I want to step on or off the bus. At night the price doubles. I would have to consistently travel more than 20 kilometers round-trip on the bus before it would cost less than driving my own car, but unfortunately most locations I would want to visit are just within the 10 km range, or outside of the city where the flat fee no longer applies.
Plus the fact that the bus takes twice as long to get there, and it’s never available exactly when I need it, adding up to an hour of waiting time on top, whereas with my own car I can just go whenever.
I’m guessing you have never lived outside the core of a major city and that city hasn’t neglected its public transportation because there are many locations untouched by buses, subways, and trams.
Much as I wish that was true it really isn’t far to often, at least for the user. Especially when compared to the EV user – as most of them will have charging capacity at home, even if its pretty slow that means every morning you have say 300miles of range, and if you also have solar its reasonably likely that those miles don’t cost you anything more than the tyre wear and the fraction of the cost of ownership that journey represents, which if you actually use your EV will be a really really small number.
PS Trains are particularly crazy in price around here
How’s that solar panel going to work in the night?
What you mean is “If you have net metering, it won’t cost you a thing”, also assuming that you can produce 100 kWh (300 mi) of electricity over a day, which implies around 40 kW-p of solar panels. That setup alone will cost you the price of a second car.
So it’s not exactly free driving, unless, again, you get subsidized, which means everyone else is paying your driving. It’s only profitable to you as long as the vast majority of other people aren’t doing the same thing.
Yeah the average person doesnt drive 300 miles per day though. The average American commuter drives approximately 30.1 to 37 miles per day.
Chevy equinox EV has an 85kwh battery, which gives it a 307-319 mile range. So the average driver only needs ~10% top off each day. Lets call it 9kwh.
The average american address gets between 3-6 hours of sun per day. So using the standard 75% derating the average driver really only needs around 4kw of solar panels/home battery capacity to top off their EV.
On average, a 4 kW solar panel system costs $11,000, according to real-world quotes on the EnergySage Marketplace from the first half of 2024.
The starting price for a 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV is approximately $33,600.
So pretty far cry from a second cars cost. In fact, you could get your solar charging setup and the base level Equinox EV for just a little bit more than the $43,400 RS trim package.
Depends. If you compare to an equivalent gasoline vehicle, an EV cost 10k more, and if the solar system adds another 10k, we’re in the territory of buying a cheap ICE car new – or some reasonably priced second hand car and a decade worth of fuel for it.
Doesn’t really matter what type of metering you are on all the electricity you have prepaid for is covering your mileage and then some. Which when most folks don’t drive very far most of the time is almost certain even on a tiny European city house with solar. And as the cost of solar is almost all in the fitting and certifying required to be grid connected etc – costs which do not change much for adding as many panels as your house can fit…
Even if your car is never home while the sun is up, most solar setups come with some battery and most of the time you are getting paid for exports even if its low rates – making it nothing more than playing games with accounting as to if your solar is paying for your driving miles or everything else in your house instead.
” If you compare to an equivalent gasoline vehicle, an EV cost 10k more”
Sure a chevy equinox LT is ~$11k more than the cheapest new internal combustion engine (ICE) car available in the US , the 2025 Nissan Versa.starting MSRP of $18,330. But thats hardly an equivelent vehicle.
2025 Chevrolet Equinox LT: Starting MSRP of $29,995.
2025 Equinox EV, an all-electric version, has a starting price of $33,600, Add $11k in solar and youre still only at +50% for fuel free.
That works out fairly close to your estimate of 10 years worth of fuel based on average US drivers annual mileage, epa estimates of the equinox LTs fuel economy, and current gas prices.
Thats as EQUIVALENT as you can get. The SAME vehicle in IC vs EV.
“and if the solar system adds another 10k, we’re in the territory of buying a cheap ICE car new”
Enjoy your gas powered versa backup vehicle instead of driving your roof powered Equinox. Im sure it will come in handy once or twice a year when you need to drive more than 300 miles in a day.
“or some reasonably priced second hand car and a decade worth of fuel for it.”
Reasonably priced second hand car isnt a reasonable comparison to bother with. No need to go hyperbolic to make a point.
Let me guess youre one of those “I get 50mpg in my 1989 Geo metro and it cost me $28K less than a new prius that gets the same mpg. Youre just wasting your money.”
it is, if your demand is “a car”.
Let me remind you that 70-80% of the entire market for cars is second hand, because people can’t afford new cars. People have to take loans to buy second hand cars, too.
A huge portion of the costs of an automobile are essentially fixed … If you ever need a car, the extra cost of using it for more trips is often marginal.
“Considering that all the hardware is already in the car that you purportedly purchased, this is sure to rub people the wrong way”
you could say the same for PC, it has all the hardware needed to run almost any software, that doesn’t mean you can ….
It’s entirely human to believe that – you’ve paid for an item so asking for more money simply to ‘unlock’ extra features which are already present seems just wrong. But that’s exactly how computers work, you buy the computer then to ‘unlock’ some features you need to buy software, although the subtle difference is the software wasn’t already installed on your computer, so you get the feeling you’re paying for something you didn’t physically have already.
Software to a computer is like fuel to a car – you add something that requires effort to make in order to do something useful with the hardware.
The software doesn’t “just exist” so that you could assume every computer should have every piece of software by default.
Meanwhile, a car is engineered to have certain specs, and if then limited and unlocked by money, that is simply rent-seeking. Limiting access to something the user already has in order to extract more money out of them.
every computer sorta does have every piece of software, you just click download to enable it. And plenty of computer come with various trial version of software preinstalled, but if you wan to keep using it you need to buy a license
If you have to download it then it doesn’t have it. 🫣
That the software exists, someone had to work for it and someone has to keep maintaining it, keeping the servers to distribute it, handle bug reports and support, etc. and to fund all that the users need to pay money for it. Otherwise development stops, distribution stops, and the software becomes abandoned. Even open source software requires effort to keep it in circulation. Who pays for the servers to run the repositories?
A car, once made, just is. There’s no reason to artificially limit its operation, unless you want to extract money by denying access, which is called rent-seeking.
@Anonymous how it that different from, if you have to buy a license to enable it is doesn’t have it …
@Dude and how about software that comes preinstalled but not enabled?
Rarely. What you get is a downloader for the software – it’s just and advert that pretends you have it and need it enabled.
It used to be more common when people didn’t have fast internet connections to pre-load devices with software and require the purchase of a license to enable it, but nowadays you don’t get that.
It’s there, it just has most of its bits configured incorrectly. “Downloading” simply corrects the incorrect bits.
“You will own nothing and be happy.”
“You will have no original thoughts to contribute and will echo memespeak endlessly”
Well, MBAs are struggling to find new ways to keep the pipedream of exponential growth alive.
But then again, the pandemic clearly has shown, that basically noone understands exponential growth, so yeah…
The last human on earth will starve on his huge pile of money that grows out of a dusty, barren landscape. And his biggest regret will be, that the mountain of money is not larger…
The problem is that when you buy a car that has disabled features which you can activate by an additional (monthly) fee is that it just feels like you’ve bought a full featured vehicle which is deliberately crippled AND that these features are held hostage but can be released as long as you are willing to keep on paying.
And even if you really don’t want those features, for good reasons, they put them in any way, and you need to drag them bag and forth wherever you go. So resources are wasted on things people are not willing to pay for, resources are wasted because it increases the weight of the car. Meanwhile… if those non functional features cause direct or indirect problems… who’s gonna pay for it, you never asked for them to put it in?
I just doesn’t feel good and that’s the problem.
I think the fact that people are discussing technical workarounds instead of phoning their elected representatives and tearing a strip off them suggests that democracy (if indeed it ever existed) is now certainly dead.