Sold my Audi when they started this, VWs are already overpriced basic shits.
Give me asian cars.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Sold my Audi when they started this, VWs are already overpriced basic shits.
Give me asian cars.
Sounds like a good reason to skip buying any car warranty going forward since I'll be attempting to void that shit almost immediately.
Bad business decisions all around.
Capped speed isn't enough. I want it to slam the brakes on the highway and go "Tired of the ads? Get the Volkswagen Battlepass and enjoy an uninterupted drive!"
Every tine you bring the car to a stop it covers half the windows in ads like youtube does when you pause it to try and read something
Ooh, how about it accelerates really slowly at stop lights unless I pay for "turbo mode" to not get honked at?
Need a panoramic view instead of just a slit? Get the Extend-A-View™ subscription to instantly make the full surface of all your windows transparent!
From the same company that brought you test based emissions upgrades?
🤔 💭 Our cars aren't selling... Hmm.. Should we make them last longer? No. Should we make the interior out of anything except hard plastic? No. Should we make our cars easier to repair and not have even the most basic shit require specialized tools? No. I got it! Subscriptions for basic shit that gauges the few customers still buying our shit!
I understand your point, but have you driven a VW in the past decade? They are reliable, relatively easy to repair and have comfortable interiors that aren't with "hard plastic." Perhaps you've confused VW with Ford?
I fix cars for a living every day.
reliable
Maybe, compared to a BMW or other "luxury" car marketed to rubes. But a Honda or a Toyota would totally eat VW's lunch in regards to reliability, at half the purchase price.
relatively easy to repair
The VW Beetle is famously easy to repair, basically every modern VW model sucks ass. It needs some proprietary tool to access half the vehicle on more than half the models. I do not like working on them. We also get wonderful examples of German Manufacturing Precision™️ where you have a half a millimeter clearance to remove a part. This was worse in older VW's in my experience (the Germans really took to AUTOCAD like fish to water when that became common, methinks) but it still happens.
comfortable interiors
Actually totally agree here, the interior of most modern VW's is pretty nice. Shame that doesn't extend under the hood.
VW also got caught straight up lying about their emissions testing a few years ago so that also destroyed basically all trust that I had in their brand. They'll sell you a car that runs, but there's really no knowing if the numbers that it reports are actually accurate.
Reliably cheating emissions regulations, maybe.
Relatively easy to repair compared to a smartphone maybe.
Yeah. I think my car has a pretty decent build overall but the (I shit you not) 14 recalls ive had to bring it in for ranging from door handle replacements, firmware updates, back hatch issues makes me raise an eyebrow to it. I let a few stack up before I bring it in because I never notice any issue before or after, but better to get the free service than not.
Evidence strongly counters my own feelings on the matter.
Ford is even worse than VW, but VW is overpriced shit.
No doubt they are all overpriced, but I thoroughly researched my Škoda before buying it in 2020 and it was competitively priced, especially with its reliability score and relatively low maintenance cost. In my case of course anecdotal, but I've had no issues after 90,000 km with a lot of Autobahn.
Das subscription
Die*
Is that in english or german?
Yes
[laughs in 2013 era type-1 mod]
Our family was looking for a newer car. We found a listing for a VW, went to the dealership with intent to buy and was told that the car (which was standing RIGHT there) was available for sale in 3 months. Now we enjoy our new Toyota.
The car has to ripen.
You dodged a bullet.
VW has gone down the drain.
Had a 2023 VW ID4. They literally go out of their way to make your experience worse in many cases.
They have an app, they can read locked state, but can't lock the car.
Their app/website makes you completely re-sign in and re-accept cookies every month or so that breaks any API usage mildly like HomeAssistant.
The key unlocks the door if you walk to it, 50% chance to re-lock the door when you walk away without interacting with it.
Can detect tire pressure, but they don't tell you what it is, only if there is "pressure loss"
Backup camera was horrific quality, especially the field of view of a telephoto camera, especially compared to my 2015 Nissan altima
The entertainmrnt console was terible, extremely laggy, and Android auto was the worst experience. It would take between 2 and 15 minutes to connect to android auto with multiple different phones, and it would choose 1 app per phone to not display. My girlfriends' was her maps app which is insane. Sometimes I would be at my destination before it would connect.
Also putting a trailer hitch on it would have been like 1500-2000€...
For the tire pressure thing, that's because VW doesn't actually use sensors in the wheels. They calculate wheel circumference as you're driving and warn you if it changes, meaning you have a flat. On the one hand, you don't have to worry about sensors if you have winter tires, but on the other... having it show PSI would be nice.
Tell me more about the sensors & winter tyres. They arent a thing where I live.
If you buy a new set of wheels, the pressure sensors for the valve stems also cost extra, and I think have to be paired with the car using a scan tool, depending on the manufacturer. So if you've got separate winter and summer tires, the sensors have to get updated each time you change. (Maybe some manufacturers have figured out how to auto-pair based on proximity? but idk)
Of course! You change the entire (en-tyre?) wheel, not just the tyre. I kind of assumed it was a twice a year thing that you would do at a tyre shop.
I imagine its a pain but it must feel good going from slippery summer ones to something that sticks - to ice!?
Fuck you volkswagen!
Most car for the last decade or two already come with a lot of options built-in that are simply disabled by software in the factory. It's cheaper to just build in a standard set of electronics and disable what's not bought by the customer because many brands still like to milk the customer with options. Subscriptions just take the buying of options to renting.
VW here also also has the "lifetime subscription" for this. That makes it basically the same as you buying the option and they switch in it on in the factory. It's just plain in your face that it's behind a paywall while the old checking options didn't feel as much as a paywall.
Anyway, I went with Hyundai. They didn't do options and subscriptions. You only get to choose the model and looks, that's it.
If you pay a little extra a little corkscrew that raises up from the middle of the driver seat every half hour will only do so every two hours too.
option to pay $22.50 per month or $879 one time to gain 20 horsepower.
At least you can buy it outright, so not the worst scheme of this sort, but still a scheme.
Auto Express UK reported on the pricing but could not verify whether the subscription follows the vehicle or the user profile.
This is bad journalism, per EU regulation, if the option is bought it follows the car, if it's a subscription, I doubt they can legally demand either the original and definitely not another owner to keep it. A subscription can be cancelled, otherwise it's an indefinite contract, which a new owner never agreed to.
....
Oh sorry I forgot for a second that UK is no longer in EU, so UK customers can be fucked in new creative ways, which probably also explains why this experiment is in UK. Ah well they chose to fuck themselves over I guess.
Consumer planning anything but Volkswagen subscription upgrade