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What annoys me is having to pay for the base features that came with the car after your 3 years is up. My VW eUp came with an App for controlling the charge settings, pre-heating the car from the mains, etc. It wasn't an extra. After 3 years, I'll have to pay to retain use of that App, which I regard as part of the car.
The question for who is liable if the part doesn't work is also a very good point.
With EVs it seems as though we are not far off batteries that should be good for half a million miles. Put that into a nicely galvanised body and you could easily build a car that would last 20-30 years.
There are owners of Nissan Leaf in America who’ve bought them second hand at around four-five years old, and then repeatedly having to have the cars towed to a dealer for repairs at several hundred dollars a time, and are then told the issue cannot be fixed, because the batteries are no longer available.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
It already is. There are way more Nissan Leaf batteries available used from crashed cars than people who need batteries, for the later models.
After 3 years, I’ll have to pay to retain use of that App, which I regard as part of the car.
It's not though. That app works via servers that have to be paid for, the car has network connectivity which has to be bought from a network provider.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
Well no you won't be able to fit a scrap.motor in a battery car. But there are a number of.companies besides nissan doing replacement batteries or even replacement cells for repair of batteries.
It's no different to when there are no engines to direct replacement where you can rebuild the engine with new parts.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
Well no you won't be able to fit a scrap.motor in a battery car. But there are a number of.companies besides nissan doing replacement batteries or even replacement cells for repair of batteries.
It's no different to when there are no engines to direct replacement where you can rebuild the engine with new parts.
Well no you won’t be able to fit a scrap.motor in a battery car.
Why couldn't you fit a scrap motor? It's just a motor, if you can find one available lfor sale from a scrapped car the same as yours, you can fit it, surely?
What annoys me is having to pay for the base features that came with the car after your 3 years is up. My VW eUp came with an App for controlling the charge settings, pre-heating the car from the mains, etc. It wasn’t an extra. After 3 years, I’ll have to pay to retain use of that App, which I regard as part of the car.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Comments about it being OK on lease cars is being ingenious - what happens to those cars once they leave the leasing system? Don’t forget that leasing includes the likes of Motability cars, which my car is, so if the person specs the car with the full set of bells and whistles, then for whatever reason, the car leaves their ownership? It would probably end up being sold through a dealer, after refurbishment, or it may go through the auction system. Whatever happens, someone looking to buy it might well look at the spec, think “yummy, I’ll ‘ave that!”, then having paid for it, discovers that all the features the spec says it has, have been turned off because, well, they only applied to the initial owner.
Anyone who imagines, for even a picosecond, that the manufacturers are going to come across as Mr Altruistic, well there’s a really nice bridge in Arizona I’d like to sell you.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
Cz clearly means engine engine in he point he's trying to make as he said his car and his cars a generic Internal combustion ford
And if it's the 1l ecoboost isn't that a subscription service 🙂
Do BMW spec their cars with indicators yet?
Hilarious. Never heard that one before.
I 100% prefer the built in navigation/traffic etc, especially as it integrates so well with all the other features (charging, battery pre-con etc.) This is a first for me as previous nav systems have always been way behind google (all previously VAG derivatives: total sh1te!) ) however, currently it is free… I’m not sure how I’d feel if I suddenly had to stump up a monthly sub for it. Well, I’d feel annoyed for a start.
This is exactly what I was talking about. Comments about it being OK on lease cars is being ingenious – what happens to those cars once they leave the leasing system?
That's a fair question. IMO the subscription service should no longer apply and whoever buys it buys the car and all its parts outright.
Just another benefit of buying over leasing.
The operative word being 'should', I have no illusions to the contrary.
Of course they haven’t, you would never get that past accounting! The cost of the extra hardware is baked into the unit cost otherwise that makes no financial sense.
I bet it does. It saves money to make all the cars the same. Possibly more money than a few quid for some extra circuit boards, some cheap cameras and some software which has already been written. That's why this whole thing is happening.
If my car’s motor fails a few years down the line, I can find a replacement from a scrap car, probably for less than £1000; that won’t be possible with batteries.
People's concern about the longevity of batteries is understandable, but there have been issues obtaining spares recently for all cars. JLR had tens of thousands of cars off the road 'cos they couldn't get spares. Some customers ended up buying another car while waiting months for parts.
Something expensive going wrong is not just an EV thing, either. We sold an otherwise v nice car for spares when it ingested its own turbos, it wasn't worth us spending the money to sort it.
@squirrelking I completely misread your post as testing it when you get home. 🤦🏻♂️
I bet it does. It saves money to make all the cars the same. Possibly more money than a few quid for some extra circuit boards, some cheap cameras and some software which has already been written. That’s why this whole thing is happening.
But that's not what you said.
Anyway, I was actually giving this some more thought and that may not be the case for long. The issue is that looms are labour intensive to fit once the car is assembled, SKUs cost money etc. I can't remember what it's called but there is another way of sending power and control around the car other than discrete wires to every point, basically it's an evolution of the present multiplex system where you have a common 12V power rail and multiple points to tap off of and the switching function is performed by local controllers. This means the accessories can be plugged in as needed and you're not spending money fitting things that aren't needed.
My Focus is a bit like that already, it has the plug connections on the main loom but no sub-looms or modules for systems that weren't fitted in the factory (towbar, BLIS, HUD etc.). Now I could retrofit them, it's been done but it's not trivial as there are a lot of sub-looms needed and the opaque joy of Forscan asbuilt codes to deal with. Under a common loom the former would be less of an issue, the latter always will be. But the point is the manufacturer isn't wasting money fitting redundant looms and modules, they changed the radar units once they figured out how to perform some basic functions with the camera instead. The days of fitting unused options are over IMO, sometimes you get lucky but it's not the done deal it once was.
@drac lol fair enough, happens to the best of us😂