A couple of points:

1. If I wanted DaaS (Driving As A Service) I'd hire a taxi or Uber. I own my car(s) because I don't want to be dependent upon some service provider if I need to get somewhere.

2. When I buy something, I am an _owner_ not a user.

3. Unnecessary dependence on phoning home to the mothership is a huge mis-alignment between the interests of customers and manufacturers. This is why the "Internet of Things" has so far been a disaster (and will continue to be a disaster). Really, it should never be acceptable for your thermostat or your smoke detectors or your refrigerator, or yes--your car, to require constant permission from the manufacturer in order to work.

EDIT:

3a. To me, there are acceptable and unacceptable reasons for such devices to request connections back to home base, but it should always be optional (i.e. the device should work as advertised without connectivity):

- To ask for permission to continue functioning: Unacceptable

- To enable remote-controllability of the device by the manufacturer: Unacceptable

- To harvest customer personal information to be sold or used for marketing purposes: Unacceptable

- To report behavioral or analytics data for the purpose of improving the product: Marginally acceptable

- To enable remote-accessibility or controllability of the device by its owner: Acceptable

- To integrate with valuable 1st or 3rd party services which cannot be provided entirely from the device: Acceptable

All the points you named can be solved by contracts and litigation (perhaps, yes we might need stronger consumer protection). What can't be solved (from what we've seen so far) is manufacturers polluting the environment to no end except by making their products into services.

> 2. When I buy something, I am an _owner_ not a user.

Yes, please get over it. If you don't own a car, your car will not take up useless spacetime. Imagine what cities could look like without parking spots!

They can also be partially solved by refusing to do business with companies that sell products with customer-hostile terms. The only problem would be the day every car manufacturer on Earth decides to behave in this way. Fortunately, while there are a significant number of people like me around, there will always be a market for "things you can buy use without asking permission from the manufacturer".

I find the car I own to very usefully occupy spacetime. If I didn't I wouldn't have bought it. And I am glad that I don't have to phone home to Toyota in order to start it each morning or to repair it. Quite frankly, I don't care what a city would look like without parking spots.

Have we learned nothing from Comcast? Has everyone forgotten Hush-A-Phone?

The user pays for a service, and the provider then tries as hard as possible to lock them in so the cost can be maximised. The interests are fundamentally at odds in that the user has money and the provider has shareholders who are trying to pry it from the user's hands.

The manufacturer will also not plan to recycle the thing unless they're in the EU where they're legally obliged to do so. Does your mobile contract include handset recycling?

So, I own a Toyota. I don't need permission from the manufacturer to fix anything, or change anything. It's much cheaper than a tesla, but it will likely last longer. I have no restrictions on how I drive it other than traffic laws. It's not as fast in a straight line, but it's much better on a track and significantly lighter. Everything you describe is a huge downgrade in my personal freedoms, with no clear benefits.

You are so much more optimistic about the motivations of these "providers" than I that I am struggling to find any common ground where we could have a discussion. All I see are new opportunities for exploitation and control driven by rent-seeking behavior.

If the market is open and competitive then your concerns should be addressed by other vendors. There is no need, nor is it possible, for every product to be appropriate for every consumer. The 'motivation' for these providers is to achieve a return on investment, they can only do that by creating a value proposition that the market approves, which is not the same things as a value proposition that everyone approves.

It isn't entirely clear to me if 'rent-seeking' is the appropriate description here though. You aren't being forced into to this type of arrangement and are free to purchase from other vendors. I'd like to see a bit more regulatory capture, government mandates, and so on before it makes sense to me to start talking about 'rent-seeking'.

For example, the byzentine dealership laws in many states and the lobbying by dealers to maintain the status quo via legislation seems more like rent-seeking to me.

As good get more complex, the industry naturally becomes limited tona few less than competitive competitors.

Open design products allow small companies to compete on add-ons like maintenance and repairs, even though they can't offer whole cars.

Examples? What causes the increased complexity? Market demand? Government regulation? What prevents competitors from appearing or for exiting vendors to offer different products at different levels of 'complexity'?

Makes sense. I see it more as lock in.

Sure, but lock-in is a means of reducing market competition and thereby enabling rent extraction. Lock-in practices are an example of rent-seeking behavior.