I think people over-estimate that because most EVs are very new. Of course this is n=1 type data, but the service cost on engine related things for my several years old BMW are quite low compared to other items. They replace the oil once the computer wants it, which is every 30,000 to 40,000km, so less than once a year for most users. And that's all engine costs I've had over the years.

But I do have maintenance costs associated with this type of car. It's more things like replacing tires at least once a year (which I think high torque EVs will do even faster), then at about 100k miles they replaced the wishbones / control arms.

Those things get more expensive on high-end cars with things like software damper control, larger rims etc, all of which Tesla (just picking an EV) also has.

Fully agree.

Maintenance costs for my gen 1 Ioniq are ca 60% compared to my previous ICE Kia. Of course this is a welcome change, but it‘s not like switching to an EV means no costs beside electricity.

The power train per se will probably never need paid maintenance, but they do check the coolant and brakes lines every year, clean the AC, resolve system warnings, replace filters etc.

And then there’s tires - you can easily pay 2k for new 22“ rims + tires, and expect a sporty EV to go through those tires quickly. In most regions you‘ll also change tires regularly, which alone can cost 200 bucks per year in a shop (including balancing which is a good idea if you‘re into driving fast).

Tire costs dilute EV savings a lot, to put it mildly.

With regard to tire costs… for any EV owners in the US make sure to buy tires at a place that honors the tread wear warranty. Although my tires are high end which hurts the wallet, I regularly get $500 - $600 tread wear warranty credit applied to the purchase because I remember to ask for it, bringing the cost down a lot.

Costco is the absolute worst for this in my experience. They won’t honor the warranty until the tread level is dangerous. Discount Tires (also branded as America’s Tires in some states) is the best and they’re all over which is handy on road trips.

Someone into "driving fast" in an ICE will also go through tires quickly, so there's no added tire cost.

well on an ev you go through tires more quickly if you drive it in a regenerative style. on an ice on the other hand you will less likely go through a lot of tires if you go for the smallest consumption. the driving styles just differ enormously if you want to get the maximum range out of a car.

> It's more things like replacing tires at least once a year (which I think high torque EVs will do even faster), then at about 100k miles they replaced the wishbones / control arms.

I've not heard of tires that need replacing once a year, unless you are doing an insane amount of driving. Tires are generally lasting 50k, 60k, even 85k miles. Can you elaborate on the scenarios that require yearly tire replacements?

Definitely not true for any kind of safe quality tires. Safety means good dry and wet grip, convenience means noise level, and economy means wear.

Wear for anything quality and safe is maximum 40-50k km, the better performing tire the less. Yeah cheap (mostly) chinese crappy unsafe tires will last much more, but its due to them being too hard and have very little grip, especially in wet.

It means difference between being perfectly safe in 120kmh in moderate rain/snow vs being scared shitless that next bend may kill you (and car certainly behaves like that), so you drive 70-80kmh and become an obstacle to others in very low-visibility and high danger situation.

Definitely not worth saving on tires, ever.

Low profile tires do not last 50k much less 85k miles. Lots of BMW tires are front/rear and left/right which means you can’t rotate. People on the X7 forms said they had to start changing tires around 20-25k.

My coworker had a Leaf and said he went through rear tires 2x as fast.

This. For example a BMW 550i eats rear tires under heavy acceleration and front tires under sporty cornering, because it's not a light weight car. Worse for low-profile and sporty tires, better grip but softer rubber.

A BMW 550i has similar horse power as a Tesla Model 3 performance, but I think like any EV the Tesla delivers even more low-end torque. So it can kill tires even faster, and it's all-wheel-drive...

The BMW tires are about $200 more expensive then the Tesla. In 5-7 years the Tesla would be drastically less in maintenance but in years 4-5 the BMW could be less if you need to throw an extra set on the Tesla. Not sure I’d want a 550i outside of an extended warranty. However, newer BMW v8 twin turbos are a LOT more reliable than the first couple generations.

Tesla economics are much better because by 2021 you'll be able to use it as a Robotaxi in the Tesla network. You'll keep 70% of the revenue while you're just sitting at home.

When FSD launches in 2021, you'll also be able to work your tech job while you're driving to work, earning you extra money if you're hourly, or extra time if you're salaried.

Similar HP…but not Torque. :-)

That's what I said :-) but now I've Googled it and it isn't really true they're both around the 600 Nm range. But I think the delivery is still different, EVs deliver peak torque directly from standstill, which is the worst option for the tires.

> Tires are generally lasting 50k, 60k, even 85k miles.

I would not want to be in a car with a tire that lasts 85K miles.

Tires come in all kinds of compounds for different conditions but in general, the grippier the tire (i.e. better braking, better turning) the shorter the lifetime.

Race tires take this to the extreme, maximizing grip at all cost and they only last as little as a few hundred miles.

That would be silly for street use of course, but the general pattern stands. Less wear = less grip. I buy top performance street tires for maximum safety, the tradeoff being they'll last about 15k-25k miles depending on the car.

Other factors that have a big influence on tire life is car weight and acceleration. EVs are both very heavy and (most of them) fast accelerating. So tire life is bound to be less than on an otherwise similar ICE car.

Absolutely. I've had my Model Y for about 1.5 years (14,500 miles). Recently, I've had to replace the rear tires due to slow pressure loss. Supporting 5,000 pounds certainly increases wear and tear; alas, they don't come cheap [0].

At least the "run-flat" design is worth it for long road trips, the ability to re-inflate, and increased storage space.

[0] https://tsportline.com/products/continental-procontact-rx-25...

> Tires are generally lasting 50k, 60k, even 85k miles.

Probably depends on road conditions. Where I'm at good tyres — my criteria being soft ride, good grip, low noise — last at most 40k km. But then the roads here aren't exactly the best.

Not just tyres, even things like oil, filters, engine mounts etc need to be changed more frequently where I'm at, compared to Western countries.

Very heavy and fun-to-drive cars like Teslas (all that battery weight) go through them faster.

>I think people over-estimate that because most EVs are very new

And they're expensive. So the people who can afford them were already the kind of people driving well kept newish stuff so all they got to experience were recalls and the early part of the bathtub curve.

Parts on a car more or less wind up needing to be serviced more or less in direct correlation to hose close to the road they are. But if you're trading in every ~5yr your experience you won't see that because your experience will all be the early failures part of the bathtub curve.

Basically everyone doing all the talking right now doesn't know what they don't know.

I don't think this is the biggest reason. It's because most cars now come with always-online LTE modems and everything is software-controlled. Couple that with a product VP who wants to make his bones and you get "turn everything into a continuing revenue stream." Doesn't matter whether the car is electric or ICE.

IOW, they're doing it because they can.

The solutions are:

1. Don't buy these cars.

2. Hack the software and share that knowledge.

3. Install a 50-cent switch to apply power to the seat heaters directly.

4. Disable the goddamned modem and share that knowledge too.

Renting stuff is economically efficient as long as you don't let the actual owners abuse the relationship to their benefit.

We've not had a good track record of that in the past, but still worth keeping in mind as a general principle.

So I'm going to jump on you here because this line is wrong, in this case.

> Renting stuff is economically efficient as long as you don't let the actual owners abuse the relationship to their benefit.

Renting is economically efficient when there is a limited supply of the item, and renting allows the item to be used more often & efficiently then it would with if it were owned.

A simple example: It is much more efficient to have a single lawn-mower that you and your neighbors can rent, rather than having every lawn owner buy a mower that sits unused 99% of the time. It is cheaper to rent than buy so the folks save money on mower expense, less waste is produced because there are fewer mowers, and the item sits idle far less. The downside is the coordination required to use the rented item - it may not always be available, or available when any given person would like it to be.

NONE OF THAT FUCKING MATTERS WHEN THE ITEM IN QUESTION IS HEATED SEATS!!!!

No one is able to use those "rented" heated seats when you're not using them. They will never be taken out of the car. There is literally no way to more efficiently allocate this item when rented rather than bought, unless the entire car is rented (in which case... moot point).

So this case cannot be anything other than abuse by owners. There are no efficiency savings to be had. The item won't be allocated more efficiently, it will just provide additional revenue.

Essentially - the argument that renting is more efficient UTTERLY fails when the item being rented is essentially the on/off switch to a thing built into an item you own. It's ALWAYS going to stay part of the item you own, and there is no way to re-allocate it when you are not renting it.

This is a scummy, scummy move. It should be illegal.

I think the assumption in the case you are presenting is that efficiency is viewed from the POV of the use of resources aggregated over the whole society. There are other POVs, such as it being more cost or production speed or resource or factory floor space efficient for BMW or their suppliers to maintain one product line as opposed to two, or it being more cost efficient for owners to have the option to turn on the feature temporarily or permanently as opposed to having to have the feature installed afterwards (which may depend on the percentage of owners who turn on the feature).

I think an analogy could be a software package which have some subscription features. The features are already contained in the software, but paying for the subscription would turn it on, and stopping the subscription would turn it off. Regardless of whether you are subscribed or not, it's taking up storage space, although I suppose the low cost of storage makes a difference in degree (but not in kind).

To be clear - all of the items you've listed would probably fall into the "owner is abusing the renter" category.

I'm becoming more and more hostile to "we've sold you product that has a little man inside who only obeys us" style approach, and to tackle your software example - I find it just as hostile there (I actually refuse to purchase Apple products because you absolutely do not own any device you've purchased from them).

I'll pay for a subscription service that has a genuine recurring cost for the company (ex: I'm using their networks and servers to process data as part of that subscription). But this new world where companies try to make you pay a subscription to get access to static content (or in this case: literal hardware) that lives nowhere except on devices you own is not something I find morally or ethically acceptable.

Frankly - my strong opinion at this point is: If I own a device, I legally must be provided with a key to EVERY lock the device has: physical or digital. No more "you own the phone, but we kept the keys" or in this exact case: "you own the seat heater, but we kept the on/off switch"

Would you think it's acceptable to have BMW stop providing you the ignition and door keys? "Just call us up and we'll unlock the car! (for a small subscription charge)" fuck that horseshit. That's no ownership, that's servitude.

Economics talked a lot about lighthouses historically, because they were the kind of thing that you couldnt stop people using once you'd built it. This meant there were less built than society might want. Solutions involve finding a way to make people pay and taxes are one such tool, either just general tax or taxing imports or something related to shipping.

Open source software is similar. I agree that its better for society, but there are two ways to achieve that. The bottom up approach of making it a better option (sometime with the extra stick/carrot of copyleft) or the top down approach, just mandate that any government bought software or any open standard need to be open source and usable by all since they all paid for it.

You can apply those same solutions to hardware and physical things, e.g. renters of housing often have various legal protections, but it varies by jurisdiction, you also have social housing where its lived in but not owned and the property value rises go back to the government.

Maybe coming from the chip design world, this is a bit more commonplace and normal-seeming for me. I'm used to huge software packages which cost 5 to 6 figures to license, and additional features which are enabled and disabled based on a license file. No live content (aside from bug fixes). A new version with upgraded features would be another license. I've been out of chip design for a while, so things might be different now.

Not for nothing, but BMW realizes very little post-first-sale service dollars because they bake that into the price of the car.

If you go and buy a new 3-series this afternoon, you pay for your gas and that's pretty much it. All your scheduled maintenance is included, and you may even end up with a tire plan (wise on some of these cars; Z-rated rubber is pricey, and urban areas can eat tires) so the rubber ends up "included" too.

Sadly, not anymore. In 2017 they replaced the comprehensive 4yr/50k mile "BMW Maintenance Program" with the 3yr/36k mile "BMW Ultimate Care", and it only covers fluids, filters, and spark plugs.

https://www.bmwusa.com/explore/bmw-value/bmw-maintenance/ter...

https://www.consumerreports.org/bmw/bmw-reduces-free-mainten...

I always just assumed that program was meant to encourage tradeins after the free maintenance period ends. That kicks off the next profit cycle via a used car sale and another new car sale.

Its a trap! And probably one that customers are pretty happy with.

> the company tends to get constant income via service thanks oil filters, other filters, and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be replaced (assuming people take it to authorised service centers, which I assume most people do when the car is relatively new).

I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in the US, the vast majority of official car dealerships are owned by the franchiser of that dealership, not the car company itself.

This is what caused the conflicts between Tesla and certain US states who had car dealership groups lobbying to ban Tesla from owning their own dealerships/service centers.

Outside of replacement parts specific to the car, like a bumper, most service income goes straight to the dealership franchiser owner, not the car company.

Isn't this just a new way to pay for already existing options? Instead of paying the full cost in advance, you can spread it over the product's lifetime, and once the car gets resold, the new buyer can "configure" it as they prefer.

That's assuming manufacturers wouldn't already include the price of rentable hardware in the cost of the car.

Would any manufacturers do that?

Why would a manufacturer fit in hardware for heated seats into a car, and not charge you for it? Because they hope you will subscribe to the heated seats?

This argument breaks down in markets like India, middle East, Malaysia etc where it's hot and humid, and nobody would want to use heated seats. If you don't subscribe, then it'll be a loss for the manufacturers who included the hardware and not charged you for it.

Of course, the sane thing would be to not offer heated seats at all in such markets, but as things stand today, heated seats are offered in these hot places (and nobody uses them AFAIK).

In the subscription-based future, here's how I think it'll be like:

- heated-seat hardware will be present in the car

- heated seats will be a rentable option

- manufacturers would include the price for it anyway in the cost of the car

=> customers lose

Cars are expensive as it is, so manufacturers can totally get away with it.

in india, the car market starts at around 4 Lacs Inr or $5000. people tend to now buy cars for like 4-9L or $5000-$12000. the cheapest EV on the market is tata tigor ev for like inr 12Lacs or $15000 and those prices are on the high end spectrum of the general market and mass adoption is only possible if prices are price-matched or be close to the ICE cars.

in that situation, it is not possible to add "features" that the people don't care about. think about it, a $5000 car is barebones as it is, when they launch its EV version, it is not going to have tesla features. there are manufacturers who are failing NCAP testing and they are pushing to not make such testing mandatory because in their opinion, it would reduce choice for customers and their own business would fail.

I don't see how your conclusion follows your premise.

> people tend to now buy cars for like 4-9L or $5000-$12000

Sure the majority of the sales are for cheaper models, but go to any tier-1 or tier-2 city and you'll see plenty of BMWs, Mercs, Audis, Jaguars, Land Rovers, and whatever else is under the sun. Like, stand on any random junction, and I guarantee that the won't even be a single minute where you won't be able to spot a >₹50 lakh car ($62000). Yes the sales numbers are objectively much lower, but still you see plenty of them.

> those prices are on the high end spectrum of the general market

Here's a sales analysis for May 2022. How many of those are in the price range you mentioned: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/252707-may-2...

People have moved past the ₹12 lakh mark a while ago. It's more like ₹25 lakhs now. I see plenty of Hyundais, Hondas, Kias, and Toyotas. None of them exactly have a cheap model anymore.

Heck, there's such a huge number of Toyota Innova/Crysta on the road that it's practically invisible now. And top end Crysta retails at ₹25 lakhs (≈ $31000).

> in that situation, it is not possible to add "features" that the people don't care about

Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense (in this country) features like heated seats. My E-class has a panoramic sunroof which I never open because the sun is scorching here, and the glass' greenhouse effect cooks everyone inside so the AC has to work harder.

> there are manufacturers who are failing NCAP testing and they are pushing to not make such testing mandatory because in their opinion

European manufacturers here have always done well in terms of safety. Not entirely sure about other Asian brands. As for Indian brands, new Tata and Mahindra cars pass GNCAP with 5 stars, though Maruti still has a lot to improve.

yes. the 12L -25L category is in T1, T2 but the rest of the country is huge and those are a drop in the bucket numbers.

the link you shared, the top 20 cars by volume are all in the sub 12L range so that is what i was saying.

https://www.rushlane.com/maruti-suzuki-chairman-says-bharat-...

yeah, it was maruti who said that so there you go.

>Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense (in this country) features like heated seats. My E-class has a panoramic sunroof which I never open because the sun is scorching here, and the glass' greenhouse effect cooks everyone inside so the AC has to work harder.

i do not own a car. no one in my family does. you say your e-class so your income bracket is already in the top %.

>People have moved past the ₹12 lakh mark a while ago. It's more like ₹25 lakhs now. I see plenty of Hyundais, Hondas, Kias, and Toyotas. None of them exactly have a cheap model anymore.

i am not saying people arent buying this. my point is, they are serving a niche and not cutting into the sales of cheap vehicles where haggling is done on the number of airbags.

>Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense

that is my point. if you stay in the price range of sub 12L, you will not find those features and as long as these cars sell, these features will not be common in india.

Just FYI it does indeed snow in Korea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Seoul

It's funny how everyone thinks of South Korea as this Thailand-like climate when they in fact have some awfully cold days every once in a while.

I'd say quite often even. It's pretty comparable to the Midwest in terms of climate (like south Ohio or Indiana).

It's pretty comparable to the Midwest in terms of climate (like Ohio or Indiana).

In the winters it's cold, pretty consistently.

And as soon as that car hits the second hand market, the next owner can find the appropriate relay, tap in a switch, and solve the rent to use problem.

"Irregular power draw detected, shutting down for your safety."

While obviously a big pain in the butt, aftermarket EV computers are coming onto the market which could help solve the long tail of used EV software related nuisances.

Lots of learning from the EV conversion market will go directly into that ecosystem too I feel. But that said, I'm pretty sure that it's already illegal in many countries to tamper with the ECU. It's currently because you can change the emissions profile of the car, but I'm sure they'll just swap to saying it's about safety instead for EVs.

Ye you maybe need to put the wires directly on the battery poles.

“Site:aliexxpress.com bmw heated seat unlocker”

ha, accurate

So true

The cost of installing heated seats might be at least partially included in the base price. But that's different from the price they charge for buying heated seats. The $300-$500 you currently pay for heated seats are not reflective of the price to run a couple resistive wires through a seat, they are reflective of what people are willing to pay for the convenience and status of heated seats.

This isn't how things are priced. They ask what they can get. If they could ask for more money for the car, why wouldn't they?

How much are you suggesting heated seats cost? What would an average owner pay over the lifetime of the vehicle?

$406 for pemanent activation. It's right there in the article...

Other than oil and filters, which you don't need to buy from the manufacturer, most new cars don't need much engine maintanance. On the other side, suspension, brakes and tires are much more subject to wear and the need of replacement, and in a heavier car, there's a big chance that you'll need even more frequent maintainance of such itens.

Official service centers are a bad joke though. Especially for BMW you pay 2.5x the work of other, good service (tested this on oil change, liquids were the same). Then they also screw you on parts prices. Suffice to say I never went there again.

I never saw the reason to buy new cars which drop value tremendously in first 5 years, I am certainly not that rich to not mind. I rather buy 6-7 years old, BMW in this case, do maintenance in good unofficial garage and drive the car to the ground. If you find one, stick with it till you die.

First car (BMW E46 3-series) bought for 25% price of new, maintenance costs rather minimal, drove it for 10 years till clutch/transmission literally died.

Now we have again BMW (5-series F10 wagon), bought for 20% of the new, 6 years/90k km old. Obviously no clue how it will behave in future, but we paid 80k less for really premium safe family car, and my yearly maintenance costs have been around 500$ per year.

People sometimes do stupid decisions when they are driven mainly by emotions.

In 15 years, I’ve only been to the dealer for recalls.

How does that affect second-hand value for you (if you intend to ever sell)? Where I live, a lack of documentation from official or authorized dealership servicing is a big red flag when buying a used car.

I find that hard to believe unless it’s an antique or a sports car. It’s certainly a plus when you sell something.

2 Jeep dealers couldn’t tell me what needs to be done on my 35k checkup. It’s right in the manual. They only tried to upsell fluid flushes. The multipoint inspection didn’t even cover the cv joint checks that were mentioned in the manual!

In the US, almost no one goes to their dealership for routine maintenance (i.e. tires, brakes, oil). Many/most will go in for bigger stuff like transmission service, steering, etc. but even then many still opt for their local mechanic's shop. To be honest, I would rather see a car going to reputable local shop than to a dealership, but it's really hard to know what "reputable local shop" means when you're buying a used car that could have been serviced four states away.

We have lots of garbage chains of auto shops (looking at you, JiffyLube...) that leave cars in worse shape than when they came in, which complicates matters immensely. I've had one car for example that has had the front engine cover come off twice because the knuckleheads at the shop didn't reattach it correctly, causing it to drag on the road for miles before we realized what was wrong.

(inb4 someone rolls in with how blockchain is going to "fix" this)

I actually go to the dealership (VW) for routine maintenance and I have a local, specialized Euro/VW mechanic for more expensive repairs. Dealership service centers are the training grounds for specialized mechanics. So it's better for me to get the alignment done using an apprentice who does them daily rather than a pricey specialist who does them 4x/year and has 4 engine outs in the bay.

What's your basis for this assertion?

Everyone I know who drives a foreign car (a set that tilts overwhelmingly to German makers) takes their car to the dealer for routine maintenance because the maintenance is often included in the purchase price. This is true absolutely for BMW, and CAN be true (ie, you can choose to do it) with Volkswagen.

If you're not the first owner, then yeah, you may go to a 3rd party, but the new-car drivers are going back to the mothership.

My basis for this assertion is that I know very few people who are duped into buying maintenance contracts. Those things aren't "included in the purchase price" for anything but the highest end of mass market cars, they're overpriced tack-ons that dealerships push hard when you're purchasing a car.

Granted, I know very few new BMW owners (and the few that I do know, know very little about cars and just wanna go fast); most everyone I know who has a US- or Japan-make car doesn't bother with going back to the dealership, and that's the vast majority of car owners in the US.

EDIT: The other thing to keep in mind is, most Americans aren't buying new cars. In our tech centric bubble, sure, nearly everyone buys a car new off the lot, but in my sample size of a few dozen people in Ohio who are almost all professionals working decent office jobs, maybe half my friends have ever bought a new car, and the rest are driving something second hand. And keep in mind, these are young professionals with low debt and decent financial sense. The average person in the US almost certainly can't afford a brand new car on a frequent basis, and certainly not the dealer markup on services.

IDK, a lot of my local dealers push free maintenance for the first 24 months. I've had one of them. They recommended additional services on every free visit, including the first one after only ~5k miles. Every recommendation was at least as expensive as an oil change.

I'm sure that was coincidental and they were all seriously needed services.

All those German cars are leased

Mine never were, but ok.

You’re in a bubble.

I’ll drive it until the wheels fall off.

It absolutely doesn’t affect the value of the car to use 3rd party service.

Some EVs actually require more maintenance. For example, due to incompetent engineering and sloppy assembly, Tesla ranks below most ICE vehicles.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/tesla-ranks-30th-in-unoffici...

I'm not a Tesla owner or fan, but this article doesn't quite say that. It reports on the JD Power and Associates dependability ranking, which is based on surveys of owner complaints about anything with their cars; Tesla ranks higher than average in number of complaints.

The only supporting quote about Tesla in the article: "Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation. However, some did complain about troubles with Tesla’s in-vehicle voice recognition." IMO this supports the sloppy assembly claim, but not the incompetent engineering claim. It jives with what I've heard about Tesla cars, that the fit and finish is not what you'd expect for this class of car.

Neither this article nor my personal experience with Tesla support your claim.

> Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation.

Tesla issues aren't about maintenance, they are mostly about quality control. Maintenance on Tesla is simple: air filters, brakes, tires, air conditioning.

https://www.tesla.com/support/car-maintenance

ON a modern car you only add oil changes until you get to 100k miles. Oil changes are fast and cheap.

Except for air conditioning - unless you mean the air filter the air conditioner should NEVER need maintenance - if you do maintenance it means an environmental disaster - they are closed systems and so the only time you service them is if they lost the Freon.

Hopefully there is no Freon to lose in the first place in the AC.

TuV results from mandatory safety checks in Germany seem to indicate that Tesla has significant issues with its suspension and some of the lights. It competes with Dacia for last place of all cars tested.

> Maintenance on Tesla is simple: air filters, brakes, tires, air conditioning.

Maintenance on a new ICE car is exactly the same, plus an oil change every couple of years.

But, due to more parts being present on an ICE car, isn't there a higher likelihood of something going wrong eventually?

There is a lot more: timing belt replacement, water pump replacement, oil change, oil filter, radiator, spark plugs, drive belts, ...

You don't need any of those things for a couple of years on a new car, and most of them never in five years. If you're buying new, as most electric car people are, it's the same burden.

There’s an easy way to make sure this doesn’t catch on. Never buy a car from any car company that does this. Advocate loudly for never buying a car from a company that does this. The market will speak. We are the market.