Buying an old car doesn’t really solve the problem in general, it just solves it for you, temporarily.

The auto sector is one of the most competitive in the world. There are tons of automakers that don’t have subscription services.

Yet. Because if there is money in subscription services, they will add those — or go bust if they don't because, as you've said, it is one of the most competitive sectors in the world.

Or they’ll realize there’s a market of people who don’t want subscription services and they’ll price their car at a profit making level without subscriptions…

...which will still lead to lower profits than if they instead tried to push into the higher-margin section of the market. The Innovator's Dilemma, you know?

Sure, but there’s competition in the subscription car space, just because you make one doesn’t mean it will sell. Businesses will make products that people want when they are in competitive markets.

For now. The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time, because incidental cooperation between all competitors is just so much better for them than trying to compete on this point.

And this is an industry where starting a competitor is simply not feasible without incomprehensible amounts of capital.

> The problem is that anticonsumer grift will eventually pervade the entire space. If not prevented legally then it will just be a matter of time

This isn't a guaranteed thing.

Toyota makes money hand over fist selling decade behind the competition vehicles for high prices based on a premise of reliability that the overwhelming majority of buyers will not keep the car long enough to take advantage of and HN never misses an opportunity to praise them for it.

I feel very confident saying that the market for cars that don't include SAAS-esque BS subscriptions will be large enough to sustain a decent number of offerings in the same way that the sedan market is still healthy despite the crossover-ification of everything and the hatch market is stronger than it's been since the 90s.

but something as big as an auto purchase is a amalgamation of many decisions into one. what they are relying on is that the pain of subscription does not out weighs the rest of value a BMW provides. esp if they can bury this in details and give it away for a couple of years like volvo does.

My suspicion is this will become a lot more pervasive & render every auto purchase to choke full of these under the surface sour decisions.

Kind of true but also not as true as it was pre-COVID. Used car prices skyrocketed during COVID to the point that people are selling their 2-3 year old cars for more than current new MSRP. And a 10 year old Corolla is often more than $10k. Prices are just now starting to come back down, but probably not to pre-COVID prices.

Used cars are now just $3k USD more than new cars, on average.

There should be absolutely no reason to buy a used car anymore.

I feel like I'm living in a bizarro world b/c everyone seems to claim buying a used car is the much better financial decision. It isn't for me, by a long margin.

There honestly hasn't been much reason to buy a new car since the GFC. It's really felt like new cars were subsidized because they were necessary to create used cars. With the last several cars I bought, or tried to buy, the negotiation ended up with the new car price being the same, or lower than 1-2 year old models with the same options.

I feel like most used car buyers look at inflated MSRP and judge the "discount" for the used car based on that. They don't factor in the sometimes massive discounts (pre COVID, of course) that practically every new car would have. So a used 2018 model looks $3k cheaper than an identical new 2019, but the 2019 has $4k on the hood, plus better financing, lower miles, and better legal protections (lemon law). Granted, "certified pre-owned" cars often come with better sounding warranties than new ones, but I'm sure there are some fine print details that make them worse than the factory one.

Granted, the post-covid market is all kinds of skewed.

I bought a new car recently because of problems with my existing car. I didn't have a lot of negotiating leverage on the new vehicle but I was shocked by the tradein I was able to get on my existing car and was even able to negotiate it up by about $1K.