And, at the very least, they add to the weight or energy consumption of the car, thereby decreasing my fuel economy and adding costs to my budget.

yeah, the grandparent comment is utterly absurd. if it's cheaper for them to make, then they're making it an upsell even though it could be a standard feature. and if that's happening, but no competitor is coming along to take advantage of this cost situation and standardize the upsell, then there's something wrong with the market.

this subscription approach is just rent-seeking behavior, which is another sign that there's something wrong with the market.

This bothers me because those raw materials and byproducts of manufacturing still get either used or produced. So this seems like a net negative for the planet when there have been pushes to reform the impact this industry in particular has on the environment.

I agree there is waste, but if you buy into the whole capitalist schpiel, if the cost of production is lower, it's still better. This obviously externalizes environmental impacts which the current trend of eco-politics is trying to address with many ideas around taxing carbon output and other ways of accounting for the external effects comes into play. I assume if the world is able to correctly implement such a system we'd get rid of these aberrations where sometimes chucking a bunch of useless stuff into a product, or producing it in the other side of the world ends up "making sense" - because it only "makes sense" if you don't account for all the trash you leave behind you.

I'm optimist though, I see the discourse moving in this direction and many countries starting to investigate properly how to implement these ideas from the 70's.