What does that have to do with anything? If you sell a product and then try to put a subscription on hardware that is already in the customer's hands, that's scummy.

If you put a subscription on something where you have to continuously maintain server capacity and build and distribute new features, then that... seems fair?

Not gonna claim that there's no rent-seeking going on in the software industry, certainly. And they're scummy.

But once I'm sold a car, every bit of hardware in that car should work without artificial limits (well, modulo safety and legal concerns). Sure, it's fair for a car maker to charge for map updates for the navigation, real-time traffic information, remote functionality, etc. -- stuff that requires on-going cost to the manufacturer. But charging a subscription to send a few bits of information to the software in the car to give the motor more power? Robbery.