[ryandrake]

Here's the extreme example I always reach for: Imagine BMW decides that it's cheaper for them to just make all 4 seat sedans instead of having some 2 seat models and some 4 seat models. They instead tell customers: "You're buying a 2-seater. You need to pay a $X/month 'sedan fee' to be allowed to sit in the rear seats." Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not, and for the same reason that subscriptions for other things that are already part of your car should also be unacceptable.

[gruez]

>Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not

I disagree. This literally happens for CPUs, and people don't seem to get angry at it. There might be different models of CPUs sold that use the same die and come off the same manufacturing line. The only difference is that cores are disabled/fuesd off and/or clock speeds are lowered.

[josephcsible]

In CPUs, there's at least a legitimate reason: reducing wastage by, e.g., selling what was intended to be a quad-core but had two defective cores as a dual-core instead of throwing it away.

[gruez]

That's only partially true though. Back in the day you could "unlock" cores in some AMD CPUs, which indicated that they were perfectly functional. Nowadays they disable the cores in a more robust way, but I doubt every disabled core is non-functional.

[Etrnl_President]

Rear seatbelts won't work unless you subscribe, so this is a road safety issue, with government fining you for passengers…