[culturestate]

I’ve always wondered why manufacturers don’t just bump the sticker up by whatever the estimated LTV of these subscriptions would be. If you want to buy a new F-150, there’s functionally no difference between paying e.g. $52,500 instead of $51,250 and as a bonus Ford gets to avoid headlines like this.

Maybe the long-term goal is to push more people toward direct leasing?

[lakwerjl]

Because they dream of doing what all the streaming services do, what comcast does, get people to use their service, push everyone to enable autopay, and then quietly triple the price and hope no one notices. That's the goal of all of this.

[sowbug]

Same reason Basic Starter Economy Lite airfares exist: to rank higher in lists. Once they have you in the sales funnel and don't have price competition anymore, they can start upselling you on things you're missing.

[criddell]

Probably because the LTV is at least an order of magnitude more than you are estimating.

GM dropped CarPlay support from some of their vehicles. They think subscription revenue is going to be at least $20 billion / year.

[culturestate]

> Probably because the LTV is at least an order of magnitude more than you are estimating.

This subscription costs $140 per year; even accounting for price increases over time, if someone has calculated that its 10-year LTV exceeds $14,000 then I think they need to go back and review the spreadsheet.

[CamperBob2]

What you're missing on the spreadsheet is that the amount you're paying for the subscription is only a fraction of what they can get for your data.

Just think of what your insurance company would be willing to pay, for instance.

If there's anything I don't understand here, it's why they are bothering to bill the end users at all.

[x0x0]

Or what various advertising companies (and the advertisers) would pay to know where you shop.

Connect what gas you buy, what grocery or gym you go to, what restaurants you eat at with your name, address, and probably ip. And note this is significantly facilitated if they have a direct billing relationship with the driver: that's how they're getting clean phone, name, ip (gotta login to put that card in), etc.

[culturestate]

> the amount you're paying for the subscription is only a fraction of what they can get for your data.

This doesn’t clarify it at all for me because this model already works without the bother of subscriptions. They’re generating the data either way, regardless of whether the customer is paying $140 per year or $1,400 up front.

I think the real reason is probably closer to “we want to be able to add recurring subscription revenue to our 10-K” than it is to “we want a better pretext under which to mine consumer data.”

[CamperBob2]

This doesn’t clarify it at all for me because this model already works without the bother of subscriptions

Not if you're using CarPlay, it doesn't.

The automakers' best move is to incentivize drivers to use the company's nav system instead of their own phone, but instead they're penalizing them. That's the part I don't get.

[culturestate]

I understand what you mean; what I’m saying is that they can still disable CarPlay and upcharge buyers for navigation and harvest the data to resell without bringing subscriptions into the picture.

It’s the foundational decision to make this an optional subscription instead of just pricing it into the sticker from the jump that I’m having trouble wrapping my head around.

[nonethewiser]

They used to. It was a $1k option or whatever and now it's moved to subscription.

[culturestate]

I haven’t bought a car in a hot minute but those options usually also included different in-dash displays, etc. If Ford standardized the hardware, eliminated the option, and bumped the sticker, nobody would bat an eye and they would capture that revenue from every buyer, not only the ones who choose to subscribe.

It feels like such an obvious win that I know I must be missing something, I just don’t know what it could be.