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by culturestate 256 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
CamperBob2 256 days ago
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.

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x0x0 256 days ago
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.

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culturestate 256 days ago
> 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.”

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CamperBob2 256 days ago
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.

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culturestate 256 days ago
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.

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