Just wait until everyone goes to a subscription model like Rivian is doing. The times of paying only for a vehicle are slowly coming to a close. Once manufacturers see Rivian have success, they’ll slowly start rolling it out.
This is true, not necessarily because manufacturers are greedy, but rather because software has become a
major portion of modern vehicles and very expensive to produce, as much or sometimes even more so than hardware development. Everyone needs to understand that software is
never free. Someone must always pay for its development and that's going to be either the vehicle manufacuters or the buyers. So, just as with the hardware, the software development costs are going to be passed down to the buyers. But software has a major advantage over hardware, it can relatively easily be upgraded to existing vehicles. You can't easily swap out your engine or transmission for an upgrade, but you can easily get new software upgrades for your vehicle. But such upgrades are most likely not going to be handed out for free.
The upside about paying for software upgrades is that you might be able to receive significant updates to your existing vehicle whereas before such major updates were probably only available if you bought a new vehicle, otherwise, you were S.O.L. We've complained about this many times. You own a relatively new vehicle but you can't get the desired updates they put into the new model year.
For example, many, if not all, of the new Unconnect 5 software features could be ported over to Unconnect 4 hardware just as older Andriod and iOS phones can receive many, if not all, of the new features made for newer model phones, even with different hardware. But it takes significant development money to port new software to older hardware, it's less expensive to skip that and just move on, unless there are some financial or other incentives to do so.
Software is quite expensive to develop, maintain, and improve. That includes updates to firmware and maps. You would never expect updated hardware for free, software is no different. Just because you can't touch or feel software does not mean it's not expensive to produce. Yet, for some reason, many of us still expect to get it for free. That's simply not realistic financially.
Manufacturers don't want to pay to develop or purchase and then give out major updates for free as there is no incentive/profit for them. In fact, they would lose money developing/purchasing updates and then giving them away for free. It might also discourage you from purchasing a newer vehicle. So, what's in it for them financially? Unless they change the paradigm and find a way to profit or at least break even from it. This is exactly what they're now doing and why it's now going to cost you for new updates. You may still get bug fixes and safety-related updates for free, but new features, improvements, and updated maps are going to cost you just as new hardware updates would cost you.
Being charged for these updates may seem galling but it also encourages manufacturers to provide significant updates to existing vehicles which might have previously not been available. So it's a give and take. Business is business, no one's getting anything significant for free. Once you're sold a vehicle, they're not handing you out anything more unless you're willing to pay, hardware or software. That should come as no surprise to anyone.
