It’s ridiculous how nowadays a lot of hardware car features are locked behind a simple software switch. Feels like both a massive waste of resources for people that don’t buy the upgrades, and like having to pay for a feature that is already physically present in your car. Software-only upgrades like full self driving are understandable, hardware upgrades locked behind a software gate aren’t.
Cory Doctorow calls it autoenshittification and wrote about it here … https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/
edit spelling
It’s cheaper to build identical cars than it is to add certain features to some and not to others.
If it’s cheaper then they should include it. It’s like being cheaper to make a more powerful engine then software limiting the car to only go to so many RPMs or speed. It’s that John Deere bullshit all over again.
That will hold true until the manufacturers realize that there will always be someone smart enough to break their software lock, and on a car, there’s always ample incentive to do so.
Literally begging for people to hack your shit
Problem is there will never be a recall because of automaker’s greed, and that hacked software isn’t a danger to life … yet.
