The car industry is going to change drastically in the next decade and it's going to result in much higher ownership costs, especially for used car buyers. The schemes that are going to ruin ownership for a lot of people are just starting.

The manufacturers are all going to start locking features behind subscriptions. Things like heated seats, navigation, phone integration, performance, etc. will be premium features with a monthly fee. You may even pay extra for better audio or things like that. If enough people tolerate it, you may even end up with subscriptions for things like the sunroof.

Once all of that is in place, they'll include X years of subscriptions in a new vehicle, so the first owner doesn't really notice the increased cost if they get another new vehicle after X years.

As a secondhand buyer, I have to pay a non-discounted subscription for (ex) heated seats if I want that feature. The value of the heated seats won't depreciate alongside the car like it does now. If anything, the cost will go up.

That means the resale value of the car for the original owner is lower. They're selling something closer to a base model, even if they had all the premium features unlocked while they owned the car.

On the dealer side, they'll make it attractive for the original owner to trade in for a new car and it'll likely be by adding some incentives that revolve around the subscriptions because they don't really cost anything to activate, but they have a lot of value to the vehicle owner.

That will have the effect of consolidating used car sales to major dealers who can offer better value with less cost than 3rd party or private (used) sellers because they can add value via subscription incentives with (near) $0 cost.

The total cost of owning a vehicle is going to increase significantly in the next decade and a huge part of that is going to be done by leveraging post-sales subscriptions to damage / monopolize the secondhand market.

You are absolutely correct, and I have no intention of abiding by this new way of vehicle ownership.

You can pry my carburetor from my cold, dead hands!

Carburetors are awful. Stop blasting fuel into the air.

It was a joke, but my carb'd car probably blasts less fuel into the air in one year than your fuel injected car.

Why? Because it's always broken down.

Seems like they might not do it in unison.

Probably a big prize to defect once people start to catch on that it sucks.

(I will certainly shop pretty aggressively if they do shit as stupid as you describe there)

Added to that, wait until all cars are electric, and they filter down the secondhand market.

The average price of a 10-year old car in the UK, as of Sept 2022, is £6100 - pretty much the same as a replacement battery pack, which will be due after 8-10 years.

That’s going to have quite an effect on 3rd owners of cars, who buy 8-10 year old cars, especially if they have the added costs of subscriptions to deal with.

It’s already environmentally worse to buy a newly built electric car than it is to keep your current gas one (or buy a used one).

The battery wear problem only makes this worse.

The real solution is of course to heavily reduce our reliance on cars but highways and stroads keep being built.

The issue is when you buy an apple phone you're not leasing it.