> Now you are seeing the great electric car scam

Keep your anti-EV hatred in check for a second and note that nothing in here is EV only. They could just as well do this with a gasoline car, that engine is also electronically controlled.

But you can replace the ECU in a gasoline powered car, or the entire engine if you want. You may have to recode some of the parts such as the headlights and the airbags. Often you can use parts from other brands. But replacing anything in an EV is a nightmare: all the parts, motor management, battery management, charging controller are tightly integrated, signed, coded to the car etc.

But that’s not because the car is an EV, that’s because the manufacturer is greedy.

The door handles, infotainment, tire pressure gauges, gas cap, etc. all could have a digital locks on them to bless them with DMCA protection.

Fair enough, but it seems to be more prevalent with EVs because electric power is a given in such a car, where a diesel or gasoline car usually has fallbacks for most electric systems except the lights and the dashboard, and the alternator can keep the engine running if the battery suddenly dies.

I absolutely agree. I think the only reason they don’t do it for all gasoline cars is because of the cost.

If everything is done in software for the EV you have to write that software anyway. Might as well write it to pull more money from your customer.

This will require legislative changes to stop, right to repair laws (looking at you John Deere) are a good first step.

BMW still sells a subscription to advanced headlight functions, live traffic info in their navigation and few other things. It's just now a packaged deal and they also opt you in by default into a three month trial. The car is also all but unusable without an online account, so there's that.

Regrettably, despite of all the brouhaha with the heated seats, all this b/s never really went away.

At least the heated seats are "free"! [0]

(commented with the utmost sarcasm)

0- https://www.thedrive.com/news/bmw-is-giving-up-on-heated-sea...

> The car is also all but unusable without an online account

Please explain. What would make it almost unusable?

> The best part is, many won't care (when they should).

This is generally valid for current societies, not just specifically.

Conformism has infiltrated economics, so now the supply-demand mechanism is broken: the demand agents are not "informed and rational", as classical theory wanted, so the supply is degraded - spawning "shrinkflation" and "viliflation".