Mctaff
Emira Fiend
The inherent problem with any of these schemes is that there's no way to run them over the long term.
It sounds great from the manufacturer's perspective, in principle, and they try to sell it to the public as an efficiency measure. But there are inescapable realities at play in long-term digital services delivery (licensing/enablement) that are inevitable, and WILL create breakdown in the function of vehicles over the long term.
For example... BMW is using a particular internet-hosted service model today with these cars, which connect to a licensing server on the internet and check to see whether a given vehicle has rights/enablement for features like heated seats. If it can connect and download/refresh a certificate or token, then the feature works. If it can't, then it stops working.
This depends on a LOT of technology that WILL change and/or break at an undetermined time interval. Mobile data technology changes - a few years ago it was 2G/3G, now it's 5G. The cars mostly use 4G radios due to cost/interoperability with global networks today. But In 7 years, 4G will be gone, and 5G may be sunset as well. So the car will have nothing to connect to even if a customer wants to pay to do so.
Furthermore, the licensing server that the car connects to will likely change in the interim, either in terms of the particular site DNS naming structure, the API being used, or the fundamental architecture of how they govern and deliver entitlement tokens. No company is going to leave legacy technology connected to the internet serving 10+ year old products, because they aren't going to spend money to do constant platform upgrades and security updates to servers that exist to serve product that they aren't making real money on unless they have an absolutely ironclad contractual obligation to do so. And they'll never have that on a consumer product.
The number of customers paying monthly for the older models will shrink and shrink and shrink, so the incentive for a company like BMW to continue supporting the program will shrink and shrink. If it goes below a certain threshold (which is a lot higher than people probably expect) they will discontinue it and just abandon/orphan the cars that use it. Happens all the time even in enterprise IT where contracts are king. In automotive the customer will be abandoned immediately when it stops being profitable, to try to force them into new product where the real money flows.
The inherent problem with any of these schemes is that there's no way to run them over the long term.
It sounds great from the manufacturer's perspective, in principle, and they try to sell it to the public as an efficiency measure. But there are inescapable realities at play in long-term digital services delivery (licensing/enablement) that are inevitable, and WILL create breakdown in the function of vehicles over the long term.
For example... BMW is using a particular internet-hosted service model today with these cars, which connect to a licensing server on the internet and check to see whether a given vehicle has rights/enablement for features like heated seats. If it can connect and download/refresh a certificate or token, then the feature works. If it can't, then it stops working.
This depends on a LOT of technology that WILL change and/or break at an undetermined time interval. Mobile data technology changes - a few years ago it was 2G/3G, now it's 5G. The cars mostly use 4G radios due to cost/interoperability with global networks today. But In 7 years, 4G will be gone, and 5G may be sunset as well. So the car will have nothing to connect to even if a customer wants to pay to do so.
Furthermore, the licensing server that the car connects to will likely change in the interim, either in terms of the particular site DNS naming structure, the API being used, or the fundamental architecture of how they govern and deliver entitlement tokens. No company is going to leave legacy technology connected to the internet serving 10+ year old products, because they aren't going to spend money to do constant platform upgrades and security updates to servers that exist to serve product that they aren't making real money on unless they have an absolutely ironclad contractual obligation to do so. And they'll never have that on a consumer product.
The number of customers paying monthly for the older models will shrink and shrink and shrink, so the incentive for a company like BMW to continue supporting the program will shrink and shrink. If it goes below a certain threshold (which is a lot higher than people probably expect) they will discontinue it and just abandon/orphan the cars that use it. Happens all the time even in enterprise IT where contracts are king. In automotive the customer will be abandoned immediately when it stops being profitable, to try to force them into new product where the real money flows.
Some fair points…. Albeit I know lots of large companies with far older tech. For tracked lease vehicles companies often use 3rd party components in the vehicle which can easily be switched out when past end of life