It has become fashionable. But the car brands must generally stop demanding subscription payments for equipment in cars, says Volvo.
Volvo believes that the competitors must control themselves when they charge for equipment on a subscription basis. In any case, the brand's technical manager Anders Bell finds it difficult to justify the business model.
He says this in an interview to The Drive in connection with the presentation of the facelifted XC90.
– I myself would find it difficult to pay for something that I know the car is already equipped with.
– So I can understand that there are customers who react negatively to it. There needs to be a balance in things, says Bell.
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He understands that some functions may require a subscription payment. But it must not be the case that car brands only develop software if they can make billions from it.
Anders Bell emphasizes that he has only held his position at Volvo for a year and a half. So it is not all that the competitors have hidden behind a paywall over time, he will deal with.
But there are some things that he can well imagine that motorists will have to pay for in the future. For example, live information about the traffic.
– We all already do it on our phones. There's no such thing as free traffic data, so I think that's acceptable.
One of the car brands that has been hit for charging extra for equipment that is already in the cars is BMW. In fact, the German brand has been hit so hard that they have had to drop, for example, extra payment for heated seats.
However, this does not mean that the Germans have abandoned the idea of making money from cars and the equipment for them after the actual purchase. Right now, BMW is trying to pay to activate the chassis that the owners have already paid for.
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