Featured Toyota debuts its first SDV (software-defined vehicle)

I think this is something that has me worried about SDVs (software defined vehicles). With something like a smartphone or laptop, you kind of expect it not to last. It will eventually drop and break. Or the battery will get worn down to the point it's useless. Or the processor will be too slow for modern websites and/or apps and games. Or the safety layer, on a hardware level, will not be up to par. And we've kind of grown to expect that after 5 years or so, at most, your phone's manufacturer will abandon any OS and security updates altogether. Then it's only a matter of time that your apps stop supporting your OS version, especially security-oriented apps like banking apps.

Laptops are similar but do last a bit longer. The shortest I've seen a modern device be supported was 5 years. Normally you expect more than that, sometimes well over a decade.

But cars can and do last decades. Once the car is sold and past its warranty period there is little incentive for car manufacturers to keep their SDVs up-to-date. Similar problems are arising for those who have bought smart TVs, smart thermostats, and other so-called "smart" devices ("smart" being basically a synonym of software defined). Hackers are able to hack your TV habits, and sometimes even the camera on your TV (if it has one). Companies dump their cloud connection with their thermostats rendering the thermostat a "dumb" thermostat. These same kinds of things are bound to happen to SDVs.

 

You've just described precisely why subscriptions will be necessary.

"Making progress" is expensive. If the automaker wants to do it faster, somebody needs to pay more. That was always going to be us, the buyers. Software publishers have figured out that it can be made more palatable via the subscription model to stabliize the revenue flow.

I do not dispute the idea that rapid development is going to be necessary for carmakers to remain in their markets, but I think you're utterly delusional to believe there won't be a big sharp hook in the form of perpetual subscription fees to pay on the resulting SDVs.

 

I see this as part of an already going on trend.

The US market is one where new car buyers are rich. The average car buyer makes some $115,000 per year (83rd percentile). Labor costs are also high making it hard to make a profit off of cheaper cars.

The result has been the axing of the econo car market. When adjusting for inflation, there have always been cars around the $15,000 price. Right now the only car under $20,000 is the Nissan Versa and this is the last year for it.

From here on out, the cheapest vehicles will be in the +$20,000 range, like the Chevy Trax. But with tariffs those might go up a bit in price, perhaps even above $25,000.

When doing the math, your median wage worker cannot afford a $25,000 car. But car manufacturers don't care to sell cars to your average American. It's to the rich who can splurge more money on a car that they are interested in.

So a future of cars that are software defined and more expensive seems like the inevitable. I guess the good news is for used car buyers is that if part of the cost of these cars are the subscriptions, one could just do without the subscription. And like I said, there's even a chance that those subscriptions won't even be available once the car is a few years old as the manufacturers will likely drop software support for them.

 

A good recession and repricing of credit will make the ease with which finances to pay more for cars will change things I think. The 08 recession brought back econo car popularity back then too.

 

Thinking of that movie The Graduate, and that business tip word: “plastic”. Only now the word is: “subscription”.

Eric O (South Main Auto) was right, paraphrasing: “you’re never going to see these cars in a classic car show”.

 

What bothers me the most is they're going to charge regardless of the quality of the software they're "developing."

The truth is, anyone who's been involved in creating software for personal computers and smart phones will tell you that it requires a massive amount of long term investments, as well as scaling rapidly. It also requires lots of partenerships & licensing with other software developers, not to mention that products live or die based on public interest / crowd sourcing further refinements. In other words, if auto makers were to provide viable software they literally need the type of resources that have only been available to Apple, Microsoft and Linux.

And while it's true that Tesla figured out how to leverage those resources with far less investment than that, other auto makers are still in the dark ages with their software and yet they think the can get away with charging premium rates for something that for the most part won't integrate with all the other software the world has to offer. The biggest problem being an inability to respond quickly when it comes to dealing with bugs in the system, which many Gen5 owners have posted about on here already.

 

As post-covid inflation taught all the crooked corporations... It's very easy to price yourself out of your market and fail to sell something because people are unable to afford it anymore due to the disparity between rich and poor keeps getting more extreme. People can't buy your junk if they don't have enough money, which is why EVs aren't selling as well as they expected.

I remember at the peak of post-covid inflation when Walmart was freaking out about a massive decline in sales because so many of their products were more than doubling in price. For example I used to buy Walmart's economy bird seed and pre-covid it was $4.77 for 20 pounds... After Covid that same bag of seed has been as high as $14.99. Haven't bought that bird seed from them since. I've moved on to better deals.

 

Well, Linux is free, no subscription required

Mike

 

Right, I'm just saying "pick a lane dude"

You were against subscriptions in post #3, and then for them later.

 

That doesn't always happen. Economic recessions can cause cars to go up in price too. It depends on various factors. Car manufacturers just go where there's money. Right now, there is no money in sub $20,000 cars. Their margins are so slim that they basically have to pay to sell such cars here in the USA.

The fix for car prices would be simple. Just eliminate all tariffs. But the onslaught of cheap Chinese cars could decimate American car manufacturing. There is no easy solution.

 

True, but if you looks at the amount of person-hours that have been invested into that open source platform, as well as how many person-hours of crowdsource labor they've enjoyed, it's made it far and away the best system to use even if you're a proprietary for profit business building your smart phone operating system off of it. The smart phones of today wouldn't exist if it weren't for all the work Linux workers did for the past 40 years.

 

if you want cheap chinese cars, you are going to get this:us-coast-guard-responding-cargo-ship-fire-near-alaska-no-injuries-reported-2025-06-04

 

Infinite growth is theoretically impossible.

Also, GDP growth isn't the same as economic equality. The rich can pay for more things and new things. That doesn't mean the average citizen can. The new car market is shrinking and catering more and more to the rich, yet still growing in revenue overall.

 

when we reach peak growth, we can stat all over on mars

 

Most societies grow then collapse. Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, The Mayans, The Aztecs, The USA, The EU, etc.

 

agreed. it is unlikely to change, most people don't understand that these things happen over extremely long periods of time in many cases