They don’t. Majority of users don’t care, and some middle manager shmuck, working on MySkoda, can report how “we” prevented a huge security risk and funneled valuable ~~cattle~~ user data where it belongs.
Because people will still buy their cars. The average Joe has very little regard for their privacy. We've been trained to be numb.
> Is this really a tangible income stream?
Yep.
> Is it really increasing security?
Nope.
I have VW and I suppose We Connect, there's not a single thing that's worth paying for, not when you have CarPlay and Android Auto (or whatever that's called). If anything I'd prefer that they'd just drop the personalization they do with users. Our car will forever assume that my wife is driving, because that what the dealer configured and none of us care to mess around with it.
But yeah, people will buy the cars anyway, because all the automation is something that only an incredibly small segment has any interest in. It's just weird that those who actually care about connected cars are the only one VW is punishing with this move.
I tend to agree. But the counterpoint is Tesla. They charge for API access, and there are several businesses that exist to make that data available to customers. I don’t know how valuable it really is, but it’s working. My wife would pay Ford for the level of data she was getting from TeslaFi but instead she gives it to MileIQ. It’s not huge but that adds up.
1. They dont think anyone will stop buying their cars because of this
2. They want to make more money
3. (speculation) The drop in demand for their cars in china is leaving them fucked, they need revenue now
What's worse is that other manufacturers are starting to do the same thing. They all see unofficial integrations as lost revenue (less of your data to sell because you don't use their app), and higher costs because the usage still comes on their cloud spend bill.
I was talking to my gadget-passionate (but not techie) best friend when the company making our cars made it more difficult to authenticate using the HA integration. He looked at me like I switched to an alien language. "Who cares? Don't you use the app?".
It's practically a law of business: executives prioritize their power first and their company's profit margins second. This is one reason why outsourcing coding was so popular despite not saving money and being so commercially disastrous - execs were in the driving seat with that relationship much more than they were with us.
Despite what some people will tell you about how the home assistant consumer segment "doesn't matter" (it does) it really is more about the tangibility of control over data vs the intangibility of lost consumer goodwill.
Companies are not profit maximizing at all costs. The shareholders and the executives are not a singular body they have different and sometimes wildly divergent interests.
Same mentality behind companies who insist users have an "account" to use their otherwise-unconnected products.