[culturestate]

I’ve always wondered why manufacturers don’t just bump the sticker up by whatever the estimated LTV of these subscriptions would be. If you want to buy a new F-150, there’s functionally no difference between paying e.g. $52,500 instead of $51,250 and as a bonus Ford gets to avoid headlines like this.

Maybe the long-term goal is to push more people toward direct leasing?

[lakwerjl]

Because they dream of doing what all the streaming services do, what comcast does, get people to use their service, push everyone to enable autopay, and then quietly triple the price and hope no one notices. That's the goal of all of this.

[sowbug]

Same reason Basic Starter Economy Lite airfares exist: to rank higher in lists. Once they have you in the sales funnel and don't have price competition anymore, they can start upselling you on things you're missing.

[criddell]

Probably because the LTV is at least an order of magnitude more than you are estimating.

GM dropped CarPlay support from some of their vehicles. They think subscription revenue is going to be at least $20 billion / year.

[culturestate]

> Probably because the LTV is at least an order of magnitude more than you are estimating.

This subscription costs $140 per year; even accounting for price increases over time, if someone has calculated that its 10-year LTV exceeds $14,000 then I think they need to go back and review the spreadsheet.

[nonethewiser]

They used to. It was a $1k option or whatever and now it's moved to subscription.

[culturestate]

I haven’t bought a car in a hot minute but those options usually also included different in-dash displays, etc. If Ford standardized the hardware, eliminated the option, and bumped the sticker, nobody would bat an eye and they would capture that revenue from every buyer, not only the ones who choose to subscribe.

It feels like such an obvious win that I know I must be missing something, I just don’t know what it could be.