from the for-a-modest-recurring-fee-you-can-get-better-SN-story-Departments dept.
Automakers are pushing subscriptions, but consumer interest just isn't there:
The last decade or so has seen the creeping techification of the auto industry. Executives will tell you the trend is being driven by consumers, starry-eyed at their smartphones and tablets, although the 2018 backup camera law is the main reason there's a display in every new car.
But automakers have been trying to adopt more than just shiny gadgets and iterating software releases. They also want some of that lucrative "recurring revenue" that so pleases tech investors but makes the rest of us feel nickeled and dimed. Now we have some concrete data on just how much car buyers are asking for this stuff, courtesy of a new survey from AutoPacific. The answer is "very little."
AutoPacific asked people looking to buy a new vehicle about their interest in 11 different in-car connected features, starting with a data plan for the car for a hypothetical price of $15/month.
The results may chasten some of the investors demanding that the car companies keep traveling down this path. The most in-demand or desirable feature was Internet connection with a Wi-Fi hotspot—not an unreasonable demand for $15 per month. But only 30 percent of people looking to buy a new car said they were interested in paying for their car's Internet access.
[...] AutoPacific also broke down some of its data by age brackets. The 30- to 39-year-old group was consistently the most interested in connected subscription features for their cars—28 percent want to stream video directly to the infotainment screen, 20 percent want to play video games on the infotainment screen, and 18 percent want in-car video conferencing. As you might expect, the 60- to 69-year-old bracket was the least interested in any of this stuff; just 10 percent would want in-car video streaming, with video conferencing at 5 percent and in-car gaming at just 4 percent.
In other news, water is wet...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 27, @09:28PM (9 children)
Very few consumers want subscriptions, period.
There are those who lease their cars, turn them in after two years, then lease another - but I believe most of those are actually getting the car provided as a perk from their employer.
Magazine subscriptions used to be popular, but when "cleaning up your personal finances" cancelling those unread magazine subscriptions was usually near the top of the list.
Any time I have tried an Amazon "subscribe and save" deal, I have cancelled either before or soon after the 2nd shipment (particularly when the price goes up 50% on this thing you subscribed to to save 5-15% because you subscribed.)
They're trying to make "consumer goods" more like a subscription: "fast fashion" clothing that is designed to wear out after a couple of washings, Cell phones that become non-functional after 2-3 years, automobiles with major engine components (like oil pans, radiator tanks, etc.) made of plastic that are virtually guaranteed to be "uneconomical to repair" after 15+ years... yes, they could make a car that runs a million miles and lasts 50+ years with basic maintenance, yes that would be better for the environment than manufacturing a series of 5 cars to serve the same purpose, but nowhere near as profitable, and we all know what business is optimized for.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 27, @10:27PM (4 children)
I keep an Amazon subscribe-and-save for flea meds for my cats. Its primary function is to remind me to give the cats their flea meds. :)
I wouldn't mind internet connectivity for my car, but I don't trust the OEMs to get security right. These are the same rocket scientists that thought it was a great idea to play an 80 decibel (yes, I measured it) boop-beep after every bluetooth audio mode change and built the in-dash navigation system that waggles the map heading + or - 45 degrees when the car is at a dead stop with no option to nail the map to north up. I wouldn't trust them to secure a jar of peanut butter.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday March 27, @11:05PM (2 children)
Don't you work for Microsoft? ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday March 28, @02:27AM (1 child)
Yes, I work for Microsoft. I have a dumb refrigerator, dumb toaster, dumb door locks, and a dumb truck that's old enough to drink, and I don't think I'm the only one in IT that feels that way. I have, begrudgingly, integrated Alexa for a handfull of my daily routines, but none of them can kill me if compromised.
(Hmm... rapidly power cycling the smart plugs might start a fire though. I'll have to test that.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday March 28, @02:49PM
>I don't think I'm the only one in IT that feels that way
Nope, I'm right there with you. I know way too much about how the sausage is made to trust it for anything important. Even the big names that sell security-focused products have a mountain of issues, and most IoT stuff doesn't even try. Car manufacturers in particular have a long track record of grossly inadequate software security, and I don't see that trend changing anytime soon. To my mind while bluetooth, etc. is handy, anything capable of wireless communication should be air-gapped from anything of importance.
I'll use credit cards online (I primarily use cash in person), but only with my card account set up to notify me of *any* activity, because I don't trust the seller to have adequately secured their huge database of CC info against the level of temptation it presents. And it's saved my butt a few times now. Much easier to get charges reversed before they've gone through.
And I stay well away from Alexa and crew - my parents lived through the blatant government abuse of surveillance in the 60's and 70's, something with it seems likely has only become worse, if more discrete, and I have no interest in intentionally installing a corporate surveillance device in my home. Though I have been tempted by something self-owned and offline like Mycroft or the like, for voice-controlled music and timers, which seems to be 90% of what Alexa is actually useful for.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 27, @11:20PM
>I wouldn't trust them to secure a jar of peanut butter.
That goes for pretty much every unregulated industry everywhere. Thus the recent push for internet security standards on items essential to our infrastructure.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by owl on Tuesday March 28, @02:28AM (2 children)
[sarcasm] Of course.... [/scarcasm]
From the point of view of the MBA's running these shows, that is exactly what they want to do. Actual "sale" of a product is hard, and your business is subject to all the up/down cycles of the market, and to "grow" you have to sell more units next year than you sold this year (or somehow figure out how to convince an equal number of buyers next year to pay more for the same widget next year).
Instead, with a subscription, you get, generally, a nice even inflow of cash. No Christmas rush followed by a dry January hangover. And 'growth' does not require the same amount of "sales effort" next year (provided not too many of your current subscribers cancel this year). You can grow by selling only 20% of last years products, while holding onto 90% of last years subscribers. And then those 'new sales' themselves become nice even monthly cash flows.
The MBA's running these shit-shows desperately want this, because it gives them 80-90% of the old benefit, but with only 10-20% of the old work input needed.
Now, whether you would prefer to just f***ing buy the damn thing outright and be done with it, well, on that point they "don't give a damn".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 28, @10:24AM (1 child)
I don't mind "subscription" to utilities like water, electricity, even some groceries might make sense, but somehow never do.
Internet access could be a good subscription but instead it's a shit show of poor service and arbitrary prices.
For widget sales, we mostly don't need these widgets in the first place and the idea that we receive value from a widget subscription is totally out of touch with reality. All my cloud connected iot things? The cloud connection is a negative aspect of the product, I would buy one that operates on my local network if it were available.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday March 28, @02:56PM
Yeah, one more reason to embrace right-to-repair laws.
If my car has seat heaters that don't work, or is only using half its battery capacity, that's something I should be able to take to a corner mechanic and have repaired.
If that means bypassing a manufacturer lockout, so be it. I already paid for the hardware - there ain't nobody selling cars at a loss hoping you'll buy a subscription to make up the difference.
Enshrine that in law so the mechanics won't hesitate to fix such broken-by-design products, and I suspect you'll see a lot fewer companies wasting the effort to break it in the first place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @07:55PM
Magazine subscriptions used to be popular, but when "cleaning up your personal finances" cancelling those unread magazine subscriptions was usually near the top of the list.
I grew up with a daily newspaper, Reader's Digest, and of course the Sears Catalog. My mom subscribed to one or more women's magazines, which was a popular thing at the time. When I was about 9 or 10 I was gifted a subscription to National Geographic which became part of my annual birthday gift package--the next 20 years.
I guess we were lucky that subscriptions were never considered as something we had to cut. I was a paper boy at one point, and did have a few customers on the route that were dead beats or had to cut the paper to get by, so I'm sure it was a thing.
The National Geographic? As an adult I was comfortable enough to tell my Dad that he shouldn't renew it for me. Why? Because of the years they had emphasized the photography at the expense of the articles. Not that NG pictures aren't excellent--they are. It's just that you don't get several long sittings from a magazine like that. You flip through in 5 minutes, "Oooh, that's pretty" and you're done. The writing seemed "meh", an afterthought. Dad was not surprised. He saw me flipping through them way too fast.
Oh, and then there was the infamous Columbia Record and Tape Club. Rest assured youngsters, the "make it hard to cancel" trap is nothing new.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27, @09:34PM (4 children)
Who are these "very few" people that respond to "do you like to be buggered" with "only if it's with a pineapple, on a daily basis, and extremely roughly"?
Who actually are these people that respond favorably to these questions and how are these questions phrased?
I said it before and I'll say it again:
"Ain't no thing an MBA can't fuck up"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Monday March 27, @11:07PM
Answer: Microsoft product users!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 28, @01:12AM (2 children)
Usually the people like that have a comfortable standard of living but want to be seen as rich. They also feel the need to get iphone upgrades when they come out, lease cars instead of buying them, and run for office in Home Owner Associations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @08:33AM (1 child)
And hold a lot of debt that financed their display of wealth.
I know too many truly very wealthy people who are not apparent at all. And they want it that way.
And I know all too many people in hock to their eyebrows trying to give the illusion that they are wealthy. The banks make a pot of money carrying the balance of their charge cards at exorbitant interest.
They pay more money in interest than I make!
Funny that anyone would hire them given their demonstration of piss poor financial acuity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Tuesday March 28, @03:01PM
>Funny that anyone would hire them...
Who exactly do you think is encouraging them to be so irresponsible?
All that false affluence drives sales, and being in hoc to your eyebrows makes you desperate for work, putting our employer in a much stronger negotiating position.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Tork on Monday March 27, @09:45PM (8 children)
A few months in to owning my car Sirius somehow found out where I worked and actually called them to find me so we could talk about getting service. I never did get a clear answer on why they had my work number, but the best I've been able to come up with was Honda gave them that number. I don't recall sharing it with them but it is a common thing when setting up payment plans to provide employment details. I just can't for the life of me figure out why they'd think that's okay to send to a 3rd party, and they were not interested in discussing that with me.
It's fair to say that a one-time call to my place of employment was harmless. I'll be up front about that. But I have serious concerns about the future. The more electronics these cars have the more InNoVaTiOnS will come along. Entertainment for the driver, games for the kids, call home if there's a crash, streaming surveillance video of my car while it's parked, seat warmers that only activate if you pay a subscription, and so on. Will my next car purchase in a few years have ten companies calling my work to see if I want to subscribe?
Yah I'm getting old and cranky and losing touch with how the world is progressing, but I'm tired of all these companies reaching into my pocket every month. I hope they're aware that us work-from-home assholes aren't too far away from being ready to give up our cars.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Monday March 27, @10:07PM
Best guess on that phone number is they bought it from the DMV or your county clerk. I was recently surprised* to find that both sell PI for advertising.
* as surprised as one can be that a government would do something of marginal ethicity. :/
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday March 27, @11:24PM (6 children)
I disputed a $30 bill from AT&T in 1994. They sent it to collections and collections called me at work, I had never given that number to AT&T or anyone else not work related.
It's an old trick, and they're not afraid to use it because their phone bank operations are based in a jurisdiction that we can't touch with our privacy laws. Bill collectors actually have more to lose than sales drones.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday March 28, @08:53AM (5 children)
Stuff like this is why I buy used stuff, or make me leave a church, and use Tracfones (HSN.com).
Wanna know the fastest way to kill a sale?
Hand me a contract to sign!
Or click away from a website?
Just one button... "I agree".
It's much easier to nip the business relationship in the bud than deal with the fallout hidden in the fine print.
Support your local businesses.
Pay in cash.
Don't agree to anything.
That way, you make your life a LOT simpler.
Trust me. I am over 70. I don't have time to deal with professionally trained marketers who have unlimited time to compose tricky talk in contracts they present to gullible customers.
I'd just as soon wanna play a shell game (where's the pea?) with a street hustler. It's his game and my money. Best to walk away with my money still in my pocket.
Been there, done that. Wiser now.
Even when I bought my van. Cash. No contract.
Every contract a business has ever presented me has been one-sided anyway. Why bother?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 28, @10:31AM (4 children)
This AT&T dispute is from way back. I actually signed an agreement with them in wet ink around 1083 for the calling card. Around 1994 they tripled their rates without telling me, just sent the inflated bill.
My statement to them was: "show me what I signed that said you can raise my rates to whatever you want and just send me a bill to pay."
Around 1997 they sent me an "updated cardholder agreement" saying in part "we may change our rates from time to time... current rates are posted on our website... To agree to these terms just pay your bill.". I don't agree with those terms so guess what I never did?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 28, @11:34AM (3 children)
Yeh, that's the problem with these contracts of adhesion. By paying your outstanding obligation, you agree to whatever they ask.
By not paying, they ding your credit score.
Typical marketer. They don't seem to have the abstractive skillet to know that if they pull fast ones like this on their customer, the customers reveal the shenanigans in public and result in the destruction of availability of customers who will still do business with them.
Executives with this kind of marketing leadership think-outside-the-box mindset are about as welcome in a growth company as a noisy group of drunks at a favorite fishing hole. Now, no one's gonna catch any fish. That noisy drunk banging on his boat has all the fish all timid, and none wanna take the bait.
AOL trained me as to how risky it was to do business via "just click here".
However, there are plenty of corporations out there whose executives are not focused in preserving and growing their sales and will still hire those buffoons.
Those executives have a different skillet...explaining disappointing numbers to investors...while retaining generous golden parachutes.
So they have enough capital to form another corporation and do it again until the word gets around.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @11:36AM
Skillet..skill set...damm autocorrect.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 28, @03:12PM (1 child)
I didn't single handedly sink AT&T, one of their telemarketers around 2005 sounded genuinely shocked when I told her to put me on their do not call list "but, sir, I represent AT&T!". They finally got the message to quit sending door to door solicitors after I sent the third set away with "and never come back."
The AT&T tie in is one reason I never tried an iphone.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday March 28, @11:29PM
What sinks corporations is the soiling of their reputations.
Executives trained in marketing, tricky-talk, and other methods of deception will find it very hard to retain customers, much less attract new ones once their credibility has been shot.
They don't seem to teach that in business schools. It all seems anything goes if it results in an immediate return credited tor the quarter.
Remember the song "One Tin Soldier ( legend of Billy Jack) , kind of paraphrased as "go ahead and cheat a customer, you can justify it in the end ( quarterly profit/loss statement ).".
The executive doesn't have to concern himself with how the customer sees it. He is not the customer. He is the maker of rules which must be followed. He has College Degrees to prove it.
It's someone else's job to bring new suckers into the corporate customer accounts database.
The customers become aware of the corporate ethics, and toss that corporation's promotional materials into the trash bin, unread.
Even attempts to personally influence previously disappointed customers and their friends fail, as word gets around for alternative means of meeting a need.
About a year ago, the company who tricky-talked you was approaching WalMart customers in the cellphone sales area. I ended up showing the sales guy how easy it was to set up a TracFone and get it from HSN, with a year's service and some internet connectivity, for less than one month of AT&T service. No contract. Just pay and go. And how to install apps from APK Pure.
And how install WalMart SD cards in the phone so apps could be stored and survive a reset to factory just on case he got a trojan.
The young salesman, like the corporate executive, was still naive about what happens to people who have been innocculated with corporate tricky-talk.
Corporate Executives have already poisoned thaw well. No one trusts it's water. It's now useless. Best go drill another with a different name.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday March 27, @10:10PM (10 children)
I don't want to pay rent or buy food either. Reality doesn't cater to your wants.
Ultimately it will become an economic question. Will people end up buying cheaper cars with a subscription or more expensive cars without a subscription?
I have bad news for you: history shows that amortization wins. It's more predictable for both buyers (99%, the SN demographic is a minority) and sellers and simplifies accounting and budgeting.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by krishnoid on Monday March 27, @10:14PM
Makes sense. With electric cars, you have much less collectible "rent" on the maintenance, so you want to keep up that income stream somehow.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Monday March 27, @10:54PM (4 children)
I think you have it backwards. Buying something on a monthly plan, be it a house with a mortgage, a car with a loan or even a phone on a monthly plan that requires additional "insurance", is always more expensive than buying it outright up front. The reason businesses get away with this is most people, especially today, have very poor impulse control.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Tuesday March 28, @08:03PM (3 children)
No, he's got it. Nobody buys a house without a loan, but that's not because housing is intrinsically expensive. It's because it's been structured that way by a lot of powerful interests that have an incentive to make it so you have almost no choice but to finance.
Try. Just *try* to get a plot of land and start with a simple, tiny cabin that you expand with your needs. Only in the most rural of areas is this even possible. It's a DOA project in any nearby suburb, even most far flung suburbs. Even if you have acres of land and can hide it, they might catch on and fine you and if you can afford that much land you'll chose the conventional approach anyway so they've effectively forced everybody to get a loan rather than pay as you go.
Take all the racketeering out of housing and you pretty much eliminate homelessness and struggling families. Housing and health insurance. Two biggest rackets in America, except maybe war. War is the biggest racket.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29, @12:24AM (2 children)
> Nobody buys a house without a loan,
Speak for yourself. About 15 years ago I'd saved up enough, and also convinced my SO to move here. We looked until we found something we liked and then I bought us a house, cash. Easy as pie, didn't even have to go to the closing at the inconvenient county offices, my lawyer did that for me as part of their review of the sales contract. Next day I visited the lawyer's office and picked up the house keys. I will admit that writing that big check was a little daunting...but it's worked out well.
Lots of houses sell for cash, but most of them are bought by "investors" that want to flip them (or renovate and rent--that's in progress with the house across the street). But I'm proof that some people do buy a house for cash and live in it.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday March 29, @05:36PM
Yeah, I knew I'd get in trouble for the "colloquial absolute", but not until after I posted it. Nobody expects to be called out by internet pedants. Everybody posts without thinking. It never does any good to analyze these things. /sarcasm.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Wednesday March 29, @08:00PM
That would seem to be the case, but it might surprise you to know almost 40% of homeowners own their homes outright, with no mortgage.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2019/07/26/nearly-40-of-homes-in-the-us-are-free-and-clear-of-a-mortgage/?sh=6b626e1747c2 [forbes.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 28, @05:15AM (1 child)
The accounting for my car couldn't be simpler. I own it outright. No need to make a monthly payment. No need to make sure that payment was processed. No need to think about it at all.
You wanna make me subscribe to heated seats? Guess who'se going to hotwire the seat heaters? MY car, screw you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 29, @12:33AM
> You wanna make me subscribe to heated seats? Guess who'se going to hotwire the seat heaters?
Looks like you don't even have to figure it out on your own. Here's one aftermarket supplier that's looking at one-time software mods to enable BMW seat heaters and other subscription doohickeys,
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/26/hackers-already-prepared-to-screw-up-bmws-subscription-heated-seat-model/ [techdirt.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by zocalo on Tuesday March 28, @07:24AM (1 child)
Anyone with a clue about car making knows the wiring looms for the various options are all there regardless because that's *far* cheaper than making and fitting looms for all the permutations which then precludes massive markups on retrofits, and many non-critical "services" are now often on a bus rather than point-to-point wiring anyway, so this is literally about a one-off connection being made somewhere below the seat and the seat chosen having the necessary heating elements present. That's a one-off cost, whichever way you slice it, so this is purely about some asshat MBA trying to generate some extra revenue and get their bonus, and you can almost certainly bet that won't be correlated with any potential overall reduction in sales numbers for something that consumers fundamentally Do. Not. Want.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @09:24AM
Since when have businesses who have the money to retain the MBA to piss off their customers given much thought beyond the present quarter?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DadaDoofy on Monday March 27, @10:38PM (2 children)
That last thing anyone needs is YAMF (Yet Another Monthly Fee). It's sad that people don't get this until they are in their 60s.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday March 28, @02:30AM (1 child)
Exactly. If I'm going to drop an extra penny per mile driven (closer to a penny-and-a-half, on average) then I'm going to need better ROI than
"my car has wifi."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @03:50PM
Would chatGPT as co-passenger swing the deal?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 27, @11:06PM (5 children)
What do I want in a car? I want four wheels that go round and round. I want an engine and transmission (preferably manual shift) to make the wheels go. I want good brakes, in case some idiot is walking on the sidewalk or something. Heat and AC are nice, and an AM/FM radio. I want the seat to adjust so that I'm comfortable while driving. (I'm six feet tall, make the seat adjustable enough for someone a foot taller!) I want a coffee cup holder, and an ashtray.
Power windows? No thanks. Same to power brakes, power steering, makeup mirrors, heated seats, and the damned ding-ding thing that reminds me to buckle the stupid seat belt. And, JESUS!!! Pack all those reclining seats up your asses!!
Electronics? Inside the engine, maybe. Don't need anything electronic inside the vehicle. Stick it all where the sun don't shine.
I turn the key, I go, I get where I'm going, and I get out. I don't want to live in the freaking car!!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @12:26AM (2 children)
Agreed... the last thing you need is something reminding you to apply a life-saving device.
(Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 28, @01:52AM (1 child)
Exactly. My generation grew up playing outside, with the spiders and the snakes, without bicycle helmets and seatbelts.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @09:29AM
I guess common sense just ain't that common anymore. All us kids knew better than pee onto the electric fence.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 28, @02:34AM (1 child)
I have lived in my freakin' truck; it's actually quite comfortable. The wonders of bench seats!
Yeah, bench seat was one of my requirements when I went truck-hunting. Hate the stupid buckets/contoured/any shape but me seats, who the fuck designs those things, for what species?? Don't want electronic crap or subscriptions to anything; I have a perfectly good MP3 player that plugs into the cig adapter. Power steering and power brakes are nice when it's a 6000 pound juggernaut that will do 0-to-60 in 7 seconds.
I love my truck, but it's a TRUCK, and it works for a living. If I want entertainment, and subs to everything in the world, and a footbath, or whatever else they're peddling nowadays, I go in the house.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 28, @09:32AM
The bucket seats were designed so an incontinent old fart doesn't ruin the travel experience for everyone else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 27, @11:07PM
Yeah well, enough of them do to make it a functional business model. I guess the rest of us are SOL. C'est la vie
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 28, @05:00PM
People aren't as dumb as they look, sometimes.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"