Should Car Makers Give Free Updates?

A few typos do not an other world make!

 

I made the argument that it would be sensible for manufacturers to give away GPS map update disks. ( The New Ford ) Yes, I'm a good capitalist, and also agree that if they (Ford in this case) is silly enough to charge more for a ten-cent CD than Garmin charges for their map data, complete with GPS, they certainly have the right to. But what is worth more to a manufacturer:

1: Getting many customers to visit a showroom for a free CD, which also encourages them to buy the built-in GPS in their NEXT vehicle?

or

2: Making $200 each on the tiny percentage of people willing to pay such a ridiculous amount for an update.

I think the lack of upgrades (and the nonsense of using hard to get "codes" instead of plain language on displays when there is a problem) is a bad habit of manufacturers that will eventually succumb to competition.

Richard

 

Recalls for free, yes

All other upgrades should be free with a dealer service, otherwise you should pay for the time involved.

My understanding is that this is how it is done in the UK already.

 

You know, we could solve all of this if the car makers just gave away their cars for free. You wouldn't need any upgrades. You'd just leave your car by the side of the road and drop by the dealership to pick up the newest model. The car makers wouldn't go out of business because the government would bail them out. The company executives would not mind, because they'd still get their obscene salaries from the bailout money. And it wouldn't cost the taxpayers anything because the bailout money would come from money the government borrows from China. And the interest on the Chinese debt could be paid out of money borrowed from India or Germany or some place. If we play it right, we might be able to keep it going until we're all dead, and the next generation can clean up the mess.

And don't tell me this is unrealistic, because it's not that far off from what we're doing right now. The only difference is we ordinary folks would be getting free cars.

 

we already did it with houses, cars would be nuthin'. in fact, plenty of cars were purchased with equity loans which came from the banks who have since been bailed out by the government with chinese debt or funny money.