The Silent Takeover - Part 5: The Subscription Garage

You paid for the heated seats. They are physically installed in your car. To activate them, you must now pay again—every month. This is the subscription garage, where car features become services. The shift from ownership to usership is complete. Capabilities you once bought outright are now licensed, with fees that recur for the life of the vehicle. The car is no longer a product. It is a platform for continuous monetization, turning your dashboard into a point-of-sale terminal.

The automotive industry faces a profitability crisis. Electric vehicles have fewer moving parts, reducing lucrative service revenue. The solution is software. McKinsey projects that software-enabled features could generate up to $650 in additional revenue per vehicle per year by 2030. This revenue stream is pure margin, extracted not from new materials but from lines of code that toggle features on and off. Your one-time purchase is merely the entry fee to a marketplace built into your daily commute.

Hardware is Installed, Software is Disabled The foundational model is simple: install the hardware in every car, but lock its function behind a paywall. BMW made this infamous with its heated seat subscription. For $18 a month, $180 a year, or a $415 lifetime fee in certain markets, drivers could unlock hardware already present in their vehicles. Public backlash was fierce, but the economic logic was irresistible. The marginal cost of installing a heating element in every seat is low. The potential revenue from subscriptions is continuous.

Toyota followed with a remote start subscription for its key fob. The fob has the button. The car has the receiver. A software block prevents communication unless you subscribe to the Remote Connect service for $8 or $15 per month. This practice, known as “feature on demand” (FOD), transforms the buyer’s relationship with the vehicle. You are not purchasing a set of capabilities. You are purchasing the right to rent them, with the manufacturer holding permanent veto power.

Tesla Pioneered the Software-Defined Car Tesla is the archetype of this model. Its vehicles are essentially computers on wheels. The company sells a single hardware configuration. Features like “Enhanced Autopilot” or “Full Self-Driving Capability” are software unlocks, priced from $6,000 to $15,000 as one-time purchases or $99 to $199 per month as subscriptions. Tesla has even sold “Acceleration Boost” packages for $2,000, which unlock faster 0-60 mph times via an over-the-air update that adjusts motor software.

This model allows Tesla to generate revenue from a car long after it leaves the factory. A used Tesla buyer can instantly send thousands of dollars to the company to activate features the previous owner declined. The car’s value is perpetually linked to Tesla’s servers. If the company decides to discontinue a service or increase a subscription fee, the owner has no recourse. The vehicle is a physical vessel for a mutable, monetizable software profile controlled entirely by the manufacturer.

The Backlash and the Pivot Consumer outrage has forced tactical retreats. After intense criticism, BMW paused its heated seat subscription plan in many markets. Mercedes-Benz faced similar pushback over a plan to charge $1,200 per year for increased electric motor performance in its EQ models. The industry message is clear: test the waters, gauge tolerance, and adjust strategy. The underlying principle, however, remains unchanged.

Automakers now frame subscriptions as “flexibility.” They argue it allows customers to “try before they buy” or add features temporarily. This reframes a blatant revenue grab as a consumer benefit. The reality is a fundamental power imbalance. You have the hardware. They control the switch. The “flexibility” is entirely one-sided. You can choose to start paying. The company can choose to increase the price, degrade the service, or discontinue it entirely, diminishing the product you own.

The End of the “As-Is” Sale This model shatters the traditional used car market. A used vehicle’s feature set is no longer fixed. A second owner may find that the premium sound system or adaptive cruise control they test-drove at the dealership becomes disabled after the ownership transfer unless they initiate a new subscription. Carfax for software features does not exist.

Automakers have filed patents for systems that could disable basic vehicle functions for non-payment of subscriptions, including the ability to start the car or limit its speed. While not yet implemented for fear of regulatory firestorms, the technical capability is being secured. This moves the relationship from commerce to control. Failure to pay your “feature fee” could theoretically result in the repossession of a car’s utility, even while it sits in your driveway, fully paid off.

The Calculus of Enshittification The term “enshittification,” coined by writer Cory Doctorow, describes how platforms decay by first luring users, then exploiting them for business customers, and finally extracting value from everyone. The subscription garage follows this exact path. The car first lures you with promises of convenience and personalization. It then exploits your locked-in position to sell your data and your attention. Finally, it extracts direct, recurring payments for the basic functions of the hardware you bought.

The endpoint is a vehicle that is less a possession and more a conditional lease on terms you cannot negotiate. The economic incentive for the manufacturer is perverse. It is rewarded not for building a more reliable or durable car, but for creating more software gates to put between the driver and the car’s full potential. The joy of ownership—the freedom to modify, to understand, to truly possess—is replaced by the drudgery of managing a portfolio of micro-subscriptions just to keep your car as functional as it was the day you drove it off the lot.

The subscription garage does not add value. It systematically removes it from the purchase price, only to sell it back to you in monthly installments. You are no longer a driver. You are a tenant in your own vehicle, and the landlord has remote control over the thermostat.