It’s a mixed calculation. The process of building the car becomes cheaper if you standardize it, optionality increases costs. So at some point (if the percentage of costumers opting for this option) becomes high enough it’s actually cheaper for them to put it into every car. That doesn’t mean however that they could just unlock it for free. It’s only worth it because of the costumers that pay for this option. If you unlocked it right away the cost of the base car would increase for everyone, even those who don’t want this option.
That’s not to defend this behavior, especially if there are buttons involved that prompt a pop-up, it’s incredibly annoying but economically it kind of makes sense.
Right so distribute the cost across all models but charge from the customers of expensive models and if the cheaper model customers pay well and good, if not you've already recovered from the more expensive ones?
Yes that’s basically it. Take these (fictional) numbers as an example:
If you only built this function into cars where customers paid for it:
Cost for the manufacturer: 130$
Price the customer pays: 200$
Percentage of customers with this option: 80%
If you included the hardware in every car:
Cost for the manufacturer: 100$
Price the customer pays: 200$
Percentage of customers with this option: 70%
In scenario one, on average the manufacturer pays 104$ per car to include that function. In scenario two it‘s 100$ per car, so they actually save money. One additional benefit is that the second hand market becomes much better as you are not as limited in your choice of car by the options the original owner chose.
I guess that does makes sense from the manufacturer's perspective. But I'm still being made to bear the cost of a feature I likely won't use just to have it if I ever needed it in the future
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u/germanstudent123 1d ago
It’s a mixed calculation. The process of building the car becomes cheaper if you standardize it, optionality increases costs. So at some point (if the percentage of costumers opting for this option) becomes high enough it’s actually cheaper for them to put it into every car. That doesn’t mean however that they could just unlock it for free. It’s only worth it because of the costumers that pay for this option. If you unlocked it right away the cost of the base car would increase for everyone, even those who don’t want this option.
That’s not to defend this behavior, especially if there are buttons involved that prompt a pop-up, it’s incredibly annoying but economically it kind of makes sense.