The emergence of Tesla forced every premium automaker into a reevaluation of not just their products, but also their raison d’ĂȘtre. What does a brand like Lincoln mean in the 21st century? The company’s President is retiring after 38 years with Ford, and in a valedictory interview, made one extremely astute observation about the state of a luxury consumer. She also said something about “credible wellness.” I’m not sure I 100% understand that.
It’s been a while since The Morning Dump has featured a face-off between GM and Ford. My youth was dominated by the concept of Chevy v. Ford, Camaro v. Mustang, F-150 v. Silverado. With age and experience, I’m a little less concerned with picking one team over another. Both are capable of making great cars, and I’d rather enjoy all of them than pick sides.
Let’s pick sides for a minute, though, because Ford’s luxury brand is making a bigger statement about customer service being central to its business, while GM is trying to insist that anything you do on a public road in one of their cars is their business in response to a lawsuit over customer data. I don’t love that. While we’re on the topic of torts, Tesla settled another lawsuit related to a crash, which is unusual.
Toyota and Daimler may be competitive in certain markets, but the automakers seem to think they’ll have a better chance against China and U.S tariffs if they team up.
Let’s dump.
Lincoln President: Premium Customers ‘Don’t Want Subscriptions’
Lincoln has been a sleeper pick for one of the most improved brands over the last decade. Lincoln buyers are super sticky, the new cars are packed full of features, and sales haven’t been this good since True Blood was still pumping out new episodes on HBO.
A lot of credit for that success can go to longtime Ford exec Dianne Craig, who, after 38 years with the company, is peacing out at the end of April. Not content to merely go out on top, Craig gave a long interview to Automotive News, and there are two insights from Craig that I think we should talk about. Let’s start with something I 100% agree with, which is that to attract more premium buyers, you need a premium dealer experience:
âItâs all part of the package to make people feel special,â Craig said. âThatâs what premium customers want. Itâs an emotional purchase; it isnât rational.â
One strategy the brand wonât use, Craig said, is charging new buyers subscription fees to use built-in features. Although Ford is counting on recurring revenue from such services to pad profit margins, Craig said that approach isnât right for Lincoln.
âWhether it be BlueCruise, connectivity, security â they will be part of the warranty period,â she said. âOur focus is really in having that in the base vehicle price, at least for the warranty duration. Everything weâve learned about premium customers is they donât want subscriptions.â
If I buy a first-class ticket on a plane, I’m going to be upset if I’m then upcharged $5 for an extra hot face towel. That’s not how luxury works. I don’t even love paying extra for stuff in the basest of base-model Bronco Sports, and I’m not sure most buyers want that, either. It’s particularly insane for luxury cars to try to tack on expensive options you pay for monthly, although Tesla does sometimes get away with it for self-driving features (we’ll see how long that lasts). BMW tried this trick with its $18-per-month heated seats, and people got upset with them, so the Bavarian brand had to reverse its decision.
Fair play to Lincoln, here, for not doing that, or at least not doing that during the warranty period. After a few years, it might make sense to have certain features that require updates to be supported by a fee. Maybe. [Ed Note: Not a fan of monthly fees on a used car. -DT]
Here’s the other bit I’m a little less sold on, which is the move away from the guiding concept of “Quiet Flight” to another phrase:
While the âquiet flightâ theme endures, Lincolnâs outgoing president, Dianne Craig, said the philosophy moving forward will hinge on another two-word phrase: credible wellness.
âWeâve got a really clear, compelling vision of where we want to take the brand,â Craig told Automotive News at a media event here. âWe want to become the automotive brand thatâs known for wellness.â
Huh.
âThe reality is, especially our customers â the premium customers â theyâve arrived, they can afford really nice vehicles,â Craig said. âBut what you canât put a price tag on is your health and where you place your time and your precious moments.â
The new Lincoln Navigator does look super nice and has features like a “Rejuvinate mode” that’ll mix scents, massaging seats, music, and “calming visuals” to chill out passengers while parked outside a dance practice that never ends, or waiting for your mother-in-law at the airport.
She did say “credible” wellness, which means the company has to deliver the goods. I, for one, am willing to borrow the Navigator for a long trip to see if this is credible.
[Ed Note: The wellness thing I get. I see people dropping thousands on bone broth and spirulina smoothies at my local Erewohn grocery store; there’s money there. But “credible” seems unconfident to me. -DT].
GM Says Driving On A Public Road ‘Cannot Form The Basis For Any Privacy-Based Claim’
General Motors and other automakers got in trouble last year when it was revealed that they were selling your driving data to companies like LexisNexis and Verisk, who then sold that data to insurance companies. The companies all backed off, but not before a bunch of lawsuits were filed.
GM, OnStar, LexisNexis, and Verisk are all trying to get a federal court to dismiss the claims, and the arguments seem to be centered on two main arguments:
- People consented to this.
- What you do in public on public roads can’t be considered private.
Ignoring the first one for now, this second one might be a compelling legal argument, but it feels wrong. Here’s what GM said in its brief:
Ignoring the benefits of OnStar services in general and Smart Driver in particular, Plaintiffs claim GM used OnStar and Smart Driver to convert GM vehicles into âcorporate surveillance machinesâ that invaded customer privacy. These allegations fail to state viable claims because, among other reasons, GMâs collection of driving data was disclosed and consented to, and because driving a vehicleâwhich necessarily involves conduct that takes place on public roadsâcannot form the basis for any privacy-based claim.
Again, even if this is true from a legal perspective, as a consumer, I hate it.
Tesla Settles Another Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Tesla was on a bit of a roll for a while, having won a few wrongful death lawsuits related to the company’s assisted driving features. Lately, though, Tesla has been settling. First, there was the lawsuit from the Apple engineer whose Model X swerved off a highway, which Tesla settled on the eve of the trial.
This week, Tesla settled another crash.
Elon Muskâs electric vehicle company Tesla has agreed to settle a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the estate of a man who was killed in 2021 after his Tesla crashed and caught fire near Dayton, Ohio.
Tesla and lawyers for the estate disclosed the settlement in a filing on Monday in federal court in San Francisco but did not reveal its terms.
Tesla denied any wrongdoing. Is this part of a pattern? All of a sudden, Tesla and its CEO seem a lot less sympathetic to a larger group of potential jurors, though there’s been no indication that this is the reason behind the move.
Toyota’s Hino And Daimler/Mitsubishi’s Fuso Look To Merge
The world is growing increasingly uncertain with tariffs, Chinese competition, and things of that nature.
Toyota’s Hino Trucks unit and the Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation, which is actually owned by Daimler, look like they’re going to merge in order to better face this uncertainty. At least that’s the plan, according to a report in Nikkei Asia:
The four companies are expected to finalize the merger agreement as early as May. An antitrust review by the Japan Fair Trade Commission is close to completion.
After the transaction, a newly created holding company would own all of both Hino Motors and Mitsubishi Fuso.
Toyota now owns 50.1% of Hino, and Daimler Truck owns 89.3% of Mitsubishi Fuso. While Toyota and Daimler Truck are expected to have equal stakes in the new holding company, Toyota’s share of the voting rights would be under 20%.
The deal was supposed to go forward last year, but the Hino emissions cheating scandal slowed things down for a while.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I grew up in the time of grunge, even if grunge never quite felt right to me. I didn’t have quite the self-loathing necessary. Perhaps that’s why the clever Britpop of Blur and Pulp was more appealing as I grew up and slowly became aware of those bands thanks to shows like “120 Minutes” on MTV. One band I totally missed was Suede, even though the group was a key part of the success of the genre. Enjoy “Animal Nitrate” from the Brit Awards.
The Big Question
Would you pay a subscription for any car service? What would it be for?
Top Photo: Lincoln
Without reading any Comments (yet), does GM realize the opposite is also true? That all data that is within the vehicle on a public road is also public data and any effort by GM to block us from reading the computer codes and data encoded is against their own premise? And if GM tries to hide our access to that data by erecting barriers such as logins, passwords, and encryption is blocking us from that data and GM must provide access to if to us? It works both ways.
When OnStar first came out, I said “aww hell no.” Like every few months now there’s a news story that further vindicates that reaction.
My car came with a free one-year subscription to Sirius/XM and I was already a subscriber via a portable receiver in the car I had before. So, I already knew what it would cost. I probably don’t want to know how much performing artists get from them but that’s a rant for another day.
BMW’s whatever charge to keep the seat warmers working was absurd. Really it was $18/month?
Charging for built-in features of a vehicle is just nothing more than greed. I understand something like updating the database on a built-in GPS should probably cost something. (But who uses those anymore?)
I pay for satellite radio but that really has nothing to do with the carmakers. I get the $6 monthly subscription special and cancel after the term is up. Within a couple of months they usually offer the same special. I’m currently in the wait and see phase. Since I’m not in my car every day I can’t give them $24 a month. I can’t think of one thing I would be willing to pay a carmaker for subscription wise. If it’s on the car, it’s on the car.
Been paying for Sirius last 20 years, but shut it down a bit ago due to the cost.
I drive less than less than 500 miles per month, if that.
Still stream Sirius at home though.
But nothing else.
YMMV
I listen to my Sirius XM on my phone in my home as much as I do in the car. I still like changing channels among many genres, getting talk radio, news, sports…
I think I’m at 16 years. I have 12 Sirius/XM presets on my car’s radio but the ones I listen to most are comedy channels. They make me laugh and chill out while driving. Otherwise, it’s usually First Wave or Cassette Rewind. Those are my music vibes. Once in a while a news channel.
My 30-year-old son tells me I’m wasting money and listens to Spotify through his phone and Bluetooth. I would look into that, but I don’t want to mess with a phone while I’m driving.
The only other thing I have to say about satellite radio is that the fidelity in a ’15 BMW X5 was horrible. I had a portable receiver in my ’01 Jetta and then I sold it and bought a ’17 Accord, and in both it was so much better. I expected better from BMW. The digital compression and artifacts in the BMW were just awful.
Traded that thing in on an Acura MDX and the audio was also so much better than the BMW. Along with pretty much every other aspect of driving it.
Quote:
“If I buy a first-class ticket on a plane, Iâm going to be upset if Iâm then upcharged $5 for an extra hot face towel. Thatâs not how luxury works.”
It has been my experience that cheaper hotels/motels will have free wifi, parking and breakfast way more often than expensive ones.
And while this isn’t luxury, there does seem to be an inverse correlation between the price of a car and it’s reliability.
Came here to post this. Of course it makes no sense, but it’s true.
Would you pay a subscription for any car service? What would it be for?
I legit can’t see it. If I twist my brain around enough and conceive of some automotive function that depends upon an external source owned by the manufacturer, like communication between different autonomous cars facilitated by external processing power a subscription could be justified because it’s an ongoing cost, but it’s not a feature I personally would want. Same way I can’t justify Sirius/XM for in car entertainment. Some might find it worthwhile, but it’s not a thing I would get enough use out of to justify.
the “public roads” argument is a BS argument. What I do on my phone isn’t somehow magically not private because I do it while I walk down the sidewalk. The phone company can’t just record your calls because “someone walking next to you could already hear the conversation”. It’s the same for my driving, location, etc.
People are not properly pissed that these things continue to happen. It’s sad and won’t stop while consumers continue to be OK with it.
It’s not just luxury brands. Any reasonable person spending brand new car money will rightfully be annoyed by attempts to nickel and dime them for subscription services from a company that just sold them something for tens of thousands of dollars. They’ll throw “free” maintenance at you but then try to suck $20/month out of your pocket?
To make things worse, many of these services are redundant and inferior to AA or CarPlay but can come bundled with things that might be worth having as security features. Oh, do you like being able to make sure your doors are locked and your car is where you left it? Well, that’s only in the top tier subscription so you’ll also be paying for shitty navigation, the ability to connect to Apple Music without a phone, reminders about upcoming maintenance you already get but with a link to call your dealer on the screen, and in-car wi-fi for all those devices that have had unlimited data for years.
Sure, you can always just say no, but frankly, &$#@ you for even thinking about asking, any and all auto manufacturers.
I get why you do it, but man, I do wish “The Big Question” wasn’t just a prompt for anecdotal personal experience replies.
Like, there is no way I am going to read through 100+ speed-dating responses to maybe find a nugget of subject to talk about. You might as well ask, “How was your childhood? Does that matter when you decide on a car color?”
I’m not shitting on you, MT, just an observation. đ
(and yes, me typing my feelings on it is a bit ironic, lol)
I’ve found that almost all of your posts are negative to who ever you are responding to. I don’t speed read the observations of other commenters who post here. Getting real time data about what car enthusiasts think about various cars and features is one of the main reasons I come here.
I’m not shitting on you GS, just an observation. (I don’t do emoticons)
I’m pretty sure you are, but that’s cool, too.
Thanks!
> People consented to this.
This is one of my least favorite aspects of the current timeline. When you buy a product or service and get handed a Terms of Service agreement thatâs 30 pages of non-optional items, written in legalese that never gets read in its entirety by any reasonable customer, ever, and you are expected to sign for them, all or nothing, no matter how unreasonable, and do it on the spot before a purchase.
I donât doubt that these customers legally signed a document, but I bet the percentage of customers who knew they were agreeing to have their car company track and sell their location data to their insurance company basically rounds to zero.
It’s almost as bad as forced arbitration. We need a Congress and a President who are willing to write and enact a law making it illegal to force a person to give up a constitutional right to their day in court, just to use a service. Here’s an idea for the sellers of such services: If you don’t want to be sued, don’t be evil.
The subscription service would really have to be worth it for me to considering paying for it. I don’t even bother with SirusXM, even though I like it and they offer a $48/year cost. Blue Cruise/Supercruise would probably be the only one I would go for, but only if it wasn’t expensive. I had a new Lincoln for a week earlier this year and while it was great to use, not actually a need. Also the âRejuvinate modeâ in the 2025 Navigator is a neat party trick, got to play around with for a bit.
“Would you pay a subscription for any car service? What would it be for?”
Yes. Gas.
I would love a gasoline delivery service to fill up my car wherever it is for the same convenience as electricity. Would I pay a premium for it? No. If anything I should pay less since a mobile gas station is not paying B&M rent, taxes nor maintainence costs and those savings should be passed along to me, the customer.
Another subscription I might pay for: Car washes but only if done by the Scandinavian bikini teams.
+1 for the carwash girls.
Only if there was a male version wearing Speedos.
Sorry, Iâm busy this weekend.
I haven’t looked but I imagine something could be set up.
I will daily drive a 1978 Chevrolet Impala before I will pay one thin dime for one subscription service to one goddamn feature on any automobile on the road.
Surely I can’t be alone. When I buy a car, I own every nut and bolt of it, and I am the owner of every function it performs. If I’m not, I will buy something else that this is true about.
I will retro fit an 8-track player into a brand new car before I will subscribe to anything built into the dashboard.
for the subscription question, no. But, I don’t pay for any subscriptions that I reasonably can go without. (stuff like insurance are subscriptions that I will live with paying)
my thoughts with the Chevrolet thing is:
one) as many people have mentioned, there is an expectation of privacy in your vehicle, as police need confirmation or a warrant to search it, as well as if the car track this data on private property. That is an invasion of privacy
and
two) they say people consented to this, I presume this is from when they signed the contract to purchase or lease the vehicle, but what about passengers, guest drivers, or the possibility of selling the car to someone else. If they’re collecting the data in these situations, it doesn’t really feel like there was consent given to Chevrolet to collect this data. If the consent to this data is the act of using their product in any way, that, at least to me, implies that you don’t own the vehicle.
âWhether it be BlueCruise, connectivity, security â they will be part of the warranty period,â
This feels like a good opportunity to differentiate Lincoln’s certified used vehicle program, include all the add-on services with no subscription during the extended warranty period (currently 6 years/100k miles) that is included with the certification. Maybe Lincoln already does this.
When I worked there I was surprised how out of touch Ford really was. They lucked into most of their successes and werent able to calculate their way into a consumer loved vehicle.
SHO was leftover yamaha engines.
Mustang they wanted to kill for the Probe but people objected so hard they listened.
Cosworth Escort killed with no replacement. (Focus RS awd cant stay engaged more than a few seconds as its overdriven)
The Mustang top tier going auto only?
Fiesta RS teased never materialized.
Like they really know what people wantâŠ. Go retire maybe someone younger who understands that no one cares about wellness. Merc and BMW make sporty luxury cars that people want. You never think V10/V12 Lincoln, they would never gun for the M3/M4, they couldnt realize their gangster Towncar was something that people didnt want canceled.
Just bad leadership all over.
Call me cheap,call me old,but I donât want to pay for anything subscription related to my carâŠâŠ.EVER!!
I assume you have insurance…
I like subscriptions for certain things that I use a lot. Software that I use is much better as a subscription than it was when you had to buy disks. It is always the latest version, and there aren’t compatibility issues when sharing files across coworkers, clients, and vendors. It is also a very predictable expense, which makes budgeting easy.
Subscriptions suck for almost everything else largely because they are designed to suck. There is a lot of effort put into making them easy to forget about and difficult to cancel. The good products/services are fairly comfortable, not making people jump through hoops, because they have realized that as people get used to the subscription model, they also get used to canceling and activating subscriptions as a part of their daily lives. Companies that make it difficult are hurting themselves in the long run.
You’re confusing subscription with updates and support. You COULD have fully supported and updated software WITHOUT subscription. It’s bad for software in the long term. The motivation for the devs to make the software better is non-existent as you MUST subscribe to use the software and the likelihood of you switching is small. As opposed to the past there had to be a good reason for people to upgrade.
I lived in those times when support was supposed to exist. It didn’t, and it was terrible. I have used these pieces of software all day, every day for decades, and while by no means perfect, it is miles better than it used to be.
All software is better than it used to be. I don’t think that is owed to the subscription model.
Oh, but, it surely is. The number of hours wasted dealing with sharing files with people who did not have the same version as you was significant. Restricting compatibility was a lever the software companies used to encourage staying with whatever was current.
With one-time update costs being astronomical, companies always tried to skip buying new versions as long as possible. Which made the accountants happy, but the people doing the work were miserable.
But it’s not the subscription model the enables updates. The internet does. How does a subscription model ensure you’re all on the same version? The subscription is excused by the auto updates not the thing that does the updating. They could sell licenses not on subscription model that do the same thing. They could also make a subscription that DOESN’T include updates.
For example: Operating systems are not on subscription but get updated regularly to ensure interoperability. Neither are some phone apps. You buy it once and you get updates.
It isn’t an issue of online or disk. The software company isn’t going to upgrade you forever based on a single purchase. Software like the Adobe suite has been around for 40 years. Adobe can’t provide four decades of updates based on a single purchase and stay in business.
OSs have other avenues for making money. Apple maintains the ecosystems (Mac or iOS) to sell hardware and get a cut of apps, including licensing. The same is true for Microsoft, though largely to corporate clients.
For individual apps on your phone, they offer the app as a one-time purchase or for free, so they can advertise to you, sell you microtransactions, or just collect your data to sell it. Some things, like games, aren’t supported over the long term unless they have an additional revenue stream.
None of that works for most professional software. Nobody wants to buy a pack of 20 drop shadows to use in Photoshop or look at ads. So, you need to impose gateways that require users to pay for upgrades at some point. That gateway breaks the functionality of the ecosystem.
I know. I was just talking about the logistics of it all.
I would argue thereâs a difference between conduct on public roads in the moment and the collective accumulation of your public events which forms a view of your private life. Observing my vehicle driving through an intersection to determine if Iâve blown the light is different than following me around town to see every address I am visiting. One is public safety, the other is much closer to stalking.
You have nailed the issue perfectly. What we do in public has always been public, but collecting enough of that information to be meaningful was cost-prohibitive unless you were truly a person of special interest.
But now the amount of data collected makes it fairly straightforward to know almost everything about anyone. If you have a cell phone and aren’t very diligent about how it is used, there is a good chance your movements are already being collected and the data sold/used. GM is trying to get its share as well. Generally, cars are very inefficient and high-cost data collection devices that produce poor-quality data.
Yeah, if cars on public roads generate public data, then sounds like car companies are asking for the government to get involved to outline the rules involved in measuring, metrics for collecting and analyzing, storing, and sharing the data. I’m sure the govt could come up with creative ways to tax this ‘public’ resource and consumers should expect a tax credit. Car companies may want to be careful what they wish for.
About that GM legal assertion, OK. Last time someone I was in business with called me “the public” was B of A. Took me a couple hours to make them right, stop being a customer, and the personal boycott is 29 years still going strong.
Not a relationship I will stay in.
I’ve never really understood car subscriptions. Even car phones past the 80s didn’t make much sense. Then it seemed like all the manufacturers jumped in and wanted to offer some kind of phone service. Now the phone is the infotainment and they feel they need a cut of it at the very least. The adas stuff just include it the data it collects will be useful possibly more useful then the revenue at this point. Maybe include 5 years of data and then you are on your own. The other things they are trying to charge for that’s just hardware in the car is just insane. It’s astounding the amount of cars now that have features that are there just not set up to work. That really proves that it’s cheaper for them to include whatever then for a deviation. So just include it. There used to be car brands that did well on that basically everything is included. Saturn and Scion come to mind and they didn’t get rid of them because they just didn’t have the segments. Saturn was around long enough for brand loyaty and GM lost those people. Scion had brand loyalty too despite it not being around for long.
There is an easy, bright line rule for subscriptions: it’s ok to offer as a subscription anything that is an ongoing cost to the manufacturer. Ok one more rule – the car must be operable without paying for subscriptions. That is, it must get you from one place to another.
Mobile connectivity? Sure, cell companies are certainly charging Ford for that in an ongoing manner (even if it’s periodically renegotiated contracts)
Self Driving? yes, since compute is likely done outside the car and is presumably improved over time. Servers and developers cost money after all.
Heated seats? No way, that doesn’t cost BMW a dime after they’ve equipped the car with the hardware
I’ll give you mobile connectivity to an extent – which you sort of cover with “the car must be operable without paying for the subscriptions”. Is this connectivity that I want, or that they want me (or force me) to have? Is it for my stuff (used to stream music or movies without connecting to my or my family’s phones)? Or for their stuff (over the air updates/recalls, for example)?
I don’t see why I would personally need my car connected in any way. If it’s for their benefit, then I shouldn’t pay for it and it should stay with the car when I sell it. If it’s for my benefit, then as you said it shouldn’t impact the functionality of the car.
âWe want to become the automotive brand thatâs known for wellness.â
*rolls eyes*… What… ever…
“Would you pay a subscription for any car service? What would it be for?”
Honestly I would pay a subscription for self driving that was good enough that I could legally take a nap in the back seat while the car took me to my destination.
And the reason why I’d pay for that is at this point, offering true self driving is an expensive undertaking where you really do want regular system updates.
But up to this point, I haven’t paid for any subscriptions for unnecessary bullshit. I don’t need an internet service plan for my car. I don’t need satellite radio. I don’t need an overpriced maintenance plan.
And if you try to make me pay a subscription for basic things like carplay, heated seats or other stupid shit (looking at you BMW), I probably wouldn’t buy that vehicle at all in the first place.
So you still have subscriptions, you just hide them for a while to suck people in. This is not a revolutionary idea – I’m quite certain I’ve read about other automakers doing similar things. It is a pretty bold strategy to say your customers don’t want subscriptions and then talk about all the things that are going to be subscription-based. I guess the lessees will be happy to hear that.
The only thing I would consider paying a subscription for is something that has a legitimate ongoing cost, like cell connectivity or map updates for self-driving (although I strongly doubt I would ever use the latter, paid or not). Heated seats or remote start via the fob? GTFO.
Mind you, I’ve never paid for cell connectivity in any of my vehicles that had it, so the real answer is probably: nothing.