We need to boycott Supra tax

[Travelingsoldier]

Yeah! Fuck those R&D costs!

Inputting a code to unlock the license doesn’t require RnD cost.

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[MisoSup]

The Supra tax is, in fact, egregious. I have personal firsthand knowledge that certain popular mods in the 4-digit cost range can be manufactured, packaged, sold to users, and shipped to the customer at <30% of the going market rate. That includes a healthy profit remaining for the manufacturer and vendor both.

People can argue until they die about profit, income, margin dollars, blah blah. But the truth is that the prices for many popular Supra parts are approaching an order of magnitude price v. cost.

Price is a factor of supply and demand. Nothing more nothing less.

 

[Thraxbert]

Price is a factor of supply and demand. Nothing more nothing less.

I wish that is how capitalism worked.

 

[Zupra1776]

I wish that is how capitalism worked.

It is...if everyone suddenly stopped buying Supra mods that were in a stock surplus you'd find them on sale within 45 days.

 

[romanLegion9574]

obligatory meme

 

[romanLegion9574]

Still better then the Porsche tax ?

100% some Porsche owner lurking on here just laughing their ass off at the costs we're complaining about compared to theirs.

 

[zrk]

Inputting a code to unlock the license doesn’t require RnD cost.

Sigh..

No, no it doesn't. But the functionality to make the software work on a B58 does cost money. It takes engineering time, development time, etc. Otherwise, BM3 and Ecutek, and whatever else would all just work on every turbo car out there, right out of the box. The dongle is universal, the windows software is universal...

Sure, it's all distributed the same, but it absolutely 100x takes RnD to develop the key unlocks software.

It doesn't cost $800k to copy a key for a house (blah blah make the strawman argument about raw materials). The Ecutek device isn't magic...

You're not paying for the key you're paying for the software. That should be incredibly obvious.

 

[zrk]

It is...if everyone suddenly stopped buying Supra mods that were in a stock surplus you'd find them on sale within 45 days.

lol.

 

[7sstreet]

Sigh..

No, no it doesn't. But the functionality to make the software work on a B58 does cost money. It takes engineering time, development time, etc. Otherwise, BM3 and Ecutek, and whatever else would all just work on every turbo car out there, right out of the box. The dongle is universal, the windows software is universal...

Sure, it's all distributed the same, but it absolutely 100x takes RnD to develop the key unlocks software.

It doesn't cost $800k to copy a key for a house (blah blah make the strawman argument about raw materials). The Ecutek device isn't magic...

You're not paying for the key you're paying for the software. That should be incredibly obvious.

sure but ecutek is a money grab and a half. Can’t compare it at all to bm3 or any other flasher price with tuning included

 

[Kmj442]

People shouldn't look at the test equipment that they use in electronics then haha.

You buy a $500k piece of equipment and its barebones...you pay an extra $1.5M in software licenses to unlock it (no hardware changes) to be able to do what you need to do.

Yeah developing the tunes and the sw and EVERYTHING costs a lot of money. Generally this is made up for in volume which as stated, the Supra market doesn't have a ton of.

 

[zrk]

People shouldn't look at the test equipment that they use in electronics then haha.

You buy a $500k piece of equipment and its barebones...you pay an extra $1.5M in software licenses to unlock it (no hardware changes) to be able to do what you need to do.

Yeah developing the tunes and the sw and EVERYTHING costs a lot of money. Generally this is made up for in volume which as stated, the Supra market doesn't have a ton of.

I will never understand how people don't understand this stuff. Engineers don't work for free.

Idiot: "MAN, IF THEY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE MONEY THEY'D INVEST IN AN UNLOCK"

Same Idiot: "$1200 fuck that shit, that's insane, who would pay that"

 

[zulhijj]

The companies exists to make money, plain and simple. Before even starting development I'm sure they are forecasting sales to determine whether it's worth their time to even develop a physical product or software solution.

The most basic example - it costs $100,000 to develop some product since you need to pay your engineering team to perform the work. Then, after development is complete, it costs $200 to build each one. At that point the company runs the numbers to determine how to recoup their initial investment of $100,000 and ultimately start making a profit. If the company forcasts selling only 10 of them they must price it higher. If they intend to sell 1,000,000 then they can price it lower. No matter what, they ain't gonna sell it for less than the $200 it costs to build.

Companies *can* be greedy, but, at least for publicly traded ones, you can check their gross margins. They aren't selling things for 2,000% mark-ups. If they were, other companies would see the opportunity and make an investment to sell theirs at 1/2 the price and then make a boatload of money on a 1,000% mark-up. ?

 

[Kmj442]

I will never understand how people don't understand this stuff. Engineers don't work for free.

Idiot: "MAN, IF THEY REALLY WANTED TO MAKE MONEY THEY'D INVEST IN AN UNLOCK"

Same Idiot: "$1200 fuck that shit, that's insane, who would pay that"

Exactly! I mean I know this because I’ve needed this equipment for the activities I’ve worked on. You think developing the equivalent of a fully featured LTE base station in a 4U server size chassis is cheap!? Then put in like 6 massive FPGAs and write all the code to support that along with all the other sw and hardware designs.

Now for the tune: some engineers need to have a Supra dme/full car really, first they need to unlock it…tons of man hours, then they need to tune it (this one I am honestly less familiar with how long it takes and the testing involved to make sure it’s stable and works with all of the slight nuances of each specific car), then put the process in place and make it so a random joe can’t use all their work they’ve done to do their own (yeah this part sucks but it is what it is, companies around the world spend billions to try and reverse engineer stuff every year) and here we are.
Tons of man hours spent developing an unlock and tune solution for a car with relatively low volume and a pretty complex engine.

 

[dethred]

Every car group thinks they have a tax. Viper tax and Porsche tax for my last two sports cars. Those cars had crazy shit like a starting price of $3000+ stainless steel headers. $50,000 for the most basic turbo kit, $150,000 for the bells and whistles. Hell, a sheet aluminum intake heat shield was nearly $500.

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