Manufacture Car Audio Costs
Discussion
I read an article today on What HiFi about the costs of manufacture car audio upgrade, I knew it would be expensive but never quite dreamed it would be as much as some of the prices quoted in the article.
Why are cars still being sold without DAB? I can maybe understand a £7-8k super mini but £15k VW? It’s the same as Sony / Samsung. charging £££ extra to include Freeview or Freesat HD etc, in the early years it cost more to buy a TV with these technologies but very quickly they become standard. It took years for car companies to sell CD players as standard, if DAB takes as long we will never progress!
USB / SD cards are another big omission; the costs of these features would be almost £0 to the car companies to include in their new cars, I suppose it’s all about making money and not progressing technology.
Another area is phone integration, it could be argued it’s a “safety feature” personally I think not but if people are going to continue to use their phones in their cars wouldn’t it make sense for the manufactures to make it as easy as possible?
I am a music fan, got a decent HIFI and headphones etc and been looking to upgrade my Civic system for a while which is quite frankly rubbish. I’ve bought the Pioneer Appradio 2 and it does everything I want for £220: Bluetooth, Sat Nav, Music as well as duplicating my Android phone to the double din screen. Is 10 times the cost to have a similar system in a BMW justified?
Or is it people just don’t care about music and other features in their car? Do people buying new cars have sufficient money to afford these extras and those that don’t make do with things stuck to their dash and windscreen?
Here is the article if you’re interested:
http://www.whathifi.com/blog/just-how-much-does-it...
Why are cars still being sold without DAB? I can maybe understand a £7-8k super mini but £15k VW? It’s the same as Sony / Samsung. charging £££ extra to include Freeview or Freesat HD etc, in the early years it cost more to buy a TV with these technologies but very quickly they become standard. It took years for car companies to sell CD players as standard, if DAB takes as long we will never progress!
USB / SD cards are another big omission; the costs of these features would be almost £0 to the car companies to include in their new cars, I suppose it’s all about making money and not progressing technology.
Another area is phone integration, it could be argued it’s a “safety feature” personally I think not but if people are going to continue to use their phones in their cars wouldn’t it make sense for the manufactures to make it as easy as possible?
I am a music fan, got a decent HIFI and headphones etc and been looking to upgrade my Civic system for a while which is quite frankly rubbish. I’ve bought the Pioneer Appradio 2 and it does everything I want for £220: Bluetooth, Sat Nav, Music as well as duplicating my Android phone to the double din screen. Is 10 times the cost to have a similar system in a BMW justified?
Or is it people just don’t care about music and other features in their car? Do people buying new cars have sufficient money to afford these extras and those that don’t make do with things stuck to their dash and windscreen?
Here is the article if you’re interested:
http://www.whathifi.com/blog/just-how-much-does-it...
DAB is slowly creeping in - I was under the impression that DAB was standard on all VWs now, but they may have excluded the Up from that.
Trouble is that FM is nigh-on universal, so given the prevalence of "world cars" it makes it easy to make one stereo unit to use across lots of markets, and just make minor variations to settings for each market.
For post-FM stuff, there's a mire of different standards - there's a few different variants of DAB across Europe, the US uses HD Radio and Sirius satellite, Japan is using something completely different. Now car manufacturers need lots of different stereos, each with far fewer units sold.
In the UK at least, the idea of a digital switchover for radio (as they have now finished for TV) is still just an idea - no-one wants to commit to a date so it's realistically 10+ years away still. Most (new) car buyers don't keep their cars for more than 5 years, so a regular FM radio will be perfectly serviceable for them in that time.
Trouble is that FM is nigh-on universal, so given the prevalence of "world cars" it makes it easy to make one stereo unit to use across lots of markets, and just make minor variations to settings for each market.
For post-FM stuff, there's a mire of different standards - there's a few different variants of DAB across Europe, the US uses HD Radio and Sirius satellite, Japan is using something completely different. Now car manufacturers need lots of different stereos, each with far fewer units sold.
In the UK at least, the idea of a digital switchover for radio (as they have now finished for TV) is still just an idea - no-one wants to commit to a date so it's realistically 10+ years away still. Most (new) car buyers don't keep their cars for more than 5 years, so a regular FM radio will be perfectly serviceable for them in that time.
Isn’t the problem self-perpetuating though? If manufactures charge a lot for the DAB option people won’t tick the box meaning this won’t filter down to the second hand market. 5 years later they buy their next new car, they’ve lasted the last 5 years without DAB and won’t spec it again and so on!
USB / SD and phone integration / apps are a youth thing; people under 40 (without wanting to generalize too much) expect certain functions from their phones / cameras / tablets / laptops. Why are these same functions not demanded from their cars?
If the manufactures are finding it too expensive to have individual radios for each area why don’t they change to dins / double dins? Using my civic as an example, the stereo is built in but they released a special addition called a TI with a double din pioneer system. They are always far superior than factory equipment and have to be cheaper.
People buying £50k + cars might want the built in look but people at the cheaper end of the market I’m sure people would be happy with a less integrated look for dramatically increased functionality
USB / SD and phone integration / apps are a youth thing; people under 40 (without wanting to generalize too much) expect certain functions from their phones / cameras / tablets / laptops. Why are these same functions not demanded from their cars?
If the manufactures are finding it too expensive to have individual radios for each area why don’t they change to dins / double dins? Using my civic as an example, the stereo is built in but they released a special addition called a TI with a double din pioneer system. They are always far superior than factory equipment and have to be cheaper.
People buying £50k + cars might want the built in look but people at the cheaper end of the market I’m sure people would be happy with a less integrated look for dramatically increased functionality
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