Have lemons, make lemonade, proper? Solely when you have a variety of sugar. Seeing that our present lemon-heavy world scenario is missing the required quantities of sweetener to make a tasty beverage, Audi has executed the subsequent neatest thing and made lemon flavored water, rebranding it a “Semiconductor Scarcity Package deal.” The Drive picked up on discussion board posts in locations like Audi World and Reddit about this unusual merchandise on some Monroneys at Audi dealerships. Somebody at Audi obtained the concept as a substitute of merely together with a line of textual content about sure options being unavailable on sure automobiles due to chip constraints, the posh automaker ought to bundle the lacking options into the aforementioned package deal after which subtract the fee from the MSRP.
Instance deductions are $350 off the worth of a Q5 for missing Audi facet help and rear visitors warning, $1,200 off MSRP off one other Q5 for lacking that earlier function in addition to adaptive cruise management with visitors jam help, Audi lively lane help, and Audi cellphone field, and $1,350 off an Audi A4 Allroad for a similar 4 omissions.
Look, it is a novel strategy, and we get it. It saves everybody the time and trouble of attempting to determine which automobile shall be lacking which choices; another automakers have made that tough to determine. Moreover, nobody wants to purchase an Audi with the Semiconductor Scarcity Package deal — these are a part of seller stock sitting on showroom flooring. Within the Allroad instance, for example, the poster ordered an Allroad in January and was advised it might take six months for supply due to the shortage of chips. The customer noticed the same Allroad to the we they ordered on a seller website, and was asking anybody if these options could possibly be added later. So Audi is not conning anybody into these automobiles, the corporate is attempting to maintain automobiles flowing to sellers and maybe attempting to maintain the messaging of any shortcomings on-brand. It is the sort of looking-glass howler we have seen earlier than in loads of different methods, and in occasions of a lot. As a Reddit poster commented, “Oh god, the concept of calling the absence of a function a ‘package deal’ is hilarious. I am unable to consider Porsche wasn’t already doing that.”
As for retroactive set up, the reply to that’s nein. The automobile constructed with out these options lives its life with out these options. Blissful purchasing.
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