> it's not completely out of the blue, or as severe as the headline would lead you to believe.
The part of this that makes it major news is that they're retroactively taking away a feature from a car that people already bought.
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It’s hardly major news either way.
Yes, it’s bad for owners if they removed a feature. But if the feature wasn’t legal and contravened CO2 and air-pollutions laws then I guess that’ll happen. Previously that might have required a recall.
Well. not retroactively - if you used the heater last year they won't take that from you. But otherwise legislation can change and affect existing objects as well, like you can't take knives anymore on the plane while 50 years ago you could. But all metaphors aside, idling an ICE is against the regulations in many places (Switzerland, UK...) so Germany is just catching up.
Most regulations aren't like this one, though. E.g., when RoHS passed, the government didn't go through everyone's houses to confiscate and destroy all old electronics that were made with leaded solder. And even for things that aren't legal to do anymore, things you own shouldn't enforce laws against you.