KTM's demo mode divides opinions: Giving consumers options or ripping them off?

The 2023 KTM 890 Adventure R comes with a wide array of electronic rider aids and optional features when you buy it from the dealer. For the first 1,500 kilometers (932 miles), all of those options are activated. At the end of that period, buyers can then decide which features they want to keep and pay for them. They lose the ones they don't pay for.

This approach is definitely controversial among motorcyclists. When Andy wrote last year about Zero offering the ability to pay to unlock performance upgrades in some of its motorcycles — along with some other pay-to-unlock features offered by other brands — nearly 300 reader comments flowed in, more of them negative than positive.

So what are we talking about specifically with the KTM? The new 890 Adventure R offers multiple ride modes, including an optional Rally mode, traction control and slide control, a quickshifter for both up and downshifts, and cruise control, among other features. KTM touts demo mode as a chance to try the optional features and decide which ones you want and which ones you don't want, instead of having to make those decisions in a dealer showroom before you've had any time riding the motorcycle.

So is this a good thing, as KTM would surely hope for us to believe? Opinions are mixed, and I could argue either side.

The little guy sitting on my left shoulder: This is not a bad thing for consumers. Imagine you're a rider who's never owned a bike with a quickshifter. You get to try it and see if it's something you want, and if not, you don't have to pay for it. If you're mostly a highway rider who occasionally hits a dirt road, and I'm a mostly off-road rider, you probably want cruise control and I may not feel like paying for it. KTM builds one bike and we both get exactly what we need. What's the problem?

The little guy sitting on my right shoulder: This is a rip-off! KTM is selling me a motorcycle and then taking part of it back after a few weeks. I wouldn't let them come over and replace the WP XPLOR fork with a non-adjustable unit after 932 miles unless I paid a ransom, so why should they be able to remove features from the bike I paid for after it's already mine?

Vloggers are starting to weigh in on the topic and reactions are varied. Spite's Corner outright labeled it "A SCAM!" and urged his followers to fight this trend by buying elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Chronicles of Solid took a more nuanced view, suggesting that there were some benefits for the consumer, but more benefits for the manufacturer, and he mused about the potential for this to lead to subscription-style payments, where we have to pay every month to use certain features on our motorcycles.

I think it's worth noting not only that negative comments outnumbered positive comments from viewers of those videos, but also that the negative views were much stronger. In other words, the spectrum seems to range from people who really, really dislike this to others who don't mind so much, but really don't have strong feelings on the matter. The concept may seem less foreign to those who have already encountered similar pricing structures in the gaming and software worlds.

So what do you think? Is this just a more efficient way to bring motorcycles to market with lots of features, by building one fully equipped model instead of multiple versions? Or, as the most vocal opponents say, is this the beginning of the descent into subscription hell, leading to a dystopian future where we have to pay a fee to the manufacturer every time we start "our" motorcycles?