Is This For Real? BMW Charging to use heated seats?

[Eagle7]

If this is for real, this is insane! If this is a taste of the electric future, they can keep it.

BMW owners outraged over $18-a-month charge to use heated seats

Under subscription plans recently rolled out in the UK, Germany, South Korea and several other markets, BMW owners will have to pay the equivalent of $18 per month to turn on the heated front seats…

nypost.com

 

[Leonard]

If this is for real, this is insane! If this is a taste of the electric future, they can keep it.

BMW owners outraged over $18-a-month charge to use heated seats

Under subscription plans recently rolled out in the UK, Germany, South Korea and several other markets, BMW owners will have to pay the equivalent of $18 per month to turn on the heated front seats…

nypost.com

I wonder if to save costs, cars will come with everything pre fitted as std. If you don't pay for it upfront and then realise you would actually quite like it then you may purchase it on subscription.
Kinda makes sense in this crazy 🌎 but also equally bonkers
If you keep your car for a year or couple of years only then paying for winter seat heating at 15 pounds a month rather than 200/250 upfront actually makes sense....
Also opens up the used car market and stops cars sitting around for too long. Dealers could also throw in options as purchase incentives

 

[mjw930]

Never owned a BMW and never will.

 

[Nova]

The issue with this type of subscripition service, versus self-driving, is that self-driving is largely a software process, utilizing some electronic sensors. The value of the feature is in the software, and not the hardware. Expensive software has often been sold through a license model. People are used to it on their computers: they buy a computer that comes with a year of free ＊whatever* and they are expected to pay for additional years of license when it expires. A part of the software license is not just utility, but also promise of future updates and improvements.

Heated seats is not software. It is largely a collection of hardware that is installed, with basic logic control that does not require any updates. In fact, car manufacturers tend to avoid any and all software updates to their systems unless those updates are needed for regulatory compliance, safety, or some other critical defect fix. They certainly do not release software to improve/add features solely to provide additional value.

Charging customers a subscription fee to use hardware that they have already paid for is ridiculous.

 

[vision]

I wonder if to save costs, cars will come with everything pre fitted as std. If you don't pay for it upfront and then realise you would actually quite like it then you may purchase it on subscription.
Kinda makes sense in this crazy 🌎 but also equally bonkers
If you keep your car for a year or couple of years only then paying for winter seat heating at 15 pounds a month rather than 200/250 upfront actually makes sense....
Also opens up the used car market and stops cars sitting around for too long. Dealers could also throw in options as purchase incentives

I remember buying three BMWs for my business back in the day. I looked at my top spec 318IS coup at snows in Portsmouth. I was gob smacked! nothing was on it when it arrived, they imported basic cars that then had bits added to avoid import charges. As per normal tax evasion sorry avoidance.

 

[Leonard]

The issue with this type of subscripition service, versus self-driving, is that self-driving is largely a software process, utilizing some electronic sensors. The value of the feature is in the software, and not the hardware. Expensive software has often been sold through a license model. People are used to it on their computers: they buy a computer that comes with a year of free ＊whatever* and they are expected to pay for additional years of license when it expires. A part of the software license is not just utility, but also promise of future updates and improvements.

Heated seats is not software. It is largely a collection of hardware that is installed, with basic logic control that does not require any updates. In fact, car manufacturers tend to avoid any and all software updates to their systems unless those updates are needed for regulatory compliance, safety, or some other critical defect fix. They certainly do not release software to improve/add features solely to provide additional value.

Charging customers a subscription fee to use hardware that they have already paid for is ridiculous.

But you aren't paying for it, you are buying a basic car with unlockable features that costs the same as a base car now because of economies of scale

 

[vision]

But you aren't paying for it, you are buying a basic car with unlockable features that costs the same as a base car now because of economies of scale

OK, so why not sell the thing with heated seats at £X option as per the base plus lotus price

 

[Evotion]

Ha, it is indeed somewhat logical. Everything is moving to subscription.
Electric car usage, as it grows, will throw up all sorts of anomalies.

I can see there being an extra charge for using an electric car at night due the increased battery drain

 

[vision]

Ha, it is indeed somewhat logical. Everything is moving to subscription.
Electric car usage, as it grows, will throw up all sorts of anomalies.

I can see there being an extra charge for using an electric car at night due the increased battery drain

Buy an exige, and some bum air bags, it also comes with Con Air as standard

 

[xen]

There are two things here:

1. Charging for services already included in the car but disabled to up-sell. Lotus have done the exact same thing with power folding mirrors as do many many other manufacturers across various products - TV's, chips, video games etc. You could make the argument that detuning an engine with software to hit a lower price point is also the same thing - many car manufactures do this and is incidentally what Lotus plans to do with the i4 Emira.

2. A subscription payment model instead of a flat upfront fee. This is increasingly prevalent today and has (mostly) been accepted as the superior model. Practically if you live in a city where it's only cold 3 months in the year it makes a lot of sense to not have to pay a chunk when you can instead enable the feature as required. As we move towards a future where software is increasingly a differentiator in cars this will get more common.

The combination of the two might be somewhat novel in the car space but both are fairly common and make sense when you take a minute to think about it.

 

[PaulP]

If this is for real, this is insane! If this is a taste of the electric future, they can keep it.

BMW owners outraged over $18-a-month charge to use heated seats

Under subscription plans recently rolled out in the UK, Germany, South Korea and several other markets, BMW owners will have to pay the equivalent of $18 per month to turn on the heated front seats…

nypost.com

I’m a long time BMW owner and if this comes here I’m won’t be buying another one. Disgusting

anyone else remember DIVX? This is the same shit. Fk subscriptions

 

[Leonard]

OK, so why not sell the thing with heated seats at £X option as per the base plus lotus price

I imagine you will have the option. Buy to keep, or subscribe if you want. Only guessing, but actually makes sense. Look at the Evora coming with foldable mirrors on every car, but u only got them if you ordered them as an option. How many convertibles sit on the lot because they don't have heated seats. They would be gone in a weekend if the dealer could just activate them

 

[Leonard]

There are two things here:

1. Charging for services already included in the car but disabled to up-sell. Lotus have done the exact same thing with power folding mirrors as do many many other manufacturers across various products

Beat me 😁

 

[Leonard]

I’m a long time BMW owner and if this comes here I’m won’t be buying another one. Disgusting

anyone else remember DIVX? This is the same shit. Fk subscriptions

It's a change of mind set for sure.
If you actually break it down it makes sense in most cases tho

 

[xen]

Think about this for a scenario...

The Emira V6 is available in 3 states of tune:

350bhp. $65,000
400bhp. $85,000
450bhp. $110,000

Now imagine lotus allow you 'upgrade' to the next performance tier for a $250 a week fee. For those that plan to daily the car and simply potter to work most of the time they could save a fair bit of money with the 350bhp tune and still enjoy the car's dynamics and handling.

On weekends or holidays or road trips they could then pony up the $250 or $500 and have a more visceral drive with the full-fat Emira experience.

For the consumer...it makes a lot of sense. You head it here first: PaaS

 

[vision]

It's a change of mind set for sure.
If you actually break it down it makes sense in most cases tho

no it doesn't? lets take TV as an example, you start with sky, good choice, then Netflix has a programme your wife wants to watch, the amazon cos I can get quick deliveries, then apple, then Disney, she likes starters, them sports. Its only £10 a month, buy the time this rolls out to watch shit tv its £2K a year. Basically we will be renting vehicles going forward

 

[Leonard]

no it doesn't? lets take TV as an example, you start with sky, good choice, then Netflix has a programme your wife wants to watch, the amazon cos I can get quick deliveries, then apple, then Disney, she likes starters, them sports. Its only £10 a month, buy the time this rolls out to watch shit tv its £2K a year. Basically we will be renting vehicles going forward

You are looking at it wrong. Imagine if you had to buy a TV that is a hot commodity (rather than current throwaway commodity) for 1000 pounds and at point of purchase have to spend another 250 on every subscription service you think you 'may' want.
Then put into the equation trying to second guess what subscription may or may not be good for resale in 2 years time.

 

[vision]

You are looking at it wrong. Imagine if you had to buy a TV that is a hot commodity (rather than current throwaway commodity) for 1000 pounds and at point of purchase have to spend another 250 on every subscription service you think you 'may' want.
Then put into the equation trying to second guess what subscription may or may not be good for resale in 2 years time.

I agree, however if you have ever owned a BMW out of warranty? electrics and software issues are a disaster, compounded by cloud updates and incompetent staff. So you buy an nice second hand car and the McDonalds Guy in the service department then has to turn your new features on. Independent service companies don't have a chance.

Anyway, I'm buying sky glass least I don't need to mess around with cables, plus eyes are knackered, hearings shot and I need a big controller unless the kids programme it for me I'm doomed

 

[Porter]

The inherent problem with any of these schemes is that there's no way to run them over the long term.

It sounds great from the manufacturer's perspective, in principle, and they try to sell it to the public as an efficiency measure. But there are inescapable realities at play in long-term digital services delivery (licensing/enablement) that are inevitable, and WILL create breakdown in the function of vehicles over the long term.

For example... BMW is using a particular internet-hosted service model today with these cars, which connect to a licensing server on the internet and check to see whether a given vehicle has rights/enablement for features like heated seats. If it can connect and download/refresh a certificate or token, then the feature works. If it can't, then it stops working.

This depends on a LOT of technology that WILL change and/or break at an undetermined time interval. Mobile data technology changes - a few years ago it was 2G/3G, now it's 5G. The cars mostly use 4G radios due to cost/interoperability with global networks today. But In 7 years, 4G will be gone, and 5G may be sunset as well. So the car will have nothing to connect to even if a customer wants to pay to do so.

Furthermore, the licensing server that the car connects to will likely change in the interim, either in terms of the particular site DNS naming structure, the API being used, or the fundamental architecture of how they govern and deliver entitlement tokens. No company is going to leave legacy technology connected to the internet serving 10+ year old products, because they aren't going to spend money to do constant platform upgrades and security updates to servers that exist to serve product that they aren't making real money on unless they have an absolutely ironclad contractual obligation to do so. And they'll never have that on a consumer product.

The number of customers paying monthly for the older models will shrink and shrink and shrink, so the incentive for a company like BMW to continue supporting the program will shrink and shrink. If it goes below a certain threshold (which is a lot higher than people probably expect) they will discontinue it and just abandon/orphan the cars that use it. Happens all the time even in enterprise IT where contracts are king. In automotive the customer will be abandoned immediately when it stops being profitable, to try to force them into new product where the real money flows.

 

[Mctaff]

no it doesn't? lets take TV as an example, you start with sky, good choice, then Netflix has a programme your wife wants to watch, the amazon cos I can get quick deliveries, then apple, then Disney, she likes starters, them sports. Its only £10 a month, buy the time this rolls out to watch shit tv its £2K a year. Basically we will be renting vehicles going forward

People already lease vehicles, it’s massive.

Subscription is about turning it on and off… I want to subscribe to a Ferrari for august whilst I’m on holiday and stop my Audi work car subscription. After that I’ll try a bmw for work for a few months…