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

[Mctaff]

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.

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.

Some fair points…. Albeit I know lots of large companies with far older tech. For tracked lease vehicles companies often use 3rd party components in the vehicle which can easily be switched out when past end of life

 

[MickOpalak]

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.

I've owned three BMWs, all out of warranty. Haven't had a major issue with any of them and they've been great. Would buy another one tomorrow.

 

[eriegz]

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.

Not a good comparison.

1. A better analogy would be, de-tuning an engine, then charging you $18 / mo to unlock its full horsepower
2. There's no benefit to the consumer in having to subscribe to unlock this feature. A heated seat is either on or off. It's not like teams of software engineers are continually pushing out new heated seat features over the air to justify having to pay a subscription for it, like you would with, say, Adobe Photoshop, where next month you now suddenly have a new AI image recognition tool and 3 bug fixes.

This is a 100% pure cash grab.

 

[eriegz]

Go back, Capitalism. You made a wrong turn somewhere....

Companies and business models can be evaluated a number of different ways, for example:

1. Good for shareholders
2. Good for the consumer
3. Good for the planet

BMW's new heated seat subscription is only one of the above.

 

[Leonard]

Go back, Capitalism. You made a wrong turn somewhere....

Companies and business models can be evaluated a number of different ways, for example:

1. Good for investors
2. Good for the consumer
3. Good for the planet

BMW's new heated seat subscription is only one of the above.

Unless you are a original owner that only wants the seats on 2 months of the year.
Or the second owner who wanted heated seats but car otherwise wouldn't have had them.
Or the dealer who doesn't have to try and sell a poverty spec car.
It's a win all around if BMW also let you spec and purchase them outright when buying new as they do now
I spent 200 pounds on a climate windscreen on my Golf R. Used it twice to defrost it... 100 a pop. Would have much rather spent 30 total

 

[eriegz]

Unless you are a original owner that only wants the seats on 2 months of the year.
Or the second owner who wanted heated seats but car otherwise wouldn't have had them.
Or the dealer who doesn't have to try and sell a poverty spec car.
It's a win all around if BMW also let you spec and purchase them outright when buying new as they do now
I spent 200 pounds on a climate windscreen on my Golf R. Used it twice to defrost it... 100 a pop. Would have much rather spent 30 total

In all honesty, every "problem" you list above sounds like a complete non-issue:

• You want to buy a used BMW with heated seats? Then find one with heated seats.
• Can't find one with heated seats? Oh well, try again in a week or two.
• Selling your BMW with heated seats, but nobody wants heated seats? Oh well, take a hit on that option. Similar story if you paid $8,000 for a hot pink custom paint job that nobody else wants.
• You're a dealer who ordered a car that's specced too low and now it won't sell? Oh well, take a hit on the price just to get it off the lot, and don't make the same mistake again in the future.
• You're thinking of buying a certain feature on a new car, but think you'll only use it once or twice a year? Maybe don't buy that feature then. Also, paying for said feature on a subscription basis doesn't just make the underlying hardware magically go away when you're not using it. Your car will still need to lug around the hardware's weight 365 days a year, even if you only use it once a year.

I'm actually shocked how people on here are trying to come up with various ways to justify this barefaced cash grab on BMW's part.

 

[Leonard]

View attachment 7385

In all honesty, every "problem" you list above sounds like a complete non-issue:

• You want to buy a used BMW with heated seats? Then find one with heated seats.
• Can't find one with heated seats? Oh well, try again in a week or two.
• Selling your BMW with heated seats, but nobody wants heated seats? Oh well, take a hit on that option. Similar story if you paid $8,000 for a hot pink custom paint job that nobody else wants.
• You're a dealer who ordered a car that's specced too low and now it won't sell? Oh well, take a hit on the price just to get it off the lot, and don't make the same mistake again in the future.
• You're thinking of buying a certain feature on a new car, but think you'll only use it once or twice a year? Maybe don't buy that feature then. Also, paying for said feature on a subscription basis doesn't just make the underlying hardware magically go away when you're not using it. Your car will still need to lug around the hardware's weight 365 days a year, even if you only use it once a year.

I'm actually shocked how people on here are trying to come up with various ways to justify this barefaced cash grab on BMW's part.

You have just listed a big list of problems that don't need to be problems 😉
I'm not saying I agree with it, but times are changing and so is customer expectation. Are manufacturers going to try and take advantage, hell yeah. But if they don't keep pushing the boundaries then someone else will. Most of these ideas will probably come to nothing, but then some will and become the norm

 

[Mctaff]

Not a good comparison.

1. A better analogy would be, de-tuning an engine, then charging you $18 / mo to unlock its full horsepower
2. There's no benefit to the consumer in having to subscribe to unlock this feature. A heated seat is either on or off. It's not like teams of software engineers are continually pushing out new heated seat features over the air to justify having to pay a subscription for it, like you would with, say, Adobe Photoshop, where next month you now suddenly have a new AI image recognition tool and 3 bug fixes.

This is a 100% pure cash grab.

Disagree… but in certain circumstances . If you want to use it infrequently there’s a benefit to a subscription model assuming it’s short term.

Eg If I only need it one month per year

If there’s no consumer benefit no one will use it; i imagine they’ve done their research

 

[Nova]

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

Eh, I'm pretty sure that when I buy a car with heated seats, I have paid for the hardware and logic controls in it even if it wasn't enabled at the factory. The act of a network controller sending an enable signal adds no additional value and incurs no additional meaningful expense.

Look, I'm not opposed to paying for hardware in installments without actual ownership - it's called a lease.

 

[Nova]

It bears repeating that regardless of your stance on this, a car that you paid $10,000 for must have cost less than $10,000 to manufacture for the car manufacturer to stay in business. This isn't like laser printers where the toner is a consumable that *MUST* be replenished. A car manufacturer can't build a single-spec car with everything already in it and then *hope* that some portion of the users will pay for enough subscriptions to make up for otherwise selling the hardware of the car at a loss, or at a diminished profit level that can't sustain their on-going operations.

The fact of the matter is, there is a *per unit＊marginal cost incurred on every single car.

 

[Porter]

Unless you are a original owner that only wants the seats on 2 months of the year.
Or the second owner who wanted heated seats but car otherwise wouldn't have had them.
Or the dealer who doesn't have to try and sell a poverty spec car.
It's a win all around if BMW also let you spec and purchase them outright when buying new as they do now
I spent 200 pounds on a climate windscreen on my Golf R. Used it twice to defrost it... 100 a pop. Would have much rather spent 30 total

The issue is that the functional utility of the physical object is decreased over time based on service externalities. It doesn't make any logical sense for that to be the case when the physical capability exists in the product and the product is a durable good.

This sort of model DOES make sense in cases where the technology has a finite life span and there is expected obsolescence that generates a shared assumption about an end to functionality. That's why license-enablement for features in IT equipment makes sense. A subscription model can also makes sense there. There's a published end date (called EOL/EOS; end of life/end of support) that is mutually understood at the beginning of the business relationship and drives the expected total lifespan and total cost of ownership for IT investments, separately from the depreciation schedule.

That doesn't exist with a car. An automobile is a true durable good. If well cared for, it's totally reasonable for a car to be have a 20 year (or longer) lifespan, with fundamentally implied continuous utility. In the secondary market that's an absolute assumption. If it wasn't, there wouldn't be used car lots dotting the landscape selling 10+ year old vehicles, and vehicles 30 to 50 years old (and beyond) quite regularly observed in working condition providing use and value to their owners.

I just can't see BMW running a program to capture and onboard customers to a pay-as-you-go model for some small monthly fee for digital enablement of seat warmers every time a 15-year-old 3-series changes hands at a Buy-Here-Pay-Here lot in rural Wisconsin. It just makes no operational sense. The loaded costs to maintain and operate the (long-obsolete) versions of the required internet-facing services would likely exceed the revenues generated. New product with the same sort of monthly enablement scheme (but sold 15 years later) would use newer tech, based on newer computing and connectivity assumptions and would connect to different, newer internet-facing resources.

To support legacy vehicles in the way described would be like Microsoft continuing to offer software updates (including constant check-in connectivity) today for customers still running Windows XP. They don't do that, because the IT service delivery becomes impossible beyond a certain time horizon. And if they can't do it, you can be damn sure a car company can't do it.

 

[eriegz]

You have just listed a big list of problems that don't need to be problems 😉

BMW's "cure" is worse than the "disease".

Disagree… but in certain circumstances . If you want to use it infrequently there’s a benefit to a subscription model assuming it’s short term.

Eg If I only need it one month per year

Even if you only use a seat warming mechanism 1 month out of every year, it's still sitting there the remaining 11 months of the year, switched off, getting carried around wherever you go. It's not like it suddenly jumps into some other BMW to heat that occupants' butt instead.

Look, I'm not opposed to paying for hardware in installments without actual ownership - it's called a lease.

Yes, car leases are a thing. But unlike a car lease which fulfils an actual need in the market, this new scheme by BMW, which borders on ransomware (take something you already "own", and lock it so that you can't use it until you pay the "unlocking fee"), is just an attempt to squeeze the consumer for a few extra bucks.

 

[Mctaff]

BMW's "cure" is worse than the "disease".

Even if you only use a seat warming mechanism 1 month out of every year, it's still sitting there the remaining 11 months of the year, switched off, getting carried around wherever you go. It's not like it suddenly jumps into some other BMW to heat that occupants' butt instead.

Agreed, but why is that relevant?

 

[SteveB]

I bought my current BMW (435D) 7 years ago which came with heated seats as standard. I have never used them! Would happily have paid less and foregone the heated seats. Same for other features such as the device that pipes artificial engine noise through the speakers. Have had 5 BMWs from new but not buying another largely because of the new front end design. BMW have lost the plot from a design perspective and rapidly heading in the same direction from a commercial perspective. Agree with the comments about software upgrades. Had an automatic software update that failed and messed up the iDrive. Had to pay a BMW dealer to reinstall the software and reconfigure the iDrive.

 

[eriegz]

Agreed, but why is that relevant?

It's relevant because people in this thread were trying to argue that BMW's new subscription scheme was somehow more efficient.

I bought my current BMW (435D) 7 years ago which came with heated seats as standard. I have never used them! Would happily have paid less and foregone the heated seats.

Now imagine, if you will, a world in which you could purchase a new BMW... without certain options! 🤯

 

[dgrace]

Maybe Lotus can install GPUs in the seatbacks instead of simple electrical coils. Then when you turn on the heated seats you also get some useless Lotus NFTs minted on your behalf.

 

[SteveB]

It's relevant because people in this thread were trying to argue that BMW's new subscription scheme was somehow more efficient.

Now imagine, if you will, a world in which you could purchase a new BMW... without certain options! 🤯

That would be great - customisation! I guess it’s standard practice for manufacturers to load up their top of the range models with toys & features to justify a higher price - whether buyers want them or not. In the case of Lotus that’s cup holders!

 

[Tonyshepp]

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

Been doing as a service for years in IT, subscription licensing enabling new features. Clever idea for cars.

 

[Tonyshepp]

So on the more expensive GT Porsches it would come with the option enabled and you’d have to pay to turn it off 😀

 

[Pegasi]

Subscription is the future. If I get a new job and can only afford a base model then it sounds like a good idea that 3 years later when I have more money I can unlock more features instead of buying a new car.

I personally don't care for this but I understand it. The interesting part is HP. I am almost certain I read somewhere about companies planning to be able to unlock more HP with subscriptions.