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I don’t mind hardware shipping locked and being an optional fee to unlock. I have paid for the rear heated seats in my model 3. What I’m vehemently opposed to

I don’t mind hardware shipping locked and being an optional fee to unlock. I have paid for the rear heated seats in my model 3. What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. BMW wants to charge monthly for seat heaters or carplay, but those things are not a service and don’t have ongoing costs for BMW to provide. If anything creating an ongoing software lock creates an availability risk. If BMW’s authorization service is unavailable do you lose heated seats? Several manufacturers are offering either monthly or one time costs for certain features. I’m less clear how I feel about that. Maybe quite valuable for someone who lives somewhere warm and only needs seat heat one month a year. It would take many years of paying for a single month to justify paying for the fully unlocked feature. I think I can live with optional monthly fees for things as long as you can always pay once and just have something that stays for her life of the car.

foobiekr 3y ago
I've always been curious if the ongoing fees for BMW end up covering repairs if the hardware covering the function breaks. It would seem absolutely insane if not, yet I am pretty sure the answer is not.
asynchronous 3y ago
100% agree about the ongoing features. Let me pay one time to own the software unlocks please.
cameronh90 3y ago
I would also add that those sorts of subscriptions shouldn't have a lock-in period, at least not more than a month. And auto-renew should require explicit opt-in. For most subscriptions I have, automatic renewal is desirable, but invariably I forget to cancel trials or one month subs of things I just wanted to test.
nordsieck 3y ago
> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. IMO, the real issue is the price. There is pretty broad and well established equivalency between OPex and CAPex. The problem is that car companies are trying to charge OPex as if there was a 1 year depreciation schedule, when cars typically last for decades. I think that if BMW charged 1/240th[1] the cost to buy the option in order to rent it per month, very few people would complain. Especially if that price were locked in for the life of the car. --- 1. 20 * 12 = 240
- kevincox 3y ago
  ...and if I could continue paying this price and it would continue to work without third-party servers or network connectivity. One of the worst problems with this subscription-based everything is that it creates an ongoing reliance on the company instead of allowing things to be pure local. For example Netflix downloads are a huge pain because of refreshing and re-verifying. In theory these wouldn't exist if they didn't need to worry about your license expiring. You would never run into a scenario where you couldn't play the video that was stored locally because they can't prove that you are still subscribed (even though I'm only half way through my month so it is literally impossible for my subscription to have ended yet). So yes, if I could guarantee that I could pay a fairly reasonable price for as long as I wanted to and it would work flawlessly for that entire time it wouldn't be too bad. But in practice I can't rely on that and have to dread the day I am offline and can't get heated seats or they take the licensing server down since it wasn't worth maintaining for the 8 people who are still subscribed to this service.
Aloha 3y ago
I feel different about extra cores on a CPU than I do about heated seats. The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless. The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful. The way I see it, for things like heated seats or CarPlay, I'm already paying for the base hardware cost (plus some margin) as part of the base price of the car, charging me for the upgrade is charging me a markup on what I already paid for. Making it a service is insult to injury.
- matwood 3y ago
  > The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful. Citation needed. The way assembly lines and product mix work, it could be meaningfully less expensive to have all the hardware be identical with software unlocks.
  - manuel_w 3y ago
    Electrical wiring typically involves materials gained through mining, which is carbon dioxide intensive.
- thorncorona 3y ago
  > The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless. Semi yields?
- spookie 3y ago
  I believe that the worst thing is the use of natural resources to produce those things without any function whatsoever. Assuming the majority of customers don't pay extra, it just makes it worse.
- theluketaylor 3y ago
  > The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful I don't believe that is the case. BMW determined it was more expensive to have the supply chain, inventory, and manufacturing management to build both heated and non-heated versions of their seats. Rather than just make heated seats a standard feature they saw an opportunity to maintain and even expand their highest margin revenue stream: options.
hparadiz 3y ago
My Honda has heated seats. I bought the car in Hawaii and brought it to Socal with me. I didn't care about heated seats when I got the car at all. It just came with my trim. It was nice having it when I went skiing but I would never remember to turn on a premium service for one ski trip and then turn it back off. For a premium car I'd resent it on my ride up the mountain. It would ruin the experience for me entirely just because of how much I'd overthink the cost value benefit in my head. It would seriously make me unreasonably upset. Hard pass on any car that charges monthly for it.
rebolek 3y ago
I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.
- nordsieck 3y ago
  > I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me. That's because you don't understand. The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software. Presumably, a consumer could go to the dealership and pay for heated seats as an aftermarket add-on. Or they could pay to enable heated seats (software unlock) on a month-to-month basis.
  - michaelt 3y ago
    > The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car. There may not be a written contract or specification explicitly saying that the valves in the tyres are included in the deal, but they're your property nonetheless (in the absence of obvious errors like the dealer letting you drive the wrong car off the lot) The customer paid for a car with heated seats present but inoperable. If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.
    - nordsieck 3y ago
      > Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car. Sure. > If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business. If you were talking about a vacuum cleaner or something, I'd agree. But modern cars are "fly by wire". It is not, in fact, only the customer's business if they modify their car's software.
      - Zak 3y ago
Terr_ 3y ago
> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. Especially if that rent-seeking doesn't come with any kind of support for the "offering". If the heated-seats break for a "subscriber", will BMW repair them for no additional cost?
why_at 3y ago
I usually lean towards consumer rights on this type of thing, and the idea of paying a subscription for something like heated seats is annoying to me. That said I am trying to play devil's advocate here. Other people have mentioned the analogy of locking out some CPUs on a die for a cheaper version of hardware, and I think that kind of applies here, at least for a one time payment. If I'm willing to accept that, is it so unreasonable that they could rent this feature to me, even if it's only a software switch? After all, the idea of renting physical property isn't very controversial. Again, I don't like the idea and would never want to rent the heated seats software switch, but I'm having a hard time justifying why it shouldn't be allowed.

foobiekr 3y ago

I've always been curious if the ongoing fees for BMW end up covering repairs if the hardware covering the function breaks. It would seem absolutely insane if not, yet I am pretty sure the answer is not.

asynchronous 3y ago

100% agree about the ongoing features. Let me pay one time to own the software unlocks please.

cameronh90 3y ago

I would also add that those sorts of subscriptions shouldn't have a lock-in period, at least not more than a month. And auto-renew should require explicit opt-in. For most subscriptions I have, automatic renewal is desirable, but invariably I forget to cancel trials or one month subs of things I just wanted to test.

nordsieck 3y ago

> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. IMO, the real issue is the price. There is pretty broad and well established equivalency between OPex and CAPex. The problem is that car companies are trying to charge OPex as if there was a 1 year depreciation schedule, when cars typically last for decades. I think that if BMW charged 1/240th[1] the cost to buy the option in order to rent it per month, very few people would complain. Especially if that price were locked in for the life of the car. --- 1. 20 * 12 = 240

kevincox 3y ago
...and if I could continue paying this price and it would continue to work without third-party servers or network connectivity. One of the worst problems with this subscription-based everything is that it creates an ongoing reliance on the company instead of allowing things to be pure local. For example Netflix downloads are a huge pain because of refreshing and re-verifying. In theory these wouldn't exist if they didn't need to worry about your license expiring. You would never run into a scenario where you couldn't play the video that was stored locally because they can't prove that you are still subscribed (even though I'm only half way through my month so it is literally impossible for my subscription to have ended yet). So yes, if I could guarantee that I could pay a fairly reasonable price for as long as I wanted to and it would work flawlessly for that entire time it wouldn't be too bad. But in practice I can't rely on that and have to dread the day I am offline and can't get heated seats or they take the licensing server down since it wasn't worth maintaining for the 8 people who are still subscribed to this service.

Aloha 3y ago

I feel different about extra cores on a CPU than I do about heated seats. The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless. The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful. The way I see it, for things like heated seats or CarPlay, I'm already paying for the base hardware cost (plus some margin) as part of the base price of the car, charging me for the upgrade is charging me a markup on what I already paid for. Making it a service is insult to injury.

matwood 3y ago
> The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful. Citation needed. The way assembly lines and product mix work, it could be meaningfully less expensive to have all the hardware be identical with software unlocks.
- manuel_w 3y ago
  Electrical wiring typically involves materials gained through mining, which is carbon dioxide intensive.
thorncorona 3y ago
> The manufacturing price delta between an 8 core CPU and a 16 core, nowadays is functionally meaningless. Semi yields?
spookie 3y ago
I believe that the worst thing is the use of natural resources to produce those things without any function whatsoever. Assuming the majority of customers don't pay extra, it just makes it worse.
theluketaylor 3y ago
> The manufacturing cost between a car with heated seats and without headset seats is functioningaflly meaningful I don't believe that is the case. BMW determined it was more expensive to have the supply chain, inventory, and manufacturing management to build both heated and non-heated versions of their seats. Rather than just make heated seats a standard feature they saw an opportunity to maintain and even expand their highest margin revenue stream: options.

hparadiz 3y ago

My Honda has heated seats. I bought the car in Hawaii and brought it to Socal with me. I didn't care about heated seats when I got the car at all. It just came with my trim. It was nice having it when I went skiing but I would never remember to turn on a premium service for one ski trip and then turn it back off. For a premium car I'd resent it on my ride up the mountain. It would ruin the experience for me entirely just because of how much I'd overthink the cost value benefit in my head. It would seriously make me unreasonably upset. Hard pass on any car that charges monthly for it.

rebolek 3y ago

I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me.

nordsieck 3y ago
> I don't understand the mental gymnastic here. They built car with heated seats. You paid for car with heated seats that are technically fully functional but you can't use them until you pay even more. No, doesn't make sense to me. That's because you don't understand. The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. The manufacturer included them anyway, but disabled them in software. Presumably, a consumer could go to the dealership and pay for heated seats as an aftermarket add-on. Or they could pay to enable heated seats (software unlock) on a month-to-month basis.
- michaelt 3y ago
  > The customer didn't pay for a car with heated seats. Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car. There may not be a written contract or specification explicitly saying that the valves in the tyres are included in the deal, but they're your property nonetheless (in the absence of obvious errors like the dealer letting you drive the wrong car off the lot) The customer paid for a car with heated seats present but inoperable. If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business.
  - nordsieck 3y ago
    > Well, when you buy a car your payment gives you ownership of the entire car. Sure. > If the customer wants to modify their property, that's their business. If you were talking about a vacuum cleaner or something, I'd agree. But modern cars are "fly by wire". It is not, in fact, only the customer's business if they modify their car's software.
    - Zak 3y ago

Terr_ 3y ago

> What I’m vehemently opposed to is ongoing fees for things that don’t have ongoing costs. Especially if that rent-seeking doesn't come with any kind of support for the "offering". If the heated-seats break for a "subscriber", will BMW repair them for no additional cost?

why_at 3y ago

I usually lean towards consumer rights on this type of thing, and the idea of paying a subscription for something like heated seats is annoying to me. That said I am trying to play devil's advocate here. Other people have mentioned the analogy of locking out some CPUs on a die for a cheaper version of hardware, and I think that kind of applies here, at least for a one time payment. If I'm willing to accept that, is it so unreasonable that they could rent this feature to me, even if it's only a software switch? After all, the idea of renting physical property isn't very controversial. Again, I don't like the idea and would never want to rent the heated seats software switch, but I'm having a hard time justifying why it shouldn't be allowed.