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BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
- kinngh 3y agoA little sad that this is being pulled back - I was looking forward to after market hacks
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoI wouldn't. All it takes is them to require a certificate/hash-based-digitally-signed signature and it's game over for all that.
- nickthegreek 3y ago>A little sad that this is being pulled back... That is some real stockholm syndrome mentality there my friend. It is now 100% free, as it always should have been.
- almostnormal 3y agoThe addon package that includes seat heating is 900 EUR for a model I just randomly selected from the online configuration tool. The "hack" to enable it is a cable and a switch. No digital rights management can prevent that.
- josephcsible 3y ago> No digital rights management can prevent that. Monitor how much current is being drawn from the battery, and if it's more than what's calculated from all of the authorized OEM things, then hard-brick the ECU.
- perryizgr8 3y agoThe right way to sell subscriptions is for services that actually incur ongoing costs for the company. Charging a subscription for hardware and software already built into the car, and not dependent on any external servers or anything is just plain anti-consumer. There are plenty of services BMW can charge for that people will happily pay, like remote start, remote monitoring etc.
- gruez 3y ago>Charging a subscription for hardware and software already built into the car, and not dependent on any external servers or anything is just plain anti-consumer. What's the principle here? That because it already exists, consumers don't have to pay for it? How far can we stretch this? Suppose there's a streaming service (eg. netflix or spotify) that supports downloads, does that it's "anti-consumer" to deny them access to the audio/video files because it's already on their device, and the cost to produce it has already been paid for? Moreover, is there anything fundamentally different between paying $2000 (one time) for a heated seat upgrade, and $200/year for 10 years (or whatever the expected life of a car is)?
- justapassenger 3y ago> Moreover, is there anything fundamentally different between paying $2000 (one time) for a heated seat upgrade, and $200/year for 10 years (or whatever the expected life of a car is)? Yes, it’s extremely different. You own it vs you lease it.
- chrisdhoover 3y agoRecurring monthly revenue is something a business really wants. It smoothes their cash flow, so yes there is a difference.
- thfuran 3y agoBut it's not a payment plan, it's a subscription. If you drive the car for 25 years, you're still on the hook every year if you want the seats to heat.
- gnicholas 3y agoBMW maintained the one-time purchase option. The subscription was added for people who only wanted to pay intermittently (or who were buying a BMW new, but somehow didn't have the $500 to pay for heated seats upfront).
- gumballindie 3y agoBMW in particular, and german carmakers as a whole are in for a rough decade. Declining quality and increasing competition will pose the kind of risks not even eu protectionism can shield them from. One such risk is china. German carmakers desperately need new markets and china is one of them. But germany and the eu cant bully china and they will want access to european markets in return. And what i am reading and hearing is that chinese ev carmakers are rather competitive.
- lambdasquirrel 3y agoAfter the revelations about carmaker privacy concerns[0], it seems that having options from privacy-conscious Germany is necessary for the market. BMW was one of the better ones (admittedly in a sea of quite-bad), according to Mozilla's read of the legalese. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37404413 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37404413
- nebula8804 3y agoSeems like Mazda wasn't even in the list. When the Mozilla site dropped I immeaditly searched for Mazda and either Mozilla didn't test them or Mazda don't collect any meaningful info. They are old school in many ways. This mentality sucks sometimes: -their attempts at lowering fleet emissions is to just drop trucks and make all their cars use a series of efficient engines but not actually adopt EVs seriously until way down the line. This meets the goal(others get to the same number by selling gas guzzlers + compliance EVs) but is really against the grain. Other times this old school mentality is good. -insisting on not using touch screens so drivers dont get frustrated and can focus on the road -sticking with traditional transmission instead of those god awful CVTs -probably not adopting the infrastructure to make mass surveillance in their cars possible (or so I guess).
- singleshot_ 3y agoI am adjacent to a Mini (bmw manufactured) owner who reported a leaky sunroof to the dealer. Dealer examined the roof and concluded that “the frame has melted and warped” and accordingly the sunroof will always leak. Cost to repair: five thousand dollars. There’s “declining quality,” and then there’s “the roof melts.” I wouldn’t consider buying a bmw for a long, long time.
- seydor 3y agoIt's not controversial, everyone thinks it's ridiculous
- lambdasquirrel 3y agoOne wonders why the automaker's can't just charge a reasonable monthly fee for 1. tracking where you left your car parked, and 2. remote-locking your car. I would vastly prefer that to playing games with our data, or trying all these gimmicks like charging for extra acceleration.
- gnicholas 3y agoWhen my iPhone disconnects from my car (even one without CarPlay), it remembers the car's location.
- PlunderBunny 3y agoProvided you have paired the phone with the car's bluetooth (I think).
- adrr 3y agoI just leave an Airtag in my cars. Always know where they are.
- gnicholas 3y agoAlso useful for tracking your car in case it's stolen.
- wrs 3y agoIt’s not an either-or thing. If I understand our new Chrysler van correctly, they charge a monthly fee (which doesn’t even seem particularly reasonable) for (1) and (2) and they’re collecting a bunch of data to sell as well. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find an ad on the screen for some new subscription climate control feature or something.
- 3y ago
- sdfghswe 3y agoHow about you refocus on making cars mate.
- Etrnl_President 3y agoAnd have car cubs? Manufacturers would lose control of the herd, they'd never allow it!
- backtoyoujim 3y agoNow you will have to pay for the app that turns them off.
- WalterBright 3y ago> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)
- vasco 3y agoIt's not like there's no precedent, almost any significantly complex analog design will include a bunch of hardware that is disabled on the customer chip even if it's there, commonly GPUs and CPUs. There's more gadgets like this where it's cheaper to produce the same thing for everyone but price them differently.
- JoshTriplett 3y agoThere are two common versions of this. There's "produce the same chip for everyone, test it, disable the bits that don't pass, figure out the maximum speed it runs as, sell things that turned out better for a higher price", which seems quite reasonable for a process with variable yield. Then there's "produce the same chip for everyone, soft-disable features for people who don't pay to unlock them", which seems much less reasonable. (Perfectly legal, and should be, just obnoxious and unpleasant.)
- xnzakg 3y agoCompletely agree. Only issue is that this is based on the defect rate being high enough that enough lower-bin units get produced. Could argue that at that point the price of the higher end units could be lowered a bit, but that might still be outside some people's price range... This seems like a difficult problem to solve in a good way. On one hand it wastes resources, on the other hand it has the effect of the buyers willing to pay more for the higher end models to lower the price of the locked down models further.
- ssharp 3y agoI suspect one reason why this flopped so heavily with consumers is because heated seats are a well-established luxury feature, in which consumers clearly see a line between the hardware costs and the upgrade price. When you eliminate that line and recognize that you've been charged for hardware you're not using, it feels wrong to many. I doubt many people realize any feature limiting in something as obscure as a CPU.
- Flatcircle 3y agoOh that's too bad, as a consumer, I would have loved to have been obligated to pay for that feature in perpetuity.
- bonestamp2 3y agoYou wouldn't have been obligated, they were also going to offer it as a 1 time payment for the same price they've always charged for heated seats. But, the subscription option is the only thing that ever made the news.
- Flatcircle 3y agoyeah you'd be obligated if you wanted to use the seats. and there's no reason to defend the idea, it's not like they were doing anything other than try to make more money. Because it's not software that needs to be updated or anything. It's a straight up physical device that was sold as a subscription to make more money period.
- bonestamp2 3y ago> yeah you'd be obligated if you wanted to use the seats Not true. You could pay once up front for the heated seat option, just like every year they offered heated seats as an option in the past. I'm not defending the subscription option, I agree the subscription option is silly.
- mym1990 3y agoThis is assuming that the feature set of the car is free, and then you unlock features as you subscribe to them. I could be wrong, but BMW is probably not selling you the heated seats model at the same price as the base model(again, could be wrong here)! If they were, its an interesting proposition...the heated seats are there but behind a paywall...I would say the long term economics of it probably don't favor the consumer given that BMW is doing this to make more money.
- gorkish 3y agoAwesome! Now do Chamberlain MyQ who want you to charge you to open your own garage door!
- stronglikedan 3y agoThat's easy ... aaand done! (They don't)
- gorkish 3y ago....aaaah but they do! MyQ premium is $1/mo; $10/yr or $299 lifetime and is required for any external integration outside of the Apple, Amazon, or Google ecosystems. I'll forgive you if you weren't already aware that Chamberlain traded to a new PE firm shortly before all of this nonsense began to be introduced. IMO The only reason that the product remains subscription-free in any capacity is because that toothpaste had already been squeezed. I assure you, they see a future in subscribing to your garage door, and if you think otherwise, woe to you.
- cs0 3y agoI bought a MyQ garage door system and I'm not required to pay any subscription fees to use the hub and sensors. Do you have any more info?
- booi 3y agoI think they're talking about if you want to integrate MyQ with other services you need to pay for their subscription. But that feature requires both engineering and ongoing hosting services from Chamberlain... so I don't know but it feels justified to have to pay a subscription for it. Using MyQ through their own app is free. If anything that seems like a deal to not have to pay subscription.
- gorkish 3y ago> If anything that seems like a deal to not have to pay subscription. I'm gonna use this zinger at my next pitch meeting.
- olgeni 3y ago> which was actually not true, but perception is reality This is beyond stupid.
- bshep 3y agoProbably a good idea, I pretty much eliminated them from the list of possibilities when shopping for a car this year because of this. I’m just one data point but I’m pretty sure im not the only lost sale.
- criddell 3y agoI’m curious about GM and their decision to stop supporting CarPlay. I probably was never going to buy a GM anyway, but CarPlay support is a must-have for me.
- bonestamp2 3y agoWhy did you eliminate them exactly... you don't want the added weight of the heated seat since you had no use for that option?
- bshep 3y agoI find the subscription model leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I’d rather pay up front or pay to add it later. I also firmly believe in voting with you wallet and it doesnt matter what their marketing says, they are backtracking because it did not generate the income they hoped.
- bonestamp2 3y agoThey didn't take away the option to pay once upfront though. They just added the option to pay monthly.
- nlunbeck 3y agoPaywalled features really cheapen a brand. Nothing about a monthly subscription to activate existing services really screams "premium" to me.
- bonestamp2 3y agoYep. Even though they weren't getting rid of the usual one time option price, the subscription offer really turned people off.
- coinbase88 3y agoYeah, that was never going to work out.
- floxy 3y agoWhat they really need to do is charge by the minute. No one wants to pay for heated seats in the summer. And why should someone pay for the option of heating when the car is parked? Or for the passenger seats when no one is using them. Instead they should have surge pricing for when the outside temperature falls below freezing, and the colder it gets, the higher the rate you pay. Maybe it starts at $0.10/minute but climbs to $1/min when it get down to -40 °C/°F. What could be a better marker of high social status than that?
- TrueGeek 3y agoAh, we've found the account that Cory Doctorow gets his ideas from.
- riffic 3y agoturn signals are still paywalled
- ta1243 3y agoImagine a car manufacturer sold a car which was just a normal car. It didn't spy on you, it didn't rely on subscription for built in functionality, if you wanted something non-standard (say parking cameras or fancy paint color whatever) you paid for them upfront for a one off $x fee. Chances are nobody would care, but just buy what peer pressure tells them to buy.
- 29083011397778 3y ago> non-standard (say parking cameras... Those are, and have been legally required, for several years in Canada because cars have gotten so big, and visibility so bad, people kept hitting (typically their own) toddlers.
- stonogo 3y agoThey've been required in both Canada and the US since 2018.
- neonate 3y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20230907191052/https://www.forbes.com/sites/alistaircharlton/2023/09/07/bmw-drops-controversial-heated-seats-subscription-to-refocus-on-software-services/ http://web.archive.org/web/20230907191052/https://www.forbes...
- archo 3y agoand : https://archive.is/K925N https://archive.is/K925N
- _ea1k 3y agoIt is funny since this is the company that did something similarly stupid with Apple CarPlay not that long ago. BMW has really lost their way.
- dabinat 3y agoI think it would be different if heated seats had never existed before now. The fact that they are relatively standard in modern cars of a certain price range, and there are many other manufacturers who don’t charge a subscription for them, made this feel like people were having something taken away from them. I don’t know that heated seats is a hill I would personally die on, but I’m just glad that pushback is taking place so manufacturers get the message that there are limits to what they can gate behind a paywall.
- Etrnl_President 3y agoI wouldn't mind this, as long as BMW compensates me for the extra pounds of gear they installed. Fuel ain't cheap.
- anon373839 3y ago> Rather, the luxury automaker wanted to streamline production and reduce costs there by physically installing heated seats in every single car, since 90% of all BMWs are bought with seat heaters anyway. They could’ve just taken a page from Audi’s playbook and made heated seats standard. No subscription bs.
- raincole 3y agoIs it really too much to ask it with heated seats built-in? For a luxury automaker...
- not_alexb 3y ago> Is it really too much to ask it with heated seats built-in? For a luxury automaker... Lol. Porsche takes this to a whole other level in my experience.
- dicriseg 3y agoIm surprised a seat comes standard in a Porsche.
- FreshStart 3y agoIt's not. All parts are made to Porsche standards. Meaning.. Industrial standard parts - 1/porsche of a mm on all bemassungen.
- deelowe 3y agoDepends. Will you pay a subscription if they don't? We all know what they were doing...
- imperialdrive 3y agoWe're living in interesting times. Grandparents often would not believe the headline, and that's understandable. However, they would also sneer at such a sneaky idea as what BMW brought to the table. They're at peak marketing if they actually believed whatever professional advice led to charging for heated seats in a supposedly "luxury" brand vehicle. Wow
- rgrieselhuber 3y agoPeople aren’t happy owning nothing.
- RF_Savage 3y agoAnd people "owning" luxury vehicles likely disliked having to rent parts of it. And that reputational damage might have played a role. "Nice BMW you got, what's the monthly rent?"
- dazc 3y agoWell, a lot of BMWs are rented anyhow. It's not surprising BMW would engage in further rent-seeking behaviour.
- hiddencost 3y ago*condo fee
- arcticgeek 3y agoridiculous. it should be enough that a person chose your brand with their wallet in the first place. no one wants to rent your features.
- nerdponx 3y agoBut only the people with substantial disposable income to throw around (e.g. BMW buyers) are able to actually effect change in response to their displeasure. Normal people just have to suffer.
- sonorous_sub 3y ago[flagged]
- jinushaun 3y ago"We thought that we would provide an extra service to the customer by offering the chance to activate that later, but the user acceptance isn’t that high. People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. So that was the reason we stopped that," Nota told Autocar. Wow. They still don’t get it
- nottheengineer 3y agoLet's hope they did get it and this is just marketing blabber to avoid admitting any mistakes.
- angarg12 3y ago>People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true That's some serious gaslighting.
- sangnoir 3y ago> That's some serious gaslighting Devil's advocate: how would you know if BMW subsidized what would have been an add-on package?
- Etrnl_President 3y agoThe user subsidizes that package with every day of fuel spent per pound of that package.
- joshspankit 3y ago“What’s subsidized” is completely detached from the vehicle owner already. Cost to design, prototype, manufacture, pass standards, finish, sell in a dealership, and provide warranty for are all basically trade secrets. There’s no way for a car owner to know whether their $120k car cost $300k to make or $20k, so how can we have a genuine discussion about the cost of anything else?
- akoboldfrying 3y agoThat's a very popular take, but if it's laid out clearly in the contract that heated seats (or whatever feature) are not part of what you're buying up front, then technically they're in the right. The fact that buying big solid things like cars has typically, thus far, in our society, meant owning every physical piece of that thing, doesn't and shouldn't override what it says in the contract. Maybe an argument can be made that the contract is deceptive, or so long and detailed that it amounts to a DoS on the potential buyer. I think those are important topics that deserve a lot more scrutiny and weight in the courtroom than they get. But that's a different topic.
- injidup 3y agoIs it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?
- dazc 3y agoMore likely it would invalidate the warranty on the entire vehicle, which would be a costly penalty?
- dhbanes 3y agoAuto manufacturers cannot arbitrarily invalidate warranties like that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act
- chii 3y agoI dont know about whether it is illegal, but it ought not ever be illegal to hack and change your own vehicle, except for changing things like the engine number and the odometer (i.e., legal requirements from the state). This sits in the same realm as adblockers for a browser. > Is it even possible? the car maker might be able to make this impossible, but last i heard, people have done it. Unfortunately, due to a lot of cars being software, the manufacturer could detect and cause headaches for you, in an attempt to discourage it. I reckon there ought to be laws, akin to the right to repair laws, that ensures you truly own your car and the manufacturer cannot lock you out.
- fmsf 3y agoIn many countries it is illegal to change anything with the vehicle without going through a homologation afterwards, unless the parts are already homologated. This happens because it affects security and can be a danger to others and you. The consequences can range from fines to the destruction of the car.
- codetrotter 3y ago
- Gelob 3y agoGive up on that stupid wheel knob please. No one likes that thing
- user3939382 3y agoIs that a thing? They used to be called suicide knobs because people’s clothes would get caught on them and crash the car, I thought they outlawed them in the 60s or 70s.
- user3939382 3y agoOh I guess they are legal and their illegality is an urban myth.
- OnionBlender 3y agoWhat is a wheel knob?
- ommz 3y agoMeanwhile, Mercedes is still charging for full rear wheel steering in Europe after electronically nerfing cars [0] despite shipping the cars with hardware fully capable. [0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41678/full-rear-wheel-steering-on-mercedes-eqs-will-be-575-annual-subscription-in-germany-report https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41678/full-rear-wheel-steering...
- ohyes 3y agoSo you pay to maintain a more complicated system but get none of the benefits
- cat_plus_plus 3y agoI don't understand the big deal, I look at the price and features and see if it makes sense for me. Nothing wrong with market segmentation. Some people want a fancy brand car as a checkbox but can only pay so much, for others a little extra is no big deal. The only way to find out who is who is offer different packages for different price, even if the differences are more economically controlled by software. Would anyone really prefer not being able to afford a luxury brand at all, or paying more than they are comfortable with? This way, wealthy consumers effectively subsidize hardware for less wealthy consumers.
- ShrigmaMale 3y agosubscriptions almost always end up costing the consumer more.
- onion2k 3y agoThis way, wealthy consumers effectively subsidize hardware for less wealthy consumers. That's not how this works. Everyone who buys the car is paying for the feature equally. All of the cost of the R&D, the materials, the labor to build the feature in your car, that's all in the price you pay to buy the car. The subscription is entirely an additional cost to use the feature you've paid for. Mercedes are not discounting the car for everyone and then making the discount back from subscriptions. They're nerfing the car and then charging people to unnerf it.
- kristopolous 3y agoThis is the industry pushing to see what it can get away with. It does this with new things. There's always a drive to increase alienation. It's as natural as the wind. It's our job to be whiny assholes about it.
- ChoHag 3y ago[dead]
- sundvor 3y agoI think Tesla also had heated rear seats in the Model 3 as a software unlock, then they went nah just make it standard? They still have eg footwell lights that are physically there, but not available for activation in the RWD version (LR and P only). They might just flash on during a software upgrade, never to be seen again! It makes sense that automakers want to segment features at the lowest possible cost, but the acceptance of something as basic as seat warmers being a subscription service on a premium car is probably lower than for advanced autopilot stuff.
- rcarmo 3y agoOk, now let’s get Smart TV manufacturers to stop collecting data.
- qwerty456127 3y agoImagine you bought a new MacBook and it's ⌘Command key doesn't work until you sign-in online and pay a subscription.
- rendall 3y ago> "Going forward, BMW says it will continue to offer subscription-based services but only for software options, ... which is completely understandable." Is it completely understandable though? Maybe I'm an old man shouting at clouds, but I remember when the concept of a software subscription was itself seen as an unseemly money-grab.
- jdjdjdjdjduuuu 3y agoAre there some hacking garages where you can enable features like these and disables features like GPS and telemetry?