7 ms·
BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat
- raverbashing 2mo agoWow amazing I would drive straight back to the dealership and return it
- grg0 2mo agoWith or without the trunk loaded with gas cans?
- pfdietz 2mo agoYet another reason not to buy a BMW.
- WalterGR 2mo ago13 hours ago: "BMW Spider-Man in-car advertising" (consumerrights.wiki) 211 points | 148 comments
- root-parent 2mo agoI am a good bot: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49130756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49130756
- WalterGR 2mo agoHa! Thanks.
- dessimus 2mo agoBMW: The Ultimate Advertising Machine
- PeterStuer 2mo agoI have seen the bar at the top appear with "BMW has a surprise for you" or something, but I always use Android Auto which starts a second later so I have never seen what this was. Still unacceptable.
- egberts1 2mo agoWhere's my sledgehammer?
- voakbasda 2mo agoWhat a spectacularly efficient means to devalue a once “premium” brand. I guess “good will” didn’t get its own line item on their balance sheet.
- immawizard 2mo agoIt's on page 46 https://www.bmwgroup.com/content/dam/grpw/websites/bmwgroup_com/ir/downloads/en/2026/q2/BMW_Q2-2026-EN.pdf https://www.bmwgroup.com/content/dam/grpw/websites/bmwgroup_...
- vineyardmike 2mo agoGoodwill is supposedly €1.504B.
- inigyou 2mo agoGoodwill measures, IIRC, the difference between the value of a company's material assets and its market cap.
- bequanna 2mo agoBeyond Gen X, does anyone younger consider BMW a luxury brand?
- abenga 2mo agoWhat brands would you think younger people consider a luxury brand? They do make smaller and sportier cars, but 5-series and up, X5 and up, those seem firmly in the luxury car category to me.
- npxcomplete 2mo agoPublic transit (trains)
- theturtletalks 2mo agoEvery car given enough time will have ads. Just like every proprietary software will become enshittified. It should be obvious by now that the stock ticker must go up and to do that you have to squeeze your customers. And if they have already bought the car, they have no recourse. The only solution I see is open-source but for cars, that’s a long ways out.
- cogogo 2mo agoI have always been worried about self driving cars (even privately owned) being ad platforms. Guess we are getting there faster! Slate auto is not open source but at least they have no screens and I believe no driver tracking.
- hidroto 2mo agothe billboards are moving into the cars, and if it is self driving then you have more time to stare at the ads.
- inigyou 2mo agoYou ask it to drive you to McDonalds, it takes you to Burger King because they paid it more. Since you are already there, instead of fighting the car you decide to just buy a Whopper.
- encrypted_bird 2mo ago> at least they have no screens IIRC their dash is just a screen. No actual dials or gauges unfortunately. :(
- derektank 2mo agoThis doesn’t seem like an inevitability. Low fare airlines began experimenting with selling ad space in their planes but that never resulted in the major airlines following suit. And that’s in one of the most cutthroat, lowest margin industries besides grocery stores.
- ErroneousBosh 2mo agoI'm curious as to how anyone is going to push ads into my 1997 Range Rover. It barely has anything you'd recognise as a computer.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- tjpnz 2mo agoAdblockers for cars?
- inigyou 2mo agoIt's legal to block ads on your car. It's legal to start a business installing adblockers on other people's cars.
- epolanski 2mo agoI have been recently looking at new cars in Europe and there is s massive difference in quality at all price tiers between Chinese and non Chinese cars. Mind you, Chinese cars are often assembled in Europe and have to comply with all the safety laws etc, but at any price tier it feels you're getting a car that is 10k+ more expensive than it is. And that's despite EU putting (non sense) sanctions on Chinese cars and components. If Chinese were free to compete square and fair they would've long swallowed the European industry. Like look at Volkswagen and what you get at 40k. A non base Golf, maybe? It also grinds my nerves that European cars are less expensive anywhere but in Europe. You go to US and they are like 15/20% less expensive.
- kasey_junk 2mo agoThe argument (which has its own pros and cons) is that the Chinese vendors are not competing fair and square. The governmental/industrial coordination in China is quite literally un comparable to Western style industries so the western governments feel they have to protect their local industries. This definitely hurts consumers in the short term, so the whole argument is about long term impacts.
- inigyou 2mo agoNothing stops western governments from adopting the tactics that work well.
- kasey_junk 2mo agoWestern populations do.
- inigyou 2mo agoIf western populations are so committed to failure, then failure is deserved.
- kasey_junk 2mo ago
- xvxvx 2mo agoIt’s a slow burn but I feel Europe is heading in a direction where vehicles will play a safety video every time you start up a vehicle, similar to what plays on airlines. Imagine a 3 minute video on rules of the road with no skip function and you have to click ‘agree’ before you can drive. Then you have cameras tracking your eyes, speed etc. They’ll automate license suspensions based on driving style. Maybe you’ll need to scan you license and/or face when the car starts too. They won’t even be doing this to push people to use public transport. It’s just regular enshittification by big brother.
- 4748585858 2mo agoDid you know we have free healthcare if you wait three months tho
- microtonal 2mo agoYou made an account just to troll about European healthcare? (I never wait three month though. If I call my GP, I have an appointment today or tomorrow. Same with our dentist, etc.)
- gruturo 2mo agoCurious, my cardiologist will see me within a week, the specialized exams he prescribed were also a matter of days - ended up picking the day most convenient to me since they offered a wide range.
- joe463369 2mo agoThat's just something you've imagined, then got annoyed about.
- pllbnk 2mo agoThey have to show this full-screen banner about driving safely with the buttons to turn it off disabled for a few seconds. It's annoying. I want to turn it off but I can't so I start driving and I am forced to look at the screen until the button to turn it off gets enabled. That's very unsafe. Have I read the text that's written there during 4 years I drive the car? Never.
- mathgeek 2mo agoThe great irony of seeing ads in an article about how there is some arbitrary line between “you tracked me for no cost” and “I paid tens of thousands of dollars for this car” when it comes to where ads are no longer acceptable.
- SoftTalker 2mo agoAt least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. Not a supercar, but beyond the reach of most of the car-buying public. I'm surprised that the generally quite wealthy owners of those cars would tolerate that.
- altairprime 2mo agoIt suggests that BMW must be in dire financial straits somehow, and I’ve been trying to decide why. Current theory is that it’s part ‘BMW needs to prop up their share price with a steroid injection of ads into their growth in growth of profit curve’, and part ‘BMW lost the evaporating upper middle class segment and is on the verge of collapse’ It’s such a look of desperation to add advertisements when they didn’t start out as a carnival-barker brand that it’s hard to continue trusting their vehicle manufacturing. Look at how poorly they rank in reliability perception relative to Jaguar and Subaru — and only two steps away from ‘We’re selling your radio data to stay afloat’ GM, too?! https://www.bmwblog.com/2025/06/29/2025-jd-power-initial-quality-study-bmw-below-average/ https://www.bmwblog.com/2025/06/29/2025-jd-power-initial-qua... Ugh. I may not personally like their cars but I still hate to see it when notable brands swan-dive into the rocks rather than just wind down gracefully. Hopefully Toyota handles this better, given they’re facing a financial engineering crisis of their own with operating profits down to a mere 2.5% of sales: https://www.toyota-industries.com/investors/item/2025_annual_financial_report_E.pdf https://www.toyota-industries.com/investors/item/2025_annual... anyways > Sato has claimed Toyota is in a “battle for survival” against Chinese automakers. Going forward, the company will have to loosen its infamously strict quality standards to cut costs and increase output. — https://www.autonocion.com/us/toyota-crisis-chinese-evs/ https://www.autonocion.com/us/toyota-crisis-chinese-evs/
- hollow-moe 2mo ago> 2023: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/toyota/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/toyo... You can safely assume it's only getting worse until proven otherwise.
- 2mo ago
- sixtyj 2mo agoIs there a cookie and gdpr consent bar at the beginning? In-car adblockers would be nice.
- M95D 2mo agoI don't have a car like like that but I heard there's a terms and conditions screen in all internet-connected cars and that the sell agent immediately confirms all checkboxes while getting the car out for the buyer.
- curzondax 2mo agoreturn it as you bought it within 14 days if its a BTS vehicle.
- netsharc 2mo agoGoogle thought "Oh let's bundle a movie ad in an OS update": https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-theme-packs-launch-3614272/ https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-theme-packs-la...
- reaperducer 2mo agoAlso bad: On Volvos†, you are now prohibited from uninstalling the YouTube app. I don't want to watch videos while I'm driving. In the previous software, you could at least move it somewhere unobtrusive; but the latest version only displays icons alphabetically. No re-ordering anymore. † Volvos have "Google Built-In," the bastard stepbrother of Android Auto, which also has an app in the car so you can have the worst of both worlds.
- netsharc 2mo agoI saw a social media video of someone refusing to hit "Agree" on the Google user agreement dialog in a Volvo car. IIRC it just kept popping up nonstop...
- itopaloglu83 2mo agoBack to the era of spyware and bloatware preinstalled, just like the carrier phones used to be, but this time these are $30k-$40k or even $100k cars.
- microtonal 2mo agoI am pretty sure it is a separate app that you have to install? https://9to5google.com/2025/11/05/pixel-theme-packs/ https://9to5google.com/2025/11/05/pixel-theme-packs/
- ocd 2mo agoThis upsets me so deeply in my core that so many companies do this instead of creating anything new for a customer to buy. I can't even process that someone would be mentally disturbed enough to even think of this, and not feel any shame.
- throwatdem12311 2mo agoMaking things is hard. Making actual objects for people to buy is even harder. That’s why they say not to “buy things and spend money on experiences instead ” and enshittify everything instead of creating new things. It’s not because an “experience” is actually better it’s because it’s easier to make one than make a useful or novel object. Why make a new thing when you can just extract more money from people with less effort and there isn’t really anything to “make”. The incentives are all wrong.
- inigyou 2mo agoit's also because nobody on their deathbed regrets not having enough material objects
- spwa4 2mo agoPretty sure a lot of people do. The ones not dying in a deathbed, or just a really crappy one, for example. When your environment constantly irritates or even hurts due to its quality, it is pretty rare to even spend and hour or two not thinking about that. But most young people today have never experienced that. That's a good thing, but it leads to some very weird claims.
- inigyou 2mo agoI agree, there's a minimum standard. But beyond that, it's vastly overrated, even more than you think. The person who backpacks around the world with nothing has a richer life than the person who sits in a gilded mansion. Donald Trump with his obsession with gold-plated everything is the epitome of wasting wealth on useless material displays.
- M95D 2mo agoIf you bought a car with a display instead of physical gauges, what did you expect to happen?
- throwaway85825 2mo agoEvery car has to have a display since the backup camera mandate.
- M95D 2mo agoYes, mine too. I removed it and installed a chinese no-internet player instead (with Android Auto, but I'm not proud of that).
- seemaze 2mo agoI've driven several BMW's starting in the mid 90's. I recently picked up a used 2017 sight unseen from a dealer pretty far away. It was the only one available I could find that met my criteria. The car was in superb shape and I'm happy with it, but I knew immediately after driving it that it would be the last BMW I ever purchased. This just seals the deal.
- lostlogin 2mo ago> I knew immediately after driving it that it would be the last BMW I ever purchased Why?
- seemaze 2mo agoIt doesn't have that physical connection to the road the prior models had. I know a lot of this is the move to drive-by-wire with electric power steering and selectable modes. It drives like a nice car, but just feels a bit removed in comparison to the earlier cars. Also, many other automotive manufacturers have caught up and provide very nice driving experiences as well. There seems to be less differentiate BMW from any other 'nice' car these days. Well, except ads.
- mrtksn 2mo agoI wonder if advertisement was illegal, would that have effects on the economy other than the advertisement platforms not getting their cut? I mean, in Europe there are no drug or doctor advertisements and in US there is. In London or Brussels the outdoor advertisements are much more limited than what’s happening in Tokyo or Istanbul. Do Europeans miss out on medicine? Do London business do worse than Istanbul? I suspect that there’s a case for getting rid of advertisements but on the other hand the advertisement agencies are responsible for some of the greatest advancements in AI and computing, so maybe that’s the utility after all.
- throwaway85825 2mo agoMy 90s car has no screen. Auto industry needs to self correct before they collapse.
- mosura 2mo agoDon’t worry, with the progress in AI we will build BR (for blocked reality) goggles which will obscure anything you have considered possibly objectionable from your environment and replaced it with something innocuous.
- inigyou 2mo agoWill they detect BLIT patterns and other cognitohazards?
- hollow-moe 2mo agoAll automakers are bad. Hope you like biking a lot. Reports are from 2023 but assume it's gotten even worse. https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/cate...
- thayne 2mo agoI like biking ok, but where I live it is too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter for it to be a good mode of transportation. Even if the roads were better designed for bikers, everything was close enough, etc.
- inigyou 2mo agoRemember, folks: it's not illegal to remove ads from your car. And it's not illegal to open a business where people can bring their cars and you'll remove ads from them for money. And it's not illegal to wire the seat heaters to a switch on the dashboard.
- irishcoffee 2mo agoIt is very amusing to me that the outrage is with the car manufacturer, not the ad economy.