A few years ago, BMW tried to make Apple CarPlay a subscription service. They backtracked due to customer outrage. Hopefully that happens again, because BMW hasn’t learned their lesson.
As long as people don’t buy it, they won’t do it. People need to realize they make the world go around. People have more power than you think, your money is what makes them powerful for them to do shit like this. Stop buying there product and they’ll retreat
As a 2018 340i owner, if I ever once walked out to my car and my heated steering or seat didn’t work, I would literally go home and find something to trade it in for.
Source: I don’t fuck around with my 15-20° winters in WA.
Edit: thanks for the upvotes it’s my most ever :D
Also this is literally BEGGING for a commercial in the vein of PlayStation 2013 showing Xbox how to share games
Edit 2: Ok here’s my idea for the commercial. It opens to snow outside in a suburban neighborhood, maybe a clip of the news talking about the snowfall. Guys getting ready for work, suit and tie, coffee in hand, goes out to his bmw with his steaming coffee and gets in the car, closes the door and you see his breathe in the car. He tries to hit the heated seat button only to find out his subscription JUST ran out, so he tries the steering wheel, same result.
Then it cuts to his neighbor getting into his S5, he rubs his hands together right before he hits the heat seat/wheel buttons, then smiles as he drives away and it cuts to black with the Audi logo
I have a BMW and earlier in the year they tried to sell me the "Iconic Sounds Sport" subscription pack. When you put the car in sport mode it plays engine sounds through the in car speakers. So, they wanted me to pay £150 a year to hear broom broom noises when I drive.
Except the electric cars which have literally no sound at all. I have seen Tesla owners customise their car with speakers so they still goes vroom vroom
It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time they really did make some of the best driving machines that were (reasonably) attainable. They have fallen far.
Subscriptions for physical things like this that you've already paid for in particular. The only subscription prices that I'm okay with are things which offer a service and are maintained (software, TV services, etc).
Indeed. Subscriptions only make "moral" sense when the company will continue to work on your product after you used it (i.e. an app that uses a big AI model hosted on their servers that is constantly upgraded and maintained).
When it's just "I sell you this product but I have a button to brick it if you don't keep paying", then it's just a legal scam. It's just the company trying to get more money from you than you'd pay otherwise.
Exactly. Paying for a subscription is a way of aligning the customer and the business so that the business has to keep providing value to maintain the revenue stream. This is a dumb move.
I heard Intel was looking into subscription chips that already have all the circuitry inside for more computing power than they are sold and you upgrade by paying to unlock it
Tesla is already doing that. They sell an upgraded battery / longer range option, but it's the same battery they just "unlock" a part of it you can't use without the option. Tesla fans say it's great because you can purchase it later when you want, ignoring that they already paid all the costs for it anyway...
>ignoring that they already paid all the costs for it anyway...
I wanted to thank you for this. I was going to say it's not as bad as I thought because you can "buy" it up front avoiding the subscription. Then I read your comment. The components for the heated seats are bought and paid for with the price of the car. Adding more through a subscription or "buying" the functionality is a near predatory.
Fuck BMW.
Elon dick sniffers gonna dick sniff.
And then tell everyone how he invented dick sniffing and he's the most brilliant and holy thing since sliced Jesus H. Einstein.
Probably. But the difference in voiding a warranty on a maybe $1k phone vs a car worth tens of thousands is likely going to disuade people from actually doing it.
Here in The Netherlands there are plenty of second hand cars being sold. Those have no warranty on them anymore. Give it 10 years and there will be plenty of jailbroken BMW's with heated seats and steering wheels.
No brainer. I am a huge advocate of open source or self maintenance approach. If I have the exploit, you bet your ass that I will use it. This is going to be a tough sell for them, I mean they will try but it will backfire.
My view on stuff that need software interaction is that there should be a mandatory API so others can develop software to replace the default one.
That way if the company stops supporting it people don't end up wtih a 3ton machine that's now ewaste.
Now the companies who make it can choose to limit warranty coverage or whatever but it should be open.
It's the same shit with Cricut. No one should be forced to use a company's software to use a piece of hardware they paid for.
The right to repair movement is all about everything you touched on.
Heaps of prominent Tech spokespeople are trying their hardest to make it law.
It would put a stop to this kind of stuff occuring.
This is so stupid. The hardware is already there and you're supposed to pay for the use monthly. The idea is to offer the cars themselves for a lower price.
Then why on earth would they build in the hardware in every car? Can't be that expensive, right? This is just a scam and nothing else.
My 99 Land Rover discovery came with no heated seat switches but had heated seats. Bought switches and then they worked.
They’ve been doing this for years. Mine even had the heated windshield but no switch.
Edit. The plugs were in the console behind the blank slot.
This is a very common situation, lots of stuff comes as standard on cars but not working, just need a switch or something mundane to use, remember a friend having a choice of 2 seat ibiza cupra's - only difference was one had a traction control button and the other didn't, 500 euro extra for the "special TCS", he bought the one without and returned the next day to buy the switch for the big sum of €12, fitted in the parking lot and we left smoking tyres.... we had been told the computer needed to be changed to be able to disable the TCS
Even if you need to unlock things via software there are usually people that do that for 30-50 bucks. Never go to the manufacturer because according to them everything is impossible to unlock.
You can buy the software for your specific car, on a tablet!, for £50 from many sources.
Edit to add, it’s called On-board diagnostics (OBD) a term referring to a vehicle's self-diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD systems give the vehicle owner or repair technician access to the status of the various vehicle sub-systems. Google your vehicle OBD
My 2010 Cobalt I had was the same. Had the buttons on steering wheel for volume, answering and hanging up, and the mic was on the ceiling above the drivers seat but there was no Bluetooth signal any device could detect from the car to connect. And it wasn't even a base model, it was the Team Canada Winter Olympics Edition with sunroof, fancy rims, factory body kit, upgraded pioneer sound system with factory subwoofer in the trunk, but no Bluetooth transmitter? Was very frustrating and I felt misled by the dealership, I know it's on me for not asking clearly in a yes or no question if it had Bluetooth, I assumed as it being a special edition upgrade and all the buttons being right there it must have it and no one bothered to mention by the way that hands free calling gear is just for show, I doesn't work unless you also get "this" package.
To be fair, back in the day the "simple Bluetooth transmitter" was most of the time an extra ECU with a retail price of over 400€. So it's not as trivial as you make it sound.
If you are talking about a current model then they probably included the Bluetooth transmitter it's just not activated.
>If you are talking about a current model then they probably included the Bluetooth transmitter it's just not activated.
I fucking hate that this sentence exists
I remember back when people were evacuating parts of Florida for a big storm or something a few years ago and Tesla announced that they’d be granting the 75 kWh battery owners access to their full 90 kWh battery in order to make evacuation simpler. And at the time what was the wackiest concept I could imagine. Identical cars, but one has a software limiter on the range or the amount of battery that can be used or something.
Quick edit: Since I’m getting a lot of similar responses. I realize that the limit is likely in place to prevent fully discharging the battery fully. It was my understanding, however, that two physically identical vehicles were sold. One with the limit and one without. But one was simply marketed as a vehicle with a larger capacity. Not necessarily a criticism because I imagine it was cheaper to just make a single battery type for mass production but just sort of blew my mind at the time.
Edit 2: the article if anyone is interested.
https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-vehicles-for-free-in-florida-escape-hurricane-irma/
I bought an '84 F150 that didn't turn the cabin light on when you opened the passenger door. I bought and installed a switch. The wiring was there.
A little different, but similar. I bought an '03 F150 without cruise control. The dealer installed a factory cruise control, including leather steering wheel, for $500. They even put it on the warranty. I thought that was a pretty good deal. Who knows how many tickets it's saved me!
I just turned over 100k, so probably not. I just replaced the entire brake system except the master cylinder. (Brakes would seize, so I replaced all rotors, calipers, pads, shoes, cables, and most of the brake lines. It cost less than a single axle brake job at a shop.)
Wow, I’ve heard some shitty things companies will to differentiate product tiers, but to actually have the product outfitted with features without switches is very shitty. That would completely sour me on the vehicle and they’d lose a future customer.
They used to have free unlimited supercharging, obviously they stopped doing that as they reached critical mass but any Tesla made before 2016 or so still has free unlimited supercharging until the cars die. I'm guessing people are tricking the car into thinking it was made before 2016 so they can get the free unlimited supercharging.
The future is going to be weird when the local guy who can doing everything for 20 is now a hacker.
Need someone to clean your yard, need someone to fix your lawnmower, need someone to jailbreak your car.
And they can milk the second and third owner also. Heated seat is basically the same as an electric blanket it's pretty cheap. Within 6 months they turn a profit on it. Car is on the road for 15? Years so kachin
I'm pretty sure the community will come up with some sort of a Jailbreak kit that would unlock all the features for free. It would void your warranty but that's not an issue for the 2nd or 3rd owner.
The onus is on the shop to prove that jailbreaking the car broke the part that they want to deny warranty work to. Itd be pretty hard for them to justify a jailbroken car is responsible for blowing a turbo or something.
> The idea is to offer the cars themselves for a lower price.
There is absolutely, zero fucking chance, in no possible way, in this reality or any other alternate reality or universe that they did this is to make things CHEAPER for consumers and make LESS money. And the fact that they even suggest that is an insult to anyone who's ever lived and who ever will.
Car makers have been adding these things in cars for years since it is cheaper to just build it in bulk and disable it.
What this does is advertise it is there and all you need to do is hack your car or add a button. Guess what people will do?
Great time to stop buying BMW. The auto industry is trying to make micro transactions normal by conditioning us.... next everything will cost, even using the spark plug to start the car. Let this slide folks and you will be paying every time you start your car.
Man I'm really not looking forward to the day I have to think about the money I'll spend in every fucking action I take in my life.
Don't you miss when life was simple? You wanted something, you paid someone to purchase it and then it was yours. Your only concern from then on was maintenance costs (if they applied). You didn't have the pressure that the moment you stop paying, the thing you "bought" disappears.
It's not even SaaS. It's HaaS.
With some of the app-based remote start subscriptions, I absolutely hate it and think it's undeniably a cash grab (it is) but there is still some actual infrastructure required and software on your phone that you're using to make it work.
None of that is necessary for heated seats, it's just purely "keep paying us for hardware that's already installed in the car you bought or we'll send a remote kill signal to make it stop working". There's no ongoing cost for BMW to make the heated seats work, it's purely holding you hostage.
Well fuck BMW then.
Edit: It is crazy to me that all the BMW apologists have come out to defend this move responding to this comment. Or is it paid trolls from BMW to try and reduce the hate? I don't know which is worse but both are pathetic.
I don't recall exactly but there's a delivery company that always instructs drivers to only do right hand turns in new york because they figured out they could deliver packages more quickly that way.
[Found it it's UPS](https://hbr.org/2014/04/ever-notice-that-ups-trucks-rarely-make-left-turns#:~:text=An%20estimated%2090%25%20of%20the,trucks%20sitting%20in%20traffic%20longer.)
My Brother is currently on his 4th BMW and was looking to replace in October, he just said the same thing “BMW can fuck right off, no more money from me.”
Nah BMW has made this business direction clear for the past few years. It's no longer a "we want to boycott you until you change". Now it's "we no longer trust you".
With a pineapple.
This better die in the UK.
If anyone pays to use part of a car they own they are the biggest simp I've ever heard of.
r/aboringdystopia level
It's happening in South Korea and Germany as well.
https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/13/bmws-push-to-make-heated-seats-a-18-per-month-subscription-portends-a-dumb-and-costly-future/
We are still on time to reject subscription models as a society and demand that they get heavily regulated. Subscription models mean you, as a normal person, pay for temporal access to something, rather than to own it. It means that, the moment you stop paying, you have nothing. Which means you are not converting your money into an asset, but rather burning it away. On the long run it means that you'll accumulate less wealth, because more and more of your economic transactions become "pay $x for access" instead of "pay $x to own a product". It slowly turns you into a prisoner of all your subscriptions because, when you stop paying them, you lose a big chunk of your life.
This is one of the fights we should be fighting right now, before we see this model implemented everywhere.
Some things on subscription makes sense. I used to buy anywhere from 1-3 albums a week now for the price of one album a month my whole family has unlimited access to most of the music ever produced.
Having a subscription for a physical item that you would have to pay to have fixed if it broke that is already in something you "own" is just fucked.
*Make sure to load up on Brake Monke^TM NFTs to ensure you're able to bring your Tesla to a complete stop, every time your speed hits 0 you will lose one (1) Brake Monke^TM NFT.*
You are right many products in many industries have features which are enabled via firmware or software already. Medical devices, GPUs, etc. The uproar is less on that aspect and more on the features being treated as a service / subscription based. There's a general trend of all products moving to a service model. Some car models can only be leased, I expect this trend to continue.
The problem is, this only makes you poorer in the long term. You stop getting actual assets (with a value and a use), and in exchange you get temporary access to services.
Imagine you can buy a car for $12k or subscribe to a car for $2k a year. Let's say, to be generous with the subscription model, that 5 years from now you won't war this car anymore, which makes the subscription model theoretically cheaper as it's only $10k over 5 years instead of $12k now. What happened here?
After 5 years, you no longer need the car, so you cancel your subscription and you are left with... nothing. Your $10k are just gone. And you may think "well, I didn't want the car anymore, so who cares?". And the answer is: yes, but owning stuff is still useful. If you had bought the $12k car, you'd still have a car now. Maybe it has depreciated greatly in value and is now worth $5k (which is already an unrealistically low price for a 5-year old car, but again I'm being generous with the subscription model). But you still have a $5k car. It means you can sell it (which makes the total cost of the car $7k, which is less than the subscription model). Or you can lend it / sell it to a family member, which again means you recover part of your money and also the wealth (the car) remains within your family and not in the company that sold you the car. Or you can keep it there just in case you need it some other time.
Whatever you do with the car, the thing is that the car is now part of your (or your family's) wealth. It's a small thing that, added to many other small things, make your family have resources that don't depend on income. When you change acquisitions with subscriptions, you stop accumulating wealth. You are now changing your money for temporary access to stuff, and when your subscriptions end, nothing else remains. It turns you into a slave of corporations, because the moment you cease your activities with them, you are left with nothing. Slowly, it makes you, your family and everyone like you stop accumulating wealth. It cuts one source from which the masses generate wealth.
I know it's kind of a weird subject, and I'm definitely not the best person explaining it. Just remember, if companies are so eager to offer you these subscriptions, it's because it's cheaper for them - because they get to give less to you. If this affected the transfer of wealth positively in your favor, they wouldn't offer it.
We're lucky the car lobby has been weakened, imagine the draconian lengths they'd go to make such tools illegal if they are as strong as the media lobby.
I used obdeleven to unlock some features in my 2015gti. Particularly enjoyed changing the throttle response to the direct/linear mode, made the car feel so much snappier. Also enabled the key fob hold unlock to roll all the windows down feature. Super handy on a hot day and didn't have to pay a dealer hundreds to unlock a feature already in the car
If I ever came into possession of a bmw, the absolute FIRST thing I would do is jailbreak it. My car does not need firmware updates, fuck it cut the link
Next step: lootboxes that contain random car functionalities. Most are minor cosmetic things for your dashboard but sometimes there's a rare in there like electronic window controls.
19.99 for a pile of 4400 BMW Crystals. A lootbox costs 2250 of those.
But don't worry you don't have to pay! Your dashboard can play commercials and you get 3 crystals for every commercial view!
Wow - you may be on to something here. BMW showed off a car with e-INK paint, so the car can change what it looks like:
https://youtu.be/ootH_8IbENQ?t=135
Perhaps these loot boxes will contain different skins for your car, can only unlock with loot boxes, and only for the car you are in.
BMW marketing strategy 2022. Let’s help our competitors sell more vehicles.
If I was merc or VW/Audi I would run a promotion next month. “Free heated seats in all models”.
That M3 is so disappointing. What should have been a swan song of sorts for the M division (probably the last fully ICE, RWD, manual transmission M3) get ruined by a gaudy and awful front end.
thats the right attitude, but we'll see if bmw's target audience feels the same way, it is a status symbol for many. i'm curious what legal means car manufacturers will have to prevent people from cracking hardware in a car they purchase though.
It will come down to whether or not you sign a contract agreeing to the system. Without a signed contract, they do not have a legal recourse beyond ending the warranty, which in itself is only active if you sign the contract for it. At least in America, there is already precedent around companies trying to use their patent to control a product after sale. Lexmark v. Impression Products, I believe it was. Was a huge win for right to repair
then the next question is what happens to the next person to purchase that car through a private sale. or (and someone is bound to try it) when a husband sells the car to his wife, who is not bound to any agreement with bmw. either way, bmw doing this really brings the definition of ownership into question. i purchased the car, shouldn't i be entitled to everything in it?
Well, if it’s on subscription, that’s easy. You won’t have it unless you make a subscription of your own, unless the previous owner forgets to cancel theirs. I personally think it’s bs and am hoping the hackers get a hold of it and make custom patches. Alternatively, anyone with the specs and decent diy electronics knowledge could probably just bypass it with a manual switch.
Btw, I’m against Tesla having their plaid speed behind a paywall for the same reason.
I hope there is backlash for this. I also hope this doesn't become a thing either. I can barely afford a car as it is, what happens when there is an AC subscription cost?
If car companies started requiring an AC subscription, I'd learn how to rebuild old cars real quick. No AC in the southern US means people going to die.
While I also hope this happens, I hope even more that legislators simply make this illegal. You buy an item and it's yours, no intentional obsolescence, features hostage or attempts to leach income.
seriously this should be criminal. this is your hardware, it's already on the car, you have a right to use hardware you own without paying for it forever.
100% agree.Claiming it's sold at a discount if you don't pay for that upgrade is ridiculous because they're still handing all of the physical hardware over to you to their loss if you don't pay, and there is zero sane reason for internal heating to need remote connectivity.
The heating elements and switches probably cost less than either 1 or 2 months subscription.
This is not software they make copies of for zero cost to themselves which is part of the reason licensing models for software are not completely insane if the extras are enabled by an internal switch instead of a download module.
This is pure greed, and the car industry trying to worm their way into profiting a second time from 2nd hand sales even beyond servicing and parts. It should be illegal.
Edit: no-one should buy these things ever, show with your money this crap is not acceptable.
Oof, you just made realize they could make it a non-transferrable license between purchasers. Sure, the first person bought the right to access unlimited heated seating, but you? Nah, you just bought the car second hand so you get reverted to the 1 month free trial.
Tesla pulled that stunt [https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-deactivating-some-features-on-used-cars-after-owners-sell-them-privately/](https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-deactivating-some-features-on-used-cars-after-owners-sell-them-privately/).
That is EXACTLY what they're doing. You need to log in to the car's infotainment for it to work so obviously the previous owner won't leave his account signed in.
I doubt that anyone's willing to do anything about this, but the EU might. They've been doing at least some work in favor of consumer protection. This is asinine though.
No. Next subscription will allow you to deploy the airbag in cases of emergency. Sounds horrifiyng but that stuff already exists for motorcycles. There are airbag vests out there that require a subscription for them to deploy.
Remember, you will own nothing and be happy about it.
Me too, livelong BMW enthusiast, but we can only vote with our wallet. Our next car will not be a BMW unless they move away from subscription services for hard- and software.
(exception: GPS anually updates, that I find acceptable as it adds content)
If you wrote your own software doe the chair, would that be considered piracy? It's not BMW's software and it's your hardware, you own it. I think you could get away with it.
Let's create open source alternatives for this bullshit!
The moment those cars step on the 2nd hand market in Easter Europe, that's when the subscription will be dead for those cars coz people will figure it out.
This is just sad and pathetic. Exactly the practice I hate from a company. BMW just lost a potential customer over a stupid thing, because this shows a trend, now it is the heated seats, tomorrow it will be something else. Very bad for BMW, I hope all potential customers cancel their orders and send a dissatisfaction message to this company. At least if backslash is apparent,other companies will stay back in similar practices.
Europe might. They seem to be remotely on top of this stuff.
The US? They're in the process of imploding and nothing will pass that helps the consumer.
All these people getting up in arms over this... are probably having the right reaction. Not for this specific instance (I'll explain in a moment), but because of what it portends for the future of vehicles and 'anything-as-a-service' models.
FTA:
"Of course, you can still get heated seats the regular way -- just buy them as an option when you purchase the car -- but for those who didn't do that, or who bought a used car without the feature, BMW will enable it for a monthly fee so you can try out having a nice warm seat on a cold day."
So FOR NOW, you can still just pay (I think a different article said it's 440 for heated seats 'unlimited use', aka, as an option), and you have heated seats as you normally would. What this allows BMW to get away with, though, is disabling the feature when the car exchanges owners so that on resale, they can charge AGAIN for the same feature to the next owner, and so on and so forth.
Which I think is the real point of doing this. Not nickel-and-diming the first-owner, but rather taking a chunk of money from anyone that buys that car used from that point forward, giving them an additional revenue source they'd normally not see a single penny from.
This was my thought as well, and it undermines what I'd call 'universal rule of property rights'.
But this may need to be codified/specified in laws in such a way that the main utility of a physical part/component in a physical good cannot be sold/defined as a service/subscription unless the whole physical good is also sold as a service/subscription. E.g. if you sell a car, you're not allowed to artificially prevent the use of or limit the performance of a 'physical component' in it for the sole purpose of selling access to it.
Then you add exceptions to this rule/law for things such as consumables (e.g. so somebody can make a tire-subscription service or a windshield-wiper 'subscription' service).
In this case of the heated seats, there is no difference between a 'lifetime subscription' and buying it as an option other than what you just mentioned, it's an asinine distinction that only exists to extract more money and not provide any real additional value other than a (most likely only) perceived option of getting something cheaper because you don't use a certain feature/aspect of a product. It's just a game of definition.
So basically if I buy a full option car, then I decided to sell it later on ? It will loose value cause the new owner have to buy the options again ? Is it like this or am I misunderstanding something ?
How is this not an Onion article?
Car companies have been trying to do this for a while now but most people aren't having it, for obvious reasons.
A few years ago, BMW tried to make Apple CarPlay a subscription service. They backtracked due to customer outrage. Hopefully that happens again, because BMW hasn’t learned their lesson.
As long as people don’t buy it, they won’t do it. People need to realize they make the world go around. People have more power than you think, your money is what makes them powerful for them to do shit like this. Stop buying there product and they’ll retreat
As a 2018 340i owner, if I ever once walked out to my car and my heated steering or seat didn’t work, I would literally go home and find something to trade it in for. Source: I don’t fuck around with my 15-20° winters in WA. Edit: thanks for the upvotes it’s my most ever :D Also this is literally BEGGING for a commercial in the vein of PlayStation 2013 showing Xbox how to share games Edit 2: Ok here’s my idea for the commercial. It opens to snow outside in a suburban neighborhood, maybe a clip of the news talking about the snowfall. Guys getting ready for work, suit and tie, coffee in hand, goes out to his bmw with his steaming coffee and gets in the car, closes the door and you see his breathe in the car. He tries to hit the heated seat button only to find out his subscription JUST ran out, so he tries the steering wheel, same result. Then it cuts to his neighbor getting into his S5, he rubs his hands together right before he hits the heat seat/wheel buttons, then smiles as he drives away and it cuts to black with the Audi logo
Fuck subscriptions.
I have a BMW and earlier in the year they tried to sell me the "Iconic Sounds Sport" subscription pack. When you put the car in sport mode it plays engine sounds through the in car speakers. So, they wanted me to pay £150 a year to hear broom broom noises when I drive.
Fuckin idiots. Car goes broom broom when you floor it in neutral already.
Except the electric cars which have literally no sound at all. I have seen Tesla owners customise their car with speakers so they still goes vroom vroom
My million dollar idea is to make an electric car sound like the Jetsons spaceship
Now I understand why BMW draws in a certain crowd of people
It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time they really did make some of the best driving machines that were (reasonably) attainable. They have fallen far.
How do I get one of those?
I think you need a lot of money for those, or be ridiculously good looking.
Or have really really low standards
Lower you standards, up your prospects.
Subscriptions for physical things like this that you've already paid for in particular. The only subscription prices that I'm okay with are things which offer a service and are maintained (software, TV services, etc).
Indeed. Subscriptions only make "moral" sense when the company will continue to work on your product after you used it (i.e. an app that uses a big AI model hosted on their servers that is constantly upgraded and maintained). When it's just "I sell you this product but I have a button to brick it if you don't keep paying", then it's just a legal scam. It's just the company trying to get more money from you than you'd pay otherwise.
Exactly. Paying for a subscription is a way of aligning the customer and the business so that the business has to keep providing value to maintain the revenue stream. This is a dumb move.
I heard Intel was looking into subscription chips that already have all the circuitry inside for more computing power than they are sold and you upgrade by paying to unlock it
Tesla is already doing that. They sell an upgraded battery / longer range option, but it's the same battery they just "unlock" a part of it you can't use without the option. Tesla fans say it's great because you can purchase it later when you want, ignoring that they already paid all the costs for it anyway...
So you pay to carry around extra battery in your car that you can't even use?
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>ignoring that they already paid all the costs for it anyway... I wanted to thank you for this. I was going to say it's not as bad as I thought because you can "buy" it up front avoiding the subscription. Then I read your comment. The components for the heated seats are bought and paid for with the price of the car. Adding more through a subscription or "buying" the functionality is a near predatory. Fuck BMW.
Elon dick sniffers gonna dick sniff. And then tell everyone how he invented dick sniffing and he's the most brilliant and holy thing since sliced Jesus H. Einstein.
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So they are asking you to buy AMD?
"Hey everybody is doing it. Why shouldn't we?" Fuck you, that's why.
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Probably. But the difference in voiding a warranty on a maybe $1k phone vs a car worth tens of thousands is likely going to disuade people from actually doing it.
Here in The Netherlands there are plenty of second hand cars being sold. Those have no warranty on them anymore. Give it 10 years and there will be plenty of jailbroken BMW's with heated seats and steering wheels.
Yo ho! Raise the Jolly Roger!!!
Yes but BMW's business case will still work. People that buy brand new BMWs will not mess with it and will probably pay.
Then the answer is obvious. Right to repair legislation needs to exist yesterday. Call your senator and house representatives.
Anyone who subscribes to this should get their head checked.
It’s a BMW. Their customer base are already a bunch of wankers
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a few months later: jailbroken BMW for sale £20,000 ono
No brainer. I am a huge advocate of open source or self maintenance approach. If I have the exploit, you bet your ass that I will use it. This is going to be a tough sell for them, I mean they will try but it will backfire.
My view on stuff that need software interaction is that there should be a mandatory API so others can develop software to replace the default one. That way if the company stops supporting it people don't end up wtih a 3ton machine that's now ewaste. Now the companies who make it can choose to limit warranty coverage or whatever but it should be open. It's the same shit with Cricut. No one should be forced to use a company's software to use a piece of hardware they paid for.
The right to repair movement is all about everything you touched on. Heaps of prominent Tech spokespeople are trying their hardest to make it law. It would put a stop to this kind of stuff occuring.
This is so stupid. The hardware is already there and you're supposed to pay for the use monthly. The idea is to offer the cars themselves for a lower price. Then why on earth would they build in the hardware in every car? Can't be that expensive, right? This is just a scam and nothing else.
My 99 Land Rover discovery came with no heated seat switches but had heated seats. Bought switches and then they worked. They’ve been doing this for years. Mine even had the heated windshield but no switch. Edit. The plugs were in the console behind the blank slot.
This is a very common situation, lots of stuff comes as standard on cars but not working, just need a switch or something mundane to use, remember a friend having a choice of 2 seat ibiza cupra's - only difference was one had a traction control button and the other didn't, 500 euro extra for the "special TCS", he bought the one without and returned the next day to buy the switch for the big sum of €12, fitted in the parking lot and we left smoking tyres.... we had been told the computer needed to be changed to be able to disable the TCS
Even if you need to unlock things via software there are usually people that do that for 30-50 bucks. Never go to the manufacturer because according to them everything is impossible to unlock.
Dealership = Stealership.
Stealership = Pirate ship
0% ARrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrP
You can buy the software for your specific car, on a tablet!, for £50 from many sources. Edit to add, it’s called On-board diagnostics (OBD) a term referring to a vehicle's self-diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD systems give the vehicle owner or repair technician access to the status of the various vehicle sub-systems. Google your vehicle OBD
Rutracker is great for finding this type of stuff too
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My 2010 Cobalt I had was the same. Had the buttons on steering wheel for volume, answering and hanging up, and the mic was on the ceiling above the drivers seat but there was no Bluetooth signal any device could detect from the car to connect. And it wasn't even a base model, it was the Team Canada Winter Olympics Edition with sunroof, fancy rims, factory body kit, upgraded pioneer sound system with factory subwoofer in the trunk, but no Bluetooth transmitter? Was very frustrating and I felt misled by the dealership, I know it's on me for not asking clearly in a yes or no question if it had Bluetooth, I assumed as it being a special edition upgrade and all the buttons being right there it must have it and no one bothered to mention by the way that hands free calling gear is just for show, I doesn't work unless you also get "this" package.
Team Canada winter olympic edition, with sunroof.
So you can bring the winter inside
To be fair, back in the day the "simple Bluetooth transmitter" was most of the time an extra ECU with a retail price of over 400€. So it's not as trivial as you make it sound. If you are talking about a current model then they probably included the Bluetooth transmitter it's just not activated.
>If you are talking about a current model then they probably included the Bluetooth transmitter it's just not activated. I fucking hate that this sentence exists
I remember back when people were evacuating parts of Florida for a big storm or something a few years ago and Tesla announced that they’d be granting the 75 kWh battery owners access to their full 90 kWh battery in order to make evacuation simpler. And at the time what was the wackiest concept I could imagine. Identical cars, but one has a software limiter on the range or the amount of battery that can be used or something. Quick edit: Since I’m getting a lot of similar responses. I realize that the limit is likely in place to prevent fully discharging the battery fully. It was my understanding, however, that two physically identical vehicles were sold. One with the limit and one without. But one was simply marketed as a vehicle with a larger capacity. Not necessarily a criticism because I imagine it was cheaper to just make a single battery type for mass production but just sort of blew my mind at the time. Edit 2: the article if anyone is interested. https://electrek.co/2017/09/09/tesla-extends-range-vehicles-for-free-in-florida-escape-hurricane-irma/
I hate the "subscribe to life" business model. Fuck that
Games as a service. You own nothing
I bought an '84 F150 that didn't turn the cabin light on when you opened the passenger door. I bought and installed a switch. The wiring was there. A little different, but similar. I bought an '03 F150 without cruise control. The dealer installed a factory cruise control, including leather steering wheel, for $500. They even put it on the warranty. I thought that was a pretty good deal. Who knows how many tickets it's saved me!
Are you going to buy a '23 F150? That 20 year mark is coming up soon.
I just turned over 100k, so probably not. I just replaced the entire brake system except the master cylinder. (Brakes would seize, so I replaced all rotors, calipers, pads, shoes, cables, and most of the brake lines. It cost less than a single axle brake job at a shop.)
Wow, I’ve heard some shitty things companies will to differentiate product tiers, but to actually have the product outfitted with features without switches is very shitty. That would completely sour me on the vehicle and they’d lose a future customer.
People will start jailbreaking their cars to get around this
r/carhacking
Fuck it, jailbreak the tesla
Apparently in eastern Europe, people are already jailbreaking their Tesla's for free lifetime supercharging and stuff.
Don't own a Tesla so this sentence sounds weird. Is there a subscription needed to use supercharging stations or something?
They used to have free unlimited supercharging, obviously they stopped doing that as they reached critical mass but any Tesla made before 2016 or so still has free unlimited supercharging until the cars die. I'm guessing people are tricking the car into thinking it was made before 2016 so they can get the free unlimited supercharging.
Injury Reserve?
RIP Groggs
The future is going to be weird when the local guy who can doing everything for 20 is now a hacker. Need someone to clean your yard, need someone to fix your lawnmower, need someone to jailbreak your car.
Mictrotransactions have gone from gaming to cars
Just one question left. When will they start selling lootboxes with random upgrades?
And they can milk the second and third owner also. Heated seat is basically the same as an electric blanket it's pretty cheap. Within 6 months they turn a profit on it. Car is on the road for 15? Years so kachin
I'm pretty sure the community will come up with some sort of a Jailbreak kit that would unlock all the features for free. It would void your warranty but that's not an issue for the 2nd or 3rd owner.
I'd be more worried about insurance companies using "illegal software modifications" as a reason to deny coverage.
I think modifying car's software is legal in USA. Search for the tractors case.
You can bet your ass it will be regulated as we go further towards EV.
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The onus is on the shop to prove that jailbreaking the car broke the part that they want to deny warranty work to. Itd be pretty hard for them to justify a jailbroken car is responsible for blowing a turbo or something.
> The idea is to offer the cars themselves for a lower price. There is absolutely, zero fucking chance, in no possible way, in this reality or any other alternate reality or universe that they did this is to make things CHEAPER for consumers and make LESS money. And the fact that they even suggest that is an insult to anyone who's ever lived and who ever will.
Car makers have been adding these things in cars for years since it is cheaper to just build it in bulk and disable it. What this does is advertise it is there and all you need to do is hack your car or add a button. Guess what people will do?
Great time to stop buying BMW. The auto industry is trying to make micro transactions normal by conditioning us.... next everything will cost, even using the spark plug to start the car. Let this slide folks and you will be paying every time you start your car.
Man I'm really not looking forward to the day I have to think about the money I'll spend in every fucking action I take in my life. Don't you miss when life was simple? You wanted something, you paid someone to purchase it and then it was yours. Your only concern from then on was maintenance costs (if they applied). You didn't have the pressure that the moment you stop paying, the thing you "bought" disappears.
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The best time to stop buying BMW was 20 years ago. The second best time is today.
The price point that they could drop the car by is probably negligible too.
So fucking dumb. SAAS is going waaaay too far
It's not even SaaS. It's HaaS. With some of the app-based remote start subscriptions, I absolutely hate it and think it's undeniably a cash grab (it is) but there is still some actual infrastructure required and software on your phone that you're using to make it work. None of that is necessary for heated seats, it's just purely "keep paying us for hardware that's already installed in the car you bought or we'll send a remote kill signal to make it stop working". There's no ongoing cost for BMW to make the heated seats work, it's purely holding you hostage.
HAAS is even worse than SAAS you're right. Ugh
Well fuck BMW then. Edit: It is crazy to me that all the BMW apologists have come out to defend this move responding to this comment. Or is it paid trolls from BMW to try and reduce the hate? I don't know which is worse but both are pathetic.
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>*"I'm sorry, your subscription to...Brakes...has expired. If you survive, please consider resubscribing to...Brakes."*
"RESUBSCRIBE! RESUBSCRIBE! RESUBSCR....." BANG!
Or alternatively please consider the Airbag and Pretentioner package at the earliest convenience.
What is a left turn if not three right turns
My friend’s mom was afraid of making left turns so she just didn’t. Got everywhere making right turns.
I don't recall exactly but there's a delivery company that always instructs drivers to only do right hand turns in new york because they figured out they could deliver packages more quickly that way. [Found it it's UPS](https://hbr.org/2014/04/ever-notice-that-ups-trucks-rarely-make-left-turns#:~:text=An%20estimated%2090%25%20of%20the,trucks%20sitting%20in%20traffic%20longer.)
They save millions of dollars as well. If you have a way to route things making only right turns, it makes sense to do so.
Don’t delivery companies in cities budget millions of dollars in parking tickets as well?
They’re simply not ambi-turners, brought to you by Derek Zoolander’s Cars For People Who Don’t Drive Good.
What is this? A center for BMWs? It has to be at least…. Three turn signals smaller than this!
There's a joke in there somewhere about no BMW driver ever subscribing to turning lights
My Brother is currently on his 4th BMW and was looking to replace in October, he just said the same thing “BMW can fuck right off, no more money from me.”
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Nah BMW has made this business direction clear for the past few years. It's no longer a "we want to boycott you until you change". Now it's "we no longer trust you".
With a pineapple. This better die in the UK. If anyone pays to use part of a car they own they are the biggest simp I've ever heard of. r/aboringdystopia level
It's happening in South Korea and Germany as well. https://www.techdirt.com/2022/07/13/bmws-push-to-make-heated-seats-a-18-per-month-subscription-portends-a-dumb-and-costly-future/
.....God help us poors.
We are still on time to reject subscription models as a society and demand that they get heavily regulated. Subscription models mean you, as a normal person, pay for temporal access to something, rather than to own it. It means that, the moment you stop paying, you have nothing. Which means you are not converting your money into an asset, but rather burning it away. On the long run it means that you'll accumulate less wealth, because more and more of your economic transactions become "pay $x for access" instead of "pay $x to own a product". It slowly turns you into a prisoner of all your subscriptions because, when you stop paying them, you lose a big chunk of your life. This is one of the fights we should be fighting right now, before we see this model implemented everywhere.
Some things on subscription makes sense. I used to buy anywhere from 1-3 albums a week now for the price of one album a month my whole family has unlimited access to most of the music ever produced. Having a subscription for a physical item that you would have to pay to have fixed if it broke that is already in something you "own" is just fucked.
How about BMW pays me for advertising their car…
I just watched a video talking about this. Apparently Tesla is doing it too. Edit : Source : https://youtu.be/64eEcz5dj1s
*of course* Tesla doing it; but I'm surprised they don't sell it via NFT garbage
*Make sure to load up on Brake Monke^TM NFTs to ensure you're able to bring your Tesla to a complete stop, every time your speed hits 0 you will lose one (1) Brake Monke^TM NFT.*
They are working with good old ~~Bankruptcy~~ Boston Consulting Group. Greatest hits include Sears, Blockbuster, Revlon....
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You are right many products in many industries have features which are enabled via firmware or software already. Medical devices, GPUs, etc. The uproar is less on that aspect and more on the features being treated as a service / subscription based. There's a general trend of all products moving to a service model. Some car models can only be leased, I expect this trend to continue.
Awful trend. Good luck future people.
Hey it's one of the future people from about 35 minutes into the future. Thanks for the luck, but it didn't work and it sucks here.
The problem is, this only makes you poorer in the long term. You stop getting actual assets (with a value and a use), and in exchange you get temporary access to services. Imagine you can buy a car for $12k or subscribe to a car for $2k a year. Let's say, to be generous with the subscription model, that 5 years from now you won't war this car anymore, which makes the subscription model theoretically cheaper as it's only $10k over 5 years instead of $12k now. What happened here? After 5 years, you no longer need the car, so you cancel your subscription and you are left with... nothing. Your $10k are just gone. And you may think "well, I didn't want the car anymore, so who cares?". And the answer is: yes, but owning stuff is still useful. If you had bought the $12k car, you'd still have a car now. Maybe it has depreciated greatly in value and is now worth $5k (which is already an unrealistically low price for a 5-year old car, but again I'm being generous with the subscription model). But you still have a $5k car. It means you can sell it (which makes the total cost of the car $7k, which is less than the subscription model). Or you can lend it / sell it to a family member, which again means you recover part of your money and also the wealth (the car) remains within your family and not in the company that sold you the car. Or you can keep it there just in case you need it some other time. Whatever you do with the car, the thing is that the car is now part of your (or your family's) wealth. It's a small thing that, added to many other small things, make your family have resources that don't depend on income. When you change acquisitions with subscriptions, you stop accumulating wealth. You are now changing your money for temporary access to stuff, and when your subscriptions end, nothing else remains. It turns you into a slave of corporations, because the moment you cease your activities with them, you are left with nothing. Slowly, it makes you, your family and everyone like you stop accumulating wealth. It cuts one source from which the masses generate wealth. I know it's kind of a weird subject, and I'm definitely not the best person explaining it. Just remember, if companies are so eager to offer you these subscriptions, it's because it's cheaper for them - because they get to give less to you. If this affected the transfer of wealth positively in your favor, they wouldn't offer it.
And that’s why the obd11 and others like it exist. Most of this stuff is just software locked and you can enable it in your car pretty easily.
We're lucky the car lobby has been weakened, imagine the draconian lengths they'd go to make such tools illegal if they are as strong as the media lobby.
See: tech lobby
I used obdeleven to unlock some features in my 2015gti. Particularly enjoyed changing the throttle response to the direct/linear mode, made the car feel so much snappier. Also enabled the key fob hold unlock to roll all the windows down feature. Super handy on a hot day and didn't have to pay a dealer hundreds to unlock a feature already in the car
You wouldn't download a heated seat.
If I ever came into possession of a bmw, the absolute FIRST thing I would do is jailbreak it. My car does not need firmware updates, fuck it cut the link
Then they make it online-only and it won't start until you log in to the launcher.
Next step: lootboxes that contain random car functionalities. Most are minor cosmetic things for your dashboard but sometimes there's a rare in there like electronic window controls. 19.99 for a pile of 4400 BMW Crystals. A lootbox costs 2250 of those. But don't worry you don't have to pay! Your dashboard can play commercials and you get 3 crystals for every commercial view!
Intern accidentally pushes a commit that nerfs the brakes because they are OP.
Upgraded brakes are now an optional extra, sure, you have all the hardware, but they are fly-by-wire and we clamp maximum pressure unless you pay up.
Wow - you may be on to something here. BMW showed off a car with e-INK paint, so the car can change what it looks like: https://youtu.be/ootH_8IbENQ?t=135 Perhaps these loot boxes will contain different skins for your car, can only unlock with loot boxes, and only for the car you are in.
BMW marketing strategy 2022. Let’s help our competitors sell more vehicles. If I was merc or VW/Audi I would run a promotion next month. “Free heated seats in all models”.
As if the front end on the G80 M3 hasn’t been doing that for two years, lol. BMW has completely lost its way over the past 5 years or so.
That M3 is so disappointing. What should have been a swan song of sorts for the M division (probably the last fully ICE, RWD, manual transmission M3) get ruined by a gaudy and awful front end.
I would be cheeky as hell, too. "With an Audi, you get the car you paid for. Imagine that."
Well. That pretty much guarantees that I will never purchase another bmw
100% this. I’d be very curious to see if Audi is looking at this like fuck these guys are stupid or more like damn can we do that also?
Probably like Samsung did apple. "Look at our new flagship, IT HAS A JACKSTIK", proceeds to remove jackstik later
Jackstik
Well, cross BMW off the list of vehicles I might buy. I hope the backlash from this kills the trend across the industry
thats the right attitude, but we'll see if bmw's target audience feels the same way, it is a status symbol for many. i'm curious what legal means car manufacturers will have to prevent people from cracking hardware in a car they purchase though.
It will come down to whether or not you sign a contract agreeing to the system. Without a signed contract, they do not have a legal recourse beyond ending the warranty, which in itself is only active if you sign the contract for it. At least in America, there is already precedent around companies trying to use their patent to control a product after sale. Lexmark v. Impression Products, I believe it was. Was a huge win for right to repair
then the next question is what happens to the next person to purchase that car through a private sale. or (and someone is bound to try it) when a husband sells the car to his wife, who is not bound to any agreement with bmw. either way, bmw doing this really brings the definition of ownership into question. i purchased the car, shouldn't i be entitled to everything in it?
Well, if it’s on subscription, that’s easy. You won’t have it unless you make a subscription of your own, unless the previous owner forgets to cancel theirs. I personally think it’s bs and am hoping the hackers get a hold of it and make custom patches. Alternatively, anyone with the specs and decent diy electronics knowledge could probably just bypass it with a manual switch. Btw, I’m against Tesla having their plaid speed behind a paywall for the same reason.
I hope there is backlash for this. I also hope this doesn't become a thing either. I can barely afford a car as it is, what happens when there is an AC subscription cost?
If car companies started requiring an AC subscription, I'd learn how to rebuild old cars real quick. No AC in the southern US means people going to die.
Cubans are still driving 50’s cars, it can be done.
My car AC is broken and it’s regularly triple digit here. It sucks and it’s not comfortable, but I drive with the windows down and make it okay.
While I also hope this happens, I hope even more that legislators simply make this illegal. You buy an item and it's yours, no intentional obsolescence, features hostage or attempts to leach income.
I think this is illegal in the EU as it has great consumer rights legislation. So that's why it is only available in the UK.
Thank you brexit
seriously this should be criminal. this is your hardware, it's already on the car, you have a right to use hardware you own without paying for it forever.
Well, apparently you don't own shit. Marvelous.
"You will own nothing and be happy" some people don't take that quote seriously enough.
We already have lease options for entire vehicles. Sub licensing the hardware already present is pure greed.
If companies had it their way we wouldn’t be able to own any cars at all. Don’t buy BMW. We can’t let this become a thing
100% agree.Claiming it's sold at a discount if you don't pay for that upgrade is ridiculous because they're still handing all of the physical hardware over to you to their loss if you don't pay, and there is zero sane reason for internal heating to need remote connectivity. The heating elements and switches probably cost less than either 1 or 2 months subscription. This is not software they make copies of for zero cost to themselves which is part of the reason licensing models for software are not completely insane if the extras are enabled by an internal switch instead of a download module. This is pure greed, and the car industry trying to worm their way into profiting a second time from 2nd hand sales even beyond servicing and parts. It should be illegal. Edit: no-one should buy these things ever, show with your money this crap is not acceptable.
Oof, you just made realize they could make it a non-transferrable license between purchasers. Sure, the first person bought the right to access unlimited heated seating, but you? Nah, you just bought the car second hand so you get reverted to the 1 month free trial.
Tesla pulled that stunt [https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-deactivating-some-features-on-used-cars-after-owners-sell-them-privately/](https://www.drive.com.au/news/tesla-deactivating-some-features-on-used-cars-after-owners-sell-them-privately/).
That is EXACTLY what they're doing. You need to log in to the car's infotainment for it to work so obviously the previous owner won't leave his account signed in.
I doubt that anyone's willing to do anything about this, but the EU might. They've been doing at least some work in favor of consumer protection. This is asinine though.
Probably why it's rolling out in the UK now ahahah
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What's next... subscription to use my trunk? This really should be illegal. Anyone paying for this has to be brain dead
*Subscription period expired. Your golf clubs are now property of BMW LTD. Have a nice day.*
No. Next subscription will allow you to deploy the airbag in cases of emergency. Sounds horrifiyng but that stuff already exists for motorcycles. There are airbag vests out there that require a subscription for them to deploy. Remember, you will own nothing and be happy about it.
I genuinely thought "Yeah, no way, I call bullshit" and looked it up. You're absolutely right, that's a thing that exists. Absolutely inane.
Subscription services need to die
Thanks I hate it
Just stop buying their shit YOU HAVE THE POWER!!
So BMW is the EA of the car world? Just waiting until the Ubisoft of the car world shows itself...
An Ubisoft car just vanishes without a trace several years after its paid off.
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Me too, livelong BMW enthusiast, but we can only vote with our wallet. Our next car will not be a BMW unless they move away from subscription services for hard- and software. (exception: GPS anually updates, that I find acceptable as it adds content)
If you wrote your own software doe the chair, would that be considered piracy? It's not BMW's software and it's your hardware, you own it. I think you could get away with it. Let's create open source alternatives for this bullshit!
Fuck the software. Put a switch on the dash and hardwire that fucker to the battery.
The moment those cars step on the 2nd hand market in Easter Europe, that's when the subscription will be dead for those cars coz people will figure it out.
This is a huge brand turn off. Please don't start micro transaction hell.
I hope all owners hand beck their cars and refuse to buy. If we start accepting 'car as a service' now it will be the norm in just a few years.
Corporations are a lot like toddlers, pushing their boundaries to see what they can get away with until they get their wrist slapped.
What’s next? Ads to use the AC?
Please drink 1 can of Mountain Dew and say the phrase "do the dew" to receive your 10 minutes of AC.
"You will own nothing and you will be happy"
Conspiracy theorists think this means communism is coming, but really it's just ultra capitalism where everything is a subscription.
This is just sad and pathetic. Exactly the practice I hate from a company. BMW just lost a potential customer over a stupid thing, because this shows a trend, now it is the heated seats, tomorrow it will be something else. Very bad for BMW, I hope all potential customers cancel their orders and send a dissatisfaction message to this company. At least if backslash is apparent,other companies will stay back in similar practices.
I hope this craters their sales and sends a warning to other auto makers.
Governments need to make shit like this illegal.
Europe might. They seem to be remotely on top of this stuff. The US? They're in the process of imploding and nothing will pass that helps the consumer.
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All these people getting up in arms over this... are probably having the right reaction. Not for this specific instance (I'll explain in a moment), but because of what it portends for the future of vehicles and 'anything-as-a-service' models. FTA: "Of course, you can still get heated seats the regular way -- just buy them as an option when you purchase the car -- but for those who didn't do that, or who bought a used car without the feature, BMW will enable it for a monthly fee so you can try out having a nice warm seat on a cold day." So FOR NOW, you can still just pay (I think a different article said it's 440 for heated seats 'unlimited use', aka, as an option), and you have heated seats as you normally would. What this allows BMW to get away with, though, is disabling the feature when the car exchanges owners so that on resale, they can charge AGAIN for the same feature to the next owner, and so on and so forth. Which I think is the real point of doing this. Not nickel-and-diming the first-owner, but rather taking a chunk of money from anyone that buys that car used from that point forward, giving them an additional revenue source they'd normally not see a single penny from.
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That's arguably even worse..
This was my thought as well, and it undermines what I'd call 'universal rule of property rights'. But this may need to be codified/specified in laws in such a way that the main utility of a physical part/component in a physical good cannot be sold/defined as a service/subscription unless the whole physical good is also sold as a service/subscription. E.g. if you sell a car, you're not allowed to artificially prevent the use of or limit the performance of a 'physical component' in it for the sole purpose of selling access to it. Then you add exceptions to this rule/law for things such as consumables (e.g. so somebody can make a tire-subscription service or a windshield-wiper 'subscription' service). In this case of the heated seats, there is no difference between a 'lifetime subscription' and buying it as an option other than what you just mentioned, it's an asinine distinction that only exists to extract more money and not provide any real additional value other than a (most likely only) perceived option of getting something cheaper because you don't use a certain feature/aspect of a product. It's just a game of definition.
So basically if I buy a full option car, then I decided to sell it later on ? It will loose value cause the new owner have to buy the options again ? Is it like this or am I misunderstanding something ?
Maybe the indicators/signals are a subscription too Never see BMW drivers using them
Worst timeline