BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
forbes.com> 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.)
Money and prices are fungible so it isn't really possible to prove anything. But there are two very reasonable ways to look at it.
1. Those who purchase the heated seats cover the cost of all of these heating wires. So they are paying much more than the raw cost (but presumably less than if their cars needed a separate / modified production line).
2. The manufacturer is paying these costs as a "marketing fee" hoping that they will recoup their investment (and more) when people pay for this feature.
I agree that this model feels wrong but after thinking about it I have convinced myself that this can be a good thing. It allows those who what the feature to pay for it, without removing the option for a cheaper model for those who don't want or can't afford the feature.
I wrote a blog post about this a while back: https://kevincox.ca/2023/05/14/ethics-of-locked-hardware/
OK, first off, your blog post uses an entirely hypothetical, fictitious cost graph, anyone can create a fictitious graph to support their hypothesis. I highly doubt an actual cost graph on a car with actual costs would pan out the way you're looking at it. With that out of the way...
If the hardware to perform the capability is in the machine I bought, it belongs to me. I paid for it. I don't care if you discounted the price below your cost to produce, I gave you the money and you gave me the thing, its mine. No amount of legalese will change that, it is a simple fact of life. I'm paying for the gas to lug the hardware around with me everywhere I go. The hardware itself does not require software to function, you need a heating element and a switch, you can't even make the argument that you're paying for a license to the software without which the feature will not work. Even if a device does genuinely need software to work, unless the hardware can be used for other things and someone can purchase or create competing software for the thing, again, the hardware is mine and you don't get to tell me what to do with it. It's less like purchasing Windows for your computer and more like purchasing firmware for the proprietary WiFi card you just bought.
Those who want the feature can pay for the hardware. Make a car without it. If it's in my car and I didn't steal it it's mine, period. Even if they decide to put them in every car and charge me a one time fee to turn it on and even make that transferrable with the car I don't care, you can't gimp my property and sell it back to me, how is that different than ransomware? Make a car without it or charge for it for all cars it's in. It is that simple.
Off topic, we talk about e waste and what not but then we justify this form of waste by saying it reduces cost by streamlining manufacturing. This is bullshit. If it reduces costs then make it a standard feature. Why don't they? Because it doesn't reduce cost. It increases cost for every item manufactured and that cost is recouped by the subscription fee. In other words, they do it because it is profitable. And it's profitable not because it reduces cost, but because people have to pay a recurring fee to use the thing forever, and because it's valueless on the secondary market, you can't even pull one at a junkyard. If they charged a one time transferrable fee to turn it on I doubt they'd be saying it reduces cost, because it doesn't. But some people fall for this hand waving, and as a result thousands, possibly millions of cars are out there with device in them that are going for two hundred thousand mile ride right to a landfill, brand new and out of the box.
Your concept is mathematically sound, but if there exists an opportunity to double dip to boost profits, what would make a corporation turn it down? As you noted in case #1, companies are paying much more for the materials. Consumers are still ultimately paying for it.
The entire point of amortizing the upfront costs is to keep the consumers hooked by charging a smaller recurring amount that stings less but certainly adds up to a bigger amount than the original upfront costs.
Besides, why would a company go through the added hassle of creating and managing a subscription model and risk pissing off customers through this nickeling-and-diming if not for more profits?
I am sure that there is still some silver lining to this scenario (e.g. I live in hot climate and don't need heated seats), but I fail to see any that apply to a broad number of consumers.
> companies are paying much more for the materials
They are paying more for materials but less for manufacturing costs and overhead. The total cost is less. So by your logic consumers are paying less than before.
> keep the consumers hooked by charging a smaller recurring amount
Yes, I disagree with the subscription model. I am talking more about one time payment for a hardware-locked feature.
> They are paying more for materials but less for manufacturing costs and overhead
I suspect this is a complex, wicked problem. What about the marketing costs, subscription management overhead, and the ensuing PR damage?
What’s the additional weight of heated seat tech? Any impact on fuel costs for those that don’t want heated seats?
It'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.
There 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.)
Completely 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.
I 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.
The reason it flipped is that it’s a SUBSCRIPTION. That’s just insanely obvious nickel and diming.
I also wouldn’t pay for this. But the economics are more interesting.
BMW and AWS ran a quantum computing challenge two years ago. One of the tasks was to figure out all the combinations of features that need to be tested (sometimes destructively) [1].
I would imagine that having features installed in all vehicles provides a less taxing testing regime than having a physical option.
And in addition, it will be cheaper to just manufacture one version of a thing (and then switch in software).
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/quantum-computing/winners-annou...
> I would imagine that having features installed in all vehicles provides a less taxing testing regime than having a physical option.
Curious to learn the underlying economics, but not sure how software-locking features would make testing any easier. While different configurations would create somewhat unique feature-sets, not having to test some features on a certain percentage of vehicles (I imagine a testing technician looking at the missing buttons and writing down "N/A") seems more efficient than having to test every feature on every vehicle in an attempt to oversimplify.
I'm sure BMW could make a case where between 1) not needing to manufacture non-heated seats anymore improves manufacturing efficiencies and costs and 2) the people paying for the subscription brings in enough revenue that BMW can sell the car for the same price as it was without the heated seat hardware.
However, no consumer is actually going to believe that and they're just going to assume they'd paid for something they don't get value from without having to pay more.
I just wonder why they're so obsessed to make heated seats an optional feature to charge for... it comes standard these days on so many other cars in lowest trim, including Volkswagen (which is considered less premium in Munich). If they see scaling benefits by equipping every car with heated seats just do it and price it in the base offer. The backlash from this probably cost them more than they can ever raise through a seat subscription.
Are you him? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Bright
That’s him. The easiest way to summon him is to post anything compiler related, especially in the C family.
You rang?
9 minutes to reply. Are you off your game?
"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
>People feel that they paid double, which was actually not true
That's some serious gaslighting.
That'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.
I think there a link that can be drawn between the type of contract you describe, and feudal-era serfdom. Serfs at the time were effectively prevented from owning property - land. In this case, people are being prevented from owning property - cars. In both cases the exclusion was enabled by the laws at the time. In the case of feudalism, the land reform laws brought an end to the state of affairs. And, they were responsible for a very large increase in common prosperity.
What you say is correct - the laws as they stand do allow for this behavior by BMW, and the company is correct when they say that (buyers? renters?) don't own the gadget in question.
It's also true that a discussion around preventing this sort of behavior with new laws is probably warranted.
Yes, absolutely, and that's a great observation about medieval serfdom. People seem reluctant to engage with the problem in its full generality, which is essentially: What kinds of restrictions (if any) should we as a society place on contracts between parties who would otherwise agree?
Laissez-faire capitalism's answer is "None at all", which is appealingly simple and works well whenever the parties involved have similar levels of bargaining power. But in practice a huge number of negotiations occur between parties with vastly different levels of bargaining power -- and in that case, having few or no restrictions can lead to emergent behaviour (especially positive feedback of wealth and poverty over time) that many feel to be unfair.
It's difficult because the alternative -- adding restrictions -- seems almost impossible to do without "playing favourites", which leads to claims of unfairness that are hard to argue against because they are so plain: They're right there in writing. It's harder for many people to see how the absence of restrictions is also a kind of "playing favourites".
I keep bringing up this example - it's like buying a house with a room that's walled off and you need to pay the developer extra money to have it opened up for use. The houses are made from prefabs so it's easier to just make every house the same but just wall off rooms you didn't pay for. The contract could stipulate this clearly - you are not paying for the room that's walled off.
Obviously, that's completely insane and I'm sure anyone can see this. Why treat cars differently?
Add one variable to your example: imagine that having variations increases cost such as increased development cost (you need to develop each component, test and certify possible combinations, incur increased logistical complexity, etc..)
This additional cost however is less than just adding the higher trim to every configuration, e.g. the additional room, so it doesn't make economic sense to do so.
But let's assume you now get the ability to sell and unlock a higher trim after the initial purchase. Let's say that 20% of your customers would be willing to purchase such an unlock at a later point in time, resulting in increased revenue.
If that revenue plus the reduced lifecycle expense exceeds the cost of adding the higher trim as baseline you would have a business case, which wouldn't be the case if you just add the room for everybody (where you'd have to raise the base price and lose buyers on the lower end).
I understand all of that. If it isn't economical for BMW to produce cars with and without heated seats as two separate models then I guess all of their cars should have heated seats as standard. Having them but locking them behind a software unlock is profiteering, even if technically making a model without the seats would have been more expensive.
> 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.
I think I'm not alone in saying that yes it SHOULD override what it says in the contract. You can write whatever you like in contracts, but that does not make it reasonable behavior.
Many would agree.
More generally, what restrictions should the law place on contracts, in your opinion? That is, can you describe a general rule that would rule out BMW's heated car seats from being a valid contact clause (but, presumably, not rule out every possible contract)?
> Can you describe a general rule
You can't charge a subscription for something someone already physically owns.
That ought to stop this sort of nonsense while still allowing most all SaaS stuff to keep going. Heck you could still charge a service contract for the seat heaters. You just can't go "No we won't enable this thing that's already fully wired up and ready to go and fully owned by you"
Though honestly the "correct" way to fix this sort of nonsense is to rework or possibly repeal DMCA entirely. It's absurd a manufacturer can put a lock on my stuff and have it be illegal for me to remove the lock.
Thanks for responding, and sorry for the slow reply.
>You can't charge a subscription for something someone already physically owns.
I suspect the contract is worded so that the buyer of "the car" actually does not own the seats, or perhaps the heaters in the seats. If that's the case, do you feel that such a contract clause should be illegal? If so, you're claiming that there are circumstances in which it should be illegal to "separate out" some things that are usually "bundled together" (here, car seat heaters and the rest of the car) -- what general rule would you propose to decide what things are unacceptable to separate out like this? (In case you're thinking of proposing "things that are physically connected can't be sold separately", you will run into problems: Lots of raw materials, e.g., steel, need to be cut up to be sold in the quantities customers need.)
But let's suppose the contract does not in fact leave ownership of any physical part of the car with the seller. If you buy a router from an ISP, are they not entitled to also charge you a monthly subscription to use it to access the internet?
Then suddenly you buy a car that has several kg of equipment that are not yours, but theirs, just so you could activate it with a subscription at a later point in time. Great! But now I'm the one paying gas/electricity to carry that extra load around that does not belong to me.
How is it possible that they can get away with it without any lawsuits? I'd want to be compensated for carrying other people's crap around town.
If a feature requires constant development (like self-driving) then it makes more sense. But even that has been subverted these days with SaaS companies that charge a subscription but only offer new features as upgrades so your version doesn't really improve that much unless you pony up.
How much more $ do these people really need?
>Then suddenly you buy a car that has several kg of equipment that are not yours
Well, you could read the contract, see that clause, and choose not to buy that particular car, couldn't you?
It's likely that there are other cars available to buy that don't have clauses like that in their contracts. But even if there aren't (either because this car manufacturer has a monopoly on cars where you live, or there's a cartel operating in which all car manufacturers secretly agree to adopt this type of clause): Do you feel you have a right to buy a car without a clause like that in the contract?
If your answer to that is "Yes, I have that right": Suppose for the sake of argument that this car company is a monopoly. What happens if it goes out of business, or decides to stop making cars altogether? Should they be prevented from doing so by law, in order that your right to buy such a car remains undisturbed?
If you live on a remote island, do you likewise have a right to buy a car with no such clause in the contract?
I'm interested in understanding what rights you feel people should be entitled to when it comes by buying things, and how you would have the government deal with the downstream implications of legally guaranteeing those rights.
The argument "it was in the contract" doesn't connect with most people when the contract specifies something that is so strongly against common sense. The Libertarian desire of having almost arbitrary contract clauses, that is, anything goes as long as consenting adults are agreeing to it, resonates with me personally but I fully understand it's utopian. Most people simply don't think, and won't ever think, like that - and this is why BMW failed badly here.
Dystopian, more like. It's fine when the parties to the contract are of similar size, but the vast majority of contracts are between relatively powerful entities who write the contract and relatively powerless entities who like it or lump it. That needs a thumb on the scales to stop the more powerful entity taking unreasonable advantage.
> That's some serious gaslighting
Devil's advocate: how would you know if BMW subsidized what would have been an add-on package?
“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?
The user subsidizes that package with every day of fuel spent per pound of that package.
> Wow. They still don’t get it
People paid double. They did get it. Even before they tried.
Let's hope they did get it and this is just marketing blabber to avoid admitting any mistakes.
Oh they got it. Let me rephrase it for you:
"People realised they were paying double. So that is the reason we stopped"
Meanwhile, 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...
So you pay to maintain a more complicated system but get none of the benefits
BMW 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.
I 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.
My former BMW dashboard, the area below the satnav, has something that appears to have melted. It’s not the hard plastic that did it but something that appears to be a coating of some sort. It had a sunroof, and probably that caused it. The rear stopping lights circuits fried somehow, replaced them myself. Apparently water gets in?
My porsche 981 had the roof peel off, and the door panels gradually ungluing. More worrying they made a recall on my model, whereby the rear axel can crack in certain circumstances, years after issuing the same recall for US customers.
BMW owners of certain models have told me about timing chains snapping, or differentials breaking.
Not buying any of these brands again, ever. Chose an american brand instead, part due to quality, part due to politics. Couldnt be happier. At least i dont need to pay thousands just be able to play music or stream my maps. Even if it breaks down i’s still have saved money so i can fix it.
This i think is relevant to this forum because it underlines a fundamental issue with a country who’s economy is largely reliant on manufacturing quality goods. That quality seems to decline rather fast, and it will have serious impact over european affairs in my view. First warning sign was cheating on emissions. Second warning was desperate attempts at charging owners monthly fees. Now it’s clear there’s something rotten in germany.
Was your BMW manufactured in the US? Scott Kilmer gave this advice for American car buyers; make sure the BMW or Mercedes-Benz you're looking for was built in Germany! US versions apparently have terrible quality, not even close to EU standards.
Scotty Kilmer is a fucking moron, and his advice is worth what you paid for it. He's great at vomiting out old wives tales though.
Made in Germany. They sometimes last until warranty +1 day then they just fall apart.
Oh no, they're absolutely not. The lobbyists stand ready and the government will continue shoveling money in the general direction of the holy cow. I'd find it funny if it wasn't so sad.
After 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.
Seems 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).
This 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.
> 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.
Is it really too much to ask it with heated seats built-in? For a luxury automaker...
We'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
I don't think that sweet, sweet heated seat revenue is the endgame here, I assume this is the POC for an in-car app store.
(I say "is" rather than "was" because everybody bitched when they forced ads onto smart TVs and swore they'd never buy one, and yet it's nearly impossible to find a name brand TV without them. Won't be long before there's a monthly fee to mute the voice telling you what's on sale at every burger joint and strip mall you drive by)
I solved that by not owning a TV. Sadly, you are probably right. It happened at the gas station pump, smart TV’s, now your OS. Tomorrow your car.
I solved that by buying a tv that was on sale (sales guy warned that they have gotten lots of returns because the smart features were somehow not so good on the model) and promptly never connected it to internet. So far no ads outside tv channels' own ads.
You still have ads.
Puncture loudspeakers, and use external audio.
They would also expect BMW to nickel and dime you. BMW are notorious for the options. I recall when the radio was optional.
> 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.
Im surprised a seat comes standard in a Porsche.
It's not. All parts are made to Porsche standards. Meaning.. Industrial standard parts - 1/porsche of a mm on all bemassungen.
Even my cheap* 2005 Infiniti G sport coupe back in the day had heated seats.
* $31.6k + 8% tax. Couldn't fit into a used one, so had to order it new deleting the sunroof.
I expect a luxury vehicle (that I can fit into) to have both heated and cooling seats because it's damn hot here.
One problem with too many features is they add complexity and they break. Only add features that are essential because most are a rent-seeking ripoff. Preferably, a low mileage used vehicle that's periodically but barely driven by a retired elderly person is best.
My 1991 Saab had heated seats. This is just seeing what they can get away with.
Back in the 80s, BMW considered a radio an optional extra.
Admittedly they fitted a Blaupunkt (when that was a luxury brand), but still …
cheap hotels advertise free wifi. expensive ones charge you for it.
Depends. Will you pay a subscription if they don't? We all know what they were doing...
It's not controversial, everyone thinks it's ridiculous
It was actually a little more nuanced — they offered a one-time purchase (at a normal-ish price), or the option to purchase via subscription. I have no problem with this arrangement, which literally offers consumers more choices. The concerns I would have are (1) that the one-time pricing would gradually creep up, so that in a few years it becomes untenable, or (2) that when you sell the car, the heated seats would be deactivated. We'll never know if (1) would have happened, and I wasn't ever able to figure out if (2) was the case.
But you are right that the outrage-bait titles made people almost uniformly upset, since it wasn't clear that this was an additional option, and that people could still purchase heated seats outright.
In either of these cases the car you exchanged your money for physically had the seat heaters in it already. You were buying (or renting) the password to be allowed to use your own belongings.
To me this isn't nuanced at all. It's my fucking car, get out of here with this rent-seeking DLC shit.
It is nuanced. If they did not sell the car for a penny more than last years model without heated seats, in other words they put up the money for the heated seat hardware in hopes of recouping that cost (and making their usual profit on it) later, then I don't see why people have a problem with getting the same features for the same price as last year.
In fact, as someone who likes to buy lightly used cars, I love this idea even more... even though the original buyer didn't want heated seats, I can still have them for the original option price? SOLD! (I would not do the subscription option of course)
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-aut...
The license to these software enabled features is not usually transferrable. And why would they be?
It's not nuanced. If I pay you money for an object I expect the object to work. I don't care if you're selling it to me at a loss, that's your prerogative. What's not your prerogative is how I use my property.
None of that is my problem. My belongings belong to me. I don't care if a bean counter somewhere was slightly happier about it before it got to me. The moment the car is my car, it's no longer their car to start charging me access to.
I see your point. I don't have a problem with it personally, but I understand your logic. I guess now that everything is controlled by software, and software is rarely ever owned (mostly licensed) that has started to blur the lines between what we own and what we license.
This kind of thing is common in software where all of the code is there for the premium/business/family/group/team/etc features, but how much you pay determines which features you get access to. In the case of the BMW, the heated seat control only appeared on the screen if you paid $250 for it.
They're not the same thing. If I buy a computer, you can say "if you want to use adobe software you have to pay an adobe license fee", you cannot say "if you want to use WiFi you need to pay for a license to the firmware for the hardware in your machine."
And I'm sure you'd be within your rights to add a switch somewhere to toggle the heaters on manually, for instance.
The only difference between some cars power is the ECU tune on the car. Are you entitled to the fastest version from the factory because you bought the cheaper model? I would say no. But you're free to add your own ECU tune via aftermarket methods.
The devil's advocate could argue that they provided the hardware at a loss under the assumption that they would recoup their money through subscriptions. That's a silly position in this case, though, because heated seats have been a thing for decades so there's no R&D work they need to pay off, and the cost of the actual heating elements and wires is trivial compared to the cost of the car.
If I bought the heated seats via a one-time purchase then that feature should transfer to the new owner. It may require that transfer of ownership be registered with BMW.
If I rented the heated seats, or hadn't bought or rented the heated seats, then the new buyer should have the option to rent the heated seats or make a one-time purchase to just buy them.
This seems pro-consumer to me. I don't want heated seats (no, really, I don't!) and I would never buy them on my car. But, when I go to sell my car the new buyer can purchase heated seats if they so choose. That increases the market to which I can sell my car, and makes more cars available to buyers. Increased supply drives prices down.
No matter how you slice it and dice it the end result is the same: drive prices down and provide more options to consumers. I don't understand the backlash.
I think the backlash comes from incomplete reporting (and article-skimming, on the part of readers), which led people to think they were replacing the one-time purchase option with a subscription. I think we can all agree that would be bad.
Among more thoughtful folks, there were still concerns that this was a first step toward increased nickel-and-diming. What feature would be subscription-ized next? And would the one-time purchase options silently disappear?
How does it drive prices down? I can see how it drives profits up, so costs down when weighed against profits, but I don't see how it drives prices down.
Consider that these things cannot be sold on the secondary market. You can't pick and pull the hardware.
There's two ways it helps drive prices down:
1. Lowers manufacturing costs. If there were a Law of Manufacturing it would be this: the less differentiation among the widgets, the more cheaply the widgets can be made. That thinking was behind Ford saying you could have any color you want, so long as it's black. Note this doesn't just affect assembly, it affects the supply chain as well. Your supplier only has to provide one kind of seat. The company making the heating units can crank more out and reduce the unit cost of each.
2. Increases supply - which reduces cost. As I said above, heated seats can be sold as an option. Any owner of the car can buy the option at any time. That increases the supply of cars in the used market. If I want a car with heated seats I can buy the model where that feature hasn't been enabled and enable it myself.
You mention you can't pick and pull the hardware. There's nothing in principle preventing that. All the hardware is the same. If for some reason your seat were to become damaged, you don't have to look for a heated seat. Any seat will do. If BMW is doing anything to prevent that then they're going to run afoul of Right to Repair laws.
It means track users across cars, enabling or disabling features based on who owns or drives it. Might even simplify things by tying it to a social credit score. Screw that.
The state already tracks users across cars. Not sure what data you think you're protecting.
I will not pay extra for heated seats. I will also not be paying for heated seat hardware that is deactivated behind a paywall.
When I buy a physical object, that is my object. If they want to charge subscription fees they can do it on something they own. If they want to charge for new functionality they can do it own something they own.
I'm fine with the option but if it's backed up with the force of law, I'm not fine with that. If you install the seat-heating hardware, lock it down with DRM, and prosecute me for hacking it, well, we're going to have a problem.
One 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.
When my iPhone disconnects from my car (even one without CarPlay), it remembers the car's location.
I just leave an Airtag in my cars. Always know where they are.
Also useful for tracking your car in case it's stolen.
Provided you have paired the phone with the car's bluetooth (I think).
It’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.
Hasn't BMW being doing exactly that for several years now? I'm sure their strangely named "Connected Services" offered this for £10/m or so, around 10 years back.
They already know where you parked your car. The fee would be for sharing that info with you. But then the sheeple would wake up to what BMW tracks, so it's a classic espionage dilemma.
What 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?
Ah, we've found the account that Cory Doctorow gets his ideas from.
Probably 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.
I’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.
Why did you eliminate them exactly... you don't want the added weight of the heated seat since you had no use for that option?
I 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.
They didn't take away the option to pay once upfront though. They just added the option to pay monthly.
People aren’t happy owning nothing.
And 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?"
Well, a lot of BMWs are rented anyhow. It's not surprising BMW would engage in further rent-seeking behaviour.
ridiculous. it should be enough that a person chose your brand with their wallet in the first place. no one wants to rent your features.
*condo fee
But 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.
The 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.
Not remote start. Plenty of remote start units are standalone, install into the vehicle and operate offline using their own dedicated fobs.
Subaru sells first-party remote start units which operate this way. They also have a subscription service that offers remote start, but make no mistake: if your carmaker ONLY allows remote start with a subscription and won't install a standalone unit, you are being had.
More importantly if i'm not 'close' to my car I don't want it to start accidentally. I've already started my car while it was the garrage and I was.sitting in my favorite chair with no intent to go anywhere.
Even a case can be made for not charging for software maintenance and upgrades since the customer has already paid for that cost while buying the device (or just include it in the device cost). Take Apple as an example. Software upgrades are free. It actually works in their benefit to give free software since they don't need to be backwards compatible for decade(s). Charging for actual recurring fee services like data makes sense though.
I was forced to upgrade my 2015 iPhone because apps started "winking out", one at a time. No error message, they just wouldn't open anymore. It was surely the automatic free upgrades to the OS and the apps that broke them.
I was surprised, though, that it would "upgrade" my phone to apps that wouldn't work anymore and didn't bother to say it wouldn't work.
Bought a new phone, transferred my setup over, and they started working again.
Yes that is also a problem. The best software is the one which is stable and isolated entirely such that no dependencies change and is also never upgraded. Nothing usually breaks in it. As an owner you buy the entire package hardware + software in its stable form and you can keep it running as long as you want.
With new cars, what I dread the most is scenario where something breaks after an upgrade, especially after car is out of warranty. Would that mean I need to get an expensive repair, or an entirely new car just because my 5yr old hardware isn't compatible with latest software?
I want a car which is reliable enough (including the software) to run as long as I want to keep it even if it's decades. May be keeping cars for decades is about to become a distant reality
Step one: Rush underdevelop product to market so its ridden with bugs and security flaws.
Step two: Charge subscription fee to get paid to finish developing product
Step three: Add useless features and do confusing redesigns to justify subscriptions
Step four: "Subscriptions are necessary to cover ongoing costs"
>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)?
Here's the extreme example I always reach for: Imagine BMW decides that it's cheaper for them to just make all 4 seat sedans instead of having some 2 seat models and some 4 seat models. They instead tell customers: "You're buying a 2-seater. You need to pay a $X/month 'sedan fee' to be allowed to sit in the rear seats." Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not, and for the same reason that subscriptions for other things that are already part of your car should also be unacceptable.
>Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not
I disagree. This literally happens for CPUs, and people don't seem to get angry at it. There might be different models of CPUs sold that use the same die and come off the same manufacturing line. The only difference is that cores are disabled/fuesd off and/or clock speeds are lowered.
In CPUs, there's at least a legitimate reason: reducing wastage by, e.g., selling what was intended to be a quad-core but had two defective cores as a dual-core instead of throwing it away.
That's only partially true though. Back in the day you could "unlock" cores in some AMD CPUs, which indicated that they were perfectly functional. Nowadays they disable the cores in a more robust way, but I doubt every disabled core is non-functional.
Rear seatbelts won't work unless you subscribe, so this is a road safety issue, with government fining you for passengers…
The principle is the seller appropriating for themselves a value-driver that was previously part of the consumer surplus, without offering to exchange something of commensurate and enduring or time-series value in proportion to the time series of payments. It reeks of friction and parlor tricks to get you to miscalculate the cost / benefit situation.
Compare to a "land grab" or "rent-seeking" behavior. Also compare to "financing". It may be economically efficient to establish bargaining over the value but it matters asymmetrically to the parties to the transaction who is assigned property rights and who is renting.
>The principle is the seller appropriating for themselves a value-driver that was previously part of the consumer surplus
Were heated seats previously free? I don't shop luxury cars, but heated seats on regular cars are definitely a premium trim feature.
> 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.
Recurring monthly revenue is something a business really wants. It smoothes their cash flow, so yes there is a difference.
But 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.
BMW 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).
That there exists an alternative doesn't make the subscription better.
I would heartily disagree. When I go to buy some software, which I purchase via one-time purchase, I do not care one bit that they also offer a subscription. If the subscription is a ripoff, then those customers are effectively subsidizing my purchase. And if it's a great deal, then maybe I should consider subscribing instead of paying a lump sum. Either way, I'm not hurt by the additional payment option existing.
Are you equally upset about the fact that you can get a "subscription" to a car (ie. renting or leasing it) in addition to buying it outright?
That's not really the same thing, but regardless, the fact that a car can be purchased wouldn't make an expensive lease more attractive.
>That's not really the same thing
How so?
>the fact that a car can be purchased wouldn't make an expensive lease more attractive.
Yet plenty of people lease their cars.
Regarding the last question - yes. If you sell the car the add-on stays there for the next buyer. If the car lasts longer than 10 years you pay less overall. If some online validation thing stops working you don't lose access to the feature. Prices can't and don't need to be changed afterwards, not even if e.g. taxes, card fees or similar change. Etc.
Opinions my own. EDIT: typo.
Imagine 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.
> 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.
They've been required in both Canada and the US since 2018.
Is it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?
I 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.
In 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.
Later that evening: “Five killed in car crash. Evidence points to use of seat heaters without paying subscription fee, thus making the vehicle not suitable for highway commute.”
Who cares? It's your property. And yes, there are seats and there are heating elements already in the car. They even wired them up for you.
John Deere's legal department would like to have a word with you.
> Who cares? It's your property.
Authorities care. Yes it's your property and you can do whatever you want with it. The question is whether you're allowed to operate the vehicle on public roads afterwards. Cars go through thorough certification processes (homologation) and that includes software.
Can you prove that your change does not negatively affect a certification-relevant function?
DMCA does make this illegal in the US. There are some carve-outs for automobiles, but not for modifications that circumvent subscriptions.
More likely it would invalidate the warranty on the entire vehicle, which would be a costly penalty?
Auto manufacturers cannot arbitrarily invalidate warranties like that.
Voids warranty.
In the United Stated at least, federal law stipulates that modifications only void warranty if they can show that the modifications caused the failure.
My understanding is some dealers, especially BMW are dicks with any ECU tuning and will deny support. And then it's a question of whether it's worth hassle to go to court or eating the cost. Maybe that was just limited to messing with engine/transmission.
I 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.
> which was actually not true, but perception is reality
This is beyond stupid.
Now you will have to pay for the app that turns them off.
> "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.
I wouldn't mind this, as long as BMW compensates me for the extra pounds of gear they installed. Fuel ain't cheap.
Oh that's too bad, as a consumer, I would have loved to have been obligated to pay for that feature in perpetuity.
You 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.
yeah 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.
> 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.
This 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.
Awesome! Now do Chamberlain MyQ who want you to charge you to open your own garage door!
I 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?
I 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.
> If anything that seems like a deal to not have to pay subscription.
I'm gonna use this zinger at my next pitch meeting.
That's easy ... aaand done! (They don't)
....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.
Give up on that stupid wheel knob please. No one likes that thing
Is 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.
Oh I guess they are legal and their illegality is an urban myth.
What is a wheel knob?
I 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.
This 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.
subscriptions almost always end up costing the consumer more.
Imagine you bought a new MacBook and it's ⌘Command key doesn't work until you sign-in online and pay a subscription.
Are there some hacking garages where you can enable features like these and disables features like GPS and telemetry?
It 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.
I 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.
A little sad that this is being pulled back - I was looking forward to after market hacks
I wouldn't. All it takes is them to require a certificate/hash-based-digitally-signed signature and it's game over for all that.
>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.
The 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.
> 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.
Paywalled features really cheapen a brand. Nothing about a monthly subscription to activate existing services really screams "premium" to me.
Yep. Even though they weren't getting rid of the usual one time option price, the subscription offer really turned people off.
Ok, now let’s get Smart TV manufacturers to stop collecting data.
How about you refocus on making cars mate.
And have car cubs? Manufacturers would lose control of the herd, they'd never allow it!
Yeah, that was never going to work out.
turn signals are still paywalled