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BMW Is Giving Up on Heated Seat Subscriptions Because People Hated Them::The blowback worked—but subscriptions for software-based new car features will continue, according to a BMW board member.
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Now do Zero Motorcycles.
Wait, they’ve done something like this too?
Fuck them.
I just wonder how much of a market there is in fixing these issues for consumers. As in, giving people FULL ownership of their own cars…and to hell with ridiculous corporate “laws” like the DMCA.
duh
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give up
No. That’s not what companies do.
BMW and Mercedes were the “leaders” in milking their customers and thus they got the most bad press. All BMW is doing is waiting until more companies start doing this and the whole idea of subscriptions in the car business becomes normalized to the public.
Unless consumers continue to shun this concept and the press blasts these companies for trying to push this nonsense, it will make a comeback in the years to come. Unfortunately, I simply do not think consumers will look at their long-term interests. Its like telling gamers not to pre-order the hottest upcoming releases because it encourages companies to release buggy software… all the pleading in the world ends up falling on deaf ears. Same too, I believe, will happen in the car market.
Not to mention that it’s clear that they don’t want to sell cars to individuals anymore. That’s what all these subscription models point to. They are hoping to sell fleets of autonomous cars to corporations and cities, and us plebes can rent them when we need them. The upside for the manufacturer is that now they have the ecosystem to charge an extra $5 for A/C per ride, $3 for the radio, and $10 to roll down the windows.
Ew. Sounds gross, so it probably isn’t far off.
I have no actual proof. This is just what I am guessing they are planning. I could be totally wrong, I just don’t think that’s likely.
Look, it’s shitty that they’re putting this stuff behind a software lock and subscriptions just like the shitty practices of the gaming world but with shitty behavior comes opportunity with the cracking world.
That’s a big giant “no shit” from me.
Subscription based models is how they kill the second hand car market. No one will touch a BMW with a subscription off lease.
does BMW make money on second hand cars then? probably just parts…
BMW parts are bonkers expensive. I have a Cooper and whenever something goes wrong the repair is stilly expensive. Mini may be BMW’s cheaper brand when you drive off the lot. But ownership costs outside of warrantee are BMW through and through.
Parts is also where dealerships make most of their money
That and charging 2x for repairs.
BMW really doesn’t understand this business model. They tried to pull this shit with CarPlay in 2018 as well. Which one could buy as an €300 option, which was rediculous by itself, but was later moved to a fucking subscription.
It also caused a huge uproar, largely forgotten by Covid now, but they also had to backtrack that. And now they’ve tried it again, also to backtrack again.
Fix your cars to be a better value prop than that fuckface’s or the Chinese cars. Then you’ll make tons of money. Not by nickel and diming your customers.
No, you’re not understanding.
They save money by only producing the luxury model. Then they disable the feature electronically.
But to prevent you from just jailbreaking the car, they need to have a system to monitor your status. So they need to be able to check and update software that you can’t control, etc etc.
It’s still greed, but it’s like greed with extra steps.
People were objecting to the subscription, but they should have been objective to the locked features.
They’ll never stop the shitification, it maximizes profit.
People were objecting to the subscription, but they should have been objective to the locked features.
Why though, if it’s cheaper? Do you rather pay for features you don’t use or pay to remove features?
everyone would use the features if available. It is more economic aka cheaper for bmw to just install the pricier heated seat in every car ibstead of adjusting to what the customer bought.
But instead of passing the economic gain to the customers, they arbitrarily lock it to maximize profit.
But instead of passing the economic gain to the customers, they arbitrarily lock it to maximize profit.
In a perfect market those things are the same, that’s the beauty of capitalism. By software disabling features they can lower prices for customers who don’t want them and asking higher prices of people who are willing to pay for it.
Obviously perfect markets don’t exist, but cars are a super competitive market.
By software disabling features they can lower prices for customers who don’t want them
They aren’t lowering the price.
BMW’s costs are the same, so the base price must support the manufacture with all the options included. Options are 100% profit on top of the base model.
It’s not even like we’re talking about software development that needs a lot of investment. If you were talking about self-drive, then I can see the justification. That R&D can be paid for just by the people who have bought it. Not for Aircon seats. Not for carplay / android auto.
Artificial SKU creation should not be supported.
I want to own the car I just paid a lot of money for either way - that means all of the car.
I’d pay more for cars which are modular, like computers.
Cars are built on assembly lines, unlike any modular computer
What are you suggesting?
It’s harder to sell a modular product off an assembly line.
You mean more expensive to design, and sell the parts rather than sell as a whole?
If the features are in the car I have, I paid for them.
Yes, and no. Imagine it costs $20/car to install seat heating in every car, but by making two assembly lines, one for with and one without it every car becomes $25 more expensive. Software disabling costs $1/car. In this scenario it would cost more to make a car without physical seat heating than one with. This is just an extreme example to show the problem, with other costs it can be more complicated, but the principle stands.
Look at you thinking they put components you haven’t paid for in your vehicle. Sweet summer child. You do know what profit is right? That’s the money after everything is paid for, they don’t sell them without making a profit.
I never said that. Of course you pay for everything that’s in your car, but it’s certainly possible it would cost you more not to have them put it in there, that’s the crux of the matter.
Pretty sure ‘cheaper’ is a misnomer when profit exists.
💀
The issue is that it’s not that people express do not want the option, it’s just that if it is cheaper, they might go without.
In other products I’ve been involved with, the dilemma crops up. 90% of our customers pay for a premium feature, or else the feature has become so cheap it hardly saves us anything, we decide “guess everybody gets the feature”.
The argument that I might be willing to accept is when a feature carries a very large development expense, and you want to defray the cost among those that demanded it, both as a different model for funding the development and for keeping track of waning interest to discontinue that effort. Related are things like patent royalties and licensing fees.
However, we are taking about some resistive heating elements in a chair, hardly an engineering marvel and not really subject to a limited set of demanding supplier nor an area to run afoul of active patents. Once safety regulations got to the point where manufacturers had to run wiring to the seats anyway for the airbag modules, the hearing elements become negligible cost. A lot of budget models even shrugged and just tossed the feature in at that point. In that context, is crazy that a premium brand would think to pull such an obnoxious move.
Why disable at all?
You’ve determined that it’s cheaper to include it in every car Vs provide an option, so include the feature in every car. Why not make your customers happy Vs pissing them off?
“Yes, I buy BMW because you get all the creature comforts like heated seats as standard.” Premium brands don’t nickel and dime their customers.
premium brands don’t nickel and dime their customers
Premium brands invented this, centuries ago.
I feel like price discrimination is more of a factor here. To maximize revenue you want to charge an individual the maximum amount that particular individual is willing to pay. Which is going to be a different price for different people. You still make profit from everyone but make more some from than you do others. But how can you charge some people more and some people less for the same product? Well you have to come up with some arbitrary reason that seems fair. Well you’re paying more because you get heated seats, that’s fair right?
But when it’s cost effective install heated seats in every vehicle, how can they use this as a way to achieve price discrimination? “Hey you got some money and can afford it pay this subscription fee to enable the heated seats!”
Sure fixed costs are a factor, but distributing that cost equally over all vehicles sold is simpler and makes more sense. I mean in the end we are talking about different methods for a company to recover the costs of doing the R&D and product development, integration with an an assembly line, etc. after all. The cost is obviously paid upfront, the per unit costs isn’t a factor since it’s being put into every vehicle. So if unit costs are factored out this is entirely about implementing price discrimination when recovering fixed costs.
And price discrimination is always just shenanigans that only work when a company gets away with it. In this case they didn’t.
Pretty sure signal lights are a subscription option, and nobody that drives a Beemer has subscribed.
If you ever feel like your just a cog spinning endlessly in a machine with no real purpose in your career, remember that there is a man in Germany who has a job installing turn signals on BMWs.
Ironically the BMWs here in Germany tend to use their signals in my experience
Might be, but the majority of drivers is constantly ignoring safety distance and trying to butt-fuck me on the Autobahn. I used to like BMW when I was younger, but I decided I will never buy that brand because I don’t want to be associated with the majority narcissistic assholes group that is BMW drivers.
Maybe it’s not trickled down yet but I can assure you the Tesla drivers are now the worst in the UK. It was Audi.
must be a pretty busy guy if he has to install them in all those cars
Signalling is trickle down bullshit that only helps those who come after you. You don’t buy a BMW because you want to help others.
Funny thing is, they do help you. Sure, there’s assholes who see a signal as a sign that they need to speed up to prevent a lane change, but there are plenty of people who will see the signal and let you in, at least in my area. My own rule of thumb is if I don’t have to slam on my brakes to let you in, I’ll slow down for you, especially if you’re a semi.
Unless I know you pulled into an onramp lane just to skip ahead of the people not doing that bullshit when it’s stop and go level traffic. But it’s usually hard or impossible to tell who is an asshole and who is just using the onramp because they just got on the highway and I try to leave space for people just getting on.
I have a BMW motorbike, it’s a tiered subscription, the level I’m on allows for 10 flashes per month 😁
They all run out of fluid and never bother refilling it.
Someone must’ve found an easy way to jailbreak their cars
I was going to say it wasn’t that people hated them, I was thinking it was BMW users either didn’t want to pay or found a buddy to do it for free.
Yeah I don’t think the headline means they hated the heated seats, but that they hated the subscription.
I love my heated seat subscription. Keeps my tushy warm AND it makes me feel great that I can afford it and the lazy poors can’t.
I would love to see the sales metrics that made them backpedal
Number of times potential customers walked out of dealerships hurling swear words behind them.
Good fucking ridiculous
