- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
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.
You must log in or register to comment.
Good!
Does anyone know what the monthly fee for heated seats was? And what the permanent on option cost?
Heated seats is my goto example as an attack on ownership. Good to see it stop but I don’t want your proprietary software or SaS either. Give me a dumb car with no computer.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want a car without e.g. a trip computer. But I also defintly don’t want a “smart car”.
Do you mean the old mechnical trip computer, or are you refering to trip with software-only features?
The modern one, but the offline version.
Do people install Linux on it? :D
Seems to be harder and harder to get a new car without all those “smart” features. Soon, it might be impossible to find one at all, just like it’s impossible to find consumer-grade dumb tv in the market right now.
Yes, and they will tell “Look! Consumer DEMANDED those smartcars! We are only replying to a demand!”
Yeah, just like they did with station wagons. “Look! No one is buying station wagons anymore ^because we stopped making them^ so it’s all SUV’s going forward! Which cost the same to manufacture but we can sell for a higher price!”
I think they need the smart features to get a 5 star safety rating.
I mean, now with many cars being EVs, I’d rather have some computer in there to manage the battery, since I’m sitting on a bomb if that thing is mismanaged.
Euro7 regulation requires cars to be able to make emergency calls automatically on collision, so car makers use the opportunity to include 24/7 cellular connectivity into their new cars.
It’s why I am considering availability of public transportation when house-hunting nowadays. When my car breaks down, I hope to be able to NOT buy a new one. Ideally, for the rare occasion that I need one in the future, I could rent one.
Such subscription models essentially beg to be hacked and/or for third parties to come up with entire replacement computers for the vehicle that bypass entirely all of the locks.
Subaru did this with remote start. Instead of just selling you the damn option you have to pay a subscription. Fuck that I’ll just walk outside and start the car…
I hate everything about the idea of paying a subscription for a…{checks notes}…car. It’s already bad enough when people are paying monthly for car payment or lease payment, now they get hit with a subscription for software?
I hate this timeline.
just passing by, just wanted to say i liked your content a lot.
- your username, ‘Charles Darwin’.
- the ‘checks notes’, bc you feel like a tired medician raising a brow when reading the umpteenth diagnosis report of ‘stupidity’ in this world.
- the ‘i hate this timeline’, bc our actions made us end in one of the world’s bad ends.
so please, take my upvote and my upcomment, and have a nice day.
Now kiss
it’s admiration, not necrophilia! Charles Darwin is dead!
No need to kink shame
what if i feel a sadistic kink about king shaming others’ kinks? my kink should be respected then, right? evil laugh
Since they’re kink shaming themselves, I can only surmise that shame is another one of their kinks, in which case shame
deleted by creator
masochistic self-kink shaming? i’ll take it!
Uhh, you forgot about your insurance cost, tag fee, and driver’s license fee.
Man we keep running into each other.
What’s wrong with leasing a depreciating asset? Never own large assets that are sure to lose value. Even if it’s like a work truck that makes you money, let someone else’s books take the loss.
With vehicles, lessors get you on the overage miles. Negotiate it. When you turn the lease over, tell them you need to lease another one and you’ll do it with them if they waive the overage. If they won’t do it, go somewhere else. They won’t let you walk out the door without hacking away much or all of the overage.
?
I was not taking issue with leases, just commenting on the notion of a cost over and above a lease/car payment.
What if I told you that you can get rid of all those monthly payments by signing up for our service. For only one all inclusive monthly fee you can pay all of them, including a service fee. Terms and conditions apply. Sign up today!
ain’t that a bargain ?
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.
No way, I cannot believe that didn’t work. Shocked
I actually am, usually companies force their shit down the consumers throats and they happily gulp it down, buying their new products when they come out as well. This is a pleasant surprise to me
What surprises me is how often it works given the very simple fact that regular people don’t have effectively infinite money. Who is it that is just eating this subscription pile up and never reaching a limit? “Most people”? That just can’t be it.
Yeah I thought this would go down like the netflix login clampdown - people online rally against it and say they’ll cancel Netflix, but in reality their subscriber numbers are up massively
There is a fundamental difference between the two in that the Netflix one has a justifiable reason while the BMW (and Toyota) making things subscriptions when they don’t need to do anything on an ongoing basis to provide that thing is just a money grab.
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.
This has to end, somehow. Or pretty soon we will have shoes with soles subscription: you want a proper shoe, you will have to pay a monthly quota.
Modern-day low-quality shoes are already kind of a walking subscription
Terry Pratchett said it best!
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money,” wrote Pratchett. “Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.”
Someone literally quoted this already lol
Someone will quote this any time shoes or products or money is mentioned. It’s damn near a second Godwin’s Law by this point
Hmm. This reaction has a very prescriptivist and strict attitude towards language… Hitler
First time I’ve ever seen it.
Idk if you mean the postin of the passage or Discworld books in general, but I highly recommend Discworld books.
Main reason I don’t mind this passage being everywhere is it gives me a chance to shill for Terry Pratchett
I’ve never seen this passage as a memetic device.
…that’s fine with me, actually. Hey, nice boots by the way.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
I always think of Ben Stein’s comment in that Frontline episode on the Secret History of the Credit Card - people that pay off their credit cards every month and pay no interest are called “deadbeats”. Around the 11m 30s mark…as it goes for credit cards, it goes for so very many other things. If you can afford an upfront hit or what have you, you pay less than people that are in a worse financial situation.
boots
The Sam Vimes’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness! Can we be friends? XD
Fuck them.
“How do you know that people hated the heated seat subscription?”
BMW, if they were honest: “Ummmm… Jailbreaks? A lot of them? It’s impossible to enforce it because of them”
For once the car modding community got a giant W against a car maker
The gaming community could learn alot from BMW owners: when companies charge for bullshit services don’t pay for them and the company will stop doing it.
“but muh preorder!”
Yeah I hate it too
BMW: “But we’re going to keep the invasive data harvesting, though. I mean, Germans have never done anything bad with people’s data, right? Tell them, IBM…”
I drive a car from 2000, it runs great, no spyware, no features in my car that I can’t use, all I need to is add Bluetooth to the radio and its perfect. I don’t really need a screen in my car to tell me basic information the dash gauges already tell me.
I have a 2000 and a 2014. I don’t expect to replace either until both of them die. Even then… I also have a motorcycle. I really don’t want to buy any of the nonsense coming out these days.
Deleted
Buy one of these and you’re good to go:
Sadly my tape player doesn’t work anymore, not really sure why? I had planned in getting on of these also my car lacks on aux port.
Is this thing even real?
I would suggest using an aux cable instead.
Yes, it’s real and it works fine. There are also fully passive aux cable versions available.
My first car doesn’t even have aux port, so I had to use something similar, but connect to 3.5mm jack instead.
the stereo often has an aux input on its backside that you can wire up
Toyota is doing this sort of thing too…
Every car manufacturer will. $$$ is the final decision maker, and the more that are doing it the less bad press matters cause it’s not like the consumer has a choice
fuck them and their bullshit
Pretty sure signal lights are a subscription option, and nobody that drives a Beemer has subscribed.
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.
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.
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.
must be a pretty busy guy if he has to install them in all those cars
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.
