- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@derp.foo
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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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.
They all run out of fluid and never bother refilling it.
I have a BMW motorbike, it’s a tiered subscription, the level I’m on allows for 10 flashes per month 😁
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.
HA, I read the title and thought “what is going on? I love my seat warmers” - I completely overlooked the word subscription because it is absolutely absurd that there would be an ongoing cost to the consumer for a feature that provides no ongoing cost to the manufacturer.
The cost of things has detached from what it costs to put the thing in the hand of the consumer, to instead a model of “what is this worth to you”.
Under capitalism it’s always been the case of"what is this worth to you". The difference is in the past if a company overcharges then a competitor could come along and undercut them (so long as the gap was big enough that it made financial sense).
Unfortunately, monopolies, regulatory/government capture, vertical integration, marketing and cartels have gotten so far out of control that consumers are left with little choice but to suck it up. And most governments in the Anglosphere don’t really care.
Are you suggesting the automobile market is a monopoly?
No, we are suggesting that the automobile market is one of the few industries that isn’t a monopoly yet, which is why BMW couldn’t get away with it.
But also, the automobile market is getting more concentrated so it won’t be long until the 4 companies left legally collude to force this stuff on us. Just like every other industry.
Gotcha. Misread.
No, not everything in that list applies to every industry. The car market isn’t a monopoly, but it definitely has issues with government and regulatory capture (and perhaps others, I’m not expert in auto manufacturing). But even without those issues the nature of car making today gives it a high barrier of entry for new comers.
And as others pointed out, the fact it’s not a monopoly leads to more unpopular ideas being scrapped.
Yeah we’re reaching the point where it becomes clear that the market can’t bear everyone charging the most the market can bear.
People will pay extra for a luxury. People won’t pay the most they’re willing to pay on a luxury on every luxury they’ve gotten accustomed to at a reasonable price.
I hope you’re right, but I’ve seen a concerning amount of people say “It’s only $X, so why not?” so many times that it’s eating up a huge percentage of their monthly earnings.
It occurs to me that all of these feature subscription models never seem to mention maintenance. Is that correct? Like, Ford wants to make a car that will deactivate the radio and blare annoying noises at you like you’re a fucking cat if you miss a payment, BMW and Lexus are gating performance and heated seats behind subscriptions and paywalls… But all you get is access. They arent going to fix the heated seats if a coil burns out. They aren’t going to fix a spun bearing you incur while using the extra performance you paid for. They aren’t going to repair a blown transformer in the radio. So you are literally paying for nothing. I am so glad I have an '07 Mustang Convertible. If I keep it maintained and looking good, the value will skyrocket when they actually standardize all of this abusive shit.
Of course, then somehow “Cash for Clunkers” will come back and be even less “voluntary” and suddenly most cars made before ~2018 will be removed from the road and bricked.
Your 07 mustang is ICE so in the next 3 decades will lose all value.
No, it’ll become a hot enthusiast pick when everything is electric, especially if it’s a manual. There are a lot of car enthusiasts who swear by the “feel” of an ICE sports car.
How would you get fuel for it?
They arent going to fix the heated seats if a coil burns out. They aren’t going to fix a spun bearing you incur while using the extra performance you paid for. They aren’t going to repair a blown transformer in the radio. So you are literally paying for nothing.
This is what a warranty is for.
Not all warranty is lifetime.
True, but not the point
It is the point when the subscription is paid for lifetime, but the warranty is not.
A subscription fee might make sense if it came with warranty coverage. If the fee is for using some heating elements you already have, but no promises they will actually keep working, then you are paying for something that doesn’t track any associated expense incurred on the supplier.
Is your point that warranty is part of the cost of the car and so they’ve already paid a substantial portion (for the lifetime of the car) of “the subscription”?
So you get free access to the features after the warranty runs out?
I suppose not, but you are mixing two things: a subscription fee and a warranty. They are differnt things.
I obviously agree that a subscrition model for a car hardware features, even if backed by software, is stupid but you are not paying to have it repaired if broken, you are paying for another thing: the use of it no matter how stupid the thing may be.
OP knows they aren’t the same thing. Their point was that if the subscription model came with promise of repair, maybe there’s a purpose/value in it for the consumer. But without that, it’s pure greed.
Close to my original point. It’s more like “I’m paying you every month and I am going to have to pay exorbitant repair fees so I can keep paying for the privilege of using it.”
no ongoing cost to the manufacturer
The “ongoing cost” is manufacturing diversity. It costs more money to put heated seats in one car and not in another than it does to put them in all of them and allow the people who want them to simply pay to activate them.
That being said, it is a fixed cost, and should be a one-time purchase. Or at least offered as an option. At least Tesla does this correcrly.
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
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!
what if i feel a sadistic kink about king shaming others’ kinks? my kink should be respected then, right? evil laugh
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 ?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What you’re describing is a Battery Management System (BMS), whose job is to monitor some key parameters of the cells and make sure they remain balanced. There’s no intrinsic reason for it to be tightly integrated into an overarching system that performs surveillance or other high-level functions in a “smart” vehicle. This video by Great Scott explains the basic principles and he even builds a simple one from scratch, that would be suitable for something like an e-bike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rT-1gvkFj60
Sufficiently motivated people have been building highly performant DIY electric cars for several years with no Big Brother tech in the OpenInverter community https://openinverter.org/wiki/Main_Page
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=rT-1gvkFj60
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Good bot
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.
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!”
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…
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
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?
Just a reminder that if consumers hate it enough, they can have the power to change those decisions. If they or content or “don’t care” they are passively agreeing and allowing it continue. Let your voices be heard, share articles like the Mozilla investigating car companies that collect your sex life and biometrics. Let your representatives know.
The only thing that matters is voting with your wallet
The problem is all the other people voting the wrong way with their bigger wallets.
That’s business. Bmw isn’t a cost effective brand in the first place, so anyone on a budget shouldn’t complain in the first place
Mostly, but never discount the power of well-wielded shame
They didn’t feel shame, the bad PR caused people to do the aforementioned voting with their wallets.
The topic had moved to generalities; we were no discussing this specific case
Okay and, generally, companies are not motivated by shame, they register the financial/legal/regulatory impact as a result of their misdeeds being known.
That’s a non-nuanced take. A- properly wielded shame isn’t targeted at corporations usually, it’s targeted at the individual members responsible for corporations. B- corporate culture and “decorum” culture have made shame almost exclusively the domain of religion. Whatever example you’re thinking of as corporate shaming, that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m talking about the lost art of shame.
Rarely do decision makers have the latitude to make sweeping changes to corporate structure and direction based on their personal feelings. A board of directors would remove such leadership.
Give me an example of what you’re talking about then, if I’m off piste.
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.
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.
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
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.
boots
The Sam Vimes’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness! Can we be friends? XD
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.
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
…that’s fine with me, actually. Hey, nice boots by the way.
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.
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.
Damn, who would’ve guessed people are tired of subscriptions?
Seems a little bit like when your cell phone carrier disables the tethering feature on your phone and wants to charge you money to enable that. For me, infuriating to know that I’d paid to have hardware capable of being a wifi hotspot, then to be charged to use it. The “service” being provided amounts to first-we-degrade-the-thing-you-paid-for, then we-charge-you-ransom-to-get-it-back.
It’s frustrating since by using your tethered connection you’re using the same data that you already pay for. If there’s a limit on how much data, why does it matter how you use for it?
Because - assuming you don’t reach your data cap every month - you might be sharing your leftover data with somebody else who’s getting it “for free” as far as They (the carrier/provider) are concerned. They can’t control who/what devices connect to your hotspot, so They assume every tethered connection is siphoning data to a non-customer entity, potentially disincentivising “the leech” from subscribing to their own data plan.
If They can steer “the leech” towards becoming a paying customer, then they can harvest (more) data & device activity from both users AND they have more active data plans (paying account holders) to boast about to their real customers - the shareholders - than they would have otherwise.
It’s pretty simple really, you just have to think like an executive who’s fiduciarily beholden to lining the pockets of shareholders (as opposed to a business owner trying to provide a useful & mutually beneficial service to their customers). The latter do exist in the corporate world, but they are few and far between when you’re a publicly traded S-corp like most (maybe all?) of the major providers. It’s just the banality of societally-accepted evil at its finest (and yes; utter bullshit)
Next: brakes subscription 😁
And for an added 59.99$ we will also enable your airbags, subscribe now and get a cup holder for free.
I would not be surprised if they were to limit the power unless you pay for subscription.
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.
