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I guess my previous BMW will be my last one.
I’m not totally against a subscription for features, as long as they provide the ability to purchase it outright and it stays on permanantly throughout the life of the car.
It’s built into the fucking car. You already paid them the money it cost to put there. Why would you think giving them more money just so they can flip a switch allowing you access to the hardware you already paid for is a good idea, or even remotely acceptable?
I’d guarantee that they’re already doing that now anyway. If you buy a new car but don’t choose the heated seats optional extra, the seats will still have the capability, just that they won’t enable it. This has been going on for decades; I recall an old Peugot 405 my parents had when I was young, there were various placeholder areas on the console where some switches would have bee on the more expensive models. All the wiring would be there, but just no phsyical switch on the console. They’ll standardise as much as possible to make the production process as simple and cheap as possible.
I can see the appeal from a potential customers point of view as you don’t need to stress about picking the wrong options and later regretting it.
A place to put a switch and wiring harness having a couple extra wires doesn’t mean they put the parts in to make it functional. A standardized console and wiring harness is logical because it’s cheaper, installing heated seats or 4x4 drive tran is not. The vehicle usually doesn’t get part for the options installed until it’s ordered so it doesn’t make sense to make a unique part or wire harness for a small percentage of vehicles. The subscription based model just proves how effective and profitable it is, just a portion of car owners paying for it will make them enough money to justify putting it in every vehicle.
Heated seats probably costs them around a few hundred dollars a seat and if you pay a subscription for the life of the car then they will make tens of thousands back.
No.
absolutely not.
you already paid for the hardware. it already has the firmware installed. All that they’re doing is flipping a software switch that tells the system to let the firmware/hardware be functional.
it being a one-time payment isn’t the problem. The problem is that you already paid for the heated seats or whatever else. I shouldn’t have to pay to have features that are already in the car.
Technically they haven’t paid for the feature yet, it just so happens that it’s cheaper to manufacture without having a second line of non-heated seats which makes me think “why not just include heated seats (and enabled) as standard?”
In factual reality, you own every bit of hardware the thing comes with and every capability of it. Anybody who tells you otherwise is a goddamn liar and a thief!
End. Of.
It’s not that it’s cheaper.
It’s that they’re getting away with extortion and make more money that way.
I have to partially disagree on this point. Take the first generation of Raspberry Pi as an example.
The first Raspberry Pis came with hardware to decode certain video codecs, but this feature was protected by royalties (not by the Raspberry Pi foundation, but a third-party I don’t remember the name of). They decided to sell you the base hardware for cheap, and if you wanted to enable hardware decoding you could later purchase a license key for your specific device, which could then be used to flip a switch in the firmware.
In my opinion it makes sense: I would rather pay 35€ + optionally 5€ for that feature, rather than 40€ mandatory.
So, like. Proprietary codecs are also pretty disgusting.
But what you’re not being told- I assume this didn’t occur to you rather than you’re being dishonest- is that you didn’t necessarily need those keys- the chip wasn’t a dedicated decoder chip- it was the GPU.
And you have no idea how much I despised Broadcom for pulling that shit. (And I’m not alone. Most of us pirated the keys out of sheer irritation.)
I just shared my opinion. I didn’t need those keys because I was not interested in using their proprietary codecs.
For what it matters, if Broadcom decided to license the IP for some hardware accelerator I don’t have anything against it. As long as they don’t make me pay for it when I don’t need it.
Dedicating a small portion of the silicon to optional features is cheaper than designing two separate silicons one with and one without such features.
Except that’s not what happened in the pi and that’s not what is happening in the cars.
You’re paying for that hardware whether or not you also pay for the keys. You own that hardware. You would be offended if you bought a house and the previous owner said “oh and if you want to use the rooms, you’ll need to buy room keys”.
You should be offended at BMW. And Broadcom.
You get that, right?
R pi paid Broadcom for the chips. Then you paid r pi for the pi. Broadcom didn’t give anyone a discount there.
And you’re ignoring decades of scummy lawyering and lobbying to make the proprietary codec bullshit legal.
Your example is a prime one that people cite against proprietary code/firmware. It’s probably the worst example you could have cited.
This was actually probably an efuse, so not really just firmware, but hardware. In any case we are not talking about a software/firmware feature to decode videos, we are talking a section in the silicon that stays dormant unless you activate it with a valid license key.
Imho it makes sense from an economical perspective: they develop, test and fabricate a single silicon that does everything, then they allow you to specialize it on demand for a fee.
In any case, we can agree to disagree.
Manufacturer are going SDV, whether we like it out not. Software defined vehicle. They’re a computing platform on wheels.
Like a computer or a smartphone, buying the hardware does not grant you access to all software ever made for that plateform.
Hopefully one day we’ll see some computing hardware standardization across brands and openness for third party apps and subscriptions.
The current status of being at the mercy of a single vendor is terrible. Given standardized and similar computing hardware and APIs, I’d like to try Mercedes or Cadillac or Tesla’s FSD one month each and see which one I prefer and can afford.
Heated seats, for example, are not “software”.
It’s some form of heating element. You flip a switch and it runs electricity through some fairly resistive wires (iirc it’s carbon fiber; maybe NiChrome)
The most firmware you see is some kind of thermal monitoring to keep from getting too hot. It’s not a complicated system.
All this is, is a whole bunch of claptrap to sell you fully functional car, but charge you to unlock that functionality. You wouldn’t buy a house and then buy keys to use every room in the house.
You can call it what you want. I call it extortion. It should be illegal, and it’s certainly scummy.
Of course they will. BMW drivers aren’t buying them because they’re actually good cars.
is that why they never use turn signals? you need a subscription?
No, it’s because the peasants don’t need to know where I am going.
The assumption is that every peasant on the road will stop, move out if their way and politely greet them because of the higher BMW status. Just as they in turn have to defer to a Bentley or Rolls Royce. The hierarchy of cars.
The only BMW drivers I’ve known are crack or meth dealers. Not the best judgment and expect everyone to bend to their will like the addicts they sell their crap too.
We have those too, but they mostly stay in one part of the city. And there are some race freaks. But mostly BMW is a very common company car.
It’s funny, because a boy I used to work with in a major UK city centre with lots of traffic congestion used to say “go for the gap in front of the ones with a nice car, they’ll stop”.
In the same vein, never let them out of a junction out of politeness. They have enough privilege in their life, they can wait.
Banged up Corsa? Out you come, you’ve places to go.
Boring Ford Mondeo? Sure, I’ll be nice.
Land Rover Evoque Sport? Get fucked, I’ve got right of way.
Well, RR is now BMW, so that tracks. Bentley’s are just an overpriced VW, so just another peasant.
You joke but I actually had a co-worker once tell me that “I’m an adult, I don’t need to tell others where I am going.”
I will never buy a bmw because of this, and they were on my short list of new car next year.
I’m probably going Volvo now, we will see.
I went with a different brand too. One that just gave all those options as part of the basic package.
Just checking that you are aware that Volvo is basically Chinese now a days.
Your statement is misleading.
From Google.
“Yes, some Volvos are made in China*, as Volvo operates several manufacturing plants there (Chengdu, Daqing, Taizhou) to serve the Chinese and Asian markets, though models for the US and Europe often come from Sweden, Belgium, or the U.S., with some Chinese-made Volvos even exported globally, but recent US-bound models tend to be produced in Europe or the US. The Chinese-owned Geely group owns Volvo, and production locations vary by model, with Chinese plants focusing on specific models like the S90 and XC60 for Asia, while Swedish and Belgian plants produce for Western markets.”
I’m not in these markets nor am I looking at either of these models made in China.
The Chinese-owned Geely group owns Volvo
I mean, they’re not wrong.
Toyota builds its cars in multiple different countries, but it’s still a Japanese company.
Guess what car I won’t buy.
I wasn’t gonna buy it before because the price for a bmw is fucking rediculous, but now I’ll even more not buy one!
fuck the subscription model. I want to own my shit!
BMW has a big fanboy club. They will buy that shit simply because it’s BMW.
I guess because BMW doesn’t believe their customers make wise decisions?
They know their customers make unwise decisions. They got a bmw in the first place.
oh yes, surely that idea helps them compete with Chinese cars, this is what they are going to add value to and justify their price
It lowers the upfront cost which is what millions of financially illiterate people think of first. $299 biweekly for 96 months! That’s $20 cheaper than XYZ
Never you mind how much extra it costs for radio or heated seats or the horsepower on the sticker.
$600 a month for 8 years. For a car. Plus a $99 subscription on top.
JFC
I’m with this guy
Insane economics.
What’s the saying? Only poor people can afford “cheap” shoes? (Though cheap at $600/month is doing a lot of work there)
Fuck that.
Gimme that indestructible Japanese shitox any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
If it’s already built into the car the car won’t be any less expensive just because the features is locked behind a subscription.
Even if you don’t buy the subscription, you already payed for the feature since they already built it into your car. They didn’t do that for free and hope that you pay for it later.They didn’t do that for free and hope that you pay for it later.
That is, in fact, the business model.
Cars already are wired for many features or have software gates on them. For decades now, they’ll run the wire for a rain sensor but not include the sensor, because it’s more expensive to have two parts for the harness than to not hook it up. Or they’ll include the full hardware requirements for GPS but it’s gated in software. You can go to the dealer, pay $1000 and get navigation turned on.
It’s a lot cheaper for OEMs to just manufacture one SKU (a car with all the hardware) than to have a bunch of different options. Now, wether or not they pass those savings to the consumer, I have my doubts
Totally depends on the part
It won’t work for so many millions when Chinese cars are skyrocketing, competing on price with them is crazy. Combustion engines require advanced engineering, but electric ones are absolutely basic, we must look for another element that differentiates these brands, I would pay more for good open source and auditable privacy software that I know is not going to leave me stranded at the first opportunity.
The problem is that not enough people care about privacy, but it’s a valid approach. Just need to market it.
One of the challenges I think are the things you can’t notice until you live with a car. How much space does the seat heater actually heat? My old BMW heated quite far up the backrest while Japanese and Korean cars barely warm the lumbar area (and cycle on/off leaving you hot/cold respectively).
How good is the traction control? I have driven GM products shipped on this side of 2020 that only do torque limiting and the abs doesn’t seem to do pay any attention to the rear wheels. The system is very similar to 1980s functionality. Compared to a 2000s smart car, it’s downright dangerous. Does the HVAC work? I’ve had a Subaru (2014) that couldn’t heat or couldn’t cool the car, without having the fans on above normal speaking level (in fact it couldn’t cool the car at 25°C without recirculate on); my BMW on the other hand moderated heat output, heated seats, and heated mirrors based on the outdoor temperature; it was exceedingly comfortable. I never needed to adjust the climate controls.The cheaper cars have the “features” but the implementation is crappy. It costs money to finesse.
The problem is that most people (as with privacy) don’t notice this. They may note the absence of the small luxuries if they change cars, but it’s difficult to market it, difficult to convince people to spend more on it, and difficult to include in press reviews without being a huge nerd.
What Has Seat To Do With BMW? It is Volkswagen Company.
I also misread this the first time. It’s not about Seat the company but seat heaters.
BMW isn’t part of Volkswagen Group
For now, BMW is defaulting to a more traditional approach. If it requires a data package of some sort, it will probably have a recurring fee—and BMW says its customers are already comfortable subscribing to such add-ons.
Sounds like a fairly reasonable position imo, and that they listen to the outrage about heated seats (which tbh was ridiculous). I get the feeling that everyone who commented on this didn’t actually read the article, lol.
Full disclosure: I own a fairly recent BMW and do like it a lot. Would I have bought it with subscription based heated seats? Maybe not, but I do appreciate other things like having a physical button to go into battery save mode and not having to dive 3 touch screen menus down… or that it’s one of the most powerful hybrids in electric only mode (though not anymore I think)… or being generally more dialed back when it comes to driver assist features.
That said I will admit that it has a physical button that tells me to pay up when pressed, to enable automatic high beam control… though it’s not like it was an advertised feature (got it used).
Bring
My
Wallet
Bourgeoisie Meat Wagon
And i will never commit to BMW.
