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BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

motor1.com

11–20 of 396 posts

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#11
post #2

I hope people promptly come up with ways to enable these features for free. This is nothing short of criminal. To charge for a feature that is physically in the car. Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.

As long as you can find the wires that provide power to the seat heaters, add a switch, and splice it into some power, I imagine one can enable it without any software changes.

Let me introduce you to our good 'friend' Control Module.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#12
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you can find the wires that provide power to the seat heaters, add a switch, and splice it into some power, I imagine one can enable it without any software changes.

Let me introduce you to our good 'friend' Control Module.

*friends, my 435i has something like 30 ECUs

But people still do find defeats for most of those. The reality is BMW doesn't care because the average person won't bother with any of that and will just pay.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#14
post #7

They have an option to buy it outright that appears to be priced at the same level as a typical upgrade. They also have 1 and 3 year subscriptions. This is actually a net win for both BMW and for consumers. You can do things like "try extensively before you buy" or even choose to only subscribe during the winter (which they probably expect a lot of people to do). BMW benefits because they're almost certainly expandin…

Haha nope. If I buy the car, I own everything that is in it. Installing extra parts or features? Sure, I'll pay for that. Hardware that's already in the car, and disabled just so the manufacturer can try to squeeze more money out of me? Never. I'll either enable it myself, or refuse to support companies that do such a thing if I can't.

Subscription models like this one need to be punished, hard, and/or simply rendered unprofitable. Maybe a few rich chumps are willing to pay, but I think the vast majority of car buyers have no interest in being nickel-and-dimed for the privilege of using hardware they already paid for.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#15
post #2

I hope people promptly come up with ways to enable these features for free. This is nothing short of criminal. To charge for a feature that is physically in the car. Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.

> Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.

Why?

Not that I am in favor of this but are there really objective arguments to support that?

One can argue that the ecological impact is higher due to the need for additional materials but maybe people buy new a car only because they didn't have feature X and installing it afterwards is too expensive.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#16
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me introduce you to our good 'friend' Control Module.

*friends, my 435i has something like 30 ECUs But people still do find defeats for most of those. The reality is BMW doesn't care because the average person won't bother with any of that and will just pay.

I'm not sure the average person drives a BMW. I don't know, maybe if you can afford to drive a BMW, you don't mind having to rent something you already bought. I have a feeling that if Honda or Toyota pulled this shit, nobody would buy the models that had it.

Renting things like heated seats? It feels bizarre to even have to discuss such a dystopically stupid idea.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as you can find the wires that provide power to the seat heaters, add a switch, and splice it into some power, I imagine one can enable it without any software changes.

Let me introduce you to our good 'friend' Control Module.

Is the control module built into the heating pads themselves?

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#18
post #15
post #2

I hope people promptly come up with ways to enable these features for free. This is nothing short of criminal. To charge for a feature that is physically in the car. Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.

> Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product. Why? Not that I am in favor of this but are there really objective arguments to support that? One can argue that the ecological impact is higher due to the need for additional materials but maybe people buy new a car only because they didn't have feature X and installing it afterwards is too expensive.

Because you're getting a good deal out of it. They're managing the hardware it runs on. Keeping the software up to date.

The customer gets a good deal. We have office 365. Users self manage. They can download and install on devices as they want. Before office 365 I had to install it for them. It's a big win for our business. We have no dedicated I.T. people. I'm a developer that does a little here and there but we work to avoid anything with I.T. costs. SASS is a brilliant solution to our problem.

Yeah I'll pay a subscription for an on going service.

I won't pay a subscription for enabling a feature I then have to maintain. If the seat heater fails, I have to pay to fix it.

Re: BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea

#20
post #7

They have an option to buy it outright that appears to be priced at the same level as a typical upgrade. They also have 1 and 3 year subscriptions. This is actually a net win for both BMW and for consumers. You can do things like "try extensively before you buy" or even choose to only subscribe during the winter (which they probably expect a lot of people to do). BMW benefits because they're almost certainly expandin…

> try extensively before you buy

More like try *after* you buy, and then pay a subscription to use.

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