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

motor1.com

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

#341

Post by joenathanone »

athorax wrote: post #285
jms703 wrote: post #215

I can see why a car manufacturer would not want to make two versions of each car, one with heated seats and one without. Instead, build it into all of them, and only activate and charge those that actually need it. Also, the subscription is an option. You can also pay the full price for the feature. Where I live, I could see using this once or two months a year. Whereas some would need it more and they might just buy…

It is mind blowing that this is something people are willing to accept. The feature is there, the ecological damage is done already by including those extra resources, and you've paid for the vehicle but don't actually own its capabilities.

Exactly, also you have already paid for them, since there is no way they are selling at a loss.

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

#342

Post by woobar »

dbetteridge wrote: post #300
chrisseaton wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you need to purchase additional software to enable that is absolutely insane and wasteful I don't know - could be less wasteful to ship identical hardware to everyone. An example from another sector is did you know low end processor chips are often exactly the same as higher end ones, just with features burned off? It means they can re-use imperfect chips, reducing waste, and they can have a simpler p…

Chips I could understand as they're small and volume would be X times the number of cars produced. But a heated seat is not light, its a lot of extra weight to ship and therefore more fuel used for every car. What percentage of car owners will pay for that feature to be enabled. 20, 30 , 50? That's a lot of fuel and energy burnt to get it to that person and over the life of the car the weight of those seats will have…

The seats are the same. The difference is a heating element that weights Here is example with packaged weights:

[1] https://bimmercat.com/bmw/en/search/selectCar/F30/Lim/BMW+33...

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

#344

Post by woobar »

fny wrote: post #284

What dumbass executive greenlighted this? $18 per month over 10 years is $2,160. MSRP for the 2020 2 Series--BMW's cheapest sedan--is $35,300. So instead of charging $2K--5% more--for heated seats out right they have no gone through the expense of (1) building the software, billing, and support infrastructure to manage this (2) pissing off customers. I'm assuming they're also streamlining production by building heate…

The feature is sold for much less than $2K. In the article it mentions $400 for a lifetime subscription. What could be attractive to that executives is an opportunity to broaden the market for this feature.

I.e. instead of having only one chance to sell you this feature at the time of order, they now can let you trial this after the purchase. They might even run a promo during a cold streak for free (just like SiriusXM gives free access during major holidays). $18/mo is there just to make $406 number more attractive.

I think people are too distracted by the subscription aspect and missing the fact that the "conversion rate" for heated seats purchases could be improved.

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

#345

Post by rdsubhas »

chewz wrote: post #193

Good news is that all bmw's come with all the options just turned off via software.. So be smart guys, this is called hacker news for a reason... Just buy bare metal bmw and turn all luxury options on... (and BMW is traditionally very dumb on security)...

Hello, this is your car insurance provider here. We noticed that you are driving a hacked car on the road. Your insurance is hereby cancelled. Thank you for paying your premiums so far.

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

#346

Post by [deleted] »

llllllllllllk wrote: post #237
bsedlm wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"

This is a weird take to read when you're someone who dropped out of college when the debt load got too scary and had learned enough to gain a marketable skill and enter industry. Paid my debt off in a couple years. This was less than a decade ago, too, I'm not that old. Tuition has been frozen at my university since I left so the kids there now have the same exact choices I had The big difference between me and my pe…

[deleted]

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

#347

Post by midhhhthrow »

sitkack wrote: post #265
midhhhthrow wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using jet brains because they went to subscription

IntelliJ is Apache Licensed, https://github.com/JetBrains/intellij-community That seems like a pretty spiteful thing to do for a (F|f)ree Software.

First they tell me I can use their IDE forever if I pay for it. Then they go back on their word and prevented me from using the thing I already paid for. They’re being spiteful to their customers

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

#348

Post by midhhhthrow »

mywittyname wrote: post #269
midhhhthrow wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using jet brains because they went to subscription

You still get a perpetual license for the version that was out when you purchased the subscription.

That has not been my experience

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

#349

Post by shard »

horsawlarway wrote: post #83
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renting stuff is economically efficient as long as you don't let the actual owners abuse the relationship to their benefit. We've not had a good track record of that in the past, but still worth keeping in mind as a general principle.

So I'm going to jump on you here because this line is wrong, in this case. > Renting stuff is economically efficient as long as you don't let the actual owners abuse the relationship to their benefit. Renting is economically efficient when there is a limited supply of the item, and renting allows the item to be used more often & efficiently then it would with if it were owned. A simple example: It is much more effici…

I think the assumption in the case you are presenting is that efficiency is viewed from the POV of the use of resources aggregated over the whole society. There are other POVs, such as it being more cost or production speed or resource or factory floor space efficient for BMW or their suppliers to maintain one product line as opposed to two, or it being more cost efficient for owners to have the option to turn on the feature temporarily or permanently as opposed to having to have the feature installed afterwards (which may depend on the percentage of owners who turn on the feature).

I think an analogy could be a software package which have some subscription features. The features are already contained in the software, but paying for the subscription would turn it on, and stopping the subscription would turn it off. Regardless of whether you are subscribed or not, it's taking up storage space, although I suppose the low cost of storage makes a difference in degree (but not in kind).

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

#350

Post by panick21_ »

bsedlm wrote: post #225
panick21_ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are rapidly moving towards Feudalism. I hate when people say that. This has literally nothing to do with the historic institution of feudalism. Its is the opposite of actually educating people on actual feudalism. Its just using historical terms that people call not to be 'bad' so you don't actually have to explain the problem. We are literally talking about people who can buy a BMW. Did BMW promise them heated…

> Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to. yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"

Nonsense. Student loans are not some kind of enforced slavery or whatever. You are getting a education, you are investing in human capital and that will increase your earnings potential for the rest of your life. Just like every other investment.

You are like gone be working for 40 years, to spend some of that paying back university is not a horrible deal. People here act like you get absolutely nothing for student loans as if you were born a debt slave.

One can make an argument of course that another system is better, a system where everybody (including people who don't go to university) pay more taxes and you pay more taxes in order to pay for higher education. That argument can be made.

There are many improvements that could be made, less people should do formal education and more people should be doing apprenticeships and then part time further education. That would produce much less debt without actually fundamentally changing the system.

However to act like this is some draconian feudalism is crazy.

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