Is it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?
Voids warranty.
BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
131–140 of 197 posts
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the extreme example I always reach for: Imagine BMW decides that it's cheaper for them to just make all 4 seat sedans instead of having some 2 seat models and some 4 seat models. They instead tell customers: "You're buying a 2-seater. You need to pay a $X/month 'sedan fee' to be allowed to sit in the rear seats." Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not, and for the same reason that subscriptions…
>Would this be acceptable to many people? Of course not I disagree. This literally happens for CPUs, and people don't seem to get angry at it. There might be different models of CPUs sold that use the same die and come off the same manufacturing line. The only difference is that cores are disabled/fuesd off and/or clock speeds are lowered.
In CPUs, there's at least a legitimate reason: reducing wastage by, e.g., selling what was intended to be a quad-core but had two defective cores as a dual-core instead of throwing it away.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it really too much to ask it with heated seats built-in? For a luxury automaker...
We're living in interesting times. Grandparents often would not believe the headline, and that's understandable. However, they would also sneer at such a sneaky idea as what BMW brought to the table. They're at peak marketing if they actually believed whatever professional advice led to charging for heated seats in a supposedly "luxury" brand vehicle. Wow
I don't think that sweet, sweet heated seat revenue is the endgame here, I assume this is the POC for an in-car app store.
(I say "is" rather than "was" because everybody bitched when they forced ads onto smart TVs and swore they'd never buy one, and yet it's nearly impossible to find a name brand TV without them. Won't be long before there's a monthly fee to mute the voice telling you what's on sale at every burger joint and strip mall you drive by)
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#134Is it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?
Who cares? It's your property. And yes, there are seats and there are heating elements already in the car. They even wired them up for you.
John Deere's legal department would like to have a word with you.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#135Give up on that stupid wheel knob please. No one likes that thing
Is that a thing? They used to be called suicide knobs because people’s clothes would get caught on them and crash the car, I thought they outlawed them in the 60s or 70s.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
>A little sad that this is being pulled back... That is some real stockholm syndrome mentality there my friend. It is now 100% free, as it always should have been.
The addon package that includes seat heating is 900 EUR for a model I just randomly selected from the online configuration tool. The "hack" to enable it is a cable and a switch. No digital rights management can prevent that.
> No digital rights management can prevent that.
Monitor how much current is being drawn from the battery, and if it's more than what's calculated from all of the authorized OEM things, then hard-brick the ECU.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is it really too much to ask it with heated seats built-in? For a luxury automaker... Lol. Porsche takes this to a whole other level in my experience.
Im surprised a seat comes standard in a Porsche.
It's not. All parts are made to Porsche standards. Meaning.. Industrial standard parts - 1/porsche of a mm on all bemassungen.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#138Is it illegal to enable the seat heating yourself after purchasing the car without the seat heating plan? Is it even possible?
I dont know about whether it is illegal, but it ought not ever be illegal to hack and change your own vehicle, except for changing things like the engine number and the odometer (i.e., legal requirements from the state). This sits in the same realm as adblockers for a browser. > Is it even possible? the car maker might be able to make this impossible, but last i heard, people have done it. Unfortunately, due to a lot…
In many countries it is illegal to change anything with the vehicle without going through a homologation afterwards, unless the parts are already homologated. This happens because it affects security and can be a danger to others and you. The consequences can range from fines to the destruction of the car.
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#139Give up on that stupid wheel knob please. No one likes that thing
What is a wheel knob?
Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription
#140Meanwhile, Mercedes is still charging for full rear wheel steering in Europe after electronically nerfing cars [0] despite shipping the cars with hardware fully capable. [0] https://www.thedrive.com/tech/41678/full-rear-wheel-steering...
So you pay to maintain a more complicated system but get none of the benefits