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BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

forbes.com

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Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#61

Post by pixxel »

kevincox wrote: post #51
WalterBright wrote: post #29

> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)

Money and prices are fungible so it isn't really possible to prove anything. But there are two very reasonable ways to look at it. 1. Those who purchase the heated seats cover the cost of all of these heating wires. So they are paying much more than the raw cost (but presumably less than if their cars needed a separate / modified production line). 2. The manufacturer is paying these costs as a "marketing fee" hoping…

What’s the additional weight of heated seat tech? Any impact on fuel costs for those that don’t want heated seats?

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#62

Post by xnzakg »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #40
vasco wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like there's no precedent, almost any significantly complex analog design will include a bunch of hardware that is disabled on the customer chip even if it's there, commonly GPUs and CPUs. There's more gadgets like this where it's cheaper to produce the same thing for everyone but price them differently.

There are two common versions of this. There's "produce the same chip for everyone, test it, disable the bits that don't pass, figure out the maximum speed it runs as, sell things that turned out better for a higher price", which seems quite reasonable for a process with variable yield. Then there's "produce the same chip for everyone, soft-disable features for people who don't pay to unlock them", which seems much l…

Completely agree. Only issue is that this is based on the defect rate being high enough that enough lower-bin units get produced. Could argue that at that point the price of the higher end units could be lowered a bit, but that might still be outside some people's price range... This seems like a difficult problem to solve in a good way. On one hand it wastes resources, on the other hand it has the effect of the buyers willing to pay more for the higher end models to lower the price of the locked down models further.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#63

Post by ssharp »

WalterBright wrote: post #29

> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)

I'm sure BMW could make a case where between 1) not needing to manufacture non-heated seats anymore improves manufacturing efficiencies and costs and 2) the people paying for the subscription brings in enough revenue that BMW can sell the car for the same price as it was without the heated seat hardware.

However, no consumer is actually going to believe that and they're just going to assume they'd paid for something they don't get value from without having to pay more.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#64

Post by ano-ther »

WalterBright wrote: post #29

> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)

I also wouldn’t pay for this. But the economics are more interesting.

BMW and AWS ran a quantum computing challenge two years ago. One of the tasks was to figure out all the combinations of features that need to be tested (sometimes destructively) [1].

I would imagine that having features installed in all vehicles provides a less taxing testing regime than having a physical option.

And in addition, it will be cheaper to just manufacture one version of a thing (and then switch in software).

[1] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/quantum-computing/winners-annou...

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#66

Post by gumballindie »

singleshot_ wrote: post #42
gumballindie wrote: post #5

BMW in particular, and german carmakers as a whole are in for a rough decade. Declining quality and increasing competition will pose the kind of risks not even eu protectionism can shield them from. One such risk is china. German carmakers desperately need new markets and china is one of them. But germany and the eu cant bully china and they will want access to european markets in return. And what i am reading and he…

I am adjacent to a Mini (bmw manufactured) owner who reported a leaky sunroof to the dealer. Dealer examined the roof and concluded that “the frame has melted and warped” and accordingly the sunroof will always leak. Cost to repair: five thousand dollars. There’s “declining quality,” and then there’s “the roof melts.” I wouldn’t consider buying a bmw for a long, long time.

My former BMW dashboard, the area below the satnav, has something that appears to have melted. It’s not the hard plastic that did it but something that appears to be a coating of some sort. It had a sunroof, and probably that caused it. The rear stopping lights circuits fried somehow, replaced them myself. Apparently water gets in?

My porsche 981 had the roof peel off, and the door panels gradually ungluing. More worrying they made a recall on my model, whereby the rear axel can crack in certain circumstances, years after issuing the same recall for US customers.

BMW owners of certain models have told me about timing chains snapping, or differentials breaking.

Not buying any of these brands again, ever. Chose an american brand instead, part due to quality, part due to politics. Couldnt be happier. At least i dont need to pay thousands just be able to play music or stream my maps. Even if it breaks down i’s still have saved money so i can fix it.

This i think is relevant to this forum because it underlines a fundamental issue with a country who’s economy is largely reliant on manufacturing quality goods. That quality seems to decline rather fast, and it will have serious impact over european affairs in my view. First warning sign was cheating on emissions. Second warning was desperate attempts at charging owners monthly fees. Now it’s clear there’s something rotten in germany.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#68

Post by TrueGeek »

floxy wrote: post #44

What they really need to do is charge by the minute. No one wants to pay for heated seats in the summer. And why should someone pay for the option of heating when the car is parked? Or for the passenger seats when no one is using them. Instead they should have surge pricing for when the outside temperature falls below freezing, and the colder it gets, the higher the rate you pay. Maybe it starts at $0.10/minute but c…

Ah, we've found the account that Cory Doctorow gets his ideas from.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#69

Post by criddell »

bshep wrote: post #36

Probably a good idea, I pretty much eliminated them from the list of possibilities when shopping for a car this year because of this. I’m just one data point but I’m pretty sure im not the only lost sale.

I’m curious about GM and their decision to stop supporting CarPlay. I probably was never going to buy a GM anyway, but CarPlay support is a must-have for me.

Re: BMW drops controversial heated seats subscription

#70

Post by screamingninja »

kevincox wrote: post #51
WalterBright wrote: post #29

> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality It was true. The heating wires in the seats were already installed and the consumer paid for them and owned them. I remember in the olden days some compiler vendors added a fee to "unlock" floating point code support. That was never popular (I never did such with my compilers.)

Money and prices are fungible so it isn't really possible to prove anything. But there are two very reasonable ways to look at it. 1. Those who purchase the heated seats cover the cost of all of these heating wires. So they are paying much more than the raw cost (but presumably less than if their cars needed a separate / modified production line). 2. The manufacturer is paying these costs as a "marketing fee" hoping…

Your concept is mathematically sound, but if there exists an opportunity to double dip to boost profits, what would make a corporation turn it down? As you noted in case #1, companies are paying much more for the materials. Consumers are still ultimately paying for it.

The entire point of amortizing the upfront costs is to keep the consumers hooked by charging a smaller recurring amount that stings less but certainly adds up to a bigger amount than the original upfront costs.

Besides, why would a company go through the added hassle of creating and managing a subscription model and risk pissing off customers through this nickeling-and-diming if not for more profits?

I am sure that there is still some silver lining to this scenario (e.g. I live in hot climate and don't need heated seats), but I fail to see any that apply to a broad number of consumers.

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