Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

theautopian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 106 posts

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#71

Post by gruturo »

4748585858 wrote: post #17
xvxvx wrote: post #16

It’s a slow burn but I feel Europe is heading in a direction where vehicles will play a safety video every time you start up a vehicle, similar to what plays on airlines. Imagine a 3 minute video on rules of the road with no skip function and you have to click ‘agree’ before you can drive. Then you have cameras tracking your eyes, speed etc. They’ll automate license suspensions based on driving style. Maybe you’ll ne…

Did you know we have free healthcare if you wait three months tho

Curious, my cardiologist will see me within a week, the specialized exams he prescribed were also a matter of days - ended up picking the day most convenient to me since they offered a wide range.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#72

Post by tengwar2 »

inigyou wrote: post #59
jjtheblunt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. No they most definitely are not. They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including effi…

Is there any brand of any product which is not subject to extreme cost-cutting these days?

Skoda seem to have a small budget, perhaps $5/car, to add features in. Nothing major: an ice scraper / tread depth gauge under the fuel cap; a parking ticket clip on the side of the windscreen - that sort of thing. It tends to be disproportionately popular with owners.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#73

Post by itopaloglu83 »

reaperducer wrote: post #35
netsharc wrote: post #31

Google thought "Oh let's bundle a movie ad in an OS update": https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-theme-packs-la...

Also bad: On Volvos†, you are now prohibited from uninstalling the YouTube app. I don't want to watch videos while I'm driving. In the previous software, you could at least move it somewhere unobtrusive; but the latest version only displays icons alphabetically. No re-ordering anymore. † Volvos have "Google Built-In," the bastard stepbrother of Android Auto, which also has an app in the car so you can have the worst…

Back to the era of spyware and bloatware preinstalled, just like the carrier phones used to be, but this time these are $30k-$40k or even $100k cars.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#74

Post by altairprime »

hollow-moe wrote: post #55
altairprime wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It suggests that BMW must be in dire financial straits somehow, and I’ve been trying to decide why. Current theory is that it’s part ‘BMW needs to prop up their share price with a steroid injection of ads into their growth in growth of profit curve’, and part ‘BMW lost the evaporating upper middle class segment and is on the verge of collapse’ It’s such a look of desperation to add advertisements when they didn’t sta…

> 2023: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/toyo... You can safely assume it's only getting worse until proven otherwise.

Many car companies have managed to fail and cease operations without destroying their brand with, as the article title describes it, “showing commercials on their car’s dash screens”. While I agree that they’re as greedy and shitty as the other companies — though GM and Rivian have them beat on that for denying CarPlay over its data processing protections! — it’s too early to identify which brands will next self-immolate with video ads like this.

It’s infuriating to see that if Toyota would just stop trying so hard to sell cars, they wouldn’t be at risk of this. Something like 90% of their sales profits on a 25% markup from production cost are spent on marketing to get each sale?! That reeks of the same kind of desperation to show growth in growth of profits that BMW is showing, so they’re definitely in the at-risk category now.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#75

Post by ErroneousBosh »

theturtletalks wrote: post #11

Every car given enough time will have ads. Just like every proprietary software will become enshittified. It should be obvious by now that the stock ticker must go up and to do that you have to squeeze your customers. And if they have already bought the car, they have no recourse. The only solution I see is open-source but for cars, that’s a long ways out.

I'm curious as to how anyone is going to push ads into my 1997 Range Rover. It barely has anything you'd recognise as a computer.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#76

Post by jjtheblunt »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #50
jjtheblunt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. No they most definitely are not. They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including effi…

> > At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. > No they most definitely are not. > They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. Whether you personally like it or not has no impact on the product positioning. BMW is a luxury car brand [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW

that's what i refer to by the marketing...and it carries indeed over into the pricing, and carries over into the insurance rates to repair at such pricings.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#77

Post by spwa4 »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #50
jjtheblunt wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. No they most definitely are not. They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including effi…

> > At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. > No they most definitely are not. > They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. Whether you personally like it or not has no impact on the product positioning. BMW is a luxury car brand [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW

If you think like that then what makes a car luxury is not whether it's a good car, not whether it's comfortable, not anything at all about the car.

This reasoning makes the price it's own argument. It's supposed to be good because it's expensive and only because it's expensive. The car itself is beside the point (and the car's quality will of course soon be sacrificed by management to the insatiable gods of profit)

I'd rather have a good comfortable luxury car.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#78

Post by tedggh »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #45
SoftTalker wrote: post #23

At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. Not a supercar, but beyond the reach of most of the car-buying public. I'm surprised that the generally quite wealthy owners of those cars would tolerate that.

> At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. No they most definitely are not. They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes. I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including effi…

I don’t think is fair to compare Asian and German cars. I personally dislike Asian designs regardless of how reliable and efficient they are. Subarus are objectively ugly cars and they are not great as daily drivers. Lexus offer a closer driving experience as German cars, meaning you can have both a sporty and family car without the annoyance of a sport ride and noise of a WRX. But is still very Asian looking with the sharp angles, ugly headlights and large grills.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#79

Post by spwa4 »

inigyou wrote: post #62
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making things is hard. Making actual objects for people to buy is even harder. That’s why they say not to “buy things and spend money on experiences instead ” and enshittify everything instead of creating new things. It’s not because an “experience” is actually better it’s because it’s easier to make one than make a useful or novel object. Why make a new thing when you can just extract more money from people with les…

it's also because nobody on their deathbed regrets not having enough material objects

Pretty sure a lot of people do.

The ones not dying in a deathbed, or just a really crappy one, for example. When your environment constantly irritates or even hurts due to its quality, it is pretty rare to even spend and hour or two not thinking about that.

But most young people today have never experienced that. That's a good thing, but it leads to some very weird claims.

Re: BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

#80

Post by OptionOfT »

altairprime wrote: post #29
SoftTalker wrote: post #23

At least in the USA, a new BMW is a high-end car. Not a supercar, but beyond the reach of most of the car-buying public. I'm surprised that the generally quite wealthy owners of those cars would tolerate that.

It suggests that BMW must be in dire financial straits somehow, and I’ve been trying to decide why. Current theory is that it’s part ‘BMW needs to prop up their share price with a steroid injection of ads into their growth in growth of profit curve’, and part ‘BMW lost the evaporating upper middle class segment and is on the verge of collapse’ It’s such a look of desperation to add advertisements when they didn’t sta…

I don't know. I think the goalpost is constantly being moved as to what is acceptable, and they're just trying to squeeze out more revenue per car sold.

And what better way to do so by using this large space in a car?

Thank God they downloaded it over their own 4G connection, not the one I pay for (yes I got the message this morning in my iDrive 7 car...).

Post reply on HN