Car Companies going too far Subscription for Heated Seats

a reply to: JAGStorm

Staying directly on topic....

You can buy heated seat covers, good looking ones and work better and faster than car manufacturer built in on Amazon and other places , 2 sets for under $80.00

They just plug into the 12 volt adapter.

This subscription thing for cars, not gonna last a year when they find out that consumers will refuse to buy their cars at the already inflated prices and then be expected to lease mechanical and electrical amenities for more money... The principle of the thing will make them turn to a model that does not do that , irregardless of the cost.

if you can afford a bmw in America you can probably afford a subscription for heated seats which themselves are a luxury. weird thing to complain about.

originally posted by: namehere
if you can afford a bmw in America you can probably afford a subscription for heated seats which themselves are a luxury. weird thing to complain about.

You think this will only be for BMW’s….coming to a car maker near you.

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe
That's fitting, feudalism shelters many things like authority, control of the peasants, being able to own people like stock, while taking enough to keep them down and busy. Communism fades in here perfectly if the people are brainwashed enough to "have nothing and be happy", in the sense of that they believe it is fairly distributed.

My neck hair stood up first because I thought you were talking about hybrid cars *shudder*. Then it stood up even more grasping the connection, nightmare indeed.

a reply to: charlyv

I already made the call to my BMW guy, had a long drive this morning already and a lengthy conversation. Hints are that the subscription model is not for cars that are sold to customers, similar to what I expected. Also never the seat heating, although there can be exceptions like mixed calculations. But every manufacture does that.

He was audibly shocked about my question and could not believe the upper guys would really try to pull that off. Company philosophy and all that. If he can tell me anything, he will. It's an official request, not private to private favor. I can't imagine it myself but won't exclude the possibility.

Like, if one orders a basic car it may be the case that the wiring is done for the next option stage because it's cheaper to lay them in anyways than running another line for manufacturing a different wire harness. It depends on other factors when a manufacturer will do this. Like, will people upgrade later on their own and they may want to prevent that.

Some cars that have the antenna for radio combined with the the rear window heating wires inside the glass. If you order such a car without a radio and expect to mount in one yourself, you might be in for a bad day. AUDI for example clipped their antennas directly at the glass if you did not at least buy the "radio preparation package".

But you still get the same rear window glass with the antenna, because it would be more expensive for the manufacturer to run a line or design one without. So it could be, that BMW is trying to do mixed calculations and have seat heating elements in every seat, maybe even the bus controller but not the buttons or software on the ECU to activate it.

And you could say, okay, seat heating would cost me 600€ fixed or like 30€ per year on subscription base, because I need it like 3 months a year. I want to use the car for 10 years so that is 900€. Or maybe I need it 1 month and then it is 300€

Good deal, I go for subscription. And the car may be even cheaper WITH seat heating than without, because the manufacturer does a mixed calculation and spares a lot of production hardware and power. If that's the case, it would be a WIN WIN situation for both and the downside is that material and resources are used that might not be needed.

Because with every option in a car, it costs a lot of money for everyone involved. From the production hardware all the way to shops or part distributers that need storage space, documentation...

So on first look and how the article is written, I agree, second look it might be a whole different reason. I will get back to the thread about that when I have an answer.

originally posted by: JAGStorm
www.forbes.com...

But what has garnered the most attention in the 24 hours since journalists removed their VR headsets, is a complex new subscription model. BMW has dabbled with charging subscriptions for features before. But in the case of asking drivers to stump up $80 a year for Apple CarPlay (which is installed for free on their phone, don’t forget), the business model quickly performed a U-turn after customers complained.

This is just wrong, but I guess it goes along with the you will never truly “own” anything that’s coming.
So this silly subscription is for things like heated seats, light element, other tech features. Even after you pay off your car you’ll still have to pay the monthly subscription. This story is for BMW but many other brands are looking at it. We can also thank John Deere. They possibly started this trend.

I know heated seats are a luxury, but I don’t think I would be ok paying monthly for them! This is so wrong!

You will own nothing and be happy.

Within the decade no one will even be able to buy a house. Only rent one.

If the Reehmocrats stay in power that is.

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
a reply to: interupt42

Like the trend in cars and homes.
In cars, there is no more CD players that I have seen.
You stream [rent] Sirius.

And in homes, there is a trend away from CDs and DVDs to streaming.
They say you own an album or a movie, but there is no physical item to own.

yeah, it's like the sports paintings.

you can buy it but can't hang it or hold it.
it exists on your phone or PC

Just putting this out there, I was watching something last night that mentioned Russia has a huge untapped reserve of crude Oil and gas in it's arctic waters and Siberian region, I do wonder how much of this move away from Petrol is because someone fears the growing power and economic clout this would have given the Russians if we remain dependant upon internal combustion engines.

With that in mind Russia are definitely doing themselves no favour's at all strangling supplies as the knock affect of this tactic is to push there future customers even further from wanting to buy there oil and gas.