BMW heated seats subscription costs $18 per month in South Korea
motor1.com
motor1.com
For cars with internal combustion engines, the company tends to get constant income via service thanks oil filters, other filters, and a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be replaced (assuming people take it to authorised service centers, which I assume most people do when the car is relatively new).
With the transition to EV, those avenues dry up because EVs need lesser maintenance (as per my understanding).
So, are they trying to create new recurring income sources due to the possibility of existing such incomes drying up?
Would any manufacturers do that?
Why would a manufacturer fit in hardware for heated seats into a car, and not charge you for it? Because they hope you will subscribe to the heated seats?
This argument breaks down in markets like India, middle East, Malaysia etc where it's hot and humid, and nobody would want to use heated seats. If you don't subscribe, then it'll be a loss for the manufacturers who included the hardware and not charged you for it.
Of course, the sane thing would be to not offer heated seats at all in such markets, but as things stand today, heated seats are offered in these hot places (and nobody uses them AFAIK).
In the subscription-based future, here's how I think it'll be like:
- heated-seat hardware will be present in the car
- heated seats will be a rentable option
- manufacturers would include the price for it anyway in the cost of the car
=> customers lose
Cars are expensive as it is, so manufacturers can totally get away with it.
Lots of learning from the EV conversion market will go directly into that ecosystem too I feel. But that said, I'm pretty sure that it's already illegal in many countries to tamper with the ECU. It's currently because you can change the emissions profile of the car, but I'm sure they'll just swap to saying it's about safety instead for EVs.
in that situation, it is not possible to add "features" that the people don't care about. think about it, a $5000 car is barebones as it is, when they launch its EV version, it is not going to have tesla features. there are manufacturers who are failing NCAP testing and they are pushing to not make such testing mandatory because in their opinion, it would reduce choice for customers and their own business would fail.
> people tend to now buy cars for like 4-9L or $5000-$12000
Sure the majority of the sales are for cheaper models, but go to any tier-1 or tier-2 city and you'll see plenty of BMWs, Mercs, Audis, Jaguars, Land Rovers, and whatever else is under the sun. Like, stand on any random junction, and I guarantee that the won't even be a single minute where you won't be able to spot a >₹50 lakh car ($62000). Yes the sales numbers are objectively much lower, but still you see plenty of them.
> those prices are on the high end spectrum of the general market
Here's a sales analysis for May 2022. How many of those are in the price range you mentioned: https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-scene/252707-may-2...
People have moved past the ₹12 lakh mark a while ago. It's more like ₹25 lakhs now. I see plenty of Hyundais, Hondas, Kias, and Toyotas. None of them exactly have a cheap model anymore.
Heck, there's such a huge number of Toyota Innova/Crysta on the road that it's practically invisible now. And top end Crysta retails at ₹25 lakhs (≈ $31000).
> in that situation, it is not possible to add "features" that the people don't care about
Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense (in this country) features like heated seats. My E-class has a panoramic sunroof which I never open because the sun is scorching here, and the glass' greenhouse effect cooks everyone inside so the AC has to work harder.
> there are manufacturers who are failing NCAP testing and they are pushing to not make such testing mandatory because in their opinion
European manufacturers here have always done well in terms of safety. Not entirely sure about other Asian brands. As for Indian brands, new Tata and Mahindra cars pass GNCAP with 5 stars, though Maruti still has a lot to improve.
the link you shared, the top 20 cars by volume are all in the sub 12L range so that is what i was saying.
https://www.rushlane.com/maruti-suzuki-chairman-says-bharat-...
yeah, it was maruti who said that so there you go.
>Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense (in this country) features like heated seats. My E-class has a panoramic sunroof which I never open because the sun is scorching here, and the glass' greenhouse effect cooks everyone inside so the AC has to work harder.
i do not own a car. no one in my family does. you say your e-class so your income bracket is already in the top %.
>People have moved past the ₹12 lakh mark a while ago. It's more like ₹25 lakhs now. I see plenty of Hyundais, Hondas, Kias, and Toyotas. None of them exactly have a cheap model anymore.
i am not saying people arent buying this. my point is, they are serving a niche and not cutting into the sales of cheap vehicles where haggling is done on the number of airbags.
>Move up the price range and you start to see nonsense
that is my point. if you stay in the price range of sub 12L, you will not find those features and as long as these cars sell, these features will not be common in india.
In the winters it's cold, pretty consistently.
But I do have maintenance costs associated with this type of car. It's more things like replacing tires at least once a year (which I think high torque EVs will do even faster), then at about 100k miles they replaced the wishbones / control arms.
Those things get more expensive on high-end cars with things like software damper control, larger rims etc, all of which Tesla (just picking an EV) also has.
And they're expensive. So the people who can afford them were already the kind of people driving well kept newish stuff so all they got to experience were recalls and the early part of the bathtub curve.
Parts on a car more or less wind up needing to be serviced more or less in direct correlation to hose close to the road they are. But if you're trading in every ~5yr your experience you won't see that because your experience will all be the early failures part of the bathtub curve.
Basically everyone doing all the talking right now doesn't know what they don't know.
I've not heard of tires that need replacing once a year, unless you are doing an insane amount of driving. Tires are generally lasting 50k, 60k, even 85k miles. Can you elaborate on the scenarios that require yearly tire replacements?
Probably depends on road conditions. Where I'm at good tyres — my criteria being soft ride, good grip, low noise — last at most 40k km. But then the roads here aren't exactly the best.
Not just tyres, even things like oil, filters, engine mounts etc need to be changed more frequently where I'm at, compared to Western countries.
My coworker had a Leaf and said he went through rear tires 2x as fast.
A BMW 550i has similar horse power as a Tesla Model 3 performance, but I think like any EV the Tesla delivers even more low-end torque. So it can kill tires even faster, and it's all-wheel-drive...
Wear for anything quality and safe is maximum 40-50k km, the better performing tire the less. Yeah cheap (mostly) chinese crappy unsafe tires will last much more, but its due to them being too hard and have very little grip, especially in wet.
It means difference between being perfectly safe in 120kmh in moderate rain/snow vs being scared shitless that next bend may kill you (and car certainly behaves like that), so you drive 70-80kmh and become an obstacle to others in very low-visibility and high danger situation.
Definitely not worth saving on tires, ever.
I would not want to be in a car with a tire that lasts 85K miles.
Tires come in all kinds of compounds for different conditions but in general, the grippier the tire (i.e. better braking, better turning) the shorter the lifetime.
Race tires take this to the extreme, maximizing grip at all cost and they only last as little as a few hundred miles.
That would be silly for street use of course, but the general pattern stands. Less wear = less grip. I buy top performance street tires for maximum safety, the tradeoff being they'll last about 15k-25k miles depending on the car.
Other factors that have a big influence on tire life is car weight and acceleration. EVs are both very heavy and (most of them) fast accelerating. So tire life is bound to be less than on an otherwise similar ICE car.
At least the "run-flat" design is worth it for long road trips, the ability to re-inflate, and increased storage space.
[0] https://tsportline.com/products/continental-procontact-rx-25...
Maintenance costs for my gen 1 Ioniq are ca 60% compared to my previous ICE Kia. Of course this is a welcome change, but it‘s not like switching to an EV means no costs beside electricity.
The power train per se will probably never need paid maintenance, but they do check the coolant and brakes lines every year, clean the AC, resolve system warnings, replace filters etc.
And then there’s tires - you can easily pay 2k for new 22“ rims + tires, and expect a sporty EV to go through those tires quickly. In most regions you‘ll also change tires regularly, which alone can cost 200 bucks per year in a shop (including balancing which is a good idea if you‘re into driving fast).
Tire costs dilute EV savings a lot, to put it mildly.
Costco is the absolute worst for this in my experience. They won’t honor the warranty until the tread level is dangerous. Discount Tires (also branded as America’s Tires in some states) is the best and they’re all over which is handy on road trips.
We've not had a good track record of that in the past, but still worth keeping in mind as a general principle.
> 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 efficient to have a single lawn-mower that you and your neighbors can rent, rather than having every lawn owner buy a mower that sits unused 99% of the time. It is cheaper to rent than buy so the folks save money on mower expense, less waste is produced because there are fewer mowers, and the item sits idle far less. The downside is the coordination required to use the rented item - it may not always be available, or available when any given person would like it to be.
NONE OF THAT FUCKING MATTERS WHEN THE ITEM IN QUESTION IS HEATED SEATS!!!!
No one is able to use those "rented" heated seats when you're not using them. They will never be taken out of the car. There is literally no way to more efficiently allocate this item when rented rather than bought, unless the entire car is rented (in which case... moot point).
So this case cannot be anything other than abuse by owners. There are no efficiency savings to be had. The item won't be allocated more efficiently, it will just provide additional revenue.
Essentially - the argument that renting is more efficient UTTERLY fails when the item being rented is essentially the on/off switch to a thing built into an item you own. It's ALWAYS going to stay part of the item you own, and there is no way to re-allocate it when you are not renting it.
This is a scummy, scummy move. It should be illegal.
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).
I'm becoming more and more hostile to "we've sold you product that has a little man inside who only obeys us" style approach, and to tackle your software example - I find it just as hostile there (I actually refuse to purchase Apple products because you absolutely do not own any device you've purchased from them).
I'll pay for a subscription service that has a genuine recurring cost for the company (ex: I'm using their networks and servers to process data as part of that subscription). But this new world where companies try to make you pay a subscription to get access to static content (or in this case: literal hardware) that lives nowhere except on devices you own is not something I find morally or ethically acceptable.
Frankly - my strong opinion at this point is: If I own a device, I legally must be provided with a key to EVERY lock the device has: physical or digital. No more "you own the phone, but we kept the keys" or in this exact case: "you own the seat heater, but we kept the on/off switch"
Would you think it's acceptable to have BMW stop providing you the ignition and door keys? "Just call us up and we'll unlock the car! (for a small subscription charge)" fuck that horseshit. That's no ownership, that's servitude.
Open source software is similar. I agree that its better for society, but there are two ways to achieve that. The bottom up approach of making it a better option (sometime with the extra stick/carrot of copyleft) or the top down approach, just mandate that any government bought software or any open standard need to be open source and usable by all since they all paid for it.
You can apply those same solutions to hardware and physical things, e.g. renters of housing often have various legal protections, but it varies by jurisdiction, you also have social housing where its lived in but not owned and the property value rises go back to the government.
2 Jeep dealers couldn’t tell me what needs to be done on my 35k checkup. It’s right in the manual. They only tried to upsell fluid flushes. The multipoint inspection didn’t even cover the cv joint checks that were mentioned in the manual!
It absolutely doesn’t affect the value of the car to use 3rd party service.
We have lots of garbage chains of auto shops (looking at you, JiffyLube...) that leave cars in worse shape than when they came in, which complicates matters immensely. I've had one car for example that has had the front engine cover come off twice because the knuckleheads at the shop didn't reattach it correctly, causing it to drag on the road for miles before we realized what was wrong.
(inb4 someone rolls in with how blockchain is going to "fix" this)
Everyone I know who drives a foreign car (a set that tilts overwhelmingly to German makers) takes their car to the dealer for routine maintenance because the maintenance is often included in the purchase price. This is true absolutely for BMW, and CAN be true (ie, you can choose to do it) with Volkswagen.
If you're not the first owner, then yeah, you may go to a 3rd party, but the new-car drivers are going back to the mothership.
Granted, I know very few new BMW owners (and the few that I do know, know very little about cars and just wanna go fast); most everyone I know who has a US- or Japan-make car doesn't bother with going back to the dealership, and that's the vast majority of car owners in the US.
EDIT: The other thing to keep in mind is, most Americans aren't buying new cars. In our tech centric bubble, sure, nearly everyone buys a car new off the lot, but in my sample size of a few dozen people in Ohio who are almost all professionals working decent office jobs, maybe half my friends have ever bought a new car, and the rest are driving something second hand. And keep in mind, these are young professionals with low debt and decent financial sense. The average person in the US almost certainly can't afford a brand new car on a frequent basis, and certainly not the dealer markup on services.
I'm sure that was coincidental and they were all seriously needed services.
I'm not sure how it works in other countries, but in the US, the vast majority of official car dealerships are owned by the franchiser of that dealership, not the car company itself.
This is what caused the conflicts between Tesla and certain US states who had car dealership groups lobbying to ban Tesla from owning their own dealerships/service centers.
Outside of replacement parts specific to the car, like a bumper, most service income goes straight to the dealership franchiser owner, not the car company.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/18/tesla-ranks-30th-in-unoffici...
The only supporting quote about Tesla in the article: "Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation. However, some did complain about troubles with Tesla’s in-vehicle voice recognition." IMO this supports the sloppy assembly claim, but not the incompetent engineering claim. It jives with what I've heard about Tesla cars, that the fit and finish is not what you'd expect for this class of car.
> Tesla owners reported more problems with their exterior and interior than with other systems like propulsion, battery or infotainment and navigation.
Tesla issues aren't about maintenance, they are mostly about quality control. Maintenance on Tesla is simple: air filters, brakes, tires, air conditioning.
Except for air conditioning - unless you mean the air filter the air conditioner should NEVER need maintenance - if you do maintenance it means an environmental disaster - they are closed systems and so the only time you service them is if they lost the Freon.
Maintenance on a new ICE car is exactly the same, plus an oil change every couple of years.
If you go and buy a new 3-series this afternoon, you pay for your gas and that's pretty much it. All your scheduled maintenance is included, and you may even end up with a tire plan (wise on some of these cars; Z-rated rubber is pricey, and urban areas can eat tires) so the rubber ends up "included" too.
https://www.bmwusa.com/explore/bmw-value/bmw-maintenance/ter...
https://www.consumerreports.org/bmw/bmw-reduces-free-mainten...
Its a trap! And probably one that customers are pretty happy with.
I never saw the reason to buy new cars which drop value tremendously in first 5 years, I am certainly not that rich to not mind. I rather buy 6-7 years old, BMW in this case, do maintenance in good unofficial garage and drive the car to the ground. If you find one, stick with it till you die.
First car (BMW E46 3-series) bought for 25% price of new, maintenance costs rather minimal, drove it for 10 years till clutch/transmission literally died.
Now we have again BMW (5-series F10 wagon), bought for 20% of the new, 6 years/90k km old. Obviously no clue how it will behave in future, but we paid 80k less for really premium safe family car, and my yearly maintenance costs have been around 500$ per year.
People sometimes do stupid decisions when they are driven mainly by emotions.
IOW, they're doing it because they can.
The solutions are:
1. Don't buy these cars.
2. Hack the software and share that knowledge.
3. Install a 50-cent switch to apply power to the seat heaters directly.
4. Disable the goddamned modem and share that knowledge too.
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)...
> Just buy bare metal bmw and turn all luxury options on
I can't just "turn on" adaptive headlights because the vehicle doesn't have the necessary camera to scan the road for oncoming cars installed.
I can't just "turn on" adaptive cruise control, because my vehicle doesn't have the necessary front radar installed.
I can't just "turn on" the HUD, because my vehicle doesn't have the necessary dash components physically installed.
The number of different hardware permutations of most modern cars is eye-watering. For most options, if you didn't get it installed from the factory, you're looking at an expense retrofit.
With the best will in the world, software can't magic a night vision camera into my car.
Note the odd logo change around this time as well (2020 or so), another sign of their attempts to "reinvent" themselves as a services company. https://bimmertips.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/BMW_logo_o... (via https://bimmertips.com/bmw-logo-history-origin/) in one picture, and BMW's take at https://www.bmw.com/en/automotive-life/bmw-logo-meaning-hist....
I miss the days when BMW just made really fun cars that I was willing to overpay for, helping my dealer and the factory stay profitable.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a30139034/bmw-apple-carpla...
I have a 2019 model bought in 2018 and it has absolutely no ongoing fees to use CarPlay, which I do daily.
Yes you can do that with a SASS product but no you cannot for a physical product.
But people still do find defeats for most of those. The reality is BMW doesn't care because the average person won't bother with any of that and will just pay.
Renting things like heated seats? It feels bizarre to even have to discuss such a dystopically stupid idea.
First off, saying "the average person would do X" is a hypothetical. It doesn't mean they're in that situation: "If given choice between modifying car and paying money, will pay money"
Second, the article is about BMW, so even if you missed that it'd still be pretty easy to infer an average person amongst their customers...
Third, what's with the weird dig against people for owning BMWs. Different people can want different things... and there's a reason Toyota's halo sports car is rolling around with a BMW powerplant.
Fourth, Toyota started this is 5 years ago by paywalling remote start not just with the app, but with your normal physical key fob: https://ktvo.com/news/auto-matters/costs-associated-with-ent...
They even doubled down and removed the physical button on newer models!: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/toyota-remote-start-digit...
There are plenty of people out there that make decent money but are bad at managing it.
Everyone buying iPhone knows it's not a financially optimal decision
There I learned you can't just replace the bulb, no. The whole light module had to be replaced, $350 + work.
These things are getting ridiculously integrated. Wouldn't surprise me if the seat heaters had some integrated temperature controller unit just because.
Unless there's something snuck in that throws codes if the seat heater does something unexpected - wouldn't that be something, DRM for Bimmer bun warmers. In which case if it's not possible to fool the system by wiring in a resistor instead, then it's a car to avoid as seat warmers are rather prone to broken traces over time from occupants bouncing and shuffling around on the seats, which could render the car unregisterable in regions that check OBD codes.
Why?
Not that I am in favor of this but are there really objective arguments to support that?
One can argue that the ecological impact is higher due to the need for additional materials but maybe people buy new a car only because they didn't have feature X and installing it afterwards is too expensive.
The customer gets a good deal. We have office 365. Users self manage. They can download and install on devices as they want. Before office 365 I had to install it for them. It's a big win for our business. We have no dedicated I.T. people. I'm a developer that does a little here and there but we work to avoid anything with I.T. costs. SASS is a brilliant solution to our problem.
Yeah I'll pay a subscription for an on going service.
I won't pay a subscription for enabling a feature I then have to maintain. If the seat heater fails, I have to pay to fix it.
Mechanical insurance is the equivalent.
This annoys me so much. It's pretty clear "cannot" in this context means in their opinion non-justifiable. There is no such thing as an objective opinion and those who believe in objective opinions generally are just referring to their own thoughts as objective.
The SASS product is more akin to paying for ongoing use of energy. The more it's used the more an impact there is.
This is very common. It is often cheaper to have a single SKU and enable/disable features via software than to create a separate one. I don't see what could be criminal about that.
I'm surprised practices like these have legal legs. No reasonable finance statement/legal statement will stand behind a $3.5k line item under manufacturing for a robot to flip a switch to enable a software setting on already installed hardware.
Example w/ non-real numbers: BMW x5 with front facing radar, dealer enabled, cost of goods sold = $31,000. MSRP = $60k.
BMW x5 with front facing radar installed, dealer disabled, cogs =$31,000.MSRP= $56.5k.
This is not healthy for a company to rely on.
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
This is becoming so sad in all aspects, soon this kind of practices will get to PCs? where the motherboard will also have subscriptions, even maybe cpu and gpu.
This not only is absolutely an anti-consumer practice, but also is probably a pretty temporal and ineffective solution to prevent your car being stolen[2].
Nowadays, is pretty common to need to program some kind of electronic module in the car for some parts replacements, and with that, they are preventing people and small and new car garages to do that kind of repairs. Heck, even the TPMS control module need to "re-learn" "where is who" when you rotate your tyres.
[1]: Usually diagnosis machines have a subscription-based system where they provide you not only new car models software packages, but also instructions about how to do part replacements.
[2]: AFAIK, most stolen cars are really easy to stole (like the 80s/90s Honda's) or really valuable (and they provide tools, ECMs, or whatever they need to stole them).
I imagine it will become a bit of a cat and mouse game as they try to block access to paid features, though it's ultimately a moot point for me, as it's obvious where the company is going and I'm never buying a new BMW again.
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 the option outright.
Heated seats are unimportant in the scale of things, but this is also how capitalism approaches something you literally have no option to do without like health care.
Also since this is _Hacker_ news, it should probably be mentioned that a MIG welder could probably be used to put whatever seats you like into an old used BMW. Buy the body and powertrain that you want, cheaply, do your own maintenance, then fit the aftermarket bells and whistles yourself to make it comfortable.
In the past this is just how "luxury" options trickled down into standard options. If it's more economical to just produce all cars with the option then it should just be an optimization passed on to the consumer.
I find this pretty surprising in the luxury car market. A lot of features that are standard on base model non-luxury cars are options on luxury cars.
Anyway, this subscription model raises other questions. For example, if I'm paying for the subscription and the seat heater breaks, who is responsible for the repair? Am I paying for a subscription (i.e. lease) of the hardware, or is it just a software subscription?
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/2239/cpu-lock
It’s cheaper to physically put the functionality in all the cars than to differentiate at assembly time. We don’t have the same visceral reaction to paying for options at the dealer.
(I am assuming they aren’t adding this charge RETROACTIVELY. That’s very different)
[TFA](https://www.motor1.com/news/597376/bmw-heated-seats-subscrip...) says:
> Should you want the feature permanently, that'll set you back $406.
I had to double check this wasn't an Onion article.
thats one of the most dumbest brand burning idea's I've ever seen. I'm happy enough with my Mid range Rav4 Hybrid that comes with seat heaters and no subscription fee thanks...
In case you thought Toyota wouldn't do the same thing.
I can sort of understand a subscription for the speed camera data, although its a bit cheap, but for the lights it seemed mad.
20 quid after the purchase is quite an annoyance.
Why didn’t they just add it to the sticker price and everyone would have been happier.
Checking from my phone, the heated steering wheel is more than 300$, which is more than what would cost the permanent upgrade in the car.
Now we should wonder, having a construction line and distribution system capable of handling optionals like the heated steering wheel, does it cost more or less than 300$? I don't think that the answer is obvious.
Would it be possible that the car get actually cheaper for the consumers?
Also having those optionals allow to turn them on and off at will. Maybe if I swap car with my SO it would like the heated seat that I never care for.
I see the dangerous of this, but I also see the benefits.
He's talking about consumer goods which typically have a negative ROI.
This is truly insane, its WORSE than feudalism. https://www.businessinsider.com/american-worker-less-vacatio...
> A similar subscription plan is offered for a heated steering wheel and it costs $10 per month, $92 annually, and $161 for three years. You can also buy it outright for $222.
I suppose the challenge would be getting consent in-between the crash becoming inevitable and actually happening
"Our car tried to deploy the airbags, but the customers credit card was declined"
Although to make it even more futuristic, we could replace "credit card" with "crypto wallet"
"Please deposit some $BMWTKN to your wallet or sell one of your cars microservices in order for the window-wipers to work again.[...] We detected that your rear-view camera was sold, window-wipers are now activated again."
https://www.inputmag.com/tech/this-motorcycle-airbag-vest-de...
I'm expecting some kind of crescendo of insanity until we finally hit the reset button.
Subscription models like this one need to be punished, hard, and/or simply rendered unprofitable. Maybe a few rich chumps are willing to pay, but I think the vast majority of car buyers have no interest in being nickel-and-dimed for the privilege of using hardware they already paid for.
More like try *after* you buy, and then pay a subscription to use.
It’s cheaper to build fewer SKUs and variations of a product. The fact that the assembly line never has to change what they’re installing in the car could make heated seats cheaper in the first place.
BMW currently charges $500 for heated seats a la carte in the US, so that costs 1.76 times more than the 3 year subscription at $283. That means your breakeven point is at a little bit over 5 years, without considering present and future value of money.
I could see a lot of BMW owners being completely uninterested in owning the car after 5 years, with so many of them choosing to lease. It is a luxury car, after all.
Now, here’s the other thing, if you do the monthly plan, presumably you could unsubscribe in the summer. So that’s more like $54 a year if you need it for three months of the year. That puts your breakeven point at close to 10 years!
BMW does have a lifetime purchase option, too.
I hope these purchases are tied to the vehicle and not the owner, but I have my doubts on BMW being so benevolent.
I also think it would be ideal if hardware subscriptions like this would simply unlock once the car reaches a certain age to consider its depreciated status.
Now in 3 years it's $25 a month.
This is the path. Companies exist for profit. They will only make customers as happy as they need to.
I think these connected services are aimed at lessees who are the bread and butter of BMW's business. Someone leasing this car would actually save money by "renting" the heated seats, next owner be damned.
Still, I'm definitely not trying to say that this is a wonderful, wonderful thing. But, considering that a "lifetime" purchase option still exists, I think this represents example of giving customers more options than they previously had.
I'll never buy another BMW, and I won't buy a car from a company that follows suit. It's gross.
No - you can either pay for the option one-time up front (the article says), or you can pay a subscription. You don't pay for the option up-front and also pay the subscription.
Depending on your circumstances, one of these two ways to pay will be cheaper for you. It may be the subscription. Or you can not pay at all and never pay for the feature and forget about it.
If you never pay at all I guess you're 'paying' to carry the hardware around but not using it, in terms of extra fuel consumed. But maybe the baseline car ends up being cheaper for you as it simplifies the production line to install it everywhere?
That's not what he's saying. He's saying that BMW has already sold the car at a profit with the heating elements built-in, and then are trying to make more profit off of a software patch to enable a feature you technically already own.
If Apple offered you a $1000 iPhone with a camera app installed, and then offered you the same iPhone for $800 but which will not let any camera apps be installed unless you pay them $18/month, does that seem fine to you? They're already making a profit selling at $800, the hardware is identical, it's just a cost-free software change that you are not permitted to make to your own device.
How do you know how BMW structures profit and costs? I would guess their profit is based on some people choosing to enable the future.
> If Apple offered you a $1000 iPhone with a camera app installed, and then offered you the same iPhone for $800 but which will not let any camera apps be installed unless you pay them $18/month, does that seem fine to you?
Yeah - seems ok to me. I can pick what I want. Pay more up-front, or pay the same after purchasing, or pay a subscription, or don't pay at all. More choices for the consumer.
What's the issue?
Just the mental hurdle of having the option to paying to enable a feature where the hardware was already shipped? What's the underlying actual issue with that? I don't see one?
They would not risk breaking even or losing money if people opted out more than expected. The base model with the feature disabled must be profitable on its own. It's just basic business.
> More choices for the consumer.
It's a false choice. Creating the illusion of choice is not progress. If I stood in front of your front door with a gun in hand and asked you to either pay a small fee every time you leave, or a large one-time fee to leave whenever you want, well, before I arrived you only had one choice and now you have two. Are you better off?
> What's the issue?
Capitalism generally drives progress due to competition, but it should be heavily criticised whenever it stunts progress. Simple as that.
Providing more features at the same or lower cost due to economies of scale is great progress. Artificially disabling those features with software to try and squeeze out more profit is not progress. No doubt they will also go after anyone who tries to bypass this software lock.
This is the same logic behind printer manufacturers trying to lock out third party cartridges and refilling. It's wasteful, anticompetitive and regressive, not progressive.
Loss-leader. Allows them to advertise a low base price, but most people will pay more.
> It's a false choice
Lol it’s not - you can genuinely choose to never pay for it, to pay later, or pay up front. Those are all useful choices I can imagine real people exercising.
Why do you think it’s an illusion? Why is not paying not an option?
> If I stood in front of your front door with a gun in hand
It’s a car seat heater. It’s a luxury. Nothing as dramatic.
They wouldn't risk it in this case, for such a high cost item. It makes no sense for the marginal cost of the heater, the base price would just be marked above the cost.
> It’s a car seat heater. It’s a luxury. Nothing as dramatic.
Way to miss the point. Thought experiments are dramatic so as to make the principle obvious: just because you've increased the set of possible choices does not mean you've added value. That's the case with the thought experiment and with subscription seat heaters. That's why it's a false choice, the value has already been added by economies of scale, and BMW is trying to profit more without any effort by removing that added value.
As I already explained, we want innovation from effort that encourages progress, not profiteering from artificial scarcity. Skewed incentives that don't result in progress should be criticized and corrected.
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 production line, reducing costs.
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 a material impact on the lifetime fuel usage of the car, tyre wear times etc etc.
Here is example with packaged weights:
[1] https://bimmercat.com/bmw/en/search/selectCar/F30/Lim/BMW+33...
That's different from other cars I've seen with heated seats , in that case I can definitely see the case of just including it into every car just incase.
Who says that app is available after 3 years? Or the servers required for using it? It might be even removed from the app store, and you can't sideload it with your iPhone.
Either the car manufacturer won't let you subscribe month by month (sorry, you need to subscribe to a year at least, the rules!) or they will jack up the price where they are ahead even with just seasonal usage.
If the heated seat is already built-in and they can still sell the car profitably for $999 less, then charging for this feature you already got and they already profited from is a pure money grab.
If Apple started selling iPhones that had the usual cameras built in, but you couldn't install any camera apps unless you paid them $18 per month, would you really be so enthusiastic?
Still, if this becomes a way that I can get a cheaper car by declining all of the add-ons, or if it lowers the price of used cars, I'll be happy.
I've thought about this a bit, and I feel like many of these sort of abuses could be mitigated rather elegantly with some sort of right-to-repair type legislation focused on providing consumers with the ability to modify their property as they see fit. Far less costly than trying to anticipate and ban every possible anti-feature manufacturers could build into their products.
Would be interesting to know I suppose though.
I watched one restaurant try something like this. It was a fairly high end restaurant. They came in and started charging for salads. They were so proud of 500-1000 extra per month they were making. What they did not notice was their clientele just decided to not be treated like that. The place went from 2 hour wait to get into, to the servers fighting to get tables, within a year, out of business 2 years later. They could have put the cost into the meal and no one would have batted an eye. Instead they came off as cheap and gouging.
If it's _your car_ then all the features in the car _belong to you_. Why should you pay a third party additional monies to use features of an object that _you already own_.
I think this is despicable, and I won't purchase a car that I can't own outright.
They think this benefits them, because they can get a device (for example a printer) at cheaper prices at what would be possible, and find ways around (cartridge) soft locks.
They think that, but that's wrong. It creates an industry with skewed incentives and less competition. The company can obviously sell the item at the lower cost and thus provide more competitive options to the marketplace, but they're trying to limit competition via software locks instead.
(Paid monthly subscription is a different issue though.)
$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 heated seats into every car instead of selective models, but again, why not just go with a permanent upgrade model? Everyone buys heated seats, BWM provides a special chip to activate them.
To grow profits in excess of inflation in a saturated market, you must charge your costumers continuously more for the same product.
That dumbass executive looked at the healthy used car market, got pissed that some people owned BMW's without paying their dues, and asked how to fix that.
This service allows a customer to purchase a feature outright, now do you think that feature belongs to the car, or does it belong to the customer? Will it transfer during a sale?
Remember, the feature has a lifetime value. All that's happening here is those payments are being deferred. You could (1) charge the 10 year value outright or (2) charge it on a monthly basis.
In scenario 1, BMW captures the full value and basically allow their customers to negotiate the remaining value of the feature in the used car market. In scenario 2, BMW requires the second purchaser to enable the feature. It additionally requires that the feature never be turned off for an extended period of time. Say the car sits in a dealership lot for 6 months. Do they profit from the feature then?
Altogether it looks like they're trying to streamline production. It's likely a lot cheaper to have all the cars manufactured with heated seats and have some mechanism to enable them. Monthly subscription cost, however, seems insane.
Also, inflation is actually a counterargument for a strategy like this.
In inflationary environments, money today is worth more than money tomorrow. Also, can you imagine trying to hike subscription prices frequently to keep up with inflation?
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.
If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights. The fee could be increased at any time, or new fees could be introduced.
As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either.
So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord, probably living in debt starting from the student loan and dying in debt.
> If someone can charge you for using things you already bought and 'own', then average man has no property rights.
e.g. you used to own your music and movie collection but now you rent access to it via Spotify, Amazon Music, Netflix etc
Even games: it used to be it was YOUR game but now you pay a subscription.
Even if you cart around audio files on 5TB portable drives, or have a drive per key location (home, office, etc) there are advantages to streaming. One less drive I need to maintain.
Losing everything when you unsubscribe is shitty though. I guess that's the choice made.
Yes. There's nothing keeping anyone from buying the music they like even if it's just digital. Music is probably the thing that there's there's the greatest choice between renting and very reasonably buying.
I have a big library which I got in order a couple years ago. But I made the decision that there was no need--at this point--to buy any gaps. I'd just stream and could always buy pretty much anything I wanted at some point if I wanted to. (My interests are mostly very mainstream.)
Unfortunately this isn't true anymore. If you want to buy a song there's beatport and bandcamp but they're missing a ton of music, Amazon Music is only available in a few countries and Google Music doesn't exist anymore. That leaves just iTunes which is a terrible experience and only available on macOS and Windows.
You can still purchase all of that media if you want
But then I don’t seem to stop myself from using Netflix.
The housing crisis is definitely a tougher nut to crack, but I don’t believe the auto manufacturers have quite the same leverage over the American population long term, especially if gas prices and electric vehicle prices keep skyrocketing significantly faster then inflation.
I love electric bikes and want to install the bafang kit myself, but lets keep things in perspective - it's not gonna get my pregnant wife to the hospital.
When the weather's sufficiently bad, we take the BMW with heated seats instead =)
I don’t think this happens before mom and baby are discharged from the hospital, so it is not relevant to the discussion.
That said: my wife and her mother _did_ ride home on the back of her father's bicycle after she was born (in 1980s China).
Hypothermically cold/wet days, if you suffer a physical injury, going anywhere with friends, trips to IKEA, groceries that last more than a week, vacations, or the reason I stopped cycling:
a car driver randomly forces you to pay for a new bike while also giving you a concussion and 7 stitches to your face then drives away.
Happier now with my 'cage' than with the ego I used to have.
I got through a full year before giving up and buying another car. I have never been motivated to repeat the experience, though I still love city life and try to keep car usage to a minimum, getting around primarily by motorcycle.
Better tell the people in the Netherlands they can't ride bikes then!
And obviously there are tremendous use cases to enjoy weekends, do groceries/other shopping, helping friends and family and so on and on...
I come from Europe, currently living in Switzerland which has best rail system in the world and general decent public transport... but still owning a car is a must for 4 of us, travelling anywhere with kids is a chore and amount of stuff for weekend is impossible to carry in public transport (stroller(s), child bed, all clothing, food equipment etc. and thats just kids).
Sure you can spend all weekends in the same place if thats your thing, but it certainly ain't ours, not when we have alps just in the backyard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_rickshaw
Some modern takes:
https://www.vanraam.com/en-gb/advice-inspiration/news/van-ra...
More people than ever maybe, but that is a tiny fraction of the number of cars, at least in the U.S. It is like saying more people than ever are turning vegetarian/vegan. Yes, it is true, but it is still a miniscule number in the grand scheme of things, and the the change is way too slow/small to have any real impact, at least in my life time.
I love Jetbrains products, it was irritating when they went subscription model. Tableau did the same. I guess it is just a matter of time before everyone started doing it, both in digital and real world. Next would be what? 10 bucks for my washing machine that I own, $10 for my fridge, $10 for my air conditioning, stove, vacuum cleaner...
I don't know how we can fight back. They will keep pushing and pushing trying to eek out every possible cent. There are products we can simply stop using, but cars (at least in the U.S) are much difficult to avoid, outside of cities like NYC. Much of the country is built for cars
Isn't that basically a traditional (90's style) software purchase?
But not only that, they went through a couple revisions with the customer to determine what the right model is.
The software that JB produces as has massive value, but it is also fragile in that it needs to be kept up to date as the ecosystem evolves. That value is fragile in the face of constant change unless you pin yourself to a snapshot of the language and all its dependencies. The JB subscription model allows for this while also enabling constant upgrades.
The way that JB handled the outcry about the original subscription model is the real innovation.
That seems like a pretty spiteful thing to do for a (F|f)ree Software.
Basically the difference to buying every year is that you don’t keep old versions. You still get to keep/own the version of your last paying day. And you get discounts…
Unless there are really bad feature changes, there is really no reason to prefer the old model
This was already happening with planned obsolescence. The EU fought that by implementing a new law that requires big home electronics to have a 10year warrant. I guess the next step for vendors is bundling “service” features for subs
I cited an auto start feature o VOLVO cars that required a siriusXM membership.
It's unfathomable that we reached this point of monthly subscriptions being implemented on things that we've already paid for. It's the first sign that we're in for a wave of not feudalism, but outright economic slavery. There is no rational consumer protection against many predatory business practices, and many are eager to be a part of monthly subscriptions for useless services for lord knows what motivational reason.
Mike Judge was a genius for making the movie Idiocracy, it's our future. No way around it now. :[
If we reach a point where we can't even restate what our Founders said, we're already in our twilight as any kind of civilized liberal society.
Now we can argue about what constitutes an "essential liberty". I'm not sure I'd put, "Heated seats in my BMW" in that category.
As much as I dislike that kind of fee, it at least makes sense. The remote communication support isn't free.
99.9% of the time this feature is used to start the car when the driver is within 50 feet. There's no need for it to be relayed through the Internet.
$300 a year is crazy. I never even turned that feature on.
what they really want is install a bunch of these leeching monthly subscriptions on your credit card that you forget about and they keep billing you for almost no marginal value.
But I don't mind it for some things. I have no interest in owning a pile of movies, music and etc.
Consumer finance is a real thing.
Before these financial innovations - people could not by homes, or ironically cars. They could not 'insure' themselves against fire etc..
Being able to 'buy a feature' on a monthly basis, instead of paying up front for it, actually may have some benefits.
That said, obviously if people just want to buy it they can/should do that.
"Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better"
There are real problems with housing affordability but a subscription to heated seats in a luxury car is not indicative of a bigger issue.
HN frowns upon trolling.
That said, if you're asking that kind of question, I just assume you're trolling but then I thought about it and realized it was an earnest inquiry.
You still have to pay property tax against the "property value" which is a completely arbitrary number set by an outsider. If you don't pay, you lose your home - that is not my definition of ownership.
If you won't or can't pay your tax then you have to sell your property to someone who can. This is what the community that lives in an area agreed on. You can take your house with you though. It's totally up to you to lift it, put it on a truck and put it on a different piece of land, considering the bank doesn't own it. Feel free to find land with no taxes and put your home there.
If you wanted an argument for not owning housing, a better argument would be something like zoning restrictions.
Property taxes in the US predate the US as an independent country. Do you think the owner should be able to set the value? Should anyone be able to declare that their property is worth $0 and therefore no tax is owed?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_tax_in_the_United_Sta...
I see this argument a ton, people complain that new cars are too expensive, super high monthly payments and subscription features. Yes these are all problems but they are only problems if you choose to buy a new car. Seems that folks forget in these arguments that there is a sea of affordable, reliable used cars without any of the bullshit they add to new cars these days, at a fraction of the cost of a new car.
And this is an industry where starting a competitor is simply not feasible without incomprehensible amounts of capital.
This isn't a guaranteed thing.
Toyota makes money hand over fist selling decade behind the competition vehicles for high prices based on a premise of reliability that the overwhelming majority of buyers will not keep the car long enough to take advantage of and HN never misses an opportunity to praise them for it.
I feel very confident saying that the market for cars that don't include SAAS-esque BS subscriptions will be large enough to sustain a decent number of offerings in the same way that the sedan market is still healthy despite the crossover-ification of everything and the hatch market is stronger than it's been since the 90s.
My suspicion is this will become a lot more pervasive & render every auto purchase to choke full of these under the surface sour decisions.
There should be absolutely no reason to buy a used car anymore.
I feel like I'm living in a bizarro world b/c everyone seems to claim buying a used car is the much better financial decision. It isn't for me, by a long margin.
I feel like most used car buyers look at inflated MSRP and judge the "discount" for the used car based on that. They don't factor in the sometimes massive discounts (pre COVID, of course) that practically every new car would have. So a used 2018 model looks $3k cheaper than an identical new 2019, but the 2019 has $4k on the hood, plus better financing, lower miles, and better legal protections (lemon law). Granted, "certified pre-owned" cars often come with better sounding warranties than new ones, but I'm sure there are some fine print details that make them worse than the factory one.
Granted, the post-covid market is all kinds of skewed.
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 seats when they sold it to you? Would you feel better if the service worker at the dealer would rip out 5mm of tubes to 'break' the heated seat? Would that make it Ok?
Also, this is the extreme, extreme minority of features from an extreme minority of cars, by the extreme of car manufactures. Calling this 'rapidly moving to Feudalism' is way overly dramatic.
> As the housing crysis deepens, average person will never own a home either.
High amount of home ownership is not the same as having a high quality of live. And its also not really accurate.
> So average person will be in the same position as a medieval serf, conpletely dependand on the whims of the lord,
The lord who sold the serf a BMW?
> probably living in debt starting from the student loan and dying in debt.
Many people manage to pay of their student loans and don't have to live in debt if they don't want to.
Many people want to take on debt in order to consume now rather then later, being in debt is not actually necessary bad.
yikes... this strikes me as quite similar to this line of reasoning: "poor people are poor because they just don't want to work"
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 peers was that I did poorly academically my first year and it forced me to enter the work force and learn the value of the money I was borrowing, and after that I borrowed the minimum I could to remain in school, for the minimum time, as it was so expensive.
I'm supposed to believe that it's impossible to avoid... When I avoided it?
I even got screwed by federal assistance because my parents seemed financially healthier than they were. I paid for 90% of my own educational costs, by working part time. And like I said this was the late 00s, early 10s, I'm not telling a tale from the 70s
My wife has a similar story, but started out much poorer. Now we're both professionals sans degrees making over six figures, no debt. But that's impossible.
I get it, these are anecdotes. But student loan debt is a choice, and it's one we both avoided, so it's definitely possible to do.
Being possible isn't the same as being scalable, for the vast majority of people debt is extremely difficult to get out of, and it's in the interest of the creditors (quite literally) to encourage lending to people who are likely to find it difficult to break free of the compounding interest, because it maximises their return.
Even assuming everyone was individually instantly capable of recognise and managing the risks of their debt, there would be massive reduced opportunity for ways to escape it, and the interest might be higher in order to satisfy the creditors who would otherwise not get as much return... it would be much harder to escape in that situation - From that perspective you should count yourself lucky, had everyone been as "smart" you might still be in debt.
I know a lot of people who were, frankly, railroaded into college. Middle class kids who never had to worry about money, did good to excellent in school, never worked a serious job, were told by their schools, parents, teachers, television and the internet that any degree was a path to success. Then the clock strikes midnight on their 18th birthday and they have no idea how to make informed decisions, so they just do what they've been told by everyone they've trusted for their entire lives.
They mostly ended up with history, sociology or some other useless undergraduate degrees and working at Starbucks if they're lucky and five to six figures of student loan debt with no way to pay it off. And by the time they're wise enough to actually handle money responsibly they're already trapped.
Also most universities are not freezing tuition, and I'm wondering where you went to college and what your part time job was, and how much assistance you got. You're not paying college tuition by working the counter at California Pizza Kitchen part-time. Plus Tuition has continued to inflate every year even since the early tens, although the rate of inflation has decreased in recent years. https://www.in2013dollars.com/College-tuition-and-fees/price...
yes, things could be better. (yes, a lot better if people suddenly were suprarational.) yes, there are metrics that regressed in the US, or even in the world in general (civil liberties for example)
but it's quite possible to look at each issue in context, and this approach is a lot healthier and more useful than adopting either extreme. (student debt is basically the perfect issue for this, because without context we can just throw anecdotes or useless overly general statements at each other. there's not even consensus about what's the problem. yes, tuition costs are high, and rising. yes, many people have trouble servicing their debt. and so on. but these are different - though of course interconnected - problems. nor is there consensus about who is most affected. should society instead focus on those who did not even have the opportunity to apply to collage? should we focus on those who dropped out due to financial hardship yet ended up with debt? both? neither? and so on.)
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.
The analogy to feudalism might be stretched in the literal sense, but most people use the term as a substitute for "you own nothing and are subject to the whims of the owner".
And there's a lot of truth to that for the average person, compared to conditions even 20 years ago. With regard to heated seats, my 22 year old car has heated seats. They have never required a subscription, and they are mine for as long as they function/are repairable. Now you can argue that, theoretically, car companies could charge less for the car up front and make it up on the subscriptions, so the consumer will see increased customization and savings, and the car company will make the same amount of money instead of more money! If you believe that I have a subscription to a bridge to sell you for $19.99 a month.
Economically things look rather grim. Goods will get more and more expensive. People will have less money to spend on frivolous items. Before they'd ignore minor expenses, now they will look for the best possible deals.
Subscriptions only work when people don't pay attention. BMW will be OK because it's just a rich person's toy anyway. I don't see it working for mass-market cars.
Heated seats is a luxury, sure. But what about music? Kitchen appliances? Movies and TV? Productivity software? Transportation?
All these things are things we own much less of (or "own," as it were, since we got to keep physical custody of the bits, and they didn't try to authenticate against a web service)
The situation is positively feudal, people are sharecropping increasingly large parts of their lives. And the lords sit in their castles, surrounded by yes-men, pushing the limits of legality and ignoring the cries of the people that make their businesses happen.
I implied nothing about myself. I myself did not go to university.
> Heated seats is a luxury, sure. But what about music? Kitchen appliances? Movies and TV? Productivity software? Transportation?
Subscription is just one way to pay for things, sometimes it makes sense sometimes it doesn't. Public transport have been using subscription for decades and people somehow don't think that's a bad thing.
For cars people usually use loans, and that ends up being just another form of monthly payment.
They have advantages and disadvantages depending on many factors. To have moral outrage because something in particular uses subscription makes no sense.
The waste majority of the things you named the waste majority of the time don't need subscription. And the reality is that while you don't need a subscription for music for example, people do actually prefer it in some cases and that is fine.
> people are sharecropping increasingly large parts of their lives
Comparing digital goods to land ownership is a terrible analogy.
> And the lords sit in their castles, surrounded by yes-men
You have a real flair for storytelling, next you will add some more fantasy element and you will tell me they have 'greedy grins' or whatever. Makes for good drama I guess.
Probably varies a lot by location. IIRC, the UK government's own report on their current university fee/loan structure anticipates a large number of people paying off their loans so slowly that they will end up being written off.
I think this counts as both a stealth tax and stealth government borrowing.
the problem is you don't see the big picture: all modern tractors are internet connected and farmers are not allowed to repair them.
all TVs are smart, you cant't buy a new 'dumb' TV. Philips recently added adslvertisements to TVs people bought years ago.
This isn't some niche thing that won't affect you, this is a paradigme shift like we haven't seen in a century.
if you rent an apartment in 2050, it will come with a smart oven, frisge and toilet. The oven will be brans-locked to wallmart and if you buy food somewhere else it will refuse to turn on with the warning "unauthorised substance detected"
Started with WoW and getting kicked for "using" exploits which are ultimately just faults in a product that I purchased - why should I as a customer know and care for what an exploit is and what not?
Example: Manual transmissions available for sale in the United States vs Europe. Europe has many more available to be sold new than the United States at maybe 3% and dwindling.
I see the only reason that smart-TVs are some prominent now is that the market for those eclipsed the market for dumb-TVs. While there are individuals that would like a dumb-TV, I've seen them post on HN, outliers don't make a sustainable market for revenue.
If individuals don't purchase the subscription, it won't be a revenue stream and then decision-making individuals should make decisions to change it.
The housing market is another conversation altogether.
Though marketing models for things you already have, is just handing over money so you can enable a feature you own and they add nothing. No AI to measure your heating needs or add on's ahead, just money to turn on the heat with no added value.
Shame as when your business model is a death of an innocent away (say child died of hypothermia as unable to enable the heating) from a PR disaster - then it's in need of some adjustments. But certainly, will encourage people with little skill and lots of willingness to try modifying their cars they own.