BMW starts selling heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month

theverge.com

14 points·brntn··5 comments

$18 for heated seat, $12 for heated steering wheel - unless BMW are changing their purchase model to pay monthly for the whole car rather than ~$50K upfront, this really cheapens the BMW brand.

I guess the options will be available packaged upfront for a one off payment, but BMW is (was?) a luxury/performance brand and their cars are investments - this makes it look cheap.

Sorry, no auto is an "investment" and particularly not those of Euro design. After a few years on the road, these start to lose their value almost as fast as crypto due to the exorbitant maintenance costs.

What looks like a good deal on a late model "luxury" car becomes anything but once the naive new owner discovers it is due for over $10k of scheduled dealer maintenance.

The rich who buy these write them off as disposable status symbols --- not to be confused with reliable daily transportation.

Check Z8 prices. Plenty of cars are great investments.

Apples and oranges.

A Z8 is a limited production collector's item, a work of art ---- not a mass production "auto" being sold for use as a reliable transportation appliance.

I could understand pricing dynamically-updated things like self-driving features as a subscription service (someone needs to train newer and better ML models; update maps; etc) but something _fixed_ made into a subscription is just tacky.

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