BMW’s Heated Seats as a Service Model Has Drivers Seeking Hacks
wired.com
wired.com
"Great" thing about consolidated megacorporation dominated markets: you have nowhere to go if only three companies decide to squeeze more money out of you. And shareholders WILL demand that every car manufacturer squeezes more money out of you by locking equipment you own now behind subscriptions.
It sounds like you missed last 15 years of developing DRM technology and IP law.
If I own the car outright, I own the computer and can do whatever I want to it. Seems like you missed all the DRM hacks, and think vehicle insurance companies do IP law.
Driving habits and all the data tracking that will be standard in a few years will absolutely be critical to your insurance company, and it stands to reason that they would use any semblance of hacking any part of your car and thus risking the purity of the data (nomatter how unrelated) as a pretense to deny coverage.
Which “few titanic entities” are you referring to? Tesla? BMW? Toyota? Volkswagen Group? Gheely? BYD? Hyundai? Honda? … the list goes on. Basically there isn’t a more competitive anti-monopoly industry than the car industry.
Somebody who wants to buy a BMW will likely not be cross-shopping with a Hyundai, even if there's are models at the same price point.
The luxury car segment is also huge…
The Chinese car manufacturers are going to eat them alive soon anyway.
Same situation as Mercedes. Taking dumb money more or less.
I doubt BMW is going to nail this on their first pass, but subscriptions are obviously more lucrative so they may keep trying (or others will).
Regardless, software running everything is a nightmare in progress. The quality standards are atrocious and regulations haven’t even come close to keeping up.
Eventually they're all going to jump on the bandwagon.
[1] https://www.motor1.com/news/554620/toyota-subscription-fee-r...
The trend toward turning products into subscriptions has been in flight for at least 20 years. It was bullshit when it started and it continues to be bullshit today.
On the other hand, the use case BMW is presenting is actually quite reasonable: making car extras available to second hand buyers (and presumably, making their pipeline more effective and flexible so they don't have to customize cars at build time). I'd be thrilled if I bought a used car without heated seats and was able to "add" heated seats and other upgrades on the spot, by paying one-time fees for the extras that the original owner didn't purchase. Car extras are already very much a thing and always have been – the alternative is that BMW physically has to remove the heater components or disable them permanently, so as a second hand buyer, I'd be permanently locked out of the upgrade. Forcing the car maker to have to physically neuter the hardware out of "purity" strikes be as something a bit silly.
No, the alternative is to simply sell what you have 'as is', and not to try to graft a subscription model onto every sale.
Rather than selling unnecessary services BMW should focus on selling cars. And with the number of software issues their vehicles suffer from (a friend of mine was an avid BMW fan for many years his cars spent more time in the shop for software issues than mine ever did for all of their maintenance put together over the same 20 year period) they should strive to have less software related components rather than more of them.
Finally, what do you think the chances are that they are able to keep that service up and running over the service life of their vehicles?
Wouldn't both of those goals be accomplished just by letting anyone who buys the car use the heated seats?
> Car extras are already very much a thing and always have been – the alternative is that BMW physically has to remove the heater components or disable them permanently, so as a second hand buyer, I'd be permanently locked out of the upgrade.
The point is that if BMW is willing to pay for the heated seat components in every car they make, then anyone who buys a BMW should be able to use the heated seats. You shouldn't have to pay someone else money for the privilege of fully utilizing something that you own outright.
this is buying into a market differentiation approach that I see no reason to tolerate
it's one thing to differentiate by installing something extra (at cost) to charge a price higher than the cost to some market segment. sure, do that as much as you want, makes sense
This is an odd interpretation.
You aren't buying a car without heated seats and "adding" them. They are already there.
>the alternative is that BMW physically has to remove the heater components or disable them permanently, so as a second hand buyer, I'd be permanently locked out of the upgrade
How on earth is that the alternative? That would cost them more money in labour. Once the car is sold, why does BMW have to do anything?
As a second-hand owner, or just the owner who changed their mind later down the line, there is an obvious benefit to being able to purchase an extra without going to a dealership or a mechanic and incurring in extra costs in replacing the whole part – you really wouldn't bother for something like heated seats.
What the car manufacturer is saying here is that they would prefer to ship the extra part in all the cars because it doesn't cost them that much and letting the owner (or next owner) change their mind is an obvious benefit, but that if they're not allowed to charge extra for a part that they already shipped, then they will keep on ripping out or damaging the part before it gets sold.
If you aren't using the heated seats, you're lugging around extra weight, more electrical complexity. You can't sell your car as having them, as you have no idea if they work after how many years.
The doctrine of first sale says I own the car, and I own the heated seats in it.
And once its ours, they do not have the right to charge us for something our car has the capability to do without them. And its unethical for them to try to add microtransactions on something we already physically own. This is a form of fraud, IMHO.
BMW is losing the trust of buyers; they will not last long if they continue this.
What about leasing? If you lease (rent) the vehicle, is it okay to enable / disable features based on what you pay?
You own the hardware. You don't necessarily own the license to operate it. I agree this is a bullshit difference, but it's a legally material one.
Right to Repair would imply that individual components of a vehicle can't be under a subscription to use because that implies you don't have full ownership of the part.
Also Right to Repair usually includes some requirements on manufacturers to publish the schematics and repair manuals publically or at least provide them to owners. That means whatever piece controls the subscription would be known, and could be bypassed or removed more easily.
I dunno though. This is just my thoughts
> And God help you if an A-list blogger finds out that your premium printer is identical to the cheap printer, with the speed inhibitor turned off.
As it turns out, you don't need divine help if every manufacturer has the consumer already conditioned to accept abuse in the form of EULAs, subscriptions, and microtransactions from all directions...
[1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...
What if instead of owning cars, we rented them? Less garbage parked on all our streets when not being used. Less fossil fuel monopoly lockin. Self driving upgrades would be the norm. Then this approach by BMW would make sense.
For me, the real racket has really been the pushing of ownership on everyone. Own a car. Own a house. To do so, RENT MONEY from a bank and go work to pay back millions of dollars over decades or we will reposess your house. You’re welcome, pleb!
https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/05/bill-g...
Money is the new land. They are making more of it but they know everyone needs it, and the banking system has a monopoly on it.
The “American Dream” was promoted was a way to get the plebs to take out large mortgages (to finance home construction, etc.) and be nice little workers and pay it off (this creates demand for the bank’s finance products and by extension the dollar). At least back then, only one parent worked long hours for corporations, because the culture mostly had women be homemakers and raise kids.
Once both sexes started flooding the labor market, wages got repressed and corporations started promoting a new “Lean in” version of the “American Dream” to the men AND women… now everyone’s self-worth and satisfaction was supposed to be determined by climbing the corporate ladder:
https://magarshak.com/blog/?p=286
Look at these modern ads specifically to US Americans, making them PROUD of how little free time they have… they don’t even try to hide it:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8
This doesn’t lead to more happiness for the population, as measured.
But this doesn't solve the "less garbage parked" problem; for that you need short-term rentals and although ZipCar and others are making inroads there are real challenges here: the demand is bursty (everyone wants a car on a sunny weekend) and the model is inconvenient (can't leave stuff in your car).
For my anecdotal situation renting has never came out on top.
Let’s compare
B = Buying
R = Renting
B > R ?
B - R + R > R ?
Now we can subtract R from both sides and we get:
B - R > 0 ?
Well, in the real world, if your salary and credit allows you to borrow X, then you should look at what you can invest it in. If you had rented since 2012 and invested all that money into Bitcoin or a stock index, you’d be able to sell it and buy 1,000 houses. So yes, renting could be far better than buying.
If you're renting, your landlord can decide to sell your home out from under you, or evict you to have family move in, or renovate without your choice, or or or. You aren't really in control of your own home when you rent. Most rentals I've lived in wouldn't allow pets for instance. And you can't even choose the color of paint on the walls. It's a joke.
So yeah. Borrow money from a bank, buy a house. Paint it whatever you want. Plant whatever flowers you want. Grow your own food. Have pets. Enjoy having actual choice and freedom about your surroundings.
In the world of "we only rent" we limit our options by an extreme amount.
This extends to cars too. You can't even change the tires on a rented car. And you're limited to only driving what is available for renting. What if I want a sports car? What if I want an SUV? What if I'm doing some yard work and need a truck, but none are available?
Seriously if you're ok only ever renting, houses or vehicles, or anything else... How do you apply any kind of agency on your surroundings? You just live by other people's rules and accept the surroundings other people have crafted for you all the time?
No thanks. People need stuff that is thier own.
I am just saying there is a lot of propaganda to get people to do stuff that is in the bankers’ and corporations interest. People are told en masse what they should be doing: go to college, get a job, pay off a mortgage, own a home. Lean in. Make partner at the firm.
Slowly the public is waking up and millennials onwards don’t care so much. They even started to realize that college isn’t essential to an education in many fields, given how much can be learned on the Internet. At least, not the four year college. I wager most people on HN learned far more on the Internet than in college. People are starting to wake up to the idea that renting money from banks also locks you into slavery for decades, and prefer to be free.
I agree. And nothing fits this description more than "Banks and Corporations should own literally everything and everyone else should only ever rent what they need"
If you can't see how "rent everything" plays exactly into the hands of banks and corporations, I don't know what to tell you.
> People are starting to wake up to the idea that renting money from banks also locks you into slavery for decades, and prefer to be free.
No, see. Slaves owned nothing and had to rely on their masters to provide for them. Slaves were never free, not after decades of work, not ever. Also slaves couldn't decide to terminate their mortgage early, sell their house and relocate.
I don't know how you got these backwards ideas about the implications of renting versus ownership, but you really should give some really careful consideration to what you're giving up and what you're gaining if you choose not to own anything. Trust me, you aren't gaining freedom.
But don't confuse that with needing to own things instead of renting them. If you borrowed $2 million and bought Bitcoin in 2012 you'd be a lot better off than if you bought a house cause "only a fool would want to pay off someone else's mortgage".
>In my garage by the time I need it
>Always fueled up
>The same or better condition and cleanliness as I left it
>No interior monitoring system / ID unlocks
>Can be given to friends/family for no extra charge
>Costs $0 to just sit in my garage
>Can keep valuables in it safely
>0 (zero) terms and conditions of use
this is not true of your bought car, you're ignoring opportunity cost for the capital & depreciation
this might be less than you would be paying for renting a car (or more! depending on how often you'd need to rent), but it's obviously not 0
So you think the things you're renting aren't merely owned by someone else? Thanks for a cut of your income, pleb!
You just believe you can be the owner… but the big owners in this country are usually much better connected than you. They sit on each other’s boards, too.
Chances are, you won’t win that game… but they will make money off you competing and trying:
https://www.wallstreetsurvivor.com/mcdonalds-beyond-the-burg...
You mean like e-scooters?
The idea that an average car buyer won't understand that computer stuff can be "hacked" so they don't have to pay is pretty ridiculous. If your making money to buy a new BMW you probably don't live under a rock and have some idea of how computers work in a very high level way.
You are way, way, WAY too optimistic.
I buy a car with heaters in the seats. I own the car. I own the seat. I own the heater. I'm still waiting to hear any reasonably cogent explanation about how I should be prevented from using the heater I own that's inside of the seat I own.
Similar to how you can’t modify the gear ratios or the traction control system on the ecu of the car you own. Because you don’t own software, you license it.
This looks less like a subscription and more like financing.