Software controlling options (BMW) -- heated seat subscription in UK & Korea

[mangobay]

I guess this confirms what we have always known, that manufacturers fit functionality that hasn’t even been optioned by owner number one.

Still a bit shocking to read and shows how little it just actually cost to add certain functions at build and how much margin must be in them when ticked!

BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62142208

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[im85288a]

Was reading up on this yesterday and at first I saw the headline that heated seats and heated steering wheel is now on the subscription model. However reading up a bit more it is only for those people that did not option it at build time....which I think is actually a good feature.

I can see other manufacturers doing the same, Porsche already do something similar with FOD InnoDrive, Power Steering etc....RWS is probably next.

 

[Midlifecrisis]

I always wondered whether the standard seats had the heater elements in them but were not connected. I suspect they probably do have as making them all the same will be so much cheaper. All you have to add is a relay and a switch. Not even that with the current PCM. I think we will see more and more of this - Porsche are already doing it with FOD.

 

[W1NGE]

I guess this confirms what we have always known, that manufacturers fit functionality that hasn’t even been optioned by owner number one.

Still a bit shocking to read and shows how little it just actually cost to add certain functions at build and how much margin must be in them when ticked!

BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62142208

Old trick invented by IBM with the 360 computer family back in the 60's.

Just taken motor manufacturers decades to figure this model out.

 

[satchurator]

I recall recently reading Mercedes are doing this for their equivalent of RAS - pay extra for 10° of rear axle steer vs 5°. Understandably controversial, but as a software guy I’d encourage folks to consider the benefits. This is a good trend for auto makers to be pursuing subscription based features. It creates incentives for ongoing incremental development of features and capabilities in already-shipped cars, instead of the old days of shipping a static blob that receives little to zero updates over its lifetime. The downside is that cars could ship half-baked with the intent to refine and fix post production. Like T*sla does.

It might be galling to purchase a car with latent capabilities that can only be activated by subscription, but the market can educate manufacturers on what’s reasonable to put behind a paywall vs available by default.

 

[Genau]

However reading up a bit more it is only for those people that did not option it at build time....which I think is actually a good feature.

I suspect that the vast majority of BMWs are purchased from dealer inventory, so the retail customer is burdened not only with a soul-sucking grey/black/silver/white dealer-specified "safe" paint color, but with disabled hardware that can only be enabled by subscription. Hence the recent posts on BMW forums comparing the brand to discount airlines that are actively seeking to charge passengers to use the lavatory.

 

[whitex]

I recall recently reading Mercedes are doing this for their equivalent of RAS - pay extra for 10° of rear axle steer vs 5°. Understandably controversial, but as a software guy I’d encourage folks to consider the benefits. This is a good trend for auto makers to be pursuing subscription based features. It creates incentives for ongoing incremental development of features and capabilities in already-shipped cars, instead of the old days of shipping a static blob that receives little to zero updates over its lifetime. The downside is that cars could ship half-baked with the intent to refine and fix post production. Like T*sla does.

It might be galling to purchase a car with latent capabilities that can only be activated by subscription, but the market can educate manufacturers on what’s reasonable to put behind a paywall vs available by default.

Actually, shipping half baked or plain vaporware (imagine paying $10K for a feature was never available, not even for 1 millisecond of your 3 year lease duration) is where subscription actually makes sense - sane people will not pay a subscription to a feature which does not yet exist (though you never know with Elon, he has a spell over certain population which probably would).

The way I see it, for most features there should be a subscription model, but in tandem with purchase model. So for example for heated seats, you can choose to pay $500 up front, or $18 a month, or $192 per year (savings of $2 per month but you have to pay for the whole year, including hot weather months). Software such as UI should be the same, you can buy and own each major version (for which you get patches and bug fixes for free, but not the next major version), or you can pay a subscription to always have the latest version. At some point a version should become end of life, so for example connected features simply stop working unless you upgrade to a newer version (where again, you can buy it outright or subscribe) - this is needed for security, as end-of-live, unmaintained, connected devices are just easy pickings for hackers.

The above method is the Microsoft Office model. It gives everyone the best of all worlds.

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