This is a terrible article. It didn’t give a single example. It also said there is subscriptions for things that need a constant connection. The connected drive stuff currently are things anyone can do without. This is very rage baity.
Drove BMW my whole life and the brand no longer makes cars for people who like driving. Hard to imagine this is the company that made the e46 m3.
Coming up to 10 years of ownership on my 335i and it will be my final BMW. They literally don’t even make a car that is more fun than my clapped out 335. Pathetic. It’s all touch screens and electronic steering and shit that car enthusiasts despise.
Porsche is the only company still making good cars. Unfortunately that is also reflected in their prices.
Now we all know that if we see someone in a BMW at a traffic light who looks particularly comfortable, that person is an idiot.
Considering I’d never buy one, great! I couldn’t care less.
So how does the car know if your subscription is valid?
Is it going to be like Microsoft when every so often your subscription is a deactivated until you can validate it again?
So your car will need to have constant connectivity to wifi or at least reconnect each day/week/month to confirm the subscriptions are still active?
Nah, they have a cellular data connection.
It pays for itself, because the car manufacturer can sell the driving data to insurance companies.
And now it’s used to make sure your brakes subscription is up to date
Every upgrade in John Deere equipment of the same model is installed on every unit sold, just unplugged, because it’s cheaper to have the same build process.
Time to hack some John Deere hardware, I suppose.
yo fuck john deere pass it on
Most BMW drivers lease vehicles so they’re already used to what amounts to subscription. My fear is that these news articles are actually designed to normalize this to buyers of brands where leasing isn’t the default. They show how the affluent don’t mind paying to convince the less fortunate it’s a glamorous move.
Hell, based on recent approaches, these articles might primarily to help train LLMs to talk “the right way” about this stuff.
I’d like to sit here and say well now I’m never going to buy a bmw, but I don’t think that was ever going to be a choice on my part anyway.
Perhaps paradoxically, this might have turned out to be an advantage rather than a drawback
It sounds like their market research told them they would make more money this way, and my own anecdotal evidence makes me think they are correct, unfortunately.
The area where I live has some diversity and some decent people, but it is majority white christian conservative. The amount of luxury SUVs I see rage-driving around town can be astounding at times. It’s right up there with the amount of frighteningly expensive emotional support trucks with the drivers still wearing their ball caps and wrap-around shades on overcast days.
is that why they never use turn signals? you need a subscription?
No, it’s because the peasants don’t need to know where I am going.
You joke but I actually had a co-worker once tell me that “I’m an adult, I don’t need to tell others where I am going.”
The assumption is that every peasant on the road will stop, move out if their way and politely greet them because of the higher BMW status. Just as they in turn have to defer to a Bentley or Rolls Royce. The hierarchy of cars.
The only BMW drivers I’ve known are crack or meth dealers. Not the best judgment and expect everyone to bend to their will like the addicts they sell their crap too.
We have those too, but they mostly stay in one part of the city. And there are some race freaks. But mostly BMW is a very common company car.
It’s funny, because a boy I used to work with in a major UK city centre with lots of traffic congestion used to say “go for the gap in front of the ones with a nice car, they’ll stop”.
In the same vein, never let them out of a junction out of politeness. They have enough privilege in their life, they can wait.
Banged up Corsa? Out you come, you’ve places to go.
Boring Ford Mondeo? Sure, I’ll be nice.
Land Rover Evoque Sport? Get fucked, I’ve got right of way.
Well, RR is now BMW, so that tracks. Bentley’s are just an overpriced VW, so just another peasant.
oh yes, surely that idea helps them compete with Chinese cars, this is what they are going to add value to and justify their price
It lowers the upfront cost which is what millions of financially illiterate people think of first. $299 biweekly for 96 months! That’s $20 cheaper than XYZ
Never you mind how much extra it costs for radio or heated seats or the horsepower on the sticker.
$600 a month for 8 years. For a car. Plus a $99 subscription on top.
JFC
I’m with this guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPjNFp0diWE
Insane economics.
It won’t work for so many millions when Chinese cars are skyrocketing, competing on price with them is crazy. Combustion engines require advanced engineering, but electric ones are absolutely basic, we must look for another element that differentiates these brands, I would pay more for good open source and auditable privacy software that I know is not going to leave me stranded at the first opportunity.
The problem is that not enough people care about privacy, but it’s a valid approach. Just need to market it.
One of the challenges I think are the things you can’t notice until you live with a car. How much space does the seat heater actually heat? My old BMW heated quite far up the backrest while Japanese and Korean cars barely warm the lumbar area (and cycle on/off leaving you hot/cold respectively).
How good is the traction control? I have driven GM products shipped on this side of 2020 that only do torque limiting and the abs doesn’t seem to do pay any attention to the rear wheels. The system is very similar to 1980s functionality. Compared to a 2000s smart car, it’s downright dangerous. Does the HVAC work? I’ve had a Subaru (2014) that couldn’t heat or couldn’t cool the car, without having the fans on above normal speaking level (in fact it couldn’t cool the car at 25°C without recirculate on); my BMW on the other hand moderated heat output, heated seats, and heated mirrors based on the outdoor temperature; it was exceedingly comfortable. I never needed to adjust the climate controls.The cheaper cars have the “features” but the implementation is crappy. It costs money to finesse.
The problem is that most people (as with privacy) don’t notice this. They may note the absence of the small luxuries if they change cars, but it’s difficult to market it, difficult to convince people to spend more on it, and difficult to include in press reviews without being a huge nerd.
If it’s already built into the car the car won’t be any less expensive just because the features is locked behind a subscription.
Even if you don’t buy the subscription, you already payed for the feature since they already built it into your car. They didn’t do that for free and hope that you pay for it later.It’s a lot cheaper for OEMs to just manufacture one SKU (a car with all the hardware) than to have a bunch of different options. Now, wether or not they pass those savings to the consumer, I have my doubts
They didn’t do that for free and hope that you pay for it later.
That is, in fact, the business model.
Cars already are wired for many features or have software gates on them. For decades now, they’ll run the wire for a rain sensor but not include the sensor, because it’s more expensive to have two parts for the harness than to not hook it up. Or they’ll include the full hardware requirements for GPS but it’s gated in software. You can go to the dealer, pay $1000 and get navigation turned on.
And i will never commit to BMW.
That is a hill to die on. I wish you the luck that is deserved.
- to bmw, not oc
*Hackerman entered the chat
fuck the subscription model. I want to own my shit!
