Wow don't BMW drivers get ripped off :-)

Mr Bump said:
www.bbc.co.uk

BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK

The company says the £15 per month payment allows UK drivers to "experiment" with features.
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk
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Unbelievable!

BMW cars have always been more costly, so they are including hardware on their cars on the basis of recovering the manufacturing costs by subscription. That is so crass and way outside the traditional method of manufacturing motor vehicles.

IMO simply bizarre :thinking:
 
Box Brownie said:
Unbelievable!

BMW cars have always been more costly, so they are including hardware on their cars on the basis of recovering the manufacturing costs by subscription. That is so crass and way outside the traditional method of manufacturing motor vehicles.

IMO simply bizarre :thinking:
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yup its actually saying your customers are stupid :)
 
Mr Bump said:
yup its actually saying your customers are stupid :)
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It just occurred to me that this puts those cars into the category of the 'Internet of everything' and is presumably reliant on 5G connectivity.

What next......you have not renewed your MoT or Tax........they send a signal that puts the car into 'limp mode' with a warning on the instrument panel saying they have been reported to the VOSA. :sneaky::cautious::LOL:
 
Are they saying if you own a BMW with heated front seats that they can turn them off?

Or is this just new cars?
I never saw the option to turn on the indicators though :thinking:

woof woof said:
You will own nothing and you will be happy
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I own my own house. I own my car.
I'm happy enough.
 
The devil is in the detail. If you buy the car with heated seats then you have paid for that option and it somes enabled. What it seems to say is that if you dont order the car with heated seats the hardware and functionality is there but they have a software block preventing it being used. You can then pay them the lump sum - im guessign more than if ordered as new or if you are the second owner. you can activate it. Seems reasonable to me
 
AgentOrange76 said:
The devil is in the detail. If you buy the car with heated seats then you have paid for that option and it somes enabled. What it seems to say is that if you dont order the car with heated seats the hardware and functionality is there but they have a software block preventing it being used. You can then pay them the lump sum - im guessign more than if ordered as new or if you are the second owner. you can activate it. Seems reasonable to me
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haha really? so its all there its all ready to go but disabled in software?
bet you own a BMW?
 
It's a model that's been in common use for high end computing since forever, and why not? You want something the seller has to sell, you pay for it. If it is already fitted and simply needs a key to unlock, so much the better. With cars, nobody seems to have a problem with the profit bump (see what I did there?) tacit in all "feature" sales. Oh, you mean you want PAINT on your car, NICE PAINT? that'll be best part of a thousand quid extra, kerching!! Some handy little geegaws? We'll add a few together to make a flash sounding package, another 10% of the sale price of your car, please, kerching!!
 
What BMW seem to be doing is to give their customers three options on how to configure their cars.

  1. To have the heated seats disabled.
  2. To have the heated seats permanently enabled by paying a one-off fee of £200.
  3. To activate the heated seats for £15 per month after the car has been purchased.

Option three gives any subsequent owners the ability to try out different features of the car that were not enabled at the time of the original purchase. So for £15 you can turn the heated seats on for a month and if you don’t like them cancel your subscription.
 
AgentOrange76 said:
The devil is in the detail. If you buy the car with heated seats then you have paid for that option and it somes enabled. What it seems to say is that if you dont order the car with heated seats the hardware and functionality is there but they have a software block preventing it being used. You can then pay them the lump sum - im guessign more than if ordered as new or if you are the second owner. you can activate it. Seems reasonable to me
Click to expand...

It's actually quite clever, given the current way that VED (or whatever it's called this week!) is calculated. Buying a fully loaded, everything enabled car may put it well over the (?) 40 grand threshold for the higher tax rates but supply it without the extras enabled might keep it under. Once the car is home, with the list price at sub 40k, spend the extra few grand on the upgrades/enabling but keep the lower tax rating.

And no, I don't own a BMW.
 
Nod said:
It's actually quite clever, given the current way that VED (or whatever it's called this week!) is calculated. Buying a fully loaded, everything enabled car may put it well over the (?) 40 grand threshold for the higher tax rates but supply it without the extras enabled might keep it under. Once the car is home, with the list price at sub 40k, spend the extra few grand on the upgrades/enabling but keep the lower tax rating.

And no, I don't own a BMW.
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Yes. It's also presumably cheaper to manufacture them all with heated seats (fewer spare parts, better inventory control) and configure them at point of sale in software. As reported, this sounds ridiculous but it's only like Tesla - the range of their vehicles is actually limited by software not hardware.
During hurricanes, fires and other natural disasters, General Motors (GM) has used its OnStar network to help guide people to evacuation routes and emergency service, even making service available during the crisis to those who weren't paying for it. Tesla reportedly used its cars' network to unlock additional battery range during recent hurricanes on the US east coast,
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L320Rio said:
What BMW seem to be doing is to give their customers three options on how to configure their cars.

  1. To have the heated seats disabled.
  2. To have the heated seats permanently enabled by paying a one-off fee of £200.
  3. To activate the heated seats for £15 per month after the car has been purchased.

Option three gives any subsequent owners the ability to try out different features of the car that were not enabled at the time of the original purchase. So for £15 you can turn the heated seats on for a month and if you don’t like them cancel your subscription.
Click to expand...


But.....surely all the things fitted in to the car have been calculated in the sale price and the user has paid for all those parts.
I don't see BMW knocking the price down because the items are disabled do you?

I can appreciate pure software items such as Sat Nav , car audio functions etc but those heating elements are in the seats from the get go.

my take on it is more like BMW cannot be bothered to make different seats and part numbers , with and without heating elements so they fit the ones with to all the cars and hope to charge extra for them later.
 
Wow. I expected another stealership expenses rant and was going to say they all do it from Hyundai to Bentley these days, but that is truly on a different page and very nasty. Only Tesla did these sort of things with their £10k software updates, sometimes unannounced. Expect everyone else to follow suit unless this gets a major backlash. There is no point buying new cars at these terms. Maybe some chinese model but they also learn to take top dollar. Volvo is 100% Chinese owned and they are some of the most expensive.
 
I have to say that this makes my car all the more good value - Mazda 6 Tourer GT Sport Nav+. List price is circa £35k I think, mine was ex-demo so £28k with 5 months/6k miles on the clock, includes HUD, Adaptive Cruise Control, Adaptive Headlights, All round cameras, Heated seats and steering wheel, cooling seat (yes, a cooling fan in the seats), and more besides. Downside? I thought the SD card for the SatNav had become faulty because it wouldn't apply a map update using my Windows laptop. Replacement SD card - £452!!! Thankfully it did update ok on my iMac.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Wow. I expected another stealership expenses rant and was going to say they all do it from Hyundai to Bentley these days, but that is truly on a different page and very nasty. Only Tesla did these sort of things with their £10k software updates, sometimes unannounced. Expect everyone else to follow suit unless this gets a major backlash. There is no point buying new cars at these terms. Maybe some chinese model but they also learn to take top dollar. Volvo is 100% Chinese owned and they are some of the most expensive.
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With the rolling switch to EV and the "Internet of things" I surmise all vehicles will be eventually be 'connected'........the future is bright, eh!
 
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Cobra said:
Are they saying if you own a BMW with heated front seats that they can turn them off?

Or is this just new cars?
I never saw the option to turn on the indicators though :thinking:


I own my own house. I own my car.
I'm happy enough.
Click to expand...

Give our future rulers time and you won't even own the heating elements in the potentially heated seats in your car, you'll rent them.

Only kidding and the following could never happen...

Your ICE car will be legislated off the road and electric will be the only choice. You'll be able to charge your electric car via a smart charger only and only if you're deemed worthy with enough social credit points and if not you and your car and your bank account may be frozen.
 
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woof woof said:
Give our future rulers time and you won't even own the heating elements in the potentially heated seats in your car, you'll rent them.

Only kidding and the following could never happen...

Your ICE car will be legislated off the road and electric will be the only choice. You'll be able to charge your electric car via a smart charger only and only if you're deemed worthy with enough with enough social credit points and if not you and your car and your bank account may be frozen.
Click to expand...
With the Chinese ID card and facial recognition don't they already exercise control over their citizens movements at times of crisis e.g. zero COVID controls?
 
It's all to do with WLTP rules. Car manufacturers used to add physical equipment on the production-line to order either as a custom customer order or as a specific model specification. This meant that depending on the model and specification of car its weight varied considerably but it didn't matter as manufacturers were able too quote fuel consumption figures based on a "typical" model

WLTP changed all that and it means that manufacturers would have to test fuel consumption for every single variable of car they produce, which would not only be incredibly time consuming and impracticable but also expensive.

The solution?

Build cars with all the kit built in already, but make it so that it's only accessible/functional if you either pay up-front or pay a subscription. It's not only BMW who are doing this
 
woof woof said:
Give our future rulers time and you won't even own the heating elements in the potentially heated seats in your car, you'll rent them.

Only kidding and the following could never happen...

Your ICE car will be legislated off the road and electric will be the only choice. You'll be able to charge your electric car via a smart charger only and only if you're deemed worthy with enough social credit points and if not you and your car and your bank account may be frozen.
Click to expand...
Its all part of the great reset where the most wealthy control the rest of the population,
(y)
 
Box Brownie said:
With the Chinese ID card and facial recognition don't they already exercise control over their citizens movements at times of crisis e.g. zero COVID controls?
Click to expand...

Just watched a vid yesterday of unvaccinated residents being marched off under armed guard for vaccination and not forgetting Canada freezing the bank accounts of people who took food to demonstrators.
 
Cobra said:
Its all part of the great reset where the most wealthy control the rest of the population,
(y)
Click to expand...

I've always believed in questioning authority but these days many people would willingly vote for even the wildest conspiracy theorists version of the Great Reset and eagerly inform on their friends and family for all those fantastic prizes.

See the current trial of Covid passports morphed into digital ID at Air Canada and what's going on in Europe with Dutch and other farmers and the WEF standing by to buy up land from bankrupt farmers and Bill gates doing the same in the USA. I do believe that this is the future many people actually want as long as they get free broadband and a good UBI.
 
I wonder if BMW are thinking, "Wish we hadn't decided to introduce the heated seat option in the UK this month"

Dave
 
woof woof said:
Give our future rulers time and you won't even own the heating elements in the potentially heated seats in your car, you'll rent them.

Only kidding and the following could never happen...

Your ICE car will be legislated off the road and electric will be the only choice. You'll be able to charge your electric car via a smart charger only and only if you're deemed worthy with enough social credit points and if not you and your car and your bank account may be frozen.
Click to expand...

Which will be further facilitated by the change to digital currency 'demanded' by the sheeple ...
 
Nothing new here. Back in the day, if you bought a bottom of the range IBM mainframe computer and decided later you would like an expensive upgrade, IBM would send a technician who would open the case of the CPU and flip a switch.
 
£350 for heated seats is similar cost to many other marques. And as someone mentioned above you can price the car below £40k to reduce road tax and the activate the seats (amongst other things as there are other options). There is a caveat though “The availability of this feature depends on the hardware installed in your BMW”
 
john.margetts said:
Nothing new here. Back in the day, if you bought a bottom of the range IBM mainframe computer and decided later you would like an expensive upgrade, IBM would send a technician who would open the case of the CPU and flip a switch.
Click to expand...

on the AS400 stuff i used to work on years ago it was a licence code to open the CPU performance up.
 
Mr Bump said:
on the AS400 stuff i used to work on years ago it was a licence code to open the CPU performance up.
Click to expand...
It still is on the IBM Power systems ("P Series") - box is delivered with sockets full of CPU and you switch 'em on as you pay.

It's not a fantastic stretch to see that the economies of scale and simplicity of operation where you just have one seat (or steering wheel, or whatever) to install outweighs the saving of installing seats without where they aren't specified. The £5 or so the parts cost is very quickly saved. The thing people struggle to get their head around is that many of these "options" manufacturing cost is negligible, not the 3 or 4 hundred you get charged. Paint is the canonical one, the incremental cost of your metallic finish is minuscule compared to what you get charged. Every car since forever has had the same wiring loom for all the models, it's the same thing.
 
Ham said:
It still is on the IBM Power systems ("P Series") - box is delivered with sockets full of CPU and you switch 'em on as you pay.

It's not a fantastic stretch to see that the economies of scale and simplicity of operation where you just have one seat (or steering wheel, or whatever) to install outweighs the saving of installing seats without where they aren't specified. The £5 or so the parts cost is very quickly saved. The thing people struggle to get their head around is that many of these "options" manufacturing cost is negligible, not the 3 or 4 hundred you get charged. Paint is the canonical one, the incremental cost of your metallic finish is minuscule compared to what you get charged. Every car since forever has had the same wiring loom for all the models, it's the same thing.
Click to expand...


Not quite. Some VAG cars need to be specced with towing kits to have the correct wiring loom for attaching the trailer lighting socket.
 
This is really bizarre. Since the seat heating is already installed, you have already paid for it when you bought the vehicle. Now you have to pay extra to use it? That's just plain bogus.

But BMW has been doing this for a long time and the question is whether you can activate it yourself using a Bluetooth dongle and an app. My BMW is 11 years old, I bought it used last year and I was able to unlock and configure some things myself. For example, automatic headlights, cornering lights, automatic daytime running lights, etc.
 
lemo said:
This is really bizarre. Since the seat heating is already installed, you have already paid for it when you bought the vehicle. Now you have to pay extra to use it? That's just plain bogus.

But BMW has been doing this for a long time and the question is whether you can activate it yourself using a Bluetooth dongle and an app. My BMW is 11 years old, I bought it used last year and I was able to unlock and configure some things myself. For example, automatic headlights, cornering lights, automatic daytime running lights, etc.
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My Focus had the driver assist pack on it when i bought it , the fiesta doesnt. I still get the occasional message on the fiesta to say that the camera is obscured so that would suggest its installed but not operational. Both have a button that turns traction controll on and off but neither have traction control. It makes sense to manufacture one unit and fit it to all cars than make 2 or three different ones. That way they can make a batch of each colour car in advance of customers specing them and just bolt on the bits that are stand alone.
 
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Ham said:
The problem is, the price for anything is what the seller says it is, not what you think it should be.
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Yes, we pay for everything not the actual value, but what we are just willing to spend on it in pain.
 
woof woof said:
Give our future rulers time and you won't even own the heating elements in the potentially heated seats in your car, you'll rent them.

Only kidding and the following could never happen...

Your ICE car will be legislated off the road and electric will be the only choice. You'll be able to charge your electric car via a smart charger only and only if you're deemed worthy with enough social credit points and if not you and your car and your bank account may be frozen.
Click to expand...
a minor correction. The fuel for ICE car is already getting priced out from reach of most people. How much can you cope with £3/L? 4,5, 10?! Therefore they won't need to do much else and will enjoy their own classic gas guzzling cars.

woof woof said:
I do believe that this is the future many people actually want as long as they get free broadband and a good UBI.
Click to expand...

I fear you may be right on this point; and also that they will happily eat bugs as long as they are served with crispy batter, salt and vinegar and a good diabetes inducing dose of Coke, maybe even with some real coke (drugs are getting legalised in places like California). Maybe Gates is right and they need to fall off The Equation

Mountkeen said:
It's all to do with WLTP rules. Car manufacturers used to add physical equipment on the production-line to order either as a custom customer order or as a specific model specification. This meant that depending on the model and specification of car its weight varied considerably but it didn't matter as manufacturers were able too quote fuel consumption figures based on a "typical" model

WLTP changed all that and it means that manufacturers would have to test fuel consumption for every single variable of car they produce, which would not only be incredibly time consuming and impracticable but also expensive.

The solution?

Build cars with all the kit built in already, but make it so that it's only accessible/functional if you either pay up-front or pay a subscription. It's not only BMW who are doing this
Click to expand...

I don't mind them standardising the models to a smaller set, and including basic kit like heated seats in all models. In real life all buyers would be already subsidising all these accessories, while the manufacturers can milk them again twice for the privilege of turning it on. Remember if the option is not popular it simply won't be offered. Heated seats are like really really basic standard kit that's found in pretty much every Passat from 10 years ago.

If the kit is there what is in fact stopping you from hacking it with some old switch from scrappy bypassing that stupid modern trickery, and at the same time disable all the 'SMART' features.

I also wonder if they will offer option to make their new cars less hideous looking for some additional payment. Their latest designs are outstandingly repugnant.
 
Nothing that New..
My 2000 landrover discovery has the wiring loom fitted for all the options available from new, but a lot of it isn’t added. Some of it is added and needs turning on with a computer. Back in the day, only a dealer could do this and would charge a pretty hefty sum.Thankfully, now there are reasonably affordable options for people like me to buy a diagnostic device that can enable these functions on the car.

Heated seats, heated screen, cruise control, all computer locked options.
 
LongLensPhotography said:
If the kit is there what is in fact stopping you from hacking it with some old switch from scrappy bypassing that stupid modern trickery, and at the same time disable all the 'SMART' features.
Click to expand...
Nothing, provided you don't reverse engineer any of the copyright code in the ECU. If you install your own control system for the heated seats alongside the manufacturer's system then that's fine.
 
There's an interesting sense of outrage from people around the idea that you are being charged for something that isn't costing the manufacturer anything visible. Of course, all the R&D, manufacture and all that goes to getting that car on the road is ignored. It's all about context. I doubt that anyone here has a problem with professional photographers retaining the rights to their images and charging if people want to use them, although it doesn't cost them and the images are already there. But that's life.

Another, potentially more worrying, issue is manufacturer lock in, at least in this country. Currently consumers are protected against that by legislation that forced them to support third parties. For example, my German caravan tugger has online service record only. But, they are forced to open up the system to third party repair shops (who they charge a fee), who can then carry out manufacturer authorised service. (Thank the holy **** for that, or I'd be stuck with £700 oil change service bill). Trouble is, those protections all under EU legislation and now WEEV TAKIN BAK CONTROL !!1! there is a clear trend in favour of business and away from consumers (cf roaming charges on your phone) it isn't hard to see protections like that being taken away.
 
Am I bovered NO , Never had a car with seat or steering wheel heaters.
 
I imagine there will be a booming trade in Indy garages offering mods to bypass all the hardware and just add a switch to turn the elements on and off.

If it's software then it will be hacked
 
F1.2 said:
Am I bovered NO , Never had a car with seat or steering wheel heaters.
Click to expand...
Trust me you would like it in winter and you might like it even more in a convertible. Can you live without it? Yes absolutely
 
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