Comment on BMW Is Giving Up on Heated Seat Subscriptions Because People Hated Them
Ton@lemmy.world 1 year ago
BMW really doesn’t understand this business model. They tried to pull this shit with CarPlay in 2018 as well. Which one could buy as an €300 option, which was rediculous by itself, but was later moved to a fucking subscription.
It also caused a huge uproar, largely forgotten by Covid now, but they also had to backtrack that. And now they’ve tried it again, also to backtrack again.
Fix your cars to be a better value prop than that fuckface’s or the Chinese cars. Then you’ll make tons of money. Not by nickel and diming your customers.
Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world 1 year ago
No, you’re not understanding.
They save money by only producing the luxury model. Then they disable the feature electronically.
But to prevent you from just jailbreaking the car, they need to have a system to monitor your status. So they need to be able to check and update software that you can’t control, etc etc.
It’s still greed, but it’s like greed with extra steps.
People were objecting to the subscription, but they should have been objective to the locked features.
They’ll never stop the shitification, it maximizes profit.
ammonium@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Why though, if it’s cheaper? Do you rather pay for features you don’t use or pay to remove features?
Cabrio@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If the features are in the car I have, I paid for them.
ammonium@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yes, and no. Imagine it costs $20/car to install seat heating in every car, but by making two assembly lines, one for with and one without it every car becomes $25 more expensive. Software disabling costs $1/car. In this scenario it would cost more to make a car without physical seat heating than one with. This is just an extreme example to show the problem, with other costs it can be more complicated, but the principle stands.
tryptaminev@feddit.de 1 year ago
everyone would use the features if available. It is more economic aka cheaper for bmw to just install the pricier heated seat in every car ibstead of adjusting to what the customer bought.
But instead of passing the economic gain to the customers, they arbitrarily lock it to maximize profit.
ammonium@lemmy.world 1 year ago
In a perfect market those things are the same, that’s the beauty of capitalism. By software disabling features they can lower prices for customers who don’t want them and asking higher prices of people who are willing to pay for it.
Obviously perfect markets don’t exist, but cars are a super competitive market.
tabular@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I want to own the car I just paid a lot of money for either way - that means all of the car.
I’d pay more for cars which are modular, like computers.
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Cars are built on assembly lines, unlike any modular computer