Quote:
Originally Posted by Coi
Personally I really don't like this direction for BMW and I would definitely not be purchasing a new one if they bring this pricing model in the US. BMW is supposed to be a luxury brand and charging owners for features already installed on their cars is beyond parsimonious. Not at all a premium ownership experience.
This really just seems like greed with no benefit to the customer. Having hardware for features fully installed on cars but blocked with software is wasteful. This subscription is simply just to have the features unblocked; if the hardware malfunctions off-warranty then the customer still has to pay for repairs as well as paying the subscription.
Putting safety features like auto high beams or adaptive cruise behind a subscription might even be dangerous. If a customer's subscription ends or they have an error with their payment they might not even immediately notice that these features are no longer available. Of course drivers should be aware that any safety feature could malfunction or stop working at any time, but manufacturers should not be going out of their way to increase the number of interruptions to the operation of these features.
There are also issues with subsequent owners, where BMW could say that unlimited subscriptions only apply to the owner that paid for it and don't stay with the car. If the car is bought from a dealership rather than a private sale the later owners would never even know if unlimited subscriptions had previously been on the car.
With electric vehicles on the horizon this gives manufactures even more options to limit basic functionality behind subscriptions like range or performance. Also if one manufacturer starts doing stuff like this it can cause a cascading effect through the industry. I would suggest that anyone with connections at BMW try to make sure they don't continue down this path.
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This is already happening with Tesla. Quite a few complaints certain features being turned off by the mothership when the car shows up on their radar as being sold to a new owner forcing the new owner to pay again for said feature.