Personally not a option I would want or choose, had heated seats on ( in?) a couple of cars in the past, not sure we ever used them? The option I would like is built in dash cams but wouldn't want to pay £15 a month for them...

Clever move by BMW regarding stock inventory. Cut down massively on build variants by making everything with what would be options as ‘standard’ then only enable features if a customer wants to pay for them. I haven’t seen any T&C’s for this, but I wonder if you could have a heated steering wheel, for example, only when it’s most appreciated, maybe November to March?

I can see software hackers happy with this as people can buy the base budget model and they can hack it for a one off fee to get all the goodies opened up for the owner.

It's the Microsoft syndrome - we used to be able to buy Office outright - now subscription only.

It is entirely plausible this is the tip of the iceberg - sat nav updates, heated seats - in the future possibly ICE upgrade, climate control vs aircon, security settings. In fact, almost every setting currently done on screen could be a part of a package.

Charging (say) £40 per month (high end smart phone level??) to have all options enabled would generate £480pa. Over the first 10 years of vehicle life the car company would make more from options subscriptions than selling the car in the first place.

How about a £1000 a month subscription to turn off a pre-installed radar ystem that keeps a Beemer at least the minimum highway code distance from the back of the car in front.

How about a £1000 a month subscription to turn off a pre-installed radar ystem that keeps a Beemer at least the minimum highway code distance from the back of the car in front.

No word on options for monthly subscriptions for those orange flashy things at each corner then? (I'll get my coat...)

Spot on!

Edited by Crickleymal on 15/07/2022 at 22:32

A quick Google search reveals at least half a dozen third party recoding specialists, who advertise a speciality in BMWs. I think BMWs new business model might need a rethink or the security really beefing up.

That means all the add-on options have to be reliable, otherwise, they would have to repair them?

There was an American lawyer who specialises in the motor industry doing a piece on this.

He said it appears to be UK only at the moment (we're fools if we accept it).

He reasoned that if a part failed then they wouldn't fix it, they would just stop the subscription, unless the subscription made it profitable for them to fix (i.e. they were unlikely to swap out a £1k seat for a £15 a month subscription).