[discopicante]

I am wondering how many commenters actually read the (clickbait) article; BMW offers the option to purchase the feature permanently. The subscription is optional.

In any case, I see customer value in the optionality for this specific case. Perhaps the biggest reason for not purchasing heated seats is that customers have never used them in the past. Perhaps customers would otherwise not want to commit up-front for a feature they think they don't need or will only use 3-5 months out of the year.

[invalidusernam3]

The fact that the hardware needed for the heated seats is already there and you're paying to turn it on is the weird part. For BMW, the cost of the heated seats must be very low if they're prepared to install them in all cars without knowing if the consumer will pay for the them or now.

It's like buying a new laptop and paying to unlock additional RAM that is already installed, just not available. It would make me feel like the cost to the manufacturer is so low if they're prepared to risk it, that me paying for it after the fact feels like I'm getting ripped off (or that I've already actually payed for it in the original cost)

[laumars]

I don't disagree with your point but it's worth noting that this practice does actually happen in IT as well. For example some software licenses are tied to physical hardware (that was common with servers back in the day) so you'd often have to hardware disabled at the software level. AMD also sold a bunch of functioning 4 and 8 core CPUs with cores disabled when their 3 and 6 core CPUs were selling faster than AMD could meet demands. Albeit in that latter case it wasn't a subscription service to have them enabled. In fact with computing hardware, it's really common for the same hardware features to be supported across a range of models but only have specific features enabled in software (eg with graphics cards).

[discopicante]

Maybe that's the point – more consistency in the manufacturing line might actually reduce costs for BMW and/or allow them to ship more vehicles faster.

Perhaps the majority cost for the option is not for the equipment but for the labor involved in installing it.

[kevin_thibedeau]

IBM does this with their mainframes.

[vr46]

That’s not the only perspective. Suppose everybody started building devices and vehicles packed with hardware that the user might never access or use? What happens to the device when it’s decommissioned? Is the breaker’s yard allowed to strip and part out the subscription-only hardware? Why should a thousand customers burn fuel pointlessly to haul round features they don’t use? Who owns the actual hardware in the event of not-subscribing? Suppose the unwanted hardware causes failures or interference elsewhere?

It’s one thing to toggle feature flags, but I doubt the seats are heated by overclocking an Intel i9 on bootup.

[kumarvvr]

If the option can be enabled in the future, doesn't that mean the car is having the hardware in the seats? (Heating coils, or what have you).

Then, wouldn't that mean the customer is already paying for the hardware (cost of the car itself), and everything else is just greed?

[blabberwocky]

I think the distinction is semantic. The customer is paying for a feature set and usable spec which he receives. It’s not as if the customer pays some price expecting to use the heated seats and doesn’t get to do so.

There’s an argument that this unnecessarily reduces everyone’s fuel efficiency due to the greater weight of the hardware, etc., but again this is more or less already captured in the advertised spec.

[rkachowski]

In addition to the cost of the energy required to actually heat the seats.

[headsoup]

This seems to imply that there would be some significant cost to BMW for implementing it, which is clearly not the case if it can be enabled on subscription.

Otherwise just make headlights an optional subscription too because they're only used occasionally...

[praptak]

Any physical device that you sold me I can use whenever and however I want. Offering this as a paid option is not enough.

[dncornholio]

> In any case, I see customer value

It costs BMW nothing to enable the heater. The heater is in your car and you cannot use it. Where is the added value for the customer exactly? If I don't want to use, you just don't turn it on. There is exactly 0 value for the customer here, and all the value to BMW.

[frereubu]

Fair point. But my concern about the "permanent" purchase would still be similar to "buying" a move on Amazon Prime. There's presumably still a mechanism for this to be rescinded somehow, whether through technical error, sunsetting the API that's used etc.

[regularfry]

If you think about how much functionality on a modern car depends on the legislative region it's sold in (which turns out to be quite a lot), the same is true for an awful lot of functionality in a modern car. Flip the wrong bit and you're not road-legal.