Pay to Play, er, Pay to Drive?
BMW is heading down a very slippery road, with its new subscription-based heated seat model. This really burns my ass, see what I did there. Seriously, this is the start of a very slippery slope. Today it is subscribing for heated seats, tomorrow it is subscribing to use the radio, and then it is subscribing for air conditioning. From there we go with subscribing for cruise control, power windows, and better gas mileage and it won’t stop.
Imagine dropping $60K or more for a luxury automobile, you pay $900 a month for the car payment, then $35 to use the cruise control, $15 for heated seats, $20 for the rear window defrost, $33 for the air control and so on.
We already pay upwards of $220 a month in subscription fees, and most of that is for online services and applications (source). Imagine going out on a date, and things are going fairly well, and you and your date are in your $70K luxury sports car, and you go to turn on the radio, and a big STOP sign appears on the screen of your infotainment system. You joke it off and she said she is cold, you go to turn up the heat only to have another STOP sign appear on the screen. It seems that you forgot that you have to pay extra for heat above 69 degrees. So you try to out-think the car and you turn on the heated seats, and again another STOP sign, it seems that you forgot to pay your subscription services on your car and your date, well, she isn’t at all impressed.
Sources:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/
https://www.crresearch.com/