No, BMW is not making heated seats a subscription for US cars

If there is a subject assured to get rage clicks, it is the one about BMW making a few of its automobile choices obtainable as a subscription reasonably than a one-time buy. That story is doing the rounds again today after information that the Bavarian automaker is at it once more.

“BMW begins promoting heated seat subscriptions for $18 a month” declares one headline; “BMW Makes Heated Seats an $18/Month Subscription Service—Once more” reads one other. Nonetheless, you’d must learn previous the headlines and nicely into the our bodies of the articles to search out out that, truly, the automaker has no public plans to convey this subscription mannequin right here to the US market and that it is occurring in South Korea.

Not that it hasn’t tried such a factor prior to now. In 2019, in the event you wished Apple CarPlay as an non-compulsory additional, you needed to subscribe to it for $80 a yr, or $300 for 20 years. However the response by US shoppers to this transfer was overwhelmingly adverse, and, confronted with resistance in its second-biggest market, the automaker relented and even made CarPlay customary throughout most of its vary later that yr.

In 2020, it revealed that it nonetheless had designs on this area, promoting automobiles with software-locked options like adaptive cruise management, excessive beam help, and even heated seats. For instance, a British BMW purchaser can select to pay $888 (750 kilos) to purchase Driving Assistant Plus (which mixes adaptive cruise and lane maintaining) outright.

However because the {hardware} is fitted to each automobile, if a purchaser selected to not tick that field at buy, they will strive it out as a three-month trial totally free after which select to both purchase it outright or simply for one month ($42/35 kilos), one yr ($415/350 kilos), or three years ($652/550 kilos). (Clearly the sensible transfer is to purchase the limitless possibility.) BMW has additionally mentioned it is a manner for the second proprietor of a automobile to learn from options that the unique proprietor selected to not buy.

We’re not followers of this microtransaction mannequin of automobile choices, whether or not it is for heated seats or a driver comfort function of questionable security. It is extremely probably {that a} automobile might be on the street and operational lengthy after the server that should authenticate the acquisition has been decommissioned, for one factor. So let’s be grateful that BMW North America is not subscribing to this specific enterprise mannequin. But.