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Forum Index : Other Stuff : on the subject of electrically heated seats...
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CaptainBoing Guru  Joined: 07/09/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2075 |
https://nypost.com/2022/07/12/bmw-owners-outraged-over-18-a-month-charge-to-use-heated-seats/?fs=e&s=cl |
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TassyJim Guru Joined: 07/08/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 6097 |
That would upset my wife. She uses the seat heater in our MG for about 3 minutes on a cold morning and loves it but not likely to pay for the privileged. She thinks it enough to put up with me moaning about wasting power. Jim VK7JH MMedit  MMBasic Help |
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| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
Sounds like something for lawyers to sort out. If the heated seats are installed in the car when you buy it , surely you own them and have a right to use them. They may as well say, "Oh would you like us to enable the steering wheel, that will be another charge sir" Although I have never seen the need for heated seats myself, especially in Australia. We get frost, ice and snow where I live and it has never felt cold enough to want to have a heated backside. Then I do ride a motorcycle too, and it has heated handgrips. It is nice to be able to use the controls, so having hands that work is a bonus. Pete |
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| johnmc Senior Member  Joined: 21/01/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 282 |
Good Day all The old proverb,a fool and his money is soon parted! Cheers john johnmc |
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Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9305 |
They just about do. That article says they charge a monthly fee of $12 for the steering-wheel heating feature also. EVERYTHING is moving to the subscription model, and it would seem this is no different - although somewhat surprising to me, that they would try this move, knowing that many BMW drivers would be outraged and would boycott their cars because of it, so it could ultimately end up hurting them. I much prefer my old 70's British Leyland cars - none of this rubbish to worry about. Everything that's in the car, goes with the car. I wonder if BMW plan to have a subscription for use of the seatbelts in their new model. Every time you do up the buckle, they thwack you ten bucks..... Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
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wiseguy Guru Joined: 21/06/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1156 |
I sent the link to a friend, he replied with the following info; "VW announced a similar plan. They build a car with all the things built in too (heated seat, sportier engine management, fancy radio etc) ready to go. Then you pay for the unlock codes for the bits you want to work. So, they build a "Golf R", you roll up and just want a "Golf GL", no problems, they don't turn on the Golf R bits. So you get 110KW instead of 225KW BMW was doing this, but they are all turned off when you sell the car and the new owner has to pay again for the bit he wants." I had said to him as a joke "Great business model, we will get rich!! We simply extend the idea to brakes, steering, aircond, sound system, electric windows - the list goes on" I thought, what is the world coming to, but then I realised, perhaps I was actually also guilty of doing something rather similar. I released an upgraded design of 2 power supplies that were 150W and 200W. Initially it was 2 similar designs, but when I transferred the design to surface mount I did the 200W unit first and then realised that I would have to find inferior parts for the 150W unit. So I made just the 200W model and used software to throttle the output to 150W. I had reduced my inventory and lowered production costs due to larger quantities. It seemed fair to me that if a customer wanted a 150W unit I was giving him a unit well capable of an effortless 150W and that was all he wanted to pay. But at least I didnt sell a 150W and then make them pay for an ongoing subscription to get an extra 50W - my bad ?  I must admit I had adopted the business model like Intel, who used to sell a computer brain chip with a built in co-processor, then they simply crippled the c-processor if you didn't want to pay for the co-processor version. I also had first hand experience that Atmel were producing 3 memory versions of a serial boot loader IC - I think from memory they were 16K/32K & 64K versions that were all the same die and all units were actually the larger memory (64K?) but had separate prices (and part numbers) for the 3 versions - and all functioned as the 64K unit - I have a voice recording of their admission of this that I could probably still find. Edited 2022-07-16 18:33 by wiseguy If at first you dont succeed, I suggest you avoid sky diving.... Cheers Mike |
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Murphy's friend Guru Joined: 04/10/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 648 |
All this seems to me they have just created a new challenge for the hackers  . |
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phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2135 |
This may be new for cars but makers of high end electronic test gear have been doing it for decades. Multimeters, oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers and logic analyzers have all been available with reduced features for a lower price. If you want those features later you pay for the code to unlock them. To stop you sharing the code it is unique to each serial number. |
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| wiseguy Guru Joined: 21/06/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1156 |
You're quite right Phil! I had forgotten an argument I had with a sales rep about 10 years ago when Agilent released their entry level high end CROs. He said that you could buy a software patch to increase the bandwith from 50MHz to 100MHz. And I corrected him that it didn't increase the bandwidth it just "released" the bandwidth as it was already inherent. If at first you dont succeed, I suggest you avoid sky diving.... Cheers Mike |
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| Godoh Guru Joined: 26/09/2020 Location: AustraliaPosts: 458 |
I guess that clever folk could just rewire the seat heaters to a switch and run them that way. Otherwise employ a hacker to unlock the features that they want and disconnect the car from the internet. I would not buy a car that had those features anyway. I am guessing that if the ploy of charging for what exists in a vehicle or machine becomes common, then older cars and devices will soar in value. Pete |
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