Totally fair. I have no allegiance to BMW, just relaying the experience with my car. I bought it 2 years old and the original owner purchased about every possible option for it, so my experience is probably different than most. I also haven’t had to pay to use the app, but again that could’ve been something the original owner outright bought.

I hadn’t heard about the HEPA/ionization thing. That’s super weird! It must depend on the model of car, since I don’t believe mine has it. If they are building that hardware in and not using it, it must cost them a fortune.

Overall, I’ve been super happy with the car, and the app lets me remote start or turn on heating or cooling. It also ties in with Home Assistant for automation and lets me do things like have it automatically heat or cool itself when it’s plugged in at work before lunch or lock itself when plugging in to charge at work so I don’t forget.

That said, BMW could totally remove or charge for access to the API used for Home Assistant and I’d be in the same boat as the Tesla folks. Here’s to hoping they don’t! 🤞