I think they are very mistaken about the options requiring a subscription and their price. Most of the options you could get a subscription for also are available as a one time purchase… the same way they were in the past. Heating and air conditioning aren’t among those options, they come standard in every car.
BMW did drop the subscription for heated seats after backlash. That one was stupid. The other options I’m a little torn on. There are costs associated with developing the software used for most of the options like driving assistance. I have no problem paying for that development, and the subscription lets me try it for a month to see if it’s worth it. As long as there is the ability to outright buy the option instead of locking into a perpetual subscription I’m chill with it. I also hope that once unlocked, the option is still available when resold. This part I’m not so sure about, but mine seemed to maintain the options purchased by the original owner.
I only had the chance to peek and after reading your comment, it sounds very plausible that general heating is a basic function. I’m sure i saw the seat-heating, in the lowest price subscription though. It must have been before they dropped the subscription for it. The paid air conditioning included air purifing with hepa and carbon filters and some iirc Plasmacluster Ion technology.
I should have been a little more specific …
Even by not subscribing to the paid subscriptions he said he had to subscribe to the basic subscription, which enables the app.
It looked like they will also drop a random paid feature into the basic for a limited time, every few weeks another feature, so people get to test it. That’s what the ad in the app suggested.
I didn’t think about the one time purchase to be honest. I assume it to be featured in a submenu, to make it less prominent than the subscription, in order to get a bigger number of subscribers.
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! 🤞
I think they are very mistaken about the options requiring a subscription and their price. Most of the options you could get a subscription for also are available as a one time purchase… the same way they were in the past. Heating and air conditioning aren’t among those options, they come standard in every car.
BMW did drop the subscription for heated seats after backlash. That one was stupid. The other options I’m a little torn on. There are costs associated with developing the software used for most of the options like driving assistance. I have no problem paying for that development, and the subscription lets me try it for a month to see if it’s worth it. As long as there is the ability to outright buy the option instead of locking into a perpetual subscription I’m chill with it. I also hope that once unlocked, the option is still available when resold. This part I’m not so sure about, but mine seemed to maintain the options purchased by the original owner.
It’s not a super recent article, but a list of options and pricing is available at the bottom of this page: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/bmw-quietly-launches-in-car-subscriptions-in-u-s/
I only had the chance to peek and after reading your comment, it sounds very plausible that general heating is a basic function. I’m sure i saw the seat-heating, in the lowest price subscription though. It must have been before they dropped the subscription for it. The paid air conditioning included air purifing with hepa and carbon filters and some iirc Plasmacluster Ion technology.
I should have been a little more specific …
Even by not subscribing to the paid subscriptions he said he had to subscribe to the basic subscription, which enables the app.
It looked like they will also drop a random paid feature into the basic for a limited time, every few weeks another feature, so people get to test it. That’s what the ad in the app suggested.
I didn’t think about the one time purchase to be honest. I assume it to be featured in a submenu, to make it less prominent than the subscription, in order to get a bigger number of subscribers.
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! 🤞