BMW introduces new heated seat subscription in UK

[TigerTedd]

3 hours ago, Rev said:

It's the way the entire car industry is moving, VW admitted a year ago they were looking at add on subscriptions to provide profits, not selling cars themselves. 

10 years time, you'll drive your electric car away from the dealership, and everything will be locked, from extra battery range to top speed, from basic to luxury.  

It'll all be there on the car, ready for the over the air update to unlock it.

It's already a thing on the car I currently own, I can access the store and download extras such as   Internet radio, Apple and Android Carplay, a tracker, mobile car keys to allow someone else keyless access, etc etc. I'm coming up to 3 years ownership, and it'll be interesting to see which things I currently get included in the purchase price become optional extras, like real time route planning. 

This could be beneficial tech, why pay for something you'd rarely use up front, if you can rent it as and when needed?  For example, most of my driving is low speed city driving, so do I really need 300+ bhp? 

Not really, a quarter of that would do the same job in 90% of circumstances, but say I was setting off on a long journey, or enjoying a track day, the option to only pay for the power when needed, rather than upfront, would be welcome.

Funny thing is, I’m finding I can live without a lot of mod cons. We paid a big extra for heated seats in our new car, cos our old car had them. But it’s an electric car. So now I’m hyper aware of the effect it’s having on the battery. When I’m really trying to conserve the battery I’ve turned the climate control off, turned the radio off, turned everything I can think of off. It was like driving in my first car again, which was pretty much a shell with an engine.

even if I’m not conserving the battery, if I’m just going round town, I’m thinking, do I really need to put it in sports mode? do I really need a warm bum? I’ve got the battery to spare, but I’m only going to have to charge it up again when I get home and pay for more electricity. Or even if it comes from the solar panels, it’s extra energy I’ll have to pay for somewhere down the line. 

it’d be quite nice to be able to get it on demand, if I ever decide to go crazy and let my hair down one sunny day on the country lanes.

But the more I drive it, the more I realise I don’t need all that s***. I just need to get from a to b, in a fairly comfortable chair. 

[Eddie]

6 hours ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Is this a Daily Mail thread?

Hope so. I haven't posted this in a long time...

[JoetheRam]

14 hours ago, TigerTedd said:

Cars aren’t that though. They’re a means to get from a to b. The irony is, what we see now as cars will become an expression of freedom. 

modes of transport will eventually become autonomous clones. No one will own a car. We’ll just have driverless taxis everywhere.

so what you will own will be the shell of a 1996 vw golf or similar, which you’ll do up, and paint it how you want, and you probably won’t go anywhere in it, they probably won’t sell the fuel, but it’ll look cool. And that will be your self expression. 

It's the year 2050. All journeys now start not with the turn of a key, nor even the push of a button. They start with a stroke of a finger across the screen of the new Iphone 75 (it's a flip phone of course because people miss the past). A stroke of the finger that summons the grey, driverless Uber to pick them up and deliver them to their destination at the arranged drop off time. Payment is taken immediately from the users social credit score. -5cr for choosing the Japanese model that allows you to sit in air-conned luxury leather seats, - 1cr for taking the slower, more austere British version. The Government say that an air-con version is being made available soon (even though you could swear they used to have air-con anyway), but that the charge will have to go up to - 3cr to pay for the upgrades.

The cars themselves have speakers that can play music that can be accessed by a subscription fee and has a library of 10,000 songs - there used to be more but it was decided there wasn't space on the Governments servers and only the top played 10,000 survive, there is a decibel limit of course. All cars have internal cameras (for public safety and to protect against vandalism you'll understand).

It's been 18 years since the last handbrake turn in a Sainsbury's car park was executed in a Vauxhall Nova by a 19 year old called Lee. He got 3 years jail. The Cannonball Run record has still not been surpassed since the Covid lockdown run. No one has broken down on the motorway on the way to the match and been picked up by fellow supporters who identified their fellow fan by a scarf tied around a wrist and taken to the match for 30 years. No teenager has smoked a tab with their mates or snogged a girl away from the eyes of their parents, or blasted their favourite music whilst driving at 90mph down the motorway on their way to a party for at least 15 years. No one can really be sure if that even happened. It's shown in the science fiction films they occasionally release on Netflix though.

[TigerTedd]

2 hours ago, JoetheRam said:

It's the year 2050. All journeys now start not with the turn of a key, nor even the push of a button. They start with a stroke of a finger across the screen of the new Iphone 75 (it's a flip phone of course because people miss the past). A stroke of the finger that summons the grey, driverless Uber to pick them up and deliver them to their destination at the arranged drop off time. Payment is taken immediately from the users social credit score. -5cr for choosing the Japanese model that allows you to sit in air-conned luxury leather seats, - 1cr for taking the slower, more austere British version. The Government say that an air-con version is being made available soon (even though you could swear they used to have air-con anyway), but that the charge will have to go up to - 3cr to pay for the upgrades.

The cars themselves have speakers that can play music that can be accessed by a subscription fee and has a library of 10,000 songs - there used to be more but it was decided there wasn't space on the Governments servers and only the top played 10,000 survive, there is a decibel limit of course. All cars have internal cameras (for public safety and to protect against vandalism you'll understand).

It's been 18 years since the last handbrake turn in a Sainsbury's car park was executed in a Vauxhall Nova by a 19 year old called Lee. He got 3 years jail. The Cannonball Run record has still not been surpassed since the Covid lockdown run. No one has broken down on the motorway on the way to the match and been picked up by fellow supporters who identified their fellow fan by a scarf tied around a wrist and taken to the match for 30 years. No teenager has smoked a tab with their mates or snogged a girl away from the eyes of their parents, or blasted their favourite music whilst driving at 90mph down the motorway on their way to a party for at least 15 years. No one can really be sure if that even happened. It's shown in the science fiction films they occasionally release on Netflix though.

Fair. Thus paints a pretty bleak picture. And it may well be accurate. But we e barely even Gad cars for 100 years. It’s not like it’s some tradition that’s lasted millennia that might die out. 

its 2022 and it’s been 10 years since anyone had to make a cup of tea in the time it takes itv to show 3 adverts. It’s been at least 15 years since anyone last garrotes themselves on the coiled telephone wire, or shouted at their sister to get off the phone so they could look at porn on the internet. 

the world turns, things change. 

[RadioactiveWaste]

I find the more things move to subsription based models, the more I hate subscription models.

Funny old world.

Still, buy and run cheap cars until they are no longer economical to repair, I should hopefully be insulated from subscription only bum warmers for a while yet.

[kash_a_ram_a_ding_dong]

Typical bmw who have realised that they can basically charge what they want, especially to dim witted UK buyers who can't look any further than the badge on their car or iphone.

I deliver cars part time now I've retired from my career and without a doubt the worst prepared cars to go out to customers are those from official bmw dealers....and the customers don't seem to care as long as they get their precious bmw roundel on the bonnet.

I was astonished what they get away with and what people are prepared to put up with just to have the "right" image.

[Rev]

My cars just turned 3 years old, and Mercedes want me to pay £99 for another 12 months of live travel guidance on the Sat Nav. 

Like I've never heard of Google.

[Mucker1884]

On 14/08/2022 at 22:59, Rev said:

My cars just turned 3 years old, and Mercedes want me to pay £99 for another 12 months of live travel guidance on the Sat Nav. 

Like I've never heard of Google.

Similar (but obviously cheaper) for my now 2 year old Ford Galaxy. 
2 year free trial from new (I purchased at 12 months old) ends mid-Sept, and they now want a subscription for live traffic. 
Looks like £3.49 per month.  I think that includes the remote start (From mobile app), but that may be extra? Not looked into it fully... a lot of duff info out there, and not spoken to anyone in person.
I've decided to leave it for now.  I'd like to think I'll manage without!

I'll use live traffic to get me to the South of France next week, then I'll either have fingers crossed on the way home, or use Google Maps on the mobile! (Or look into other apps, like Waze etc?)
When winter comes, I'll just dash out to warm the car up on the drive*, and nip back in to finish my coffee until the seats are warm enough! (Wuss!)

*At least I can lock this car when warming it up on the drive.  Couldn't even do that on my previous VW Sharan!   

[jono]

On 14/07/2022 at 16:38, PistoldPete said:

I never knew that heated steering wheels was a thing. Isn’t it cheaper to wear gloves? 

Those were the days .. An E type Jag, girls draped on Bonnets, checked flat caps and ….. string backed “driving gloves”

Halfords did excellent stick on retrofit heated rear window kits and don’t get me going on green sun strips for your windscreen.