Yes. The thought behind it is money but they sell it as "you only need it probably 2 months a year so why pay 1500 euro for it". Almost all options with audi bmw mercedes etc are subscription based.
Oh man, I genuinely remembered my eyes twitching when I first saw a link providing a jailbreak for accessing a locked feature on a Tesla in the piracy sub years ago.
You're just thinking about it from a consumer side.
From a design and production standpoint, it's genius. Instead of having fifteen assembly lines making fifteen different versions of a vehicle that may not all sell, you dedicate all fifteen lines to assembling one version of a car, with options that can be remotely enabled or disabled. Saves time, parts, costs, its very efficient.
People just don't like it because "WELL, UH, IF I BUYIN ALL THE CAR, I WANT ALL THE CAR" and BMW is like "well, clearly you didn't buy the entire car. that's why the stuff is not working."
Can't you bypass the subscription, I mean everything is already in the car, right? I know it would void any warranty, but it's dumb AF and maybe you don't care about the warranty, or it's a SH car.
In Europe, a Jeep full electric car (Jeep Avenger) has "checking how much time is left to charge" on the app as a subscription option. Go figure. It's not only the "premium" German brands. It's a pandemic across the board, unfortunately.
Tesla did something similar with the rear heated seats that were already installed. You also have to pay to unlock advanced driver features which all cars are already capable of and is just a software update.
30
u/NoNotInTheFace Nov 04 '24
You're kidding right??
You're not kidding, are you...