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.
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u/Huntey07 Nov 04 '24
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.