Everything seems to be a subscription now. Things that you used to pay for once, like video games, apps on your computer, even food, seems to be attached to some sort of subscription. It can be overwhelming, and even if the initial price of a subscription seems to be an easier pill to swallow, the long-term costs add up. BMW, and other manufacturers, came under fire for putting subscription fees on features that the cars were built with, but couldn’t be accessed unless an extra fee was paid. And I mean features that should’ve already been available, like heated seats.
Now, that subscription is gone, probably because you don’t need to subscribe to Kia to get the seats in your Carnival heated, but others remain. Motor1 points out that there are still options to activate items that a car comes equipped with, like remote start and M Adaptive Suspension. In those cases, the car has the hardware for those systems, but it doesn’t have the software, and that’s what BMW is charging for. You can pay for them monthly or in one shot.
Now, there are also subscription options that make sense, and are in line with other charges throughout the tech world. As a BMW spokesperson told Drive, features like advanced driver assist systems incur ongoing data costs for BMW when they’re used, so it makes sense that a charge be added to them.
If you use it, we have to pay for it. It’s not everything important [to every customer], but the technology is important [to have in all vehicles], and we still believe in the option offer structure that you do not have to decide from the start if you want this ADAS [safety] system.
There are a lot of barriers for people who think they never need it, but they can decide even in a special case—for example, for the first time in a real traffic jam, they say, ‘Oh, maybe I should have bought it two years ago.’ And then they can, you know, add it online.’
It also allows flexibility, because you might not need ADAS or a similar feature when you buy a car, depending on how you’re using it. But if you decide down the line to add it, the option is there, and you didn’t have to spend more up-front. Likewise, if you sell the car, the next buyer can decide some of those features that they want. That all makes sense to me. The standard really should be that subscriptions make sense for software features that require data usage, not unlocking features the car’s hardware is already equipped with. It’s that simple.
This post has been updated to clarify information on why certain items have a subscription or download option.
