BMW to charge for using heated seats

[sapphireblack]

As an example of new charges, monthly or yearly it seems.!

https://www.visordown.com/news/general/ ... lt-feature

[StuBeeDoo]

I suppose this kind of thing was inevitable, really. From one perspective it's technology gone mad and corporations profiting from it. Although, if I were in the market for a new car, there are only limited options I would be bothered about. On heated seats, specifically, my F25 has got them and IIRC in over 4 years ownership I tried them once and haven't bothered since.

Does make the initial build easier (cheaper??.....) if all options are fitted - but not necessarily enabled - to every car and, I can see that it might be of some benefit to subsequent owners in that they can spec. their new purchase as if it were a brand new car.

Remains to be seen how long it will take software companies to develop a work-round.

[sapphireblack]

Maybe it is progress?

I own the last car I'll ever have. Fortunately its very well equipped and has everything I need, and some stuff I don't.

[X5Sport]

The interesting bit is that if you order something with the car then there’s no charge. This seems to be aimed at the second user market. My personal feeling is that this won’t stick. BMW tried it with CarPlay and had to back off once it was pointed out that Apple don’t charge for it.

Does this also mean that manufacturers will revert to building cars with everything in them (something BMW moved away from with wiring looms a number of years back - the E53 was wired for everything but not the E70 onwards)?

It just goes to show that modern cars are just computers on wheels. I definitely get that making just one version of the kit makes sense, and using software to control things, but I’m sceptical about this becoming more of a money making approach than of real use to customers. The biggest question will be how long will owners be able to request things? BMW have already stopped supporting newer phones on cars more than 10 years old - how much shorter could it get.

[lezmtaylor]

Yes I saw that in the Mail, should not be too long before it is 'Hacked' and someone will make a fortune.

Lez

[sapphireblack]

A workaround was inevitable . It seems for not many £s you can claim back your car

https://www.slashgear.com/942651/bmw-ow ... eats-back/

[X5Sport]

I’ve been reading some of the technical blurb for my awaited i4 M50 and noticed that there is a single module attached to what we would call the CIC or CCC on our generation iDrive (those with it) that is basically a master software unit that holds the code for the options. If you can get the FSC for that function then you can have it enabled as long as the requisite hardware is built on or can be added - power tailgates is one option being ‘deleted’ because of a chip shortages but that can be enabled by plugging the underside radar module in later.

The folks at B W Chiptune (members of this forum) could modify the engine map (although it had to be done off-car because of the encryption I think?) for owners of E70s and newer. The catch, albeit slight, was that if the car went back to a main dealer and got plugged into the BMW network you could lose the map because the remote servers could spot the changes and rewrite the original map back again.

I use the Carly app and module with the E71 and have found I can make programming changes - like TV-in-motion - with that. Seems to be safer than trying it with the original BMW coding software where an error in your code entry can brick the unit or worse the car!

[Wayfarer]

It should be easier to build one model with all the options added, so one loom, one set of parts and one build procedure, and then enable the options ordered by the customer, it should also great for the second hand market, to add options where the original purchaser didn’t want a specific option, also as well as the monthly or yearly charge there is a buy forever option for I suspect the same price as when the option was available to order from new. Hacking into the system could be an issue, but if BMW increase the security and encryption then it could make engine mods etc much more difficult if not impossible if they go as far as adding tamper proofing to the code, that could but the car into tamper mode and require a reset by a bmw garage connected and logged into to a Munich server!

[sapphireblack]

I thank heavens both my car and myself are low tech in 2022. I have all the features I need on my E71

[X5Sport]

I’ve just seen on another forum that the BMW iX (basically an all electric X5 - the good one can be yours for £100k+) can’t be coded as the car needs server side authentication and software signing. That functionality (at least for now) only comes directly from BMW’s data centre in Munich. Presumably it’s to stop ‘damaging’ changes being made to things like the rpm limit on the motors. The iX uses the same motors as the i4 and are limited to 19,000rpm. Changing them to say 25,000rpm (or more) could be interesting, well for a few minutes anyway.

[sp3ctre]

Crikey, are we into the era of people trying to "jailbreak" their cars to add features? I know with Audis there is a hidden menu you can activate to add some features that were not there out the box.

[X5Sport]

In best HAL9000 voice “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”