Welcome to Tech in the Car in this video we're going to talk about these somewhat controversial
news at bmw who have been selling seat heating in your brand new expensive bmw for 15 pounds a month
on a subscription in this video i'm going to tell you why i don't necessarily think that's a bad
idea but why i do think they charge too much for it and why i think all the car companies are going
that way okay so you've probably seen it in the news 15 pounds a month for heated seat in your car
and that's not the only thing that bmw charged for you can have a heated steering wheel for
25 pounds a month you can have your driver assistance features for even more than that
you can have a service plan for around 800 pounds a month these features and these subscriptions
right now are available in the uk new zealand south africa and in germany unsurprisingly
germany being the home of bmw but bmw are not the only car company to do this audi do this
and other car companies do it as well you can buy a brand new audi and you can end up subscribing to
the driver assist features on those cars in fact bmw will renown often car play as a subscription
for over 200 pounds in the uk and in other places in the world as well in fact that kicked up quite
a throat over that as well because that was a bit controversial other car companies giving
it out for free or including it as an option with a car so why are bmw doing this well first of all
let's talk about the supply chain and about car production previously car companies would produce
heated seats and then they would produce seats which are not heated that didn't have the hardware
components but in these current times where we've got the pandemic we've got a war in ukraine we've
got tons of supply chain issues it makes sense from a scale perspective to provide seats with
one configuration just disable the seat heating in the software it makes it a lot easier for bmw
it means that they can keep their costs down and they can solve production issues by only
having one type of seat potentially they still have very many different seat options and other
options in the car but they are reducing all those different parts helping solve the problem
now this is where i think it's unfair because i think they're charging too much
15 pounds a month ahead of the seat is expensive over a year we're talking over 150 pounds
and if you want it for a longer period of time it costs even more now heated seats on their own as a
separate spec don't cost that so how is that fair it's not like it's costing bmw more now to make
those heated seats in fact it's saving them money because they're making less parts for their cars
and turning off in the software isn't costing them very much either it doesn't seem fair to
me but the truth is subscriptions are coming to everything they're not only coming to the parts
of software in your car and hardware but they're also coming to the cars themselves companies like
polstar and genesis and volvo and if everyone is getting in on it offering cars as subscriptions
now is a car subscription a great idea i don't know it's more expensive than a finance deal
on pcp or lease but it also includes servicing and it also includes the warranty and also includes
breakdown assistance and it means that even though it costs more than a traditional car finance deal
potentially it's saving you money and hassle in the long term also you're not necessarily tied
down for such a long period as you would be on a pcp car finance now i'm not trying to give advice
on car finance here i'm just pointing out that everything is going subscription in fact you may
already have a hidden subscription in your car if you have a car from the last two years chances are
you might have an inbuilt sim card which gives you access to the internet now that might be included
for the first three years like on most cars but after that you'll have to pay for that access
but you might also have the ability to turn that sim card into internet access and use it to make
a hotspot and browse the internet now you've probably never checked that and you probably
don't know it's there but there may well be the option there to pay your car manufacturer money to
get access to a hotspot in your car is that worth it i don't know that's up to you it's incredibly
expensive in the newest audi such as my own new rs3 to get 12 gigabytes of data costs 150 pounds
a year that is a lot of money for a limited amount of data i could get unlimited data from a uk sim
card but i can't put the sim card in because they remove the ability to put the sim cards in
the phone because they're trying to save costs and find ways to charge you more and that is a problem
we have now all these extra subscription charges would be fine if the cost of cars was less but we
know the cost of cars are going up so it's just an extra way of charging us more now if we weren't in
a situation where we had the supply chain issue and these parts are costing less they're adding
these subscriptions for these features like heated steering wheels like heated seats like
carplay like safety assistance features would be a great idea because it would be a way to produce
a car to customers at a lower price and then find them adding add-ons like you do with your internet
subscription like you do with your netflix like you do with your apple tv subscription or youtube
whatever it is so it'd actually be very clever idea and also it allows customers to buy a car
like i said for less and get more later on even if they don't want it when they buy it
and it's saving the manufacturer's bottom line because like i said they're only making a limited
number of trims instead of making all these different parts so i think it's a great idea i
just don't think the cost is right or appropriate i think they're over charging for now bmw aren't
the first on the law tesla are actually very very famous for doing this with their self-driving beta
you can pay for that monthly 199 pounds in the uk a month for self-driving for a feature which
doesn't really work properly in the uk is it worth that no it isn't now if you watch my tesla videos
i would say buy it bundled with a car because it's included in the finance because paying 199
pounds a month is extortionate and it's going to probably cost you over 50 of the monthly
finance for that car so it's a lot of money and i would definitely buy all those features
included in the cost and that is one thing that bmw have said they said if you buy a car
with the top trim including heated seats including a heated steering wheel including carplay etc
those features will remain free and stay part of the car so great idea car prices are too high
so these subscriptions are unfair if car prices came down then the subscriptions would seem more
reasonable that's my feeling on this let me know what you think down below do you think it's fair
to charge a subscription would you do it have you done it on your car let me know in the comments
thank you very much for watching this video and please check out the other videos on my channel