Because the goal of a marketing manager is to extract more money from you not less, by creating an accepted practice of disabling functionality to optimize the money you are willing to commit to actually pay over the lifetime of owning the car.

The point is to find the most innocuous thing that you would accept at time of purchase and then make the majority of customers pay for that more often and longer than anybody at the time of purchase thinks about.

It's similar to the marketing for payday loans. People are not entirely rational actors.

If you could make double the normal sales price of the car in revenue, and the car stops working if the customer ceases to pay, then if you don't mind the occasional customer service public meltdown on social media, then as a car manufacturer you are welcome to scheme away.

As a smarter than average customer, you are wise to the scam, and hope that the scheming of the car companies is not effective on the general public.

Also subscriptions are awesome for car manufacturers for accelerating planned obsolescence. Why should there be any resale value to your car anyway, if they could figure out a way to either 1) make the new owner pay for the car again in subscriptions or 2) make your car near worthless after you initially own it, then from their perspective this is the most brilliant thing they have ever thought of! ;)

My spite trumps their audacity. If I count one more entity looking to shake my pockets empty every month, I'm gonna start calling these crooks Al Capone. No, I don't want to subscribe -- to anything. Anymore.

Do you think RICO statutes could be a way out of subscription hell? It smells like a racket but I don't think it legally meets the bar for extortion because it's an at-will transaction between willing parties, and no one is making anyone buy a car.

It does seem anticompetitive though so maybe there are antitrust and interoperability angles?

Everything is regulated. Why not a "no subscriptions on safety measures" isn't one i don't know. Having a warm butt is a safety measure

Too much wiggle room. A cold butt never killed anyone.

How about "no subscriptions on titled property"

I think that, subscriptions are fine for items that require a subscription. Sort of circular reasoning but, for example, OnStar or onboard wifi or other things of that nature makes sense as a subscription.

Compare to a heated seat. They are some of the simplest circuits out there. Apply 12V and it will heat up a nichrome alloy wire. Same way a cigarette lighter works.

> RICO

It's never RICO until it is. But it's never RICO.

BMW's heated seats are $589 upfront or $29 per month here.

Auto loan rates are about 7% p/a.

On a 5 year loan of $589, you'd pay $700 including interest. Plus you might recoup some of that when you sell the car.

A monthly subscription for the same period would cost $1740.

Same with all lease formulas. You don't have to worry about anything, but you do pay at keast 30% more. For some this can be a good thing but it's not cheap.

Wordt lease offenders I've seen so far: bikes. You repay it in about a year.

I don't ever buy new vehicles, which I think is common in value conscious customers. For this segment the the question becomes how does this look when buying used (Certified Pre Owned, used from the dealer, used from a private party) At that point presumably I'm either stuck with the subscription, or whatever the previous owner chose. As a buyer I would always just avoid any car like that unless there weren't other good choices.

Are those numbers real? I can't imagine that particular deal makes any sense for the manufacturer.

Not really the same thing, but Tesla does it on a 10x scale: The monthly cost of the FSD Subscription is $200/mo, costing $14400 if you were to pay for it over the entire 72 month loan, but you can also choose to buy it outright for $15k ( $16800 over the loan term at a 2% interest rate; at current interest rates of 7%, $21300) - and for FSD, you can cancel anytime to save money if you don't want it. With the loan, you can't get a rebate for removing the feature.

Of course, for things like heated seats, the question is whether or not they've actually reduced the price of the car to account for the additional post-sale revenue. For Tesla, the Model 3 started out at $35k so heated seats being an additional charge at first made a lot of sense, but as it crept well over $40k for the standard range/RWD version, it started to look like a money grab and IIRC it was the 2022 refresh that removed the heated seat post-purchase requirement on the RWD trim.

Meanwhile many of the "lower end" brands started to include stuff into standard that you had to pay extra in higher end brands - because they are actually competing with their competitors on best deal

BWM sells heating seats subscription for $18/mo.

"Heated seats" is just a piece of wire put into seat, some $1 (probably less) micro to turn it off and on and some $0.1 sensor.

I wouldn't be surprised if even few % of buyers buying that would cover for having to fit extra (and not have separate SKU for heater-less seats)

I installed myself heated seats in my car. Installation set, heating pads, switches, wires and relays for two front seats was $56. I would say it costs manufacturer $10/seat.

JOOI, can you arrange to only pay when it's cold enough to need them, or is cancelling/resubscribing the huge pain one might expect from such a scheme?

You already know that answer to that, because making cancelling annoying will make them more money.

Is it possible that consolidating options so that there's fewer hardware variations of a car (with heated seats or whatever being a software toggle) makes manufacturing more efficient?

It depends on whether they actually lowered the price by $1500, rather than simply bumped the price by $1500 across the board then 'graciously' canceled it out if you subscribe.

Of course, barring legal discovery or a leaked email we'd never know.

Of course, then sell it after 4-5 years to some sucker /s