AdvertisementĪgain, BMW became far better known for this practice than Tesla when, in 2020, it started offering subscriptions for factory-installed hardware features like heated seats or adaptive cruise control in markets like Korea and the UK.įor example, a British BMW owner could opt to specify their car with adaptive cruise control and lane keeping (Driving Assistant Plus in BMW-speak) for $937 (£750) when ordering it or not tick that option but later decide to try the feature as a free three-month trial, then either buy it outright for that same price or for a month ($43/£35), a year ($437/£350), or three years ($628/£550). It's a practice that Tesla has used both in the past and now, once again, artificially restricting the useable storage capacity in some of its electric vehicle batteries. Perhaps more egregious than charging a monthly fee for an in-car data service has been the practice of installing equipment at the factory and then later charging an owner a fee to unlock its use. Indeed, in 2019 BMW earned a degree of consumer distrust after making Apple CarPlay a subscription-only feature for a while before backtracking. But it turns out-surprise, surprise-that consumers don't really want any more monthly payments attached to their vehicles. Wide-eyed executives and shareholders looked at the profit margins and market value of software companies and their 'recurring revenue streams' and decided they wanted a slice of that, particularly since a modern car is just so many computers on wheels now. The last decade or so has seen the auto industry get tech fever. Earlier this week, a BMW board member told Autocar that while it will still pursue some subscription features in the future, those will only be software-based services. BMW's experiment with offering in-car subscriptions for hardware features installed at the factory is over.

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