It looks like cars made by premium brand BMW may get even more so. New reports suggests that the German car brand may be selling some optional extras as subscription services rather than an upfront, one-time payments.
Autoblog reports that optional extras like heated seats and steering wheels, adaptive cruise control, and things like that could be offered as a time-limited feature. Which means the feature will be installed in the car, but you’ll have to pay to actually use them. The question is what is the method used to activate or deactivate features that have been paid for.
Of course, there are a number of obvious up and downsides to this deal. On the positive side of things, if you bought a BMW to rent out or to sell later, then this allows you to buy a cheaper car, but the second-hand owner can get add-ons that you didn’t pay for. But on the flip side, this means you’ll have to keep paying for features you use until you sell it. And the cost of that can rack up real fast, depending on what you use.
BMW actually tried to do something like this with Apple’s CarPlay. Naturally, there was a strong enough backlash, for obvious reasons, that the carmaker walked back on the decision. But now, it looks like the company is giving the business model another go.
(Source: Autoblog)
