BMW wants to charge a subscription fee for heated seats

It seems inevitable that people will try to circumvent paid features, such as heated seats, etc.

A vibrant pool of programmers at BMW have modified luxury vehicles for years, and now they are ready to activate a controversial BMW subscription.

In the article published by the US "Vice" site, Joseph Cox and Aaron Gordon said that last week, Internet services inspired BMW to propose that the seat heating feature become a subscription service of $ 18 per month.

A group of hackers who have unlocked features in BMW cars for years have told the authors that they are willing to help owners unlock subscription-only features.

Programmable Features

The authors report that these companies say they "program" the car to add additional features, such as Android screen mirroring or remove unwanted software, such as turning off annoying bells, and they advertise their services through many vital forums and popular shopping sites such as " eBay and Etsy.

The authors explained that vehicles have always come with different features on offer as part of "luxury add-ons", or "decorations" packages, which the buyer decides when purchasing the vehicle.

Originally these were almost all physical or hardware upgrades, such as leather seats, more horsepower or a sunroof.

But it's programmable features like automatic headlights and wiper activation and driver assistance features like cruise control. Creating unlocked features through programming means all vehicle versions can have this feature, but only if the customer pays to activate it.

According to the authors, with the proliferation of connected cars and the digitization of nearly every feature the car offers, automakers are looking at they can make more money by making people pay twice for these software-enabled features, once when they buy the car and again by subscribing to unlock it on Android. Over the course of the ownership period.

The authors pointed out that Stellantis (the parent company of Jeep, Dodge and Chrysler) recently told shareholders during its Software Day presentation that it expects to generate $22.5 billion from the sale of software and subscriptions alone, matching Expectations from other major automakers, such as Volkswagen, General Motors and Ford.

The site indicated that Tesla sells some features through software upgrade, most notably the controversial Autopilot and the company's full self-driving packages, which cost more than $12,000 to open, and also eliminates paid software features on used cars when transferring ownership, which Create a market for hackers to reverse these changes.

Not like BMW

The authors believe that none of the car manufacturers raised consumers' expectations for paid software upgrades as BMW did. In 2019, the company angered its customers by announcing that it would charge $80 per year to use Apple CarPlay, a feature that many consider From owners it is necessary and even the cheapest cars are available for free, and "BMW" has given up on the idea.

But it has clearly not given up on the "software as a service" idea, as it recently announced that in South Korea owners will have to pay $18 a month to activate the front seat heating.

In recent years, BMW owners in Europe have had to pay extra fees to enable important features, such as automatically disabling high beams when they detect a car in the opposite lane and driving assistant features that help avoid accidents.

The authors pointed out that BMW programming partners offer customers two different ways to receive new features for their cars, as the company can either provide programming in person, where a representative visits the customer at his home and conducts programming there, or he can access the customer’s BMW from afar.

They added that for remote programming, customers will first need to purchase a "BMW Inet" interface cable, and this cable has an Ethernet port at one end and is connected to their laptop, and the other end is connected to the diagnostic port on the BMW car. And it costs about $25.

AMAZING FEATURES

The authors indicated that the features that programmers offer to activate are very amazing, and they include playing an alarm sound when opening or locking the car that is turned off by default in some areas, enabling video functions while driving, and removing the legal notification on the entertainment and communication system “iDrive” when starting Starting, opening the doors automatically after pressing the stop button, closing the car windows via the ignition keys, setting the windows to open with the ignition key while keeping the sunroof open, automatic cleaning of the headlights, and many more.

According to the authors, a programmer in San Francisco, who asked not to be named due to the gray market status of his work, told them, "When I first started doing this about 7 years ago there was a lot of requests for general convenience features but now it's changed somewhat a bit because the reality has Mature a little.” Programmers hack a car's firmware or create fake certificates to enable paid features, or even come up with hardware solutions to enable passive features, such as BMW's driver assistance system.

"CarPlay activation has always been one of the most common programming queries when it was a subscription service," the authors cited Smith from Pimertech.

He added that the ability of the three parties to access and change diagnostic information was not threatened, but that his company needed to keep pace with BMW's constant changes in its software.

The authors also noted what the programmer said about the problem of resetting fixes after software updates had become more serious since cars were able to perform over-the-air updates via Internet connections, allowing for more frequent updates.

Is hacking the solution?

While most of the programming services on offer give drivers control of the entertainment or technologies best suited to their car, others may avoid US regulations, as Pemertec announces on its website the ability to operate a range extender for the BMW i3 electric car earlier. Much more than what is normally allowed in the US market.

Meanwhile, drivers in the European market can operate the range extender manually once the battery charge drops below 75%. Wii3".

In most scenarios this doesn't make a difference, but with energy-intensive situations, such as driving uphill quickly in cold temperatures, the range extender may not be able to recharge the battery as quickly as it runs out, so if the battery has a tiny amount of charge, the authors added. The remainder could result in the car running at the same speed as the small gas engine originally designed for BMW motorcycles, which is usually 45 mph or slower.

The ability to pre-plan and activate the range extender in advance solves the problem, but that option wasn't available to US customers, though Pimertec says one of its technicians can remotely operate this latent feature on US car models.

The authors concluded their report with what the San Francisco programmer said that it was inevitable that people would try to circumvent paid features such as heated seats, adding, “I usually do not want to provide any service that requires hacking the firmware, but people usually do it after warranty anyway, But that's often what happens because a lot of information is shared for programmers in forums, for example if there's a forum post and someone says they figured out how to get full access to the hot seats and as long as people can read the forum post and follow the directions they can do it themselves, I think That's the great thing about the Internet."