Last week, there was a lot of buzz on the Internet about the news that BMW decided to charge $18 a month for the option of heated seats in its cars in South Korea. Vice spoke to a community of hackers who have been unlocking various features of the German giant for years and found out that they are ready to help car owners unlock this option.
These communities of enthusiasts add additional features, open options that are blocked in certain regions, or remove unwanted elements, such as annoying sounds. They advertise their services through various forums. One such specialist told the publication that they could unlock the heated seats, and if BMW does not allow it, they can add this feature through a hardware modification.
All cars come with a variety of options, they are offered as part of packages that need to be paid extra when buying a car. Initially, these were some physical elements and hardware additions, but more and more software functions began to be added to them. In fact, this means that all the functions implemented at the software level are present in the car, but they are blocked until the car owner pays for them. Automakers seem to have realized that they can make more money by making people pay twice for software features: once when they buy a car, and once when they subscribe.
Tesla is selling some features through software updates, most notably the Autopilot and Full Self-Driving packages, which cost over $12,000 to unlock. But BMW has surpassed all. First in 2019, the company announced that it would charge $80 a year to use Apple CarPlay, and recently decided to make the heated front seats option available only by subscription. All this has led to the creation of a certain niche in the market, which offers services for unlocking paid features in cars.
In particular, Bimmer Tech is ready to remove the restriction on heated seats if such requests appear, but warns that the function can be blocked again at any time. The thing is that BMW can roll back third-party changes after an over-the-air update. One of the programmers believes that the demand for such services will depend on what price automakers put up for a particular option. Sometimes it’s easier to pay once and not think about it again.
Source: Trash Box
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