I am in the demographics that would never buy that. 
Too much of a car guy to not have proper instruments. And no need of doing home-office from the car. Less screens, please!
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No, they wouldn’t.
The Standard nowadays are to sell Upgrades with the new car, eighter as packages, or separate. If they would have build already everything into the cars, the owner would also have used the items, not bought.
In “the old days” there were no big problem to use, what was build into a car, or upgrade it from the aftermarket.
The new world had brought them the possibility to use digital computer, to prevent the owner from using a function, he had not paid for.
So now they could build all in, and force the owner to pay-per-use, like an public washing machine.
The costs are produced with the complexity of the build, and this refers to the circumstances, that by individual upgrades, all cars on the assembly line were different. The worker had to verify what to build into the car, what not, and to make sure, that all necessary parts are there on time, but not to early, to not block the line.
With the new approach, they could build all cars equal, like Henry Ford did 100 years ago.
Therefore they reduced the complexity of the assembly, and that lowers significant the resulting costs.
Furthermore, they could buy more items of a certain product, like the radio, the seat heater and so on, and with an increase in the numbers, the costs per item could be also lowered.
And the customer has to pay the price for that, not only by a (over the time) significantly higher price for the pay-per-use items, but with a higher car weight, and a increased complexity, which will rise the maintenance costs further, and prevent “Free Shops” from doing works at the car, beyond changing the tires two times a year.
My wife had a cushion from Sheepskin for the saddle, on her Frisian.
Very cosy in the winter… 
Just to be sure there’s no misunderstanding, I don’t actually own that car, only wish I did. 
So by your logic, why wouldn’t a company like Apple just reduce costs by producing every iPhone with 512GB of RAM and software-walling the extra RAM?
I realize there’s an economic advantage to having single SKUs for items, and that there can definitely be benefits to producing a single model with software-activated features. But the question is how much that savings is, and whether it’s enough to offset the expense of adding the extra parts that are necessary to make it happen and the expense of developing the software to enable the feature lock / unlock. I would think that even with efficiencies gained by reducing SKUs, the per-vehicle cost would go up rather than down.
I would therefore think they’re banking on a large number of customers just paying the monthly price to cost-justify the inclusion of all the extra gear. 
Because producing a high quality micro chip is also producing a high pile of trash, because of failures, damages, and chips that are only usable to a certain degree.
So while we are in a shortage of chips, there is no real effect of that on the production of a seat heater, one for the steer wheel, or a relatively simple car entertainment system.
If we had a sufficient amount of chips, Apple would most probably do so, to save money on the production.
Just take a look for example onto AliBaba, there are car entertainment systems sold, that you can buy for a 4-Digit-Price at your local dealer, and (if you buy a container or two) for 15$ at AliBaba.
I would think that a company like BMW will pay maybe 10% of the retail price, if they get the supply from the manufacturer of the parts. And the have their own development, which also cause high costs, that get better paid, if the products are produced and sold at high numbers.
Is there any truth to the rumor that BMW drivers will soon have to wear a meter in the form of a patch on their butt that will record the actual BTUs received from their heated seats? 
All in the name of fairer pricing and the elimination of the reviled subscription?
I can not confirm, nor deny that, but it would explain the unusual shape of the new pants of the BMW Engineers in my neighborhood… 
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Subscribe to one!
Which reminds me, I know a guy working at BMW. I need to talk about seat heaters with him… but we have a strained relationship, since I own a cars from another German car maker, which I consider superior.
It’s the software concept. Unlock features by subscribing or paying for the “pro” version. Doesn’t make you very popular with buyers, as seen in the coverage of BMW’s car heaters.
I think that would backfire.
“We floated the idea out there to see if people would rage out, and they did, so we’re not going to implement this thing we were totally going to do if there wasn’t backlash.”
This entire thread, I’ve been waiting for someone to break down and admit the whole thing has been a joke.
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Still a thing i.e. in Germany: https://www.bmw.de/de/shop/ls/dp/Seat_Heating_SFA_de
It’s in German, but easy enough to understand (Sitzheizung=seat heating, Monat=month, €17=money,…)
Oh, heated steering wheel for €10 per month: https://www.bmw.de/de/shop/ls/dp/Steering_Wheel_Heating_SFA_de
Unlock CarPlay for €300: https://www.bmw.de/de/shop/ls/dp/Base_CarPlay_de
I really hope BMW never starts making toilets…
And just to add some perspective: I am not against subscriptions per se. I subscribe to the Adobe bundle and I think it’s a great value for the money. Frequent updates, many new features, etc.
But imagine Adobe asked €1900 for the Creative Suite (it used to cost that much) and then they started asking for micropayments for many features.
Or every one-trick-pony app out there thinks it’s worth a subscription (with no real updates, no server infrascructure,…). €5 per month becomes €120 after 2 years, which is NOT what I am going to pay for a simple app. TextExpander is the one I will drop because of that. Annually €39.96 which is more than of what I pay for Word+Excel+PowerPoint, programs with thousands more features. And I think the MS Office subscription is also reasonably priced.
But: many car makers out there. And…many app developers out there. And some or many may be bitten by their subscription/micropayment ideas.
Yeah, that part I get. It was the assertion above that it would actually save BMW money via economies of scale to put the formerly-optional seat heaters and all the extra physical equipment needed for these things into cars.
Makes me glad I’m hanging on to my trusty 2015 Subaru Outback that came with FREE front and rear heated seats. Not that I need them in Florida.
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Because by The profit margin Apple Wants, they couldn’t sell an iPhone with 128gb of unlocked storage for enough money to cover the other 384gb. Plus especially at the moment there are shortages due to supply chain.
But adding the £200 it costs to fit Heated Seats, plus a mark up to a car which already costs £30k isn’t a stretch
Oh for God’s sake! I read the summary that @beck (kindly) posted and I just couldn’t bear to read any more! It’s absolutely ludicrous! Soon we will have to pay €X.XX per heartbeat!
My apologies to those who posted after @beck, whose undoubted wisdom I skipped over.
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For me, the most horrifying thing about this thread has been the realisation as prices were discussed across multiple comments that £1 is now $1 or €1. Makes it nice and easy for converting currencies of course, but it’s a heck of a devaluation (15 years ago it was almost 2$ to £1).
*Dont @ me, I did just look and see it’s 85p to the dollar, but my point stands.
As a hater of subscriptions, I of course hate everything about this, but I also see no legitimate reason for the cost other than profiteering. If they’re including free repairs in that, that’s nice, but would make me wonder how shoddily made the heater is that they need to offer you free repairs 
What cracks me up most about all this though is that the UK is one of their testing locations. We don’t have hard winters (normally) or exceptionally hot summers (excluding this year). It’s a bit sad to think that BMW owners are such delicate flowers that they need seat warmers when it’s 5C/41F outside.
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This is a really broad statement, especially putting the word Need in there. Most people don’t need Air Conditioning but it comes in the majority of cars now.
For heated seats, It obviously depends what you do and who you are whether you want them. If you spend a lot of time in the outdoors either recreationally or professionally, they’re a god send, especially if you get wet a lot.
Would you test this in a country where they’re really important (e.g. Norway) or would you test it somewhere a bit milder to get a feel for how it lands with potential customers?
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The Finns wear t-shirts and drive with open windows at those temperatures. And they don’t care about seat heaters, they care about the “engine heater”. Every car has a connector somewhere to attach to an outlet to prevent the engine from freezing.
Looking forward to my trip to Finland in February to drive around a little.
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