I’m sure this will help beat the Chinese automakers
Ah ha, my clever plan has been poor and not being able to afford to buy a brand new BMW, has paid off.
No one buys BMWs, they rent them. I worked in this industry, BMW buyers were always broke ass.
A plan that is old as time. Wait til the pre own vehicle deals are in the newspaper
That is going to take a long time… newspaper…
“Your” dashboard?
Our! Comrade.
When my wife bought a new Mazda, the dealer made her sign a form that said the remote start app would only be free for one year. He told her it was just boiler plate; the remote start app would be free forever. I knew when she bought the vehicle the remote start app would be a monthly charge starting in precisely one year. lol!
My parents have a car with remote start, and I’ve never been able to understand what the advantages are supposed to be. The only time that they’ve ever used it was when they first got it, and were playing with it.
The advantages are starting your car remotely in the hot or cold months to pre-cool/preheat the cabin, defrost the windows, etc. and let the engine warm up for a couple of minutes.
I’m going to take a wild guess that you live somewhere that doesn’t freeze. lol!
Kudos to you. Where we live, it’s cold AF.
I use it everyday in the summer and winter months. Cools/heats the car for 10min before turning off again. Also can be used to keep my dog cool if I have to pop into a place real quick.
I’ve never exactly been in the market for a bmw anyhow, but this is a great way to guarantee I will never want one.
If this works in any way, shape or form for BMW then you can bet that any other manufacturer selling “connected vehicles” will sit up and take notice.
If my brand new car started pushing dashboard ads to me, it would be rejected and returned to the dealer immediately. That is the only kind of pushback they would pay attention to.
What do you mean by “returned to the dealer”? Like you would trade it in and take whatever lowball offer they give you, or you would break the lease and pay the $3000 penalty, or you would just leave it there and ??? Profit?
Is there another potential outcome I’m not thinking of?
Yes, a massive shitstorm and similar things.
You and me… same page
We’re heading straight towards a cyberpunk future.
And not even a shiny, pretty, exciting one, ours is still half boring for some reason. I can’t even pin down what’s missing. It still feels like ours has wood paneling or something, but even that would be too '70s, which would still be a little cool. Maybe ours is too '90s? Our cyberpunk somehow still feels too analogue and not enough.
We live in a boring, ugly, stupid universe.
Its not a time period or quality issue but an ownership one. You can buy a new car but you don’t ever really own it fully.
And software, and movies, and books, and…
Anytime a corporation or a politicians says they aren’t going to do something, it means they’re thinking about that subject, and they are definitely going to do it.
We make far more decisions to NOT do something, and if someone doesn’t want to do something, they just don’t do it, they don’t tell everybody. We don’t talk about the things we aren’t going to do, we talk about things we ARE going to do.
Years ago, I was in a national managers conference call meeting, and HQ started it by saying “If there are rumors of lay-offs in your office, shut them down. There are no plans for lay-offs at this time.” I don’t remember what the rest of the meeting was about, but we all walked saying “Lay-offs are coming.”
Sure enough, within two months, I was out of a job, along with a bunch of others. Within a year, several branch offices were closed. We weren’t worried about it at all, until they brought it up in the meeting.
If they’re bringing it up, they’re softening us up for it, even if they’re saying No.
Same happened to us at my job. Boss gave a big nervous speech recently about how we’re doing fine and not to worry and how the industry is suffering but we’re staying strong… yada yada going to retain everyone … have no reason to fire yada yada and the literal next week fired two employees for the stated reason of “not busy enough to retain”.
Everyone knew it was coming when he started the speech off with “I don’t want anyone to feel insecure about their jobs here”
That’s a suspiciously specific promise to make.
One-time as in there won’t be another Spider-Man ad. I’m sure the next ad will also be a “one-time” deal as well.
In case you are considering purchasing a BMW here are the models mentioned in the article:
BMW says the feature is available on suitably equipped cars built after July 2020 and running BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or X
Feature?
It’s working as designed
That’s only in the US, I suppose?
I don’t think they’d get away with it in another market with a functioning society.
one of these days I’m going to spend a weekend going from dealership to dealership looking for a new car, and just wasting their time when I come across nonsense features like this
that Prius feature that beeps and distracts you from the road whenever you pull up to an intersection? that’s fucked up
those features that remind you to pay attention to the road because you have sunglasses on, and pull your attention away from the road to tell you that? that’s fucked up
the features that aggressively keep you in your lane when you drift to give room to an obstacle? that’s fucked up
This is a capital offense.
What can I do about it? No point complaining
BMW is framing this as a “one-time movie partnership”
What kind of people do you think are eating that up?
“Guys, it’s just this one-time ad, we had no intention of ever doing this again! Just forget about it for a year or so!”
I hope people take that as a contract and when they inevitably do it again, sue the hell out of them.
Not that it’ll stop this phenomenon.
Get organised folks, join your local socialist orgs (provided they are sane and not Stalinists and don’t think China is socialist).
I want off this ride, and that’s only gonna happen if we get involved, all over the world.
It’s one-time in the sense that it’s this movie. Next one-time will be for the next movie
“It is a one time fee that you pay annually.” One of the best Portlandia skits.
Just the tip
One reason this type of promotion may be becoming more common is that connected cars give automakers a direct path to the driver’s screen.
Once a person purchases a vehicle it should be theirs, not shared access with Automakers and their partners.
It hasn’t been that way for a long time. Every car since 2018 has some sort of black box in it that it records your driving behaviors, and that data gets sent to or sold to insurance companies who then use it to raise your premiums.
I think cunts who drive like cunts should pay more.
However, the real reason why cars have black boxes is repeated fraudulent claims by US law firms on “sudden acceleration”.The last lawsuit ended because Toyota had black box data proving US drivers are shit and commonly hit the wrong pedal. Before that, they had to settle $1B to law firms.
Oh, I agree with that. People who drive like complete assholes should definitely have to pay higher insurance premiums, but the way that they get the data to determine who these people are is just a huge privacy concern for me.
How are these black boxes reporting back though? Do all these cars just have a free SIM card built in?
I’m not sure about this black box, but in the EU, the e-call system is mandatory, so all new cars do indeed have a sim. Though it’s most likely not a card, but either a chip (iSIM) or just in software (eSIM).
Typically a soldered on sim chip, or esim software. You can disable it on some cars, for example I was able to bypass it on my 4runner pretty easily. I lost the feature to find my car, lock doors or see its status using the Toyota app though but I am 100% ok with that.
They do in fact. It’s also how the app connectivity works in modern cars.
They do. They hide it as an SOS system. “Only used in case of emergency.” It’s connected to GPS, sim like a cellphone that has at least 4g cell service to “call emergency.” I think Chevy used their Onstar connection. That’s always on, and the data text files can be sent without interrupting that service.
OnStar is the worst for selling data. They even record your body weight.
One reason this type of promotion may be becoming more common is that connected cars give automakers a direct path to the driver’s screen.
“Wo ein Trog ist, da kommen die Schweine.”
A lot of manufacturers sell vehicles at cost price in the hopes of making it up in after sales (parts and servicing). Most EVs require very little regular expense (cabin filters, brakes and tyres), so they try to make up the difference in subscriptions and “value added” services.
Sometimes those “value added” services aren’t adding value to their customers; they are “adding value” for business partners.
You would think that a car that is sold at a premium price would be exempt from these nasty little scams.
