BMW announced that in certain countries, they will be charging an $18 a month subscription to use heated seats in certain cars.

The company said the goal is to begin having more micro-transactions with customers and have certain features be subscription.

This announcement caused a lot of outrage online, so thought it was worth asking the question of if this a good or bad thing?

To figure that out, the first thing is just asking the question of how much built in heated seats actually cost, what percent of cars have them and how often do people even use them?

Looked up the cost of heated seats, which shows a pretty big range.

There are kits that can make any car have heated seats installed for $400, the repair of a broken heated seat averages $593-627 and the added cost of a heated seat in a car is $500 for a driver and passenger seat.

Running with the initial price tag of $500, it’s important to know the average car will last 12 years before the cost of maintenance outweighs the value of the car.

That means a person should be expected to get 144 months out of their car, which would mean that $500 cost of the heated seat should be worth $3.47 a month.

BMW at $18 a month is charging 5.2x what the average consumer would expect to pay for heated seat use in a car today.

This is an obvious issue on why consumers shouldn’t want this, but it gets worse when looking at months to use it.

Most of the US and countries in the world don’t have cold temperatures for 8-10 months of the year.

This shows a visible issue with a subscription, where it only has value 2-4 months of the year.

On top of that, US drivers average 50.6 minutes of driving a day when owning a car.

Comparing that, Netflix which costs less than $18 a month is a subscription users average 3.2 hours a day on and use in every season.

BMW is trying to charge for a feature that people won’t use for over half the year and in cars, which they use only a third the time they use a cheaper product such as Netflix.

Which I’m aware streaming and heated seats are different, but I think most consumers would rather have Netflix than a heated seat.

Looking at both costs and value for consumers, this is a really bad idea.

That’s problem A.

Problem B is I actually think there’s an issue of the ethics of this idea.

Tesla and other car companies do have monthly subscriptions, with Tesla being the best example.

Tesla for $10 a month sells Premium Connectivity, which offers music, gaming, live traffic visualization, navigation and many more things.

This is an upsell, but it’s for a product that actually takes work to maintain and is not part of the car itself.

BMW is doing something very different, which is trying to sell people something they already bought.

When someone buys a car, it is their property and not the property of BMW, implying they bought the heated seat feature as well.

BMW has every right to not sell people cars with heated seats, but I‘m not sure they have the right to sell a heated seat and take it away.

Final thoughts

From a consumer perspective, this is a horrible deal and one which I actually thinks will cost BMW money long term.

From an ethical point of view, I believe this creates a really strange question on what people have a right to do with something they purchase.

All said and done, I don’t think this idea lasts long and due to the bad press, it’ll cost them sales from people thinking this will apply to them.

I’d not be shocked if they cancel this plan before the end of the month.