https://www.forbes.com/sites/alista...scription-for-your-heated-seats/#59ce38803c64
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/bmw-wants-to-sell-you-subscriptions-to-your-cars-features/
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/352659/bmw-make-extras-heated-seats-subscription-based-options
Missed it the other day but just caught the video so here we are.
...
Now Telsa have done something similar (and I have worse stories) but they at least had the vague pretence that it was a computer program (not that I buy it of course).
Anyway it seems BMW are contemplating building a car with everything in but software locking it, indeed even locking it to a subscription service. Whether you are a kitchen in a small restaurant, a low volume car company or a millions of widgets per hour production line company then variation costs you to do so there is a small bit of underlying logic here, and we have seen similar things for patents (there is a reason the wii played DVDs just fine in homebrew, and why your DS technically needed a firmware update to work online via normal network). Slimy as anything though and something those around here probably should be aware of if you are tracking such things in general.
We have seen similar things in games for years (even longer if we count arcades and various expansion packs that would only work with gold versions of the game). We have similarly seen it for some time in oscilloscopes and other such hardware (as in hardware there and all good/down to spec but if you want the fancy probe options even if you have the probe then you pay, or hack the thing ).
Many years ago there was a forum for the M3 flash carts, searching for it one time I found the BMW M3 being discussed. I wonder if again we will see such things in the future but in reverse and those of us used to fiddling inside consoles get to.
The heated seats example is obvious and people can stuff whatever voltage/current they like down the coils and have it working if it comes to it. That said I would not put it past them to try something tricky -- stories I have heard coming out of car dealerships this last few years and things people have to do as far as electronics to get things running for many years now (several years ago now I was fixing a computer for a car garage and a basic hatchback car had its gearbox replaced, would not have moved had it not been coded back in with dealer grade software -- this was not a fancy race car with feedback and computer controlled gears and all that, indeed sensors happened on the wheels for anything fun in this, but a bog standard bunch of gears in a greasy box approach) does not paint a pretty picture.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/07/01/bmw-wants-to-sell-you-subscriptions-to-your-cars-features/
https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/352659/bmw-make-extras-heated-seats-subscription-based-options
Missed it the other day but just caught the video so here we are.
...
Now Telsa have done something similar (and I have worse stories) but they at least had the vague pretence that it was a computer program (not that I buy it of course).
Anyway it seems BMW are contemplating building a car with everything in but software locking it, indeed even locking it to a subscription service. Whether you are a kitchen in a small restaurant, a low volume car company or a millions of widgets per hour production line company then variation costs you to do so there is a small bit of underlying logic here, and we have seen similar things for patents (there is a reason the wii played DVDs just fine in homebrew, and why your DS technically needed a firmware update to work online via normal network). Slimy as anything though and something those around here probably should be aware of if you are tracking such things in general.
We have seen similar things in games for years (even longer if we count arcades and various expansion packs that would only work with gold versions of the game). We have similarly seen it for some time in oscilloscopes and other such hardware (as in hardware there and all good/down to spec but if you want the fancy probe options even if you have the probe then you pay, or hack the thing ).
Many years ago there was a forum for the M3 flash carts, searching for it one time I found the BMW M3 being discussed. I wonder if again we will see such things in the future but in reverse and those of us used to fiddling inside consoles get to.
The heated seats example is obvious and people can stuff whatever voltage/current they like down the coils and have it working if it comes to it. That said I would not put it past them to try something tricky -- stories I have heard coming out of car dealerships this last few years and things people have to do as far as electronics to get things running for many years now (several years ago now I was fixing a computer for a car garage and a basic hatchback car had its gearbox replaced, would not have moved had it not been coded back in with dealer grade software -- this was not a fancy race car with feedback and computer controlled gears and all that, indeed sensors happened on the wheels for anything fun in this, but a bog standard bunch of gears in a greasy box approach) does not paint a pretty picture.