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
“Your” dashboard?
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 sure this will help beat the Chinese automakers
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.
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
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?
You and me… same page
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.
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.
What can I do about it? No point complaining
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”
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!”
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
“we are a premium brand”
my ass.
These “premium” German brands are all committing suicide. Rejecting electric cars, rejecting nuclear power, designing cars that look like puke, and doing everything to monetize your use of the car.
With incompetent leadership like this, those 8k workers being laid off from BMW is just the beginning.
German car brands are rejecting nuclear power?
You don’t see them launching cars powered by their own onboard reactors, do you?
You are right!
I was really looking forward to my luxury German nuclear-powered car as well >:(
don’t worry, they’ll keep stoking nationalist paranoia and shift to weapon production. What’s the worst that could happen?
suicide […] rejecting nuclear power
Uhuh. That plant in Romania that had to shut down, because the rivers are too hot.
You’re right, they should keep burning coal. Clean, beautiful coal, works no matter how hot it gets!
As if there’s not already entire countries with mostly renewable.
Nope, there’s not. Countries like Denmark which pretty much only produces wind power is completely reliant on importing energy from countries with a diverse energy mix, without which they would have blackouts every week.
And why is it so hot, I wonder
CO², nuclear didn’t help much against it.
The premium is unfortunately not in the interior and infotainment experience, at least not these days. And I guess to non car people, the infotainment is what sells cars now.
The Germans still build the best* ICE drivetrains, the best chassis and suspension setups, to give you an excellent ride quality AND sporty handling in the same 2 ton family station wagon. Nobody compares, not even Volvo. But interior layouts have been going downhill steadily for like a decade now. And when it comes to EVs, you can’t really compete without being Chinese anyway. Other countries don’t have access to the same battery pricing, nor the same labor costs (to be fair the latter applies to both ICE and EV alike).
They’ll all die slow deaths. As EVs become mandated, Chinese companies will take over because nobody else can afford to sell cars for so cheap. The Chinese cars will of course have all the same infotainment issues like unwanted ads and they’ll be similar privacy nightmares, plus the prices will go up once you can only buy Chinese cars. It’ll be fun and we’ll all love it.
* Toyota Supra A90 used BMW’s B58 engine. That should tell you everything you need to know. TOYOTA didn’t bother coming up with their own engine for the chassis they also got from BMW. It’s been heralded as the modern 2JZ.
Agree about China overtaking market. Electric BYD is a huge ass SUV and costs 24k here. The next best option is a Dacia Bigster which is not exactly as good. Even so, dacias are populating my region due to low cost
The Germans still build the best* ICE drivetrains,
“Best” is a loaded word. “Best Horsepower for weight?” Possibly. Best reliability, absolutely not.
Plenty of non Chinese brands are on the EV train now.
I can buy an Alpine that it is, in every conceivable way, better than the cheapest VW EV (while being a bit cheaper, or the same price). How is this not a problem with German manufacturers specifically?
What are all the conceivable ways to you? Anyway, the Renault 5 is almost as much as the bigger id.3 neo here and we don’t have anyone selling the Alpine version as it’s more expensive than the 5 and thus too expensive for such a tiny car.
And all of these cost at least 4x as much as a similarly sized but lower power BYD does in China. That’s how much cheaper the Chinese can build their cars. When they sell the same batteries to Renault or VW, the batteries alone likely cost about as much as BYD’s entire car. And we can’t really produce these batteries at such scale here in Europe because of pollution regulation. China processes most of the world’s lithium and cobalt. Only hope we have is coming up with a magic battery chemistry that doesn’t come with a ton of environmental issues, but unfortunately Donut Labs is more than likely a scam.
The Germans still build the best* ICE drivetrains, the best chassis and suspension setups, to give you an excellent ride quality
Dad has a BMW. It has a too smooth dampening and steering adjustment to speed, so you’ll vastly underestimate how fast you’re driving. I won’t drive his car anymore; too dangerous.
The Germans still build the best* ICE drivetrains
Until the lease expires, then they are a nightmare to maintain. Money pits.
AUDI intentionally placed the timing chains backwards in motors so a high mileage timing chain replacement would require a full engine out and cost more than the car is worth. BMW used plastics in their pressurized fuel system with failure rates known after a set number of heat cycles, they are blowing up.
That tends to be adjustable in cars now. Oftentimes the comfort setting is vague on purpose on a lot of cars. My Audi in comfort is fine if not a bit too soft for spirited driving on back roads, on Dynamic it’s perfect for that. It’s a 2007 Allroad though. Still has hydraulic (but variable) power steering and such.
When I had my 2019 C-Class, it felt just right for this type of driving, even though that one had steel springs and no adjustable dampers, but did have adjustable steering since it was fully electric power steering. It also felt completely at home cruising at 150-160 km/h (no autobahn here so I wouldn’t go faster than that usually).
Only BMW I ever owned was an E61 and that one also had superb road feel, though I hear the newer ones aren’t as good, since they do optimize for the highway rather than the curvy roads I personally prefer driving on.
In comparison, I test drove a Hyundai Ioniq 5, a small electric hatchback I thought would be sporty-ish, and that had zero road feel. Outright dangerous going fast into a corner with it, and with the electric torque it was certainly tempting to do so before I realized how little I know about its grip limits.
Hyundai Ioniq 5, a small electric hatchback I thought would be sporty-ish, and that had zero road feel. Outright dangerous going fast into a corner with it
The ioniq5 is not small. it weighs 4000-4600 lbs. Porker. That’s why it handles like shit.
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
Was looking for a new electric car and had BMW in the rotation. That’s not happening now. Was already on shaky ground after the heated seat thing and now I’m not touching em.
