Louis Rossmann is a right-to-repair advocate and owns a computer repair business based in Austin, Texas. He also happens to have over two million subscribers on YouTube where he tackles all sorts of technological and right-to-repair topics. He has called out BMW in the past for its heated-seats subscription gambit, and now the Bavarian Engine Works has him riled up again. This time, it’s over the Adaptive M Suspension subscription program, and the title of the video does not mince words: BMW SaaS model; Suspension-as-a-service. It’s time to start pirating cars.
Just last week, a Reddit user posted screenshots of BMW’s Adaptive M Suspension subscription. Buyers can pay 25 euros per month or up to 460 euros to keep the feature for good without having to pay any subscription at all. According to Rossmann, the problem is that these folks already paid for this feature at the very start.
Essentially, BMW models that are available with Adaptive M Suspension actually have it regardless of whether a buyer options it or not. For those who don’t check that box, the components just lie dormant. It’s not until one subscribes or buys it outright, that the components work to their fullest potential.
The automaker touts this system saying on its website;
Every day, for every road, you decide how you want to drive. With sporty or comfortable suspension. Simply use the Driving Experience Control in the cockpit to adapt the basic suspension settings to your driving style. So now you have a more enjoyable driving experience, and better control on uneven roads.
BMW offers a helpful guide on how to activate the system. Once one pays for it through their BMW ConnectedDrive store, they need to drive the vehicle for at least 15 minutes in a place with good wireless coverage. A message should pop up telling them that it’s enabled.
If it doesn’t, they just have to call customer service, probably wait on hold, go for at least one more (who knows? Maybe more) 15-minute drive, and then maybe the system that shipped with the car will work completely.
While this adds several layers of complexity, the benefit to anyone outside of BMW isn’t entirely clear. Advocates for subscription services will point out that it’s plausible that companies like BMW actually saved money by simply building every car with this hardware rather than creating two product lines.
Rossmann’s retort is that BMW has never dropped prices significantly from one year to the next as a result of that streamlined production. That’s not too hard to track since Adaptive M Suspension (in this form) launched in 2019. I can’t find any record of BMW prices (on affected models) getting lower year over year since then.
On top of that, some buyers might have avoided checking the Adaptive M Suspension option box because they don’t want the hassle of maintaining it over time. Surprise! They’ll still have to! That obviously goes for anyone who buys the car second-hand as well, regardless of whether or not they pay for the subscription.
This is an important distinction for the suspension subscription versus “services” like heated seats, which don’t involve critical wear components or parts likely to be damaged due to a collision or hitting a particularly nasty pothole. If you don’t pay for the heated seat sub, there’s little chance you’ll end up paying more down the road for repairs or maintenance by virtue of the heating components being included in the car, activated or not. The suspension is a different story. If you need to replace an Adaptive M shock, one must assume you’re going to pay for the electronically-controlled variable damping technology built into it whether you’ve activated the software to operate it or not.
Further, the suspension subscription raises an important question: What happens if the first owner buys and pays for the lifetime availability of the feature? Will it revert when owner one sells it to owner two? It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve heard of an automaker trying to sell a software-locked feature twice for the same car.
Factors like these lead Rossmann to suggest that pirating software is justified. BMW owners were hacking their cars years ago, so there’s certainly precedent, and that behavior could return.
Finally, it’s worth noting what Pieter Nota, board member for BMW sales and marketing, told Autocar in 2023:
“What we don’t do any more – and that is a very well-known example – is offer seat heating by [subscription]. It’s either in or out. We offer it by the factory and you either have it or you don’t have it.”
Clearly, something is different now, so we’ve reached out to BMW for additional comment and will update this story if we hear back. How do you feel about subscriptions for hardware-based features? Will such subscriptions be an inevitable part of car ownership? Should we fight it to the bitter end? Let us know down below!
Joke’s on BMW no one is going to buy the blinking lights subscription.
CNC equipment has been this way for years (1990’s), Haas, Mazak, DMG Mori, Fanuc all come with prebuilt options that require you to pay the company for a key to unlock, or a technician to come out and do it.
Trust me it’s only a matter of time until it becomes mainstream for cars. The sooner people stop buying the brands that do it, the better off we’ll be.
You say “Pirating”
I say “Liberating”
If the equipment is already in the car – it’s been paid for and should be made usable.
It is ransomware from BMW, oh you want to use something you already own? Then pay us each month.
For those in doubt, a proper subscription service is Netflix / Hulu / etc, you pay to access something you don’t own.
And here I am, just kinda passed that Mercedes-Benz rents their new remote car starter accessories . Allowing you to start your car from your phone..
If we’re lucky, we’ll start to see automakers go directly against the trend, focus on premium value and call it out as nonsense in ads.
This kind of bad behavior creates an opening for companies like Genesis and Infinity to go against the grain and build some market share.
I don’t think anyone taking decisions at Infiniti would make such a bold and smart move…
Genesis already offers free connected services and phone-based remote start for life.
I believe a new generation of tuners will show up and sell discounted access to all these options. So, since I’m never gonna buy a new BMW, feel free to load them up with all the options as standard and lock them off with software. I’ll buy a used ‘base model’ and pay some guy a grand to enable EVERYTHING
Not a fan. The only way this is palatable is if the automaker covers the cost of maintaining and repairing the subscription stuff that you don’t have a subscription for. Which of course the never will.
We need decent open source automobiles.
Would be nice. Right to repair first step. Aptera may end up being a positive example.
avoided checking the Adaptive M Suspension option box because they don’t want the hassle of maintaining it over time. Surprise! They’ll still have to! That obviously goes for anyone who buys the car second-hand as well, regardless of whether or not they pay for the subscription.
Bingo, and this was my thought in the subscription Audi article. This as you said would apply to a collision as well. My example would be an accident that effected a CAN-Bus controller that is part of the subscription, that you didn’t choose, or heck even premature failure. That controller could have knock up effects on systems you do want, or throw the car into limp mode or “non-car” mode. Now I needs to spend $$$$$ to repair the unsubscribed parts to make the purchased part of the car work?
Nein danke
I technically can afford a new BMW, not that they have anything I’d be interested in. I find this unacceptable and if I were interested, I’d have lost that interest learning about subscriptions.
Money aside, how does the connected portion work? Does it check the servers every time you start the car to check if your subscription is valid? Can you not use them in an area with no signal after the initialization? What about 10 years from now when LTE gets shut off?
A friend of mine bought an old conversion van recently. He put an Xbox One in the back. It’s not like the old days where you could just pop in a disc and play. That stupid thing needs to constantly connect to wifi to make sure you’ve paid for the games. Obviously that doesn’t work great on a road trip.
Yeah, that’s a device designed to sit in a living room, and Microsoft still caught a raft of shit from it and they had to dial back the online plans.
Cars spend half their lives in places with no signal and yet car manufacturers are making these always online bullshit systems. And no one seems to care besides us car-nerds.
Tell him to get a used gaming laptop that’s a generation or two old and set up RetroArch. If you want to go even further, install SteamOS on it (the operating system from the Steamdeck). He’ll get access to games as far back as 1968 (assuming he can get the ROMs) and it’ll never ask for anything else. Plus he can run it off battery power and then charge it later.
Modern BMWs aren’t special to drive anymore anyways, so people aren’t missing much shopping elsewhere.
I loved my E30 convertible and E36 M3 coupe, and my dad cherished his E39 for 23 years, but after driving the new M440i and X3 M50 models, they both felt… “fine”. Not awful, but not particularly fun or enjoyable either.
I fell for the ruse not that long ago. Owned a 2015 M235i for a year. It was powerful and RWD, but for everything else, I kinda missed by B5 Quattro. BMW’s are muscle cars now, the handling is binary between frustrating understeer and a big power-slide. I wish I’d been in the market when roadworthy E36’s were affordable.
Couple other things: It’d be ok if it was at least a good luxury car, but the pedal box ergonomics were whack and the ride was marginal at best.
All it will take is one lawsuit that ends up before a judge who thinks that the consumer is entitled to use all of the hardware that is installed in the car that they purchased. At that point BMW et al will need to decide if it is more prudent to put M spec parts in every car or just those that are ordered as M spec cars.
BMW won’t listen to non-customers, but they might listen to dealers. I’m not advocating for this, but hypothetically, if a group of people with high credit scores or valuable-looking “potential trade-ins” went to BMW dealers looking very enthusiastic, mentioned the subscriptions and stormed out after the explanation, that might get BMW GmbH a few sternly-worded letters from their dealerships. Hypothetically, of course. As an idyllic thought experiment.
Doubt it. In my experience BMW dealers aren’t really interested in selling cars. I’ve contacted some before trying to setup a test drive. I’ve never gotten a response back. So…I’ve never bought a BMW.
Ah, that sounds about right… One can dream.
When you make Louis Rossmann angry, you bet he’s going to tell you, and everyone else, why.
Hm. We could goose the stock more by laying off the board of directors that approved this I’ll bet. Choices choices.
I think automakers are vastly underestimating how viscerally angry this subscription shit is going to make consumers…
Are they? The simplest solution is to vote with your wallet and take your money elsewhere. Instead we get incessant kvetching and gnashing of teeth by influencers and shoppers alike….who’ll then turn around, bend over and take it because they can’t help themselves.
Well, the opportunity hasn’t come up to *not* buy a car with a subscription plan or a lack of CarPlay for me yet, unless you count the $45 monthly cost that Audi wants to charge me for a hotspot. Uh, fuckheads, my cell phone is a fucking hotspot and you want half a C-note for the car to make one…? Lol at you.
My “fuck off I’ll buy something else list” currently sits at: no CarPlay, subscriptions for my own shit, buried in a touchscreen basic commands (think vents), and a lack of a dash instrument cluster display over the steering wheel. But I’m sure these automakers will think of other stupid shit for me to add to my list.
Ohhhhh, nah. No. Too few people will care until it’s too late. People with enough wealth to buy a BMW outright wouldn’t notice anyways. And regular people have fallen for this subscription service bullshit with everything else already because in their head paying $14.99 a month to rent is cheaper than paying $100 upfront for lifetime ownership. Even though $14.99 x 12 = $180, so just a year in they’ve already overpaid.
It’s the same thing with modern AAA videogames where you pay $70 for the game (used to be $60), they cut out about 45-60% of the content, and then they sell it back to you in 5-10% increments for $5-15 each. If you bought The Sims 4 at launch, and bought all the content for it (DLC, stuff packs, content packs) the total cost would be over $1,300 currently. For Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 people estimated that the cost to get everything in the game would be over $1,880. Black Ops 6 is going to be even worse, reportedly (there was no Black Ops 5).
Having taken notes from the videogame industry others are copying this malicious behaviour. Cloud storage providers now do this. Security camera operators now do this. Washing machine manufacturers now do this.
The beancounters have proven that it’s easier to swindle a ton of money out of people if you cut it up into tiny chunks, space it out a little bit, and use abusive psychology to induce “fear of missing out.”
The whack part is that the adaptive dampers are definitely more expensive and complex than the non adaptive, they have chips in them and everything. They were a pain to get during the pandemic! Took a year to get a set of adaptive B6s from Bilstein mid pandemic. My Wife just got a ’24 X3 30i that has all options other than the adaptive dampers and Msport brakes, the non adaptive shocks and struts should be a normal job to swap when the thing is out of the 3 year lease. You paid more for the adaptive handling, and she doesn’t need it. AN OPTION. OPTIONAL.
So you are already loaded with the way more expensive part that has extra sensors, wires, etc… that can be factory turned off? It makes no business sense.
That seems so fucking ass backwards, installing the more expensive part then dangling the features instead of just offering the more expensive package at the start like since forever?
This is so stupid I can’t comprehend it fully, and then I get angry, then I get tired.
BMW just discovered a way to charge rent on something they already sold you.
Yep, it’s literally called “rent-seeking.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
Ars Technica had an article today about Peloton charging a $95 activation fee to connect secondhand bikes, and another article about an expensive “smart bassinet” requiring a subscription to access features. Against this and Tesla forcing owners of used Teslas to repurchase features, that $400 “lifetime” unlock will not transfer to a second owner because BMW wants every penny they can squeeze you for.
Screw them, and their ugly giant nostrils that mock the venerable kidney grille. I can buy an old car , or I can buy a Mazda.
Mazda is pulling the same rent-seeking by putting key fob functions in an app that you need to pay monthly for. It’s getting out of control.
At least Mazdas still have the driving dynamics BMW has abandoned
“You wouldn’t download a ca-… oh… wait, I see your point now…”
That ad really gets on my nerves… yes, I wouldn’t download a car. A car isn’t a string of ones and zeros of which a digital copy can be downloaded. If it was, I would most certainly download a personal copy. You know, for evaluation.
Strings of ones and zeros locking you out of physical components that are already installed in the car you purchased are absolutely fair game and the only ethical thing to do is patch that shit into oblivion.
“Clearly, something is different now”
I’ll tell you what’s different… Pieter Nota left or was pushed out 10 months ago:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pieter-nota-5526a235_after-6-successful-years-as-a-member-of-the-activity-7113071193179463680-NPbB/
Clearly his his replacement is on-board with the bullshit approach to subscriptions.
BMWs mistake was bothering to offer the subscription service at all.
They wanted to offer their cars at a lower price point, while not wanting to complicate their assembly lines with de-contented production. The whole subscription controversy was non-sense, as you could have bought the feature unlocked from factory. You didn’t “have to” subscribe to get heated seats – you always had the option to buy it.
But hey, click baity headlines and pearl clutching do their thing. COVID supply chains didn’t help matters either. IIRC, there was a period of time where you genuinely could not get heat seats… because the chips required simply weren’t available.
Big picture, software as a service is a common practice in other industries. It’s a core part of Tesla’s business model, and will likely find its way into every manufacturer. BMW just had the unfortunate luck of trying to be the first, and trying to do it with a hardware feature.
Disagree. What works on digital markets doesn’t necessarily translates to the physical world.
Also, the comparison is flawed anyway. The closest analogue isn’t SaaS, but instead bloatware like McAfee or Norton that comes pré installed on a new PC, but even the worst bloatware gives you the option to just uninstall it.
What this makes that BMW nonsense? Trojans? Root kits? No – ramsonware!
In any case, regardless of the analogy, pushing back against it isn’t pearl clutching, but a normal part of our right as consumers.
“They wanted to offer their cars at a lower price point”
And when did this actually happen?
They wanted to ensure a steady stream of revenue in the future, because historically OEMs make nothing when the car is sold second hand, or when people make performance upgrades. This has nothing to do with offering cars at a lower price point, as evidenced by no price cuts, and everything to do with bringing in new revenue from cars that were sold years ago.
Tell me where they said they will lower the prices of their cars to compensate for the subscriptions they peddle. I’ll wait.
“They wanted to offer their cars at a lower price point.”
lolwut?
The M5 is a six-figure car.
you’re missing a big point. this is a wear item. if I bought a car specifically because it didn’t come with an expensive feature that would be expensive to maintain, and then those parts are there on the car, not just lying dormant, but being used by me. it feels like a bait and switch, class action time.
It has been noted to death that BMW is no longer the Ultimate Driving Machine company, but it still sticks in the craw that the weenies running whatever BMW stands for these days are pulling this horseshit at the company that produced some of the finest drivers’ cars in the world for nearly half a century.
Go pull this shit at Mercedes or Cadillac or some other place that’s never stood for anything but glitz. Doing it at BMW is just spiteful.
Mercedes used to stand for quality and had to provide glitz to justify the cost of quality, right?
I’ve hacked my second hand G30 to enable Apple Carplay, which was artificially locked behind a paywall from the factory.
What I find funny is that manufacturers think this is sustainable.
It was not too long ago that Microsoft attempted to stop pirated Windows copies by activating through the cloud. People back then said this was an “unhackeable” activation method.
Yet here we are in 2024 and pirated Windows abounds. It just takes a script and a few clicks to permanently activate a new installation.
No software engineer codes as well as a pirate acting out of spite.
Nobody codes as well as someone 2 weeks later with 2 weeks worth of hindsight.