It’s a bitterly cold day when you climb into your new car to start the commute to work. Settling into the cold seats sends a shiver through your body. Grabbing the icy steering wheel, you curse the day you decided not to opt for the heated wheel option. You stop, pull out your phone, and load the app – fine, the heated steering wheel only adds $3.99 per month. But the heated seats are an additional $12.99 –too steep right now. You click the button to add the heated steering wheel. The car beeps, unlocking the feature, and the wheel begins to warm beneath your hands. You tell yourself you’ll disable it to save on the monthly bill once the cold snap has passed.
Sound ridiculous? It’s a plausible scenario in just a few years if some automakers follow their current paths.
Tesla already offers over-the-air updates, which have led to some strange tales – consider the time Consumer Reports complained about the long braking distance in the Model 3, so the automaker improved it with a software change automatically downloaded to owners’ cars.
Now, reports say, some automakers may move to a new sales model where every car they build leaves the factory with every option built-in, and owners turn them on and off with monthly fees.
Features on demand
BMW mentioned the possibility in a presentation on the company’s new digital key system over the summer, and tested it in the 2019 model year, offering Apple’s CarPlay service for an annual fee instead of a cost at purchase. BMW dropped the idea for the 2020 model year.
Audi has launched a similar program in Germany and Norway, with the twist of free trial periods. Buyers of Audi’s E-Tron and E-Tron Sportback electric cars leave the showroom with Matrix LED headlights activated, but have to provide payment information to keep them after a trial period ends.
In a presentation on the company’s future plans this week, Hyundai revealed that what it calls “features-on-demand” are planned, though the company did not give a date for the program to start.
We should note that our hypothetical scenario above is fictional, particularly when it comes to pricing. We have no idea what automakers might choose to charge for subscriptions to individual features.
Choice left to dealers and buyers
But the move may be inevitable. Factories could save money by building every single example off the line to the same specifications. It would leave it up to dealers to activate them when a buyer elects an option. Or it may be up to buyers, who enroll and disenroll from an app as they determined which options they want or need.
The system would, we should add, complicate determining the value of your car on the used market. Today, your car’s value is partially dependent on the equipment it carries.
