Standard Equipment

[Kremmen]

The EX MK4 Jazz has as standard :

Auto cruise control
Heated seats
Heated steering wheel
Auto high beam

If you had bought a BMW that would be £80 a month subscription if you didn't pay a hefty fee at purchase.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/bmw-launches-heated-seat-and-steering-wheel-subscription-service-uk

[Jazzik]

If you had bought a BMW that would be £80 a month subscription if you didn't pay a hefty fee at purchase.

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/bmw-launches-heated-seat-and-steering-wheel-subscription-service-uk

[sportse]

The manufacturers would like us to subscribe to cars like phones.

That way they know how much money they have coming in, and exactly when your contract is up to sell you a new contract.

Extras that cost more per month fit in with that way of selling, as you never own the car just rent its use.

What they haven't accounted for is that people may realise they only need a car for a few days per month, and just rent it for that time - not having to pay for something you're not using.

[Kremmen]

Same as software. (SaaS)

Microsoft would rather you pay monthly for Office365 than sell you Office2021 for example.

I prefer to own rather than have ongoing payments with no end date.

[DERMOT]

But what it Honda had subscription to remove the road departure warning?  Would you pay £10. Month to not have it?

[sportse]

But what it Honda had subscription to remove the road departure warning?  Would you pay £10. Month to not have it?

Yes, I would.

Every trip I have to manually disable it as I drive on country roads.

Unfortunately it’s not likely to happen- all the safety sense kit is required by the EU now and has to activate when the car is turned on.

You could probably find someone to code it out with a laptop, but that would cause insurance issues.

[Wivenhoe]

This tells you how much less the BMW’s options actually cost compared to what they charge when you buy them. They are fitting all the equipment etc. for the option without it definitely being paid for. I can’t see them loading the car with say a real cost of £ 5k of options on a car ordered without them in case somebody may or may not pay a subscription in future years. 
A big earner for them will be by subscription allowing subsequent owners to add stuff that the lease / company cars don’t have because they are seen as expensive options.
One upside will be that currently you pay company car tax on the list price of the car including options. With subscriptions you won’t pay company car tax on them - I guess most BMW’s are company cars these days.

[Kremmen]

When I bought my first Civic I compared it to the Golf at the time.

At that time, 2007, the Golf was about the same price, but, as soon as you added the options the Civ8c had it was considerably more expensive.

Probably still the same.

[Bristol_Crosstar]

I'm not sure it's really a big issue, if the BMW heated seats had been ordered when the car was new then there is no monthly charge. It gives future owners the option to add the heated seats later, without that option they would have had to have the seats replaced in order to get the heated version which would have been so expensive it would never be considered.

With the car largely run by software it's easier to install the hardware when the car is built and to switch options on and off with a software flag, IT companies have been doing this for years. Everyone gets a full version of the software but with certain bits disabled if they haven't been paid for, it makes sense to just have one version of the software to maintain than multiple versions with some parts left out.