Louis Rossmann made a video on it, and something that came to mind while I was watching it was that while regulation can in fact be abused, I think some regulation has to be in place because a company that can charge whatever it wants for a car doing this just for the sake of control is awful. Do we really own the things we buy, or do the corporations?
I know in the EU, they have a lot more laws/regulations about warranties and other R2R shit, I just want to be able to fix the shit I own by myself without the company hindering me from doing so because they want to treat me like a leasee while charging me purchase prices.
Edit: Starting in South Korea, but very concerned that it could be brought here considering horse armor started the gaming industry’s bullshit.
Which I did see and is in the video, it's just really iffy not adding it to the price of a car that's already an expensive luxury car, and begs the question of “why a subscription model?”
Some things may be going on here. Saving on the assembly line by reducing the configurations is probably part of it, but the consumers not wanting to foot the cost of the added configuration becomes an issue.
So BMW installs the hardware, but then only charges for it for consumers who want to use it.
But then, some consumers do calculations, like "406$ for 4 months a year" and opt out of it. But what if those consumers could have it cheaper ? Then they opt in. The hardware is there anyway, so might as well "rent it out".
Let's say you use it 4 months a year. At 18$/month, it takes 22 months to reach the 406$ price tag. 22 / 4 is 5 and a half years. If you don't plan on owning the car for 5 and a half years, it becomes cheaper to just not take the option permanently and just subscribed to it. Heck, one of those years winter is really mild ? Just don't.
I don't really see the issue here, this is all a numbers game for everyone involved. As long as the option is still there to buy permanently, there's no problem.