BMW has acknowledged that charging luxury car owners a monthly fee for seat heating was ill-conceived, yet it has no plans to abandon its overall strategy of subscription-based feature unlocking. In 2022, BMW included seat heating in its ConnectedDrive 'Features on Demand' program in markets such as the UK, Germany, and South Korea, requiring owners to pay approximately $18 per month to activate this pre-installed hardware feature—a price even higher than the $12 monthly fee for steering wheel heating. The move swiftly triggered global backlash.
