{"id":84339,"date":"2026-02-11T01:40:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T04:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/891273991"},"modified":"2026-02-11T01:40:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T04:40:22","slug":"heated-seats-controversy-highlights-the-perils-of-connected-car-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/02\/11\/heated-seats-controversy-highlights-the-perils-of-connected-car-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Heated seats controversy highlights the perils of connected car tech"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

Who would have thought that heated seats could become such a controversial thing? <\/p>\n

For anyone who has ever suffered from a bad back, having a warmed-up car seat can be not merely nice on a cold day, but an absolutely prerequisite for daily life. <\/p>\n

Heated seats have gone from being a rare luxury in a high-end car, to an item that has become so common that it now seems stingy when car makers<\/a> don\u2019t include it as standard. <\/p>\n

Which is why it was so controversial when, in 2022, BMW<\/a> decided that it would make heated seats not merely an optional extra, but something that, via the car\u2019s central connected touchscreen, you\u2019d have to pay a monthly subscription. Netflix for warmed bums, if you like. <\/p>\n

The theory was that it\u2019s much more cost-effective for BMW to fit all of its cars, at the factory, with the hardware \u2013 the cabling, the actual heating elements, etc \u2013 for heated seats, but far more profitable to then make them an optional extra, with the \u201cmiracle\u201d of touchscreen tech and over-the-air software updates able to make creating an extra button on the screen a reality, once you\u2019ve ponied up the price. <\/p>\n

Jealous of the streaming services and smartphone providers, car makers were searching for ways to squeeze some cash out of Gen Z<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reaction from car buyers and consumer groups was predictably outraged. Not only did it seem cynical that a car maker would start to charge a monthly fee for something that you previously paid in one upfront sum, but the implication for second-hand buyers was obvious: once you trade-in your subscription-laden car, all of those subscriptions would be wiped, and the next owner would have to pay for them all over again. <\/p>\n

BMW backtracked and said that while it might offer one-off post-purchase payments through the touchscreen to activate certain features, it would no longer try to charge a rolling subscription for them. <\/p>\n

There was an attempt at justification \u2013 the idea that someone might prefer to pay for heated seats for the winter months, and then reduce their subscription in the summer \u2013 but it fell on very deaf ears. <\/p>\n

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If a patent filed by Ford is anything to go by, then the next thing might be cars that repossess themselves<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

However, this idea of in-car services as subscriptions hasn\u2019t gone away. The car industry says that the idea of \u201cfunction on demand\u201d (FoD) is being driven by customers. <\/p>\n

According to a report by industry watchers Frost & Sullivan: \u201cFoD offers a solution that allows drivers to choose the features they want and pay only for what they use. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis approach reflects a broader industry trend toward software-defined vehicles (SDVs), where manufacturers can introduce new capabilities or update existing ones through Over The Air services.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not sure who Frost & Sullivan spoke to about that, but we suspect that it was car company accountants, rather than actual consumers. <\/p>\n

A reliance on FoD would almost certainly make significant ripples, waves even, in the second-hand market. One of the joys of being too poor to buy a brand new car is that if you\u2019re patient and a careful shopper, you can nab a bargain used car that someone \u2013 who could better afford it \u2013 spent big on when they browsed the options list, leading to a car loaded with nice, extra toys which haven\u2019t helped them much in terms of used value, but which you can now enjoy for a bargain price.<\/p>\n

FoD would undo all of that, as in its ultimate form a car would be effectively wiped and rebooted when traded in, leaving the subsequent owner to pay all over again for the extras that the car had 10 minutes ago. Car companies would love such a future \u2013 being paid multiple times for the same components \u2013 but consumers would doubtless love it much less. <\/p>\n

[ <\/span>Tesla scraps models in pivot to AI as annual revenue falls for first timeOpens in new window<\/span><\/a> ]<\/span><\/p>\n

Tesla<\/a>, perhaps unsurprisingly, is the latest car maker to jump on the FoD bandwagon, turning its \u201cfull self driving\u201d software and hardware (which isn\u2019t self-driving at all, let alone full) from a one-off optional extra to a monthly subscription, starting from $99 (\u20ac84) per month, but with Elon Musk<\/a> promising that price will rise in line with the sophistication of the service offered. <\/p>\n

Musk has been circling issues far more controversial than this of late \u2013 let\u2019s not even get going on his AI system\u2019s unpleasant adjacency to child abuse<\/a> \u2013 but with Tesla\u2019s profits falling by 61 per cent on a GAAP basis last year, this starts to feel less like innovation and more like a desperate play for consumers to provide Tesla with a monthly revenue stream. <\/p>\n

Rejoice, then, that Audi<\/a> might be heading in the other direction. The premium German brand has had its (un)fair share of financial headwinds in the past year, but its new design boss \u2013 Massimo Frascella \u2013 is winning drivers\u2019 hearts not just with his gorgeous Concept C sports car<\/a>, but also by slamming touchscreens. <\/p>\n

In an interview with Top Gear magazine, Frascella said that touchscreen technology for the sake of it is a bad idea, and he\u2019s underlined that by bringing back an idea from an old Audi A3 hatchback \u2013 a touchscreen that disappears behind the dashboard when you don\u2019t want to be distracted by it, a feature Frascella included in the Concept C. <\/p>\n

However, perhaps we shouldn\u2019t get our hopes up too much. Frascella is talking about design, not technology, and Audi has said it, too, is going to ramp up its FoD offerings in the future. <\/p>\n

So far, the worries have been consumer-based \u2013 features being switched on and off at the whim of a merciless customer service department, planned obsolescence disguised as \u201cwithdrawal of support for that model\u201d, and so on. There\u2019s an even more worrying potential to connected cars, though. They could be turned against us. <\/p>\n

[ <\/span>Could your old car be giving away all your secrets to its new owner?Opens in new window<\/span><\/a> ]<\/span><\/p>\n

How so? Well, if a patent filed by Ford<\/a> is anything to go by, then the next thing might be cars that repossess themselves.<\/p>\n

No, this doesn\u2019t mean a car that needs to be doused with holy water and reported to some secretive agency in the Vatican. It means a car which can simply drive itself back to the dealership if you fall behind in your PCP payments. <\/p>\n

This is more of an issue in the US than in Europe, where financial providers are more likely to engage with a customer who\u2019s defaulted on payment to sort things out with a new repayment plan. In the US, things can be more aggressive when it comes to falling behind on your loans, and the Ford tech is the autonomous new tip of that spear.<\/p>\n

The patent \u2013 titled pretty plainly \u201cSystems and Methods to Repossess a Vehicle\u201d \u2013 includes a few interventions before the final act. First, the on-board screens will start reminding you that you\u2019ve missed a loan payment. Then, the vehicle will, petulantly, start disabling important features such as your phone connection, or maybe the air conditioning, or \u2013 of course \u2013 the heated seats. <\/p>\n

The systems can even kill the engine to prevent you from driving the car at all (with a fail-safe in an emergency, although how long you\u2019ll have to be on hold on a hotline to get the car unlocked at that point is unclear). <\/p>\n

[ <\/span>Smart home becomes a harder sell when device makers arbitrarily pull the plugOpens in new window<\/span><\/a> ]<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, there is a line in the patent suggesting an eventual fully autonomous ability for the car to drive itself back to the dealership, or even to the nearest scrap yard if it\u2019s decided that the value has fallen far enough to not make it worth reselling. <\/p>\n

The system can scan its surroundings to check that it\u2019s not been parked in a closed garage to prevent itself driving away, but there\u2019s no word on what happens in that case. Is there a chainsaw hidden in the front bumper, allowing the car to cut itself free?<\/p>\n

My late father, whenever I told him with unbridled enthusiasm about some new whizz-bang piece of automotive technology, would say it was \u201cjust another thing to go wrong\u201d. Imagine his horror if he could be confronted with technology that can not only fail, but which is designed to squeeze more money from you before it does so. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… , with the \u00e2\u0080\u009cmiracle\u00e2\u0080\u009d of touchscreen tech<\/span> and over-the-air software … magazine, Frascella said that touchscreen technology<\/span> for the sake of it … your loans, and the Ford tech<\/span> is the autonomous new tip … whizz-bang piece of automotive technology<\/span>, would say it was \u00e2\u0080\u009c …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}