As I said, I think a line has been crossed when the feature is actually present in the car regardless of who its sold to but is intentionally throttled so it can't be used by people who aren't paying the subscription. Preferably they should just make it so that heated seats are on by default for anyone who buys this car since its possible to use it in any of these particular cars they sell.
I agree a line absolutely has been crossed, a proverbial Rubicon for the car world, but I did specify the short term. Expanded below;
@Bush King if the option still exists to buy outright then that's fine, but it does still seem kind of bizarre to me to disable a feature that is in the car from the start and presumably can't be removed. I think that's what makes this specific example so weird; other stuff like GPS subscriptions or testing removable extras you don't know you'll want to keep make perfect sense.
The issue is that it is incredibly expensive in marginal terms for a manufacturer to have several lines (or even just stations in the process which are skipped or added) running at once for one product. The suits at marketing, sales and accounting probably sat down and hashed out that having extras cost the production line X per year, Y could be saved by having one extremely streamlined process, and Z more sales would result from having the (I assume) normal base price for every model and then adding an option to subscribe to the extra features usually left out alongside a lump sum option.
At the end of the day the process (if the move was successful) would result in lower manufacturing costs, lower prices for consumers, and higher revenues due to whales subscribing and more customers buying the extra as a result of trying it out for cheap. As someone who has experienced but not bought a car with heated seats, I'd absolutely love this. I don't like spending more on extras, but I'd happily treat myself in Winter, where I'd pay (assuming $8 a month versus $800 for the seats) $32 per year instead of $800 stretched over the ownership of the car. Without this, I'd never have been a customer for heated seats. This is essentially all the benefits with few (current) negatives. You can buy it if you can, ignore it but have the option, or be like all poor people and rent now. The first used to be the only reasonable option, buy it first. I'm not sure how expensive it would be or if you even could get the heated seats added later, but that's a cost, and if you traded in the car you'd be paying for the seats
plus the difference of a new versus old vehicle. So long as the price without activating the seats is unchanged or lower, I'm leaning on this being a win, not a loss, even though my gut is currently screaming like Jim's does at all hours of the day.
Ok. Weird question maybe, but: if you can buy it on the spot, or take a 'subscription' and take it home with you... how is this any different from the 'buy now pay in terms' or 'buy now pay later' schemes that also often get people who are stupid with money in debt?
[Edit: duck autocorrect]
It's different because BNPL acts more like a lease. You pay it off in installments. I assume that's an option if you buy the car on finance, but if you had the car already it would just be a subscription service. No one in their right mind is going to give you the option of leasing a live service, the point is the continuous revenue stream.
I can imagine many people having three or four subscriptions for heated seats they forget about in thirty years time.
