Who would have thought that heated seats could become such a controversial thing?
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.
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 don’t include it as standard.
Which is why it was so controversial when, in 2022, BMW decided that it would make heated seats not merely an optional extra, but something that, via the car’s central connected touchscreen, you’d have to pay a monthly subscription. Netflix for warmed bums, if you like.
The theory was that it’s much more cost-effective for BMW to fit all of its cars, at the factory, with the hardware – the cabling, the actual heating elements, etc – for heated seats, but far more profitable to then make them an optional extra, with the “miracle” of touchscreen tech and over-the-air software updates able to make creating an extra button on the screen a reality, once you’ve ponied up the price.
Jealous of the streaming services and smartphone providers, car makers were searching for ways to squ
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