Great way to tank a brand. Part of BMW's value is/was the expectation of an upper middle class snob driving it, but having your car force ads on you is something people wouldn't even expect from a Kia Soul leased off a used lot.
Between this, the proprietary nut patent, and the heated seat subscription, I'm probably not going to look at BMW for my next car. They've been going back on things, but all of this adds up to they don't get it.
How can you put Ryanair and BMW in the same category?
Ryanair's whole shtick is "we'll treat you like cattle in a truck, and you'll be grateful you only paid €20 for the experience". I feel that anyone who is outraged by their nickel-and-diming doesn't really understand what Ryanair is about.
If I paid €200 for a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam, and they forced me to watch ads on the seatback screen and charged me to use the loo, then I'll be rightfully upset. But €50 for Ryanair? Where do I sign up for the €20 standing-only tickets?
The problem is a lot of people book Ryanair thinking they're going to save money and end up sucked in to these dark patterns.
I once flew from London Stansted (or maybe it was Luton?) to Dublin instead of from Heathrow with Aer Lingus to save a few bucks, and it never ended up saving me anything in the end.
With Aer Lingus the cheapest ticket includes 10kg of checked luggage, which is a nice middle ground between a tiny bag you can shove under your seat and a 23kg luggage
And Ryanair are not even cheaper most of the time unless you're prepared to fly at unsocialable times and forgo luggage.
Ryanair even seem to deliberately separate seats for adult passengers on the same booking so they can charge you extra to sit together...
Ryanair is the epitome of "cheap with compromise" which is the opposite of the BMW brand. And kindle basic gets advertising as a known feature at buying time.
Pushing advertisment after sale on a premium product is absolutely not similar.
I had to edit my comment saying it might not have been a fair comparison because I realized they might’ve just been dissing BMW pretty hard.
‘Enjoy your “luxury“ car’, the kind of “luxury“ that appeals to subsidized e-reader buyers and discount airline customers.
And I like that. If BMW can’t resist monetizing their customers’ attention, they don’t deserve the higher-end customers their marketing suggests they desire.
Ryanair: can’t recall if they’re worse than Spirit/Frontier. “We have one price for tiny people flying with the shirt on their back, and other prices for everyone else like those who might need luggage, or, liquid to survive.“
Are you including people who own older BMWs? They look like really great deals on the used market. Just don’t check the five-year total cost of ownership. If it’s not new, it’s gonna cost you in the shop. Maybe every year or so.
Also I think everyone in our social circles have flagship phones but $50 Android pre-paids sell pretty well. (Someone probably knows, unlike me, the exact numbers.)
Stellantis shows ads on their screens in-car. It’s expected behavior from an awful manufacturer like Stellantis, but I wouldn’t have expected this from BMW. It’s tacky and would turn me off from buying a BMW if I was looking at one.
I own a 2009 BMW twin turbo 3-series, purchased slightly used in early 2010 for $36k. The new price was $52k, so 10 months of depreciation really hits hard on new BMW buyers I guess.
The machine is a work of engineering art. It was made back in the days when BMW engineers were still given free rein to create The Ultimate Driving Machine. Remember that slogan? Back then, owning and driving a BMW was intentional. A driver's car. Design details down to things imperceptible were created with this intentional driver's desire to operate the vehicle. Sigh...
I feel sorry for the engineers that are still there from their glory days. Imagine being told from some power-suited punk to design that ad delivery mechanism.
What’s there to tank? Even Germans avoid BMW unless you are a drug dealer or six Syrian refugees throwing together to buy a car to flex with after the McDonalds shift.
I bought a Series 7 BMW once, went to Munich to pick it up with my GF, the electronics died three lights away from the factory. Just giving me a new one? Nope. Had to go home without a car.
I never heard anyone say, ‘Man, I’d not buy another brand than BMW again in my life.’
And I feel the people in the 21st century finally called the German engineering bluff and are now driving Chinese cars that are more innovative, a lot cheaper and basically German engineering too, after china stole all of the trade secrets.
- The Settings: Apple Intelligence and Apple Fitness+ (including the red dot as if you missed something important).
- The app store. Typically 1/2 or 2/3 of the search page is covered by ads.
- Apple Wallet. They rolled out an F1 advertisement to Apple Wallet in some region.
- iWork apps now have advertisements for updating to an Apple Creator Studio subscription.
- Apple Maps will soon have ads.
Most restraint is gone now to grow the Services category. It just feels gross for flagship devices. It seems that AOSP ROMs like GrapheneOS are the only road to sanity.
That describes almost every major auto company though. Some companies sell their luxury lines through different badging or different branding but it's the same line up. Even Nissan has a luxury line. If you want a 500k BMW you can do that too.
I'm beginning to think that my '96 Toyota Starlet is "peak ICE". It has EFI, no infotainment, no power windows, no power steering, no automatic transmission. It is basically an engine, gearbox and wheels. An electric Starlet would be Nirvana.
Edit: Just read that Toyota is toying with the idea of an electric Starlet. It'll probably have an infotainment system and power "everything" though.
I'm not a mechanic but I have rebuilt an engine (common rail diesel with electronic injection) with a friend and do some work on my own cars. I don't really get the "everything needs to be mechanical" push. My previous car was mid 2000s, automatic, electronic basically everything. The reason why I scrapped it was because it had too must rust. The engine, transmission, and electronics were still fine after 200k and 20 years of harsh winters.
My current car had an electrical issue last year... but it turned out it was a mechanical issue. Something had chewed through the wires to the MAF sensor. Fixed them, and all good. It's no different from something chewing through a fuel line, except OBD was able to tell me what subsystem was not working correctly.
The problem I see with current cars is that the infotainment system is tied into everything - and usually the software sucks. If they just went back to seperate dashboard, AC controls and radio I'd have no issues with them.
My current car is from 2016, and I specifically looked for something that was like that. It is hybrid and has modern tech (e.g. radar cruise control), but everything is compartmentalised. First upgrade I did was replacing the headunit with a Chinese one that supports Android Auto/CarPlay. No functionality was lost, as the old head unit was literally just a radio and screen for backup camera.
The infotainment thing is regrettable but nowhere near as bad as the cellular modems phoning home, constantly spying, possibly raising your insurance rates…
Lucky for Big Brother they’ve blanketed this country (USA) in Flock cameras. New car, old car, they’re ready to pull over journalists in dealer loaners, people in the wrong place at the wrong time…
The phone app misses lots of data the car can collent and send. When, how frequently, and how long turn indicators are used. How aggressively the throttle and brake are applied, how frequently pre-tensioners and other safety features activate, how closely the radar or lidar-equipped cruise control sees you following others, and I'm sure lots I haven't thought of
Been asked that before—don’t always use one. Insurers will have to buy that data from the telecom if my phone’s on.
Not sure how common it is for Verizon, AT&T, Google (Maps), Apple (Maps) to sell to insurers (or brokers who insurers use). Perhaps pretty common? I’m sure they often can deanonymize it if they do.
Electronic injection sounds like too complex system to maintain, now if it had an actual carburetor that might be a peak "ICE", true and pure mechanical experience. Jokes aside, I hope that car at least have airbags, otherwise it's just death trap
Why 2025 though? It didn't yet pass the test of time and there is not enough failure rate data on it. Toyotas(Lexus) do have serious quality issues too, rarely but that happens for certain models from time to time.
Sedan sales are tanking as a general concept. It’s not just the S class or E class. The sedan is a decreasingly popular form factor. I personally think this is quite logical: what’s the advantage of a sedan over a vehicle with a hatchback, whether it be SUV or car? It’s pretty much worse in every way. It’s just a smaller cargo opening.
The popularity of SUVs is incredibly logical given the fact that their downsides have been largely eliminated. They don’t chug gas anymore, they don’t ride like a truck anymore, again, where’s the downside? A sedan gives you a worse cargo space and more difficult entry/exit, lower view of the road, more annoying for car seats and kids, etc.
Mercedes is doing just fine selling SUVs.
This is a similar story to the death of the coupe and the manual transmission. There was a time when having two doors or manual transition cut down on labor and manufacturing costs significantly and they were sensible compromises for customers. It’s just not true anymore, and what you’re left with is a typical non-enthusiast buyer that says “why would I want a car with less functionality/is harder to drive?”
It’s easy to criticize about M or AMG being watered down but they have a pretty distinctive product separation between the true performance models and sport trims.
And to be honest, the sport trims are much more sensible purchases for most buyers than a full blown M/AMG vehicle with all the sticker price, fuel economy and maintenance baggage they entail.
Just saying that these brands have different offerings in different countries. Here in Germany all big brands: Audi, BMW, Mercedes and VW etc have offerings from low lever to luxury car.
The most evil part of this is that drivers have been conditioned to click on these “surprise waiting for you” notifications. BMW usually had fairly cute holiday animations that were a fun surprise. I actually looked forward to them until I got bamboozled by this one…
Correct. This is about the people who buy new cars. The manufacturers are addressing a well-studied market. Those with money, those who can afford to be "early adopters' of new tech are the sort of people who actually want these features. They want computer screens. They want car-phone synchronization. They want a car that can be "repaired" over an internet connection because that saves interacting with a tradesperson with skills they do not understand or appreciate. Cars are scary for such people. Phones are not. So making the car as phone-like as possible sells more cars.
I agree that it’s abhorrent. However the doomer in me can’t help but think they do these things because consumers still buy them. You’d expect GE to go “Oh yeah well we don’t put ads on OUR fridges.” but it seems like in every industry they all just follow suit.
A fridge is one of these devices where I wouldn't know why I would even want a screen. So, I would never buy a fridge with a screen or a washing machine/dryer with anything more than a simple segmented LCD.
For me the biggest annoyance are pushing ads (and the pervasive monitoring that comes with it) to devices where screens are integral to the device and therefore unavoidable, like TVs, smartphones, computer displays, etc. We haven't connected our TV to WiFi (like any TV nowadays you have to be very careful that it doesn't enable a service like Samba that screenshots what you are viewing), but I'm sure these people will do anything to get their hands on analytics and screen time by embedding cellular modems and whatnot.
Similarly, at least on Android phones, you can git of a lot of crap with adb. But Android 17 removes the possibility to uninstall apps from the 'user partition' (you can only disable), I wouldn't be surprised if they also remove disabling in the future, so there will be no way to get rid of all the spyware and crap ware. Yes, alternative ROMs do not have this issue, but they get increasingly blocked out with Play Integrity.
It's not like they're showing ads on fridges/cars in the commercials or the display units in Lowe's/the dealership. By the time you see the ad, it's too much of a hassle to return it, even if you can...
On my Samsung TV recently on the start page some ad has started to show up, years after I bought it. No idea if I can get rid of it. I barely watch TV though, so I don't really care about wasting time trying to get rid of it. But I will for sure avoid Samsung in future TV purchases.
It sounds awful, but it might not even make the top-5 of the most annoying/concering things you'll get in a new car (bought in the EU at least), many of which are now mandatory by regulation. What you'll also get is a camera that tracks your eye movements to play an alert when they're not on the road, an alarm when you drive over the allowed speed limit as determined by a camera, an alarm plus a mechanical yanking of your driving wheel when you're approaching the side of your lane without a turn signal on. As a cherry on top it's unclear what happens with all the data generated by these systems. And I'm probably forgetting a few.
I'm wondering what a good cutoff date is when considering buying a used car.
Those things are at least well intentioned, and honestly the lane keeping has once or twice saved me from accidentally leaving my lane when distracted, which might have saved my life.
An ad for a spiderman movie has no upside and is another small step towards a Minority Report vision of the future.
I haven't driven a recent model but afaik the answer for most is Yes, or at best you can disable them for the current ride and they turn on again automatically on every start.
That's quite insane then. Especially the lane departure warning / assist was downright dangerous in snowy conditions when the road markings became partially covered, I cannot imagine driving with that setting on all the time.
I've never had a point where it is dangerous. It vibrates the steering wheel and that's it. Even on the autobahn's 2.20m wide roadwork left lanes it works good/not bad enough I just leave it on. Lane keeping is not mandatory, only a warning system.
I had it behave dangerously on a VW Atlas I rented, driving south out of Atlanta. A section of 85 has those half black, half white high-contrast stripes, and I had to firmly grip the wheel for the entire section because the lane keeping system was constantly trying to correct.
Yep, it does, our VW also nudges back to the lane. The annoying thing is that you can only disable it by stepping through two pages on the on-board screen, though I think many newer models just have a button on the steering wheel to toggle it.
I had lane keeping “assist” in a Subaru Forrester rental car almost kill me and my family by trying to push us into the path of a very large truck last year.
> Especially the lane departure ... assist was downright dangerous in snowy conditions
And near cyclists...
(Opposite to some configurations described nearby, some car models do automatically steer pushing the car in its lane, they do not just warn the driver.)
We have a car with lane assist. But as far as I have seen (but can be mistaken), collision avoidance has a higher priority, so it would prefer avoiding a cyclist ov er staying in lane (though if the road is small, it might just start breaking).
What you'll also get is a camera that tracks your eye movements to play an alert when they're not on the road
Coming to you thanks to the assholes who fiddle on their phone while driving. As a cyclist, I still see this happening regularly where car drivers are fiddling on their phone while driving for just a few seconds, leading to almost-collisions (well, probably I've been lucky to only witness almost-collisions, including almost getting hit myself), etc.
Same problem on bikes and electric bikes. People are so attached to their screens that they are fiddling on their phone while cycling. This was already bad when people cycled 15 km/h on a regular bike, but now we have kids who cycle on a fat bike with the 25 km/h speed limit removed, tinkering on their phone while cycling 35 km/h in small city streets. Not surprisingly, accidents have gone up a lot.
I hate in-car cameras as much as you. But I also hate the totally irresponsible use of phones while driving/cycling.
The eu has started pushing those things with a 2016 (I believe) regulation that imposed "all cars approved for production after 2018 must have an "e-Call" system (internal GPS, microphone and telephone connected to the police in case of car crash)".
Same in my car from 2017. Also has rear camera, no infotainment other than bluetooth (so I guess it doesn't have any telemetry), physical buttons, no internal nav, no EU warning systems, no alerts that I need to turn off. Perfect car. Very peaceful to drive.
These systems are such a pain in the butt. These can’t be saving lives. My brain completely filters away the speed limit beep. The auto-steering mostly tries to drive me into other vehicles (in the countryside it steers you towards the middle of the road ). And I am pretty sure the eye tracking thing wont prevent me from selecting a spotify song.
cutoff is officially mid 2024. I don’t know if some older cars have been firmware-updated to have these features turned on by default.
The main story in the wiki page comes from the Autopian [0], specifically from Jason Torchinsky, ex Jalopnik. It's an awesome publication, check them out, and Jason is an incredible writer (Onion alumni)
At this point, the current BMW has to die and reinvent themselves in a fundamentally better way. Breaks my heart as longtime BMW fan and previous owner of some older models. What have they done to the DNA of that company...
Wouldn't it be fair if BMW at least shared the advertisement revenue with the car owners?
It's so ugly that they first sell cars, and profit from that. And then they utilize the fleet of cars to squeeze out more revenue, even though that was never part of the contract to begin with. What right does BMW have to do that?
If they found a new revenue source, it would be nice if they at least shared that with their customers. Now it's just abuse of their customers. Where BMW is one-sided profiting while the customers are suffering.
I mean, I don't know of it's still around, but the ad-supported Amazon Kindle was at least cheaper than the regular version. So the customer got some compensation for being shown ads.
Hopefully their lawyers have considered the possibility of a bug causing this ad to play while the car is being driven and leading to a distracted driving accident...
on suitably equipped vehicles running BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or OS X built after July 2020
For those who were surprised by that naming, Apple hasn't used "OS X" for nearly 10 years.
This looks like it, possibly. There doesn't seem to be a banner that you click on like it states in the consumer rights article, but rather an icon, so not sure.
BMWs have decent 'mod' support, if you fully own a msport/M you can be mitigating OTA updates in firmware to retain your perf/exhaust pops as regulations/OEMs change goals. Original firmware b58s (m340/z4m40) are infamously coveted for specific software/hardware versions... Same logic can be applied to this strange advert thingy
Focusing on US, not EU: Had a 2020 m340i delivered pre2020 so lived through this. The niche market also understands this, C3 made a full breakdown presentation for the Volkswagen scandal (https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...) that makes your first point moot.
You are being sarcastic, right? We have been seeing this coming for a very long time, in the order of ten years. Spoken with car makers employees: "people ask for that". So: what do you mean.
A month ago the highly upvoted blog entry [0] about Rivian’s rejection of CarPlay included this quote from Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, Wassym Bensaid:
The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users.
Yes, it’s clear the companies’ see the way they want to “interact” with their customers is to force whatever content they please.
Went to an official repairs shop for a device yesterday, said I had a backup device with a malfunctioning (for clinical reasons) OS. The technician replied that OS downgrade is inhibited.
And there are similarities. For example, after laws that forbid circulation of older vehicles upon "non-ecological" reasons. For example, if they stop producing replacement parts. Etc.
And anyway, if the basis of Economics is not rebuilt, that of a "violent" Demand side with a strong refusal against the Supply side, the damage will be even more than the already critical one of unacceptable products eating u the market.
> Clicking on it then activates the Spider-Man™ animation, comprising a full-screen festive animation in the Control Display with aptly chosen backing music and an accompanying light show courtesy of the ambient lighting system.
Stop the presses, it's not an ad, it's just a “festive animation”!
One of the best things one of me mates from high school did for me, is buy himself a BMW. The amount of problems and money he had to deal with helped me realize I didn't actually want a BMW, they're just nice to look at.
Only the older ones without screens. A naturally aspirated inline 6 with a manual gearbox and 50/50 weight distribution is it's own special kind of bliss.
I only take it out maybe 20 times per year, but after merely 30s behind the wheel I remember why I keep it.
they were nice to look at before they hired some military tank designer
and even looking at them is safe only seen they are parked, I warned my kids to be extra vigilant when they are nearby BMW on the road, by far the most dangerous drivers on the road with mental issues
this is what you get for buying cheap noname brand car from Temu
similar thing happened with that British LGBT brand, which is gone
though it's clear people who buy BMW are not mentally sane anyway, I'm yet to see BMW driver with stable personality who would not vent their mental issues on the road, these people will buy BMW with literally any design and specs just because it's BMW, no matter it looks like ugly tank
I honestly believe if we banned BMW car registrations number of accidents would drop much more than it's their total share on registrations.
yes, these are data from Czechia in 2022, TOP10 (it's percentage share of accidents per operated/registered cars, it doesn't take into consideration km travelled though which would eliminate all the trucks immediately with their yearly mileage):
1. DAF 4,67%
2. MAN 3,60%
3. Iveco 2,99%
4. Mercedes-Benz 1,53%
5. Volvo 1,34%
6. BMW 1,04%
7. Audi 1,02%
8. Fiat 0,89%
9. Renault 0,86%
10. Volkswagen 0,83%
Guess which of these brands doesn't sell trucks (just a little bit hint - Mercedes and Volvo sell a lot of trucks in Europe) and you will get number one among passenger cars from one brand which doesn't sell trucks and cause the most accidents followed unsurprisingly by Audi.
different chart from 2025 from CEBIA in Czechia, company checking whether car was crashed and their findings, percentage of cars they were checking and which actually crashed, though this one just says percentage out of verified cars, it must be noted that Skoda/Toyota are extremely popular in Czechia, so they are also more likely to have accidents:
Great way to tank a brand. Part of BMW's value is/was the expectation of an upper middle class snob driving it, but having your car force ads on you is something people wouldn't even expect from a Kia Soul leased off a used lot.
It's like a basic Kindle. Or Ryanair.
Between this, the proprietary nut patent, and the heated seat subscription, I'm probably not going to look at BMW for my next car. They've been going back on things, but all of this adds up to they don't get it.
How can you put Ryanair and BMW in the same category?
Ryanair's whole shtick is "we'll treat you like cattle in a truck, and you'll be grateful you only paid €20 for the experience". I feel that anyone who is outraged by their nickel-and-diming doesn't really understand what Ryanair is about.
If I paid €200 for a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam, and they forced me to watch ads on the seatback screen and charged me to use the loo, then I'll be rightfully upset. But €50 for Ryanair? Where do I sign up for the €20 standing-only tickets?
The problem is a lot of people book Ryanair thinking they're going to save money and end up sucked in to these dark patterns.
I once flew from London Stansted (or maybe it was Luton?) to Dublin instead of from Heathrow with Aer Lingus to save a few bucks, and it never ended up saving me anything in the end.
With Aer Lingus the cheapest ticket includes 10kg of checked luggage, which is a nice middle ground between a tiny bag you can shove under your seat and a 23kg luggage
And Ryanair are not even cheaper most of the time unless you're prepared to fly at unsocialable times and forgo luggage.
Ryanair even seem to deliberately separate seats for adult passengers on the same booking so they can charge you extra to sit together...
Ryanair is the epitome of "cheap with compromise" which is the opposite of the BMW brand. And kindle basic gets advertising as a known feature at buying time.
Pushing advertisment after sale on a premium product is absolutely not similar.
I had to edit my comment saying it might not have been a fair comparison because I realized they might’ve just been dissing BMW pretty hard.
‘Enjoy your “luxury“ car’, the kind of “luxury“ that appeals to subsidized e-reader buyers and discount airline customers.
And I like that. If BMW can’t resist monetizing their customers’ attention, they don’t deserve the higher-end customers their marketing suggests they desire.
Which was the straw that broke the camel's back to cancel Prime
>basic Kindle
Praise be to AdBreak https://kindlemodding.org/jailbreaking/AdBreak
I practically own it now!
Ryanair: can’t recall if they’re worse than Spirit/Frontier. “We have one price for tiny people flying with the shirt on their back, and other prices for everyone else like those who might need luggage, or, liquid to survive.“
A BMW is like a flagship smart phone. It looks like luxury, but everyone has them.
Are you including people who own older BMWs? They look like really great deals on the used market. Just don’t check the five-year total cost of ownership. If it’s not new, it’s gonna cost you in the shop. Maybe every year or so.
Also I think everyone in our social circles have flagship phones but $50 Android pre-paids sell pretty well. (Someone probably knows, unlike me, the exact numbers.)
Because it's a premium product, not a luxury.
No, it's obviously not like that.
Stellantis shows ads on their screens in-car. It’s expected behavior from an awful manufacturer like Stellantis, but I wouldn’t have expected this from BMW. It’s tacky and would turn me off from buying a BMW if I was looking at one.
I own a 2009 BMW twin turbo 3-series, purchased slightly used in early 2010 for $36k. The new price was $52k, so 10 months of depreciation really hits hard on new BMW buyers I guess.
The machine is a work of engineering art. It was made back in the days when BMW engineers were still given free rein to create The Ultimate Driving Machine. Remember that slogan? Back then, owning and driving a BMW was intentional. A driver's car. Design details down to things imperceptible were created with this intentional driver's desire to operate the vehicle. Sigh...
Now, it's apparently...The Ultimate Consumer Advertising Content Delivery System.
I feel sorry for the engineers that are still there from their glory days. Imagine being told from some power-suited punk to design that ad delivery mechanism.
What’s there to tank? Even Germans avoid BMW unless you are a drug dealer or six Syrian refugees throwing together to buy a car to flex with after the McDonalds shift.
I bought a Series 7 BMW once, went to Munich to pick it up with my GF, the electronics died three lights away from the factory. Just giving me a new one? Nope. Had to go home without a car.
I never heard anyone say, ‘Man, I’d not buy another brand than BMW again in my life.’
And I feel the people in the 21st century finally called the German engineering bluff and are now driving Chinese cars that are more innovative, a lot cheaper and basically German engineering too, after china stole all of the trade secrets.
> Part of BMW's value is/was the expectation of an upper middle class snob driving it
BMWs are no where near for that "class". A Mercedes-Benz is for that and even they also put ads in their own dashboard screens. [0]
So on HN-land, time to rule out BMWs, Chevrolets, Mercedes-Benz, Teslas, Volkswagens, Kias. What else?
[0] https://www.motor1.com/news/797846/mercedes-screen-plays-ads...
Mercs and BMWs occupy the same market space. They are direct competitors.
Mercedes may have a car or two that reaches just out of upper middle class but they are largely a middle to upper middle class brand, just like BMW.
The fact that Merc would do it too just means they are both happy cheapening their brand to align with practices of cheap off-brand android TVs.
Actually Apple will also put advertising on your phone if you have one of the dynamic carousel things and you walk into the wrong area.
They put advertising in:
- The Settings: Apple Intelligence and Apple Fitness+ (including the red dot as if you missed something important).
- The app store. Typically 1/2 or 2/3 of the search page is covered by ads.
- Apple Wallet. They rolled out an F1 advertisement to Apple Wallet in some region.
- iWork apps now have advertisements for updating to an Apple Creator Studio subscription.
- Apple Maps will soon have ads.
Most restraint is gone now to grow the Services category. It just feels gross for flagship devices. It seems that AOSP ROMs like GrapheneOS are the only road to sanity.
Mercedes is famously a company with the widest range of models, from entry-level budget cars to high-end luxury ones. It's basically their MO.
That describes almost every major auto company though. Some companies sell their luxury lines through different badging or different branding but it's the same line up. Even Nissan has a luxury line. If you want a 500k BMW you can do that too.
I don't think I'll be buying recent model years any time soon.
I'm beginning to think that my '96 Toyota Starlet is "peak ICE". It has EFI, no infotainment, no power windows, no power steering, no automatic transmission. It is basically an engine, gearbox and wheels. An electric Starlet would be Nirvana.
Edit: Just read that Toyota is toying with the idea of an electric Starlet. It'll probably have an infotainment system and power "everything" though.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/2026-toyota-starlet-rumours/
I'm not a mechanic but I have rebuilt an engine (common rail diesel with electronic injection) with a friend and do some work on my own cars. I don't really get the "everything needs to be mechanical" push. My previous car was mid 2000s, automatic, electronic basically everything. The reason why I scrapped it was because it had too must rust. The engine, transmission, and electronics were still fine after 200k and 20 years of harsh winters.
My current car had an electrical issue last year... but it turned out it was a mechanical issue. Something had chewed through the wires to the MAF sensor. Fixed them, and all good. It's no different from something chewing through a fuel line, except OBD was able to tell me what subsystem was not working correctly.
The problem I see with current cars is that the infotainment system is tied into everything - and usually the software sucks. If they just went back to seperate dashboard, AC controls and radio I'd have no issues with them.
My current car is from 2016, and I specifically looked for something that was like that. It is hybrid and has modern tech (e.g. radar cruise control), but everything is compartmentalised. First upgrade I did was replacing the headunit with a Chinese one that supports Android Auto/CarPlay. No functionality was lost, as the old head unit was literally just a radio and screen for backup camera.
The infotainment thing is regrettable but nowhere near as bad as the cellular modems phoning home, constantly spying, possibly raising your insurance rates…
Lucky for Big Brother they’ve blanketed this country (USA) in Flock cameras. New car, old car, they’re ready to pull over journalists in dealer loaners, people in the wrong place at the wrong time…
What stops your navigation app on phone collecting all the data anyways and sharing it with insurance corps?
The phone app misses lots of data the car can collent and send. When, how frequently, and how long turn indicators are used. How aggressively the throttle and brake are applied, how frequently pre-tensioners and other safety features activate, how closely the radar or lidar-equipped cruise control sees you following others, and I'm sure lots I haven't thought of
Been asked that before—don’t always use one. Insurers will have to buy that data from the telecom if my phone’s on.
Not sure how common it is for Verizon, AT&T, Google (Maps), Apple (Maps) to sell to insurers (or brokers who insurers use). Perhaps pretty common? I’m sure they often can deanonymize it if they do.
Not having a screen is great, but I don't think you're going to convince many people that lack of power steering is a feature.
Electronic injection sounds like too complex system to maintain, now if it had an actual carburetor that might be a peak "ICE", true and pure mechanical experience. Jokes aside, I hope that car at least have airbags, otherwise it's just death trap
Volvo, with their terrible infortainment system's performance, I'm not sure if it's capable of displaying ads.
And here you thought they were just incompetent. Turns out, they've been looking out for you this whole time
My Lexus 2025 remains perfect and user friendly. I have all the online connected stuff enabled. Zero enshitification.
Why 2025 though? It didn't yet pass the test of time and there is not enough failure rate data on it. Toyotas(Lexus) do have serious quality issues too, rarely but that happens for certain models from time to time.
Many NA produced lexus models have seen deteriorating quality issues past 5 or so years. Maybe yours is produced in Japan?
Lexus is a kino sleeper.
Toyota is the least objectionable car manufacturer and used vehicle deprecation curves don’t lie, I trust money decisions more than words.
As long as they keep annoying ads and subscriptions out of their vehicles, I’ll keep driving them.
>> Zero enshitification.
Lexus should put that on the cover of their product brochure.
Mercedes used to be that. The S class used to be the best car you could buy.
The S class sales are tanking as well as E class and the rest of their cars are just toyota corolla class with extra "luxury" features.
AMG used to actually mean something, now AMG badging is a feature that means nothing (Like M cars).
Sedan sales are tanking as a general concept. It’s not just the S class or E class. The sedan is a decreasingly popular form factor. I personally think this is quite logical: what’s the advantage of a sedan over a vehicle with a hatchback, whether it be SUV or car? It’s pretty much worse in every way. It’s just a smaller cargo opening.
The popularity of SUVs is incredibly logical given the fact that their downsides have been largely eliminated. They don’t chug gas anymore, they don’t ride like a truck anymore, again, where’s the downside? A sedan gives you a worse cargo space and more difficult entry/exit, lower view of the road, more annoying for car seats and kids, etc.
Mercedes is doing just fine selling SUVs.
This is a similar story to the death of the coupe and the manual transmission. There was a time when having two doors or manual transition cut down on labor and manufacturing costs significantly and they were sensible compromises for customers. It’s just not true anymore, and what you’re left with is a typical non-enthusiast buyer that says “why would I want a car with less functionality/is harder to drive?”
It’s easy to criticize about M or AMG being watered down but they have a pretty distinctive product separation between the true performance models and sport trims.
And to be honest, the sport trims are much more sensible purchases for most buyers than a full blown M/AMG vehicle with all the sticker price, fuel economy and maintenance baggage they entail.
Just saying that these brands have different offerings in different countries. Here in Germany all big brands: Audi, BMW, Mercedes and VW etc have offerings from low lever to luxury car.
You make it sound like there's no choice. Toyota/Lexus and Honda/Acura don't do it to my knowledge. Am I wrong?
EDIT Add Volvo and Genesis to the list of no ads
It’s not forced. You have to click icon. Not the smartest move, but not exactly ominous. Plenty of other bad software decisions in bmw.
The most evil part of this is that drivers have been conditioned to click on these “surprise waiting for you” notifications. BMW usually had fairly cute holiday animations that were a fun surprise. I actually looked forward to them until I got bamboozled by this one…
Sounds like it is forced and it’s an entire banner. Imagine the click-through rate on something your car shows you compared to your average ad.
Yup. I'd say ICE cars peaked in UX, performance, and safety in the early 2000s.
The current crop of cars are significantly safer than in early 2000s.
Good point especially wrt side airbags. I forgot about that.
This has nothing to do with the method used to propel the vehicle. There's nothing stopping this from happening in an EV.
Correct. This is about the people who buy new cars. The manufacturers are addressing a well-studied market. Those with money, those who can afford to be "early adopters' of new tech are the sort of people who actually want these features. They want computer screens. They want car-phone synchronization. They want a car that can be "repaired" over an internet connection because that saves interacting with a tradesperson with skills they do not understand or appreciate. Cars are scary for such people. Phones are not. So making the car as phone-like as possible sells more cars.
The electric motor is better for torque and speed than ICE.
And this effects how ads are displayed on the main console how?
Samsung the same with their display on fridge, I'm not sure how is this legal and why someone thinks this is ok.
These decision makers are meant to be educated people with may be at least a tiny bit of values in their lives...
I agree that it’s abhorrent. However the doomer in me can’t help but think they do these things because consumers still buy them. You’d expect GE to go “Oh yeah well we don’t put ads on OUR fridges.” but it seems like in every industry they all just follow suit.
A fridge is one of these devices where I wouldn't know why I would even want a screen. So, I would never buy a fridge with a screen or a washing machine/dryer with anything more than a simple segmented LCD.
For me the biggest annoyance are pushing ads (and the pervasive monitoring that comes with it) to devices where screens are integral to the device and therefore unavoidable, like TVs, smartphones, computer displays, etc. We haven't connected our TV to WiFi (like any TV nowadays you have to be very careful that it doesn't enable a service like Samba that screenshots what you are viewing), but I'm sure these people will do anything to get their hands on analytics and screen time by embedding cellular modems and whatnot.
Similarly, at least on Android phones, you can git of a lot of crap with adb. But Android 17 removes the possibility to uninstall apps from the 'user partition' (you can only disable), I wouldn't be surprised if they also remove disabling in the future, so there will be no way to get rid of all the spyware and crap ware. Yes, alternative ROMs do not have this issue, but they get increasingly blocked out with Play Integrity.
This is not the future we should want.
I suppose they've determined the revenue from the ads outweighs the potential competitive advantage.
Or they know it's a race to the bottom where as long as every brand's doing it, consumers have no choice...
It's not like they're showing ads on fridges/cars in the commercials or the display units in Lowe's/the dealership. By the time you see the ad, it's too much of a hassle to return it, even if you can...
If I have to buy a consumer fridge and they all have screens, that’s when I’ll call up a refrigeration company and buy a commercial refrigerator.
On my Samsung TV recently on the start page some ad has started to show up, years after I bought it. No idea if I can get rid of it. I barely watch TV though, so I don't really care about wasting time trying to get rid of it. But I will for sure avoid Samsung in future TV purchases.
No coincidence, BMW and Samsung did product placement in the movie too. Very conspicuously.
I wonder if they say: "A new life awaits you in the Off-world colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure."
Start…the…reactor
> BMW's own PressClub release described the advertisement as a special surprise for drivers...
That one got a chuckle out of me
Like coming back to your car getting broken into, a surprise doesn't necessarily have to be a positive one.
Reminds me of EA calling lootboxes "surprise mechanics, quite ethical"...
It sounds awful, but it might not even make the top-5 of the most annoying/concering things you'll get in a new car (bought in the EU at least), many of which are now mandatory by regulation. What you'll also get is a camera that tracks your eye movements to play an alert when they're not on the road, an alarm when you drive over the allowed speed limit as determined by a camera, an alarm plus a mechanical yanking of your driving wheel when you're approaching the side of your lane without a turn signal on. As a cherry on top it's unclear what happens with all the data generated by these systems. And I'm probably forgetting a few.
I'm wondering what a good cutoff date is when considering buying a used car.
Those things are at least well intentioned, and honestly the lane keeping has once or twice saved me from accidentally leaving my lane when distracted, which might have saved my life.
An ad for a spiderman movie has no upside and is another small step towards a Minority Report vision of the future.
I get all of these with more or less recent (2023) Mazda here in Japan, but all of them can be turned off in settings. Are they always-on in EU?
(I checked the directives weeks ago.)
In the eu, the general idea is "you can disable the functions each time you restart the car - they will be re-enabled as the car is off".
Some people spend minutes turning off the annoying parts from the settings before starting the car, each time.
It’s the main thing they tell you when you buy a new car. Press here 4 times, then here 3 times, then here once, and you’re good.
No single mamdani-burton to unsubscribe?
I haven't driven a recent model but afaik the answer for most is Yes, or at best you can disable them for the current ride and they turn on again automatically on every start.
That's quite insane then. Especially the lane departure warning / assist was downright dangerous in snowy conditions when the road markings became partially covered, I cannot imagine driving with that setting on all the time.
The "lane assist" is very dangerous. I don't understand how this got in cars to begin with, nevermind become mandatory.
It's super "fun" with temporary marking around road works. I bet it works perfectly in a lab but in the real world..
I've never had a point where it is dangerous. It vibrates the steering wheel and that's it. Even on the autobahn's 2.20m wide roadwork left lanes it works good/not bad enough I just leave it on. Lane keeping is not mandatory, only a warning system.
I had it behave dangerously on a VW Atlas I rented, driving south out of Atlanta. A section of 85 has those half black, half white high-contrast stripes, and I had to firmly grip the wheel for the entire section because the lane keeping system was constantly trying to correct.
I guess it depends on the maker. For my car it nudges the wheel back into the lane in addition to vibrating.
Yep, it does, our VW also nudges back to the lane. The annoying thing is that you can only disable it by stepping through two pages on the on-board screen, though I think many newer models just have a button on the steering wheel to toggle it.
I had lane keeping “assist” in a Subaru Forrester rental car almost kill me and my family by trying to push us into the path of a very large truck last year.
> Especially the lane departure ... assist was downright dangerous in snowy conditions
And near cyclists...
(Opposite to some configurations described nearby, some car models do automatically steer pushing the car in its lane, they do not just warn the driver.)
We have a car with lane assist. But as far as I have seen (but can be mistaken), collision avoidance has a higher priority, so it would prefer avoiding a cyclist ov er staying in lane (though if the road is small, it might just start breaking).
> collision avoidance has a higher priority
Apparently not all cars have collision avoidance towards the sides. The combination of HW and SW features now varies.
Texting and driving is a real problem.
What you'll also get is a camera that tracks your eye movements to play an alert when they're not on the road
Coming to you thanks to the assholes who fiddle on their phone while driving. As a cyclist, I still see this happening regularly where car drivers are fiddling on their phone while driving for just a few seconds, leading to almost-collisions (well, probably I've been lucky to only witness almost-collisions, including almost getting hit myself), etc.
Same problem on bikes and electric bikes. People are so attached to their screens that they are fiddling on their phone while cycling. This was already bad when people cycled 15 km/h on a regular bike, but now we have kids who cycle on a fat bike with the 25 km/h speed limit removed, tinkering on their phone while cycling 35 km/h in small city streets. Not surprisingly, accidents have gone up a lot.
I hate in-car cameras as much as you. But I also hate the totally irresponsible use of phones while driving/cycling.
My 2015 has none of these things. It has a rear camera, no telemetry, physical buttons, no internal nav, and no giant tough screen.
> My 2015 has none of these things
The eu has started pushing those things with a 2016 (I believe) regulation that imposed "all cars approved for production after 2018 must have an "e-Call" system (internal GPS, microphone and telephone connected to the police in case of car crash)".
And then more, and then more, and still more...
Same in my car from 2017. Also has rear camera, no infotainment other than bluetooth (so I guess it doesn't have any telemetry), physical buttons, no internal nav, no EU warning systems, no alerts that I need to turn off. Perfect car. Very peaceful to drive.
These systems are such a pain in the butt. These can’t be saving lives. My brain completely filters away the speed limit beep. The auto-steering mostly tries to drive me into other vehicles (in the countryside it steers you towards the middle of the road ). And I am pretty sure the eye tracking thing wont prevent me from selecting a spotify song.
cutoff is officially mid 2024. I don’t know if some older cars have been firmware-updated to have these features turned on by default.
If please drink a verification can was applied to automobiles.
The car will remain in park until you roll down the windows and yell "I love McDonalds!"
Earn 300 bonus BMWBucks by visiting your local Taco Bell (R) (TM) drive through in the next 15 minutes! Limited time offer!
That explains all the Beemers not stopping at pedestrian crossings.
Spend $20 at your local Burger King and we'll turn off that oil leak!
mountain dew is for me and you
It wasn’t. It’s an icon on desktop that most owners probably didn’t even noticed. Same with Tesla’s tron (which arguably was kinda cool for my 3yo).
If my PC or phone did that, I would immediately begin shopping for a replacement. I'm not three.
Great to see the Consumer Rights wiki has been picking up steam. Lots of passionate people behind the project
The main story in the wiki page comes from the Autopian [0], specifically from Jason Torchinsky, ex Jalopnik. It's an awesome publication, check them out, and Jason is an incredible writer (Onion alumni)
[0] https://www.theautopian.com/bmw-is-showing-commercials-on-th...
27 Jul 2026 18:42:31 UTC
BMWs shows in-car ads for Spiderman
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073924
[ok]
28 Jul 2026 19:53:02 UTC
BMW showing video ads in car for Spider-Man new Day
https://old.reddit.com/r/BMW/comments/1v802of/got_this_comme...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49089027
[ok]
At this point, the current BMW has to die and reinvent themselves in a fundamentally better way. Breaks my heart as longtime BMW fan and previous owner of some older models. What have they done to the DNA of that company...
Wouldn't it be fair if BMW at least shared the advertisement revenue with the car owners?
It's so ugly that they first sell cars, and profit from that. And then they utilize the fleet of cars to squeeze out more revenue, even though that was never part of the contract to begin with. What right does BMW have to do that?
If they found a new revenue source, it would be nice if they at least shared that with their customers. Now it's just abuse of their customers. Where BMW is one-sided profiting while the customers are suffering.
> Wouldn't it be fair if BMW at least shared the advertisement revenue with the car owners?
No.
I mean, I don't know of it's still around, but the ad-supported Amazon Kindle was at least cheaper than the regular version. So the customer got some compensation for being shown ads.
If customers have a real choice between ad supported and not ad supported then that's fine.
(And by "real choice" I mean that ad-free isn't ridiculously overpriced)
(And not a subscription fee to avoid ads)
When I learned about their heated seat subscription thing, I knew BMW is a brand I wouldn't touch.
This just cemented that.
(Not that I plan to spend that much on a car anyway.)
Whilst we are having a dig at BMW owners it turns out that most of them don't know whether their car is front or rear wheel drive.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/bmw-80-of-1series-owners-don...
1-series owners, who don’t represent typical BMW owners.
Hopefully their lawyers have considered the possibility of a bug causing this ad to play while the car is being driven and leading to a distracted driving accident...
on suitably equipped vehicles running BMW Operating System 7, 8, 8.5, 9, or OS X built after July 2020
For those who were surprised by that naming, Apple hasn't used "OS X" for nearly 10 years.
This looks like it, possibly. There doesn't seem to be a banner that you click on like it states in the consumer rights article, but rather an icon, so not sure.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Z8v2tsYdgRk
The icon is there to replay it. It'll auto-play like the 4th of July video.
at this point the luxury car feature is that nothing in it demands your attention. a screen that just shows the speed and the fuel gauge and shuts up
The safety of a 2025 with the driving UX of a 1995 is what I want.
The ultimate driving machine... for marginal revenue.
BMWs have decent 'mod' support, if you fully own a msport/M you can be mitigating OTA updates in firmware to retain your perf/exhaust pops as regulations/OEMs change goals. Original firmware b58s (m340/z4m40) are infamously coveted for specific software/hardware versions... Same logic can be applied to this strange advert thingy
Engine modules are locked because of regulation to ensure that emissions control remain in place.
Pops don't disappear with software updates. Pops disappeared in Europe because of the dreaded OPF.
Focusing on US, not EU: Had a 2020 m340i delivered pre2020 so lived through this. The niche market also understands this, C3 made a full breakdown presentation for the Volkswagen scandal (https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...) that makes your first point moot.
This and the eye tracking could make a killer combo. “Stare at this ad for 30s to unlock the drive gear”.
No no, the brake!
Shades of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_(U2_album)#...
I don't see how. One is a full-screen commercial. The other is a free album in your library.
They're both violations of boundaries associated with ownership.
It depends if you like U2 or not I suppose.
I wouldn’t even drive.
I would put up the car for sale, and would never drive a BMW again. I’d go by bus until my new car arrives.
Oh, cool. If the car has ads it means it's free then.
Right?
Dropped from top of first page to third page: rank 69, 188 points, +5 hours, 124 comments
This one doesn’t seem right to me since it’s a recent popular post w/o a previous popular post.
Shocked. Absolutely shocked. No one saw this coming
You are being sarcastic, right? We have been seeing this coming for a very long time, in the order of ten years. Spoken with car makers employees: "people ask for that". So: what do you mean.
A month ago the highly upvoted blog entry [0] about Rivian’s rejection of CarPlay included this quote from Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, Wassym Bensaid:
Yes, it’s clear the companies’ see the way they want to “interact” with their customers is to force whatever content they please.[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769397
Everyone sells out for a price and old Spidey found how much BWM will drop its pants for.
My BYD doesn't do this.
Soon Chinese tech will be viewed as premium class while their competitors are eroding their quality.
It just quietly documents your life.
LOL, so do all Western automakers.
BYD infotainment is trash tho. “The bzootoo conexun is sugzezsul” level of trash.
I got hit with this Wednesday morning when I started my 330i. I cannot wait to sign up for the class action lawsuit.
Time to upgrade to a 2008 330i
> Time to ["]up["]grade to a 2008 330i
Went to an official repairs shop for a device yesterday, said I had a backup device with a malfunctioning (for clinical reasons) OS. The technician replied that OS downgrade is inhibited.
And there are similarities. For example, after laws that forbid circulation of older vehicles upon "non-ecological" reasons. For example, if they stop producing replacement parts. Etc.
And anyway, if the basis of Economics is not rebuilt, that of a "violent" Demand side with a strong refusal against the Supply side, the damage will be even more than the already critical one of unacceptable products eating u the market.
Some more earlier this week:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073924
Wow. That’s incredibly trashy. I mean, for a brand whose cars break down endlessly — do they not make enough from recurring repairs?
> Clicking on it then activates the Spider-Man™ animation, comprising a full-screen festive animation in the Control Display with aptly chosen backing music and an accompanying light show courtesy of the ambient lighting system.
Stop the presses, it's not an ad, it's just a “festive animation”!
One of the best things one of me mates from high school did for me, is buy himself a BMW. The amount of problems and money he had to deal with helped me realize I didn't actually want a BMW, they're just nice to look at.
They're also really nice to drive (at least when they work).
Only the older ones without screens. A naturally aspirated inline 6 with a manual gearbox and 50/50 weight distribution is it's own special kind of bliss.
I only take it out maybe 20 times per year, but after merely 30s behind the wheel I remember why I keep it.
And no electronic steering like the newer ones.
The B58 engine + ZF8 is probably one of the best engine/transmission combos BMW ever built. And arguably one of the best combos on the road today.
Very reliable, efficient and fast. It's all the other things that break.
Oh he let me drive it a couple of times and the thing was an absolute beast.
The problem these days is that many drivers conflate 'beastly performance' with 'good to drive'.
When a basic sedan weighs 1700kg, you can't fool physics - it's never going to corner or respond like it's predecessor of half that weight.
they were nice to look at before they hired some military tank designer
and even looking at them is safe only seen they are parked, I warned my kids to be extra vigilant when they are nearby BMW on the road, by far the most dangerous drivers on the road with mental issues
Enshittification of everything.
and the in-dash eye tracking device shows 66% of drivers engage for at least 5 seconds!!
The ad will pause if you look away!
I suppose it could be worse. The ad could torture you with loud high pitched noise until you look at it, like in Black Mirror's 15 million merits.
this is what you get for buying cheap noname brand car from Temu
similar thing happened with that British LGBT brand, which is gone
though it's clear people who buy BMW are not mentally sane anyway, I'm yet to see BMW driver with stable personality who would not vent their mental issues on the road, these people will buy BMW with literally any design and specs just because it's BMW, no matter it looks like ugly tank
I honestly believe if we banned BMW car registrations number of accidents would drop much more than it's their total share on registrations.
Seriously not helpful, and have you actually matched this opinion to the statistics which are freely available?
yes, these are data from Czechia in 2022, TOP10 (it's percentage share of accidents per operated/registered cars, it doesn't take into consideration km travelled though which would eliminate all the trucks immediately with their yearly mileage):
1. DAF 4,67%
2. MAN 3,60%
3. Iveco 2,99%
4. Mercedes-Benz 1,53%
5. Volvo 1,34%
6. BMW 1,04%
7. Audi 1,02%
8. Fiat 0,89%
9. Renault 0,86%
10. Volkswagen 0,83%
Guess which of these brands doesn't sell trucks (just a little bit hint - Mercedes and Volvo sell a lot of trucks in Europe) and you will get number one among passenger cars from one brand which doesn't sell trucks and cause the most accidents followed unsurprisingly by Audi.
https://www.garaz.cz/clanek/servis-auto-cisla-statistiky-vin...
different chart from 2025 from CEBIA in Czechia, company checking whether car was crashed and their findings, percentage of cars they were checking and which actually crashed, though this one just says percentage out of verified cars, it must be noted that Skoda/Toyota are extremely popular in Czechia, so they are also more likely to have accidents:
Audi 69,69 %
BMW 68,82 %
Škoda 64,37 %
Toyota 63,87 %
Mercedes-Benz 62,27 %
Hyundai 61,95 %
Volvo 58,59 %
Volkswagen 56,02 %
Seat 55,02 %
Mazda 54,78 %
https://autosalon.tv/novinky/ojetiny/10-nejcasteji-bourajici...
U
Drove a lot of BMWs when I was working summers as a mechanic
wow what an amazing story