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 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.

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 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."

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...

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.

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

> BMW's own PressClub release described the advertisement as a special surprise for drivers...

That one got a chuckle out of me

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...

If please drink a verification can was applied to automobiles.

Great to see the Consumer Rights wiki has been picking up steam. Lots of passionate people behind the project

This and the eye tracking could make a killer combo. “Stare at this ad for 30s to unlock the drive gear”.

The ultimate driving machine... for marginal revenue.

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

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

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.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769397

Shocked. Absolutely shocked. No one saw this coming

My BYD doesn't do this.

Enshittification of everything.

Shades of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Innocence_(U2_album)#...

I got hit with this Wednesday morning when I started my 330i. I cannot wait to sign up for the class action lawsuit.

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.

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.

and the in-dash eye tracking device shows 66% of drivers engage for at least 5 seconds!!

Drove a lot of BMWs when I was working summers as a mechanic