BMW paid subscription to car hardware caused dissatisfaction among hackers: it claimed that it would crack it and give it to car owners for free.
CTOnews.com8, March 15 (Xinhua)-- some time ago, BMW announced that it will launch a remote paid upgrade for future new cars, including heating, ACC (adaptive cruise) and some in-car entertainment. Customers can pay to subscribe to a feature temporarily or permanently.
BMW has launched some of these subscription services in markets such as South Korea and the UK, such as British car owners spending 15 pounds (122.79 yuan) a month to activate devices such as heated seats, or 35 pounds (286.51 yuan) a month to activate adaptive cruise control systems.
This has caused a considerable number of users' dissatisfaction as to why they still have to pay for some of the functions they buy, and why some functions should not appear in their cars if they do not want to use them.
Some of the hackers who are specifically responsible for unlocking the blocked functions in BMW cars say that they have been providing unlocking services for car owners in BMW forums and other places. At present, they are mainly focused on installing additional software features for in-car systems and unlocking functions blocked by BMW officials. They also say that they will continue to conquer BMW's paid subscription system in the future so that users can use the feature free of charge.
An employee of Bimmer Tech, a company that specializes in BMW retrofitting, added, "We are always looking for ways to meet the wishes of our customers. As long as a customer has paid to use it and BMW has activated it, we can break it; if BMW does not activate it, we can also use third-party applications or hardware to modify it to achieve this function."
CTOnews.com learned that it is worth mentioning that in the US market, cars that have been hacked or modified to crack firmware are also covered by BMW's warranty, and if they are not guaranteed, they will violate the FTC Consumer Protection Act, because these features already exist and users just start it.
