[gambiting]

I keep bringing up this example - it's like buying a house with a room that's walled off and you need to pay the developer extra money to have it opened up for use. The houses are made from prefabs so it's easier to just make every house the same but just wall off rooms you didn't pay for. The contract could stipulate this clearly - you are not paying for the room that's walled off.

Obviously, that's completely insane and I'm sure anyone can see this. Why treat cars differently?

[entrox]

Add one variable to your example: imagine that having variations increases cost such as increased development cost (you need to develop each component, test and certify possible combinations, incur increased logistical complexity, etc..)

This additional cost however is less than just adding the higher trim to every configuration, e.g. the additional room, so it doesn't make economic sense to do so.

But let's assume you now get the ability to sell and unlock a higher trim after the initial purchase. Let's say that 20% of your customers would be willing to purchase such an unlock at a later point in time, resulting in increased revenue.

If that revenue plus the reduced lifecycle expense exceeds the cost of adding the higher trim as baseline you would have a business case, which wouldn't be the case if you just add the room for everybody (where you'd have to raise the base price and lose buyers on the lower end).

[gambiting]

I understand all of that. If it isn't economical for BMW to produce cars with and without heated seats as two separate models then I guess all of their cars should have heated seats as standard. Having them but locking them behind a software unlock is profiteering, even if technically making a model without the seats would have been more expensive.