BMW to start charging for individual options

https://carbuzz.com/news/bmws-latest-decision-could-really-irritate-buyers
"Our goal is to ensure the customer no longer has to adapt to the specifics of their vehicle, but for the vehicle to be geared instead towards their personal and individual requirements,"

I worked in the cellular industry for a lot of years. Alcatel-Lucent now Nokia, actually did this with their cellular equipment. They changed their pricing structure to decrease the price of the hardware but then erased those decreases by charging lots more for the software. They found it to be far more lucrative having customers paying a "license fee" for features.

For BMW, this is no more than a money grab. Let's hope other car manufacturers don't follow suit.

So, let me get this straight. They'll put all those features that cost $$$ already into the car, hoping people will "subscribe" to them? That's somewhat sunk cost...
OEM's are hungry to shave even a penny off the car....That's quite the opposite of what's going on today with the industry except Tesla...
I guess in the end having all tech in the car will increase volume of parts thus lowering the cost of the parts and BMW will charge owners even more?

The real elephant in the room is that many BMWs get sold by the dealership twice. Once in lease and once as a CPO. This move has the potential to add value to the CPO portion of their portfolio at little additional product cost. The savings from streamline production, supply, training, and QC likely will nearly meet the cost of components at the scale they order at.

IMO, this move is to shore up CPO profits to bring some additional money back to corporate while simplifying design, production, and support chains.