Rent a heated seat for your beemer

[Marks DTM Calib]

Bit more fundamental than that, the cars have what is called a digital twin, so the config is onboard and offboard. This can get aligned over the air at anytime so just avoiding a dealer won't work, you also need to ditch the connectivity

Which presumably bricks the car.

Well I would imagine it will be done through BMW connected which no-one apart from the first owner for the first year ever bothers with. When you pair a handset with the car you have to enable data services for connected to make the data connection for it's online services, on most vehicles that's a tick box menu option (certainly on the NBT iDrive version in my car which has the latest software on it - required to run 2021-1 and above maps). I don't think 'bricking' the car would be allowed in this country for a multitude of safety reasons especially when, as previously stated, disabling a car is not allowed.

Latest BMWs are permanently connected, independent of the BMW connected bit, via the inbuilt TCU (usually attached to the base of the sharkfin on BMWs). So there is effectively a car and customer connection capability.

Interestingly if you nobble connectivity on a Tesla, it absolutely will not do anything, similarly if you bugger with certain modules (ask our grads who tore one down  )

[Doctor Gollum]

Tesla are much like Apple in that respect.

[TheBoy]

Tesla are much like Apple in that respect.

Thats unfair. Apple products generally work, for the most part.

[Doctor Gollum]

Tesla are much like Apple in that respect.

Thats unfair. Apple products generally work, for the most part.

Until you want to fix them

Although my imminent Crapple contact is forced. It's going to be harder than the safety training

Although, at least when I break it, work will have to fix it

[TheBoy]

iPhones and iPads aren't too bad to fix TBH.  About the same as the majority of others.  The biggest issue is the utter crap quality of all aftermarket batteries (which is the only thing that tends to fail if you can avoid smashing the screen).

Classic iPods tend to break case clips as they go brittle after about 10 years.

Butterfly keyboards on about 4 years of their laptops, we'll skim over that snafu