BMW Is Showing Commercials on Their Car's Dash Screens as a Treat

It’s such a look of desperation to add advertisements when they didn’t start out as a carnival-barker brand that it’s hard to continue trusting their vehicle manufacturing. Look at how poorly they rank in reliability perception relative to Jaguar and Subaru — and only two steps away from ‘We’re selling your radio data to stay afloat’ GM, too?! https://www.bmwblog.com/2025/06/29/2025-jd-power-initial-qua...

Ugh. I may not personally like their cars but I still hate to see it when notable brands swan-dive into the rocks rather than just wind down gracefully. Hopefully Toyota handles this better, given they’re facing a financial engineering crisis of their own with operating profits down to a mere 2.5% of sales: https://www.toyota-industries.com/investors/item/2025_annual... anyways

> Sato has claimed Toyota is in a “battle for survival” against Chinese automakers. Going forward, the company will have to loosen its infamously strict quality standards to cut costs and increase output.

— https://www.autonocion.com/us/toyota-crisis-chinese-evs/

No they most definitely are not.

They're marketed as high end, but their engineering is a tour de force of cost cutting behind the scenes.

I just got rid of my 2024 BMW i4 xdrive40, for an electric awd subaru-toyota-lexus joint effort platform (there are a few variations, all related in engineering) and it's like jumping several years into the future, including efficiency, which is roughly 25% higher in the japanese (more modern) cars, the handling dynamics on the japanese platforms are far more refined, and then vastly less shitty interior materials, except the BMW seating which was good.

I've driven BMW "high end cars" for about 11 years, and emphatically recommend looking at Audi, Mercedes, and Subaru/Toyota joint efforts, as well as Tesla and Rivian, depending on what you seek.

$0.02 from someone who spent a fortune and lived and learned.

Why?

https://9to5google.com/2025/11/05/pixel-theme-packs/

I don't want to watch videos while I'm driving.

In the previous software, you could at least move it somewhere unobtrusive; but the latest version only displays icons alphabetically. No re-ordering anymore.

† Volvos have "Google Built-In," the bastard stepbrother of Android Auto, which also has an app in the car so you can have the worst of both worlds.

That’s why they say not to “buy things and spend money on experiences instead ” and enshittify everything instead of creating new things. It’s not because an “experience” is actually better it’s because it’s easier to make one than make a useful or novel object.

Why make a new thing when you can just extract more money from people with less effort and there isn’t really anything to “make”.

The incentives are all wrong.

The governmental/industrial coordination in China is quite literally un comparable to Western style industries so the western governments feel they have to protect their local industries.

This definitely hurts consumers in the short term, so the whole argument is about long term impacts.

I think the base golf is around 30k.

(Renault, fiat and Citroen are better priced than German cars if you don't mind staying in the low-end. You still have park assist, Google/Apple carplay and they are still good on the road, but they feel less luxurious.)

If I recalled correctly, we got a higher-specced Id.3 for around that price (yes new). It's a great car.

But I am grumpy now, because they added Play Integrity (strong) to their app (which is handy for monitoring charging, etc.) and now I cannot run it on GrapheneOS. They also cut API access for Home Assistant users. I think we are probably an invisible blip on the radar, but our next car probably won't be VW.

For consolation, China will probably suffer the same effect, in about 20 years when it has its own billionaire capitalists who control it (currently it has some but they don't control it, also they are first-generation billionaires who are stuck to the productive activity that made them wealthy)