Over-the-air updates allow automakers to make their cars better even after the customers take delivery. In the BMW Group, these are called Remote Software Upgrades and recently celebrated a milestone. At the end of September, 10 million OTAs had been pushed to cars globally. It’s an impressive feat considering the first software revisions remotely sent to cars happened five years ago.

Initially, only BMWs took advantage of OTA updates before MINI and Rolls-Royce joined. As it stands, there are more than nine million cars from the three brands that support Remote Software Upgrades. The difference between nine million vehicles and 10 million over-the-air updates stems from the fact some cars benefitted from more than just one software refresh.

The automotive conglomerate tells us that the car’s whole software can be tweaked without the owner having to schedule an appointment with the dealer. To date, the BMW Group has manufactured more than 22 million connected vehicles but less than half support OTA updates.

While remote updates are nice to have, let’s not ignore the controversy surrounding several features blocked behind a paywall. BMW sparked a lot of debate when it launched a subscription for heated seats. Facing backlash, it dropped this service after people accused the luxury brand of making customers pay twice.

But plenty of other pay-to-play goodies are still available. We’re talking about a high-beam assistant and a subscription to take full advantage of the adaptive M suspension. In the BMW UK shop, we also found active cruise control with stop & go, the Parking Assistant Professional, and even Apple CarPlay. Other notable mentions include map updates, IconicSounds, and Traffic Camera Information.

Ok, subscriptions are technically not over-the-air updates but these go to show how the obsession with software has created a new revenue stream for automakers. As with everything in life, we take the bad with the good, although ideally, a car’s software should be perfect from day one. Moreover, all the features should be readily available if the hardware is already there.

Source: BMW