I guess it’s situational then. I have never been in a situation where my phone went to unusable, but even if it would I have enough music cached on the phone to last me for a bit. I’m also not a big fan of linear music presentation and have such a “all over the place” taste in music that there is not a single “station” that works for me.
For years, my commute took me through some mountainy areas outside LA where both cell reception and standard radio reception were very spotty. Being able to keep music going was great. Same with on long drives away from population centers.
Yah, I could have downloaded a bunch of music, but having variety was nice.
I get the appeal, I just wish there was an option to not have it, that’s all. If the question is have XM in the car or get $350 discount, I’ll take a discount. I’m sure there are enough people in both camps.
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No doubt it isn’t for everyone, but it does have its use cases.
It’s deleted on a X3M40i build, 3 series build doesn’t have this issue, not sure if they can retroactively put it back. I drove south from the Bay Area to send my daughter to college two weeks ago, I was glad that I have satellite radio otherwise I have to get a 10 disc CD changer lol.
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I’m guessing you know a bit more than me due to your technical background but all these numbers are more gestures than actual costs right? Like there is no way it costs them, during normal times, $175 to have passenger lumbar support or $350 to provide XM support right?
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Short answer is no. Something like lumbar has a small additional cost for different foam and the labor to install it when the seat is being built, but it usually comes as a fully assembled seat that needs to be installed.
With satellite radio, the “chip” (more than just a chip) is going to be marked up to include the cost of activation and the initial trial subscription. At one time, these were a separate subassembly that was connected to the head unit, now it’s almost always integrated into the head unit - it would just be a different style on the same part number with a different cost.
They’re deleting these so they don’t have to. Can they? If you want to buy an entire iDrive head unit that includes the integration and swap them out when it become available, probably. Or you can add an aftermarket SXM receiver and wire it up.
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I’m sure they’re an extrapolated “market value” of the option rather than the raw material cost.
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Sounds like the WTP (willingness to pay) market pricing exercises you have to run in B-school.
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No sxm would be a deal breaker. I only use it for bbc world service and comedy, but still…
I can count the number of times I used SXM in our BMW’s on one hand.
Our MX has it and besides the free trial, we haven’t even thought about it.
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I can’t understand asking Pat Gelsinger‘s opinion about anything, especially semiconductors. Intel’s roadmap has been so wrong / late, for soooo long.
“I’ll make them as many Intel 16 [nanometer] chips as they want,” Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger told Fortune last week during his visit to an auto industry trade show in Germany.
Carmakers have bombarded him with requests to invest in brand-new production capacity for semiconductors featuring designs that, at best, were state of the art when the first Apple iPhone launched.
“It just makes no economic or strategic sense,” said Gelsinger, who came to the auto show to convince carmakers they need to let go of the distant past. “Rather than spending billions on new ‘old’ fabs, let’s spend millions to help migrate designs to modern ones.”
You know what does make sense? Releasing a 2022 model car in 2022, +/- 1 year, which Intel hasn’t been able to do for their own products in almost 2 decades.
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I don’t see anything Pat is wrong about. The semiconductor industry is not going to invest in fabs for ancient manufacturing processes. He’s not asking the automaker suppliers to step up to the bleeding edge, just a nearly decade only process which as been adapted for a wide range of non-compute applications.
Pat wasn’t around for the pretty much any of those delays, which have a root in Intel betting against EUV.
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“The few times I have been a part of product development that was also connected to the development of a new integrated circuit ended poorly, and never connected to a manufacturing process. That is, the integrated circuit identified was under development and the product was going to use this integrated circuit as the production date was in line with the production date of the OEM product. The integrated circuit was subsequently not able to be produced, the yield was too low for it to be an economically viable product for the IC manufacturer. This failure delayed the product under development by the OEM required retooling, retesting and the project extended for months longer, with increased costs.”
Or this?
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Nobody is asking an automaker to use an IC which hasn’t been production qualified in a design. Only that the automotive supply chain is responsible for transitioning to new process technologies in order to meet supply.
We aren’t taking about TSMC 3 or 4nm, we are talking about the equivalent of TSMC 16nm.
Buckle up. Just when things couldn’t get any weirder…
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-power-shortfalls-begin-to-ripple-around-the-world-11633101100
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A little context on the China power shortfall (Twitter thread):
I used to work for Pat’s old company. He wasn’t at Intel when the issues started. I would not bet against Pat getting things in order. He is hyper-focused and won’t be playing with all the other stuff that Intel picked up and lost focus with.
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