Illogical stuff in the SE. It's the little things...

Glad I'll never be tempted to replace my SE with a BMW.

 

The key mapping doesn't bother me that much, but I wish I didn't have to press the center button to confirm the station change every time. I'm a channel surfer and like to flip quickly through the stations, and this is super annoying. At least in the i3 roller you don't have to constantly adjust the position of your thumb. Overall, the design of the steering wheel buttons is pretty terrible.

 

I also dislike having to hit two buttons to skip forward/reverse, and the layout is bad.

At least you can skip/etc in Carplay on the Mini. The i3 roller didn't work in Carplay for whatever stupid reason.

 

Thanks to @revorg's great MINI Cooper SE newsfeed summary, I found this CNET article summing up their yearlong experience with a 2022 MINI Cooper SE. The SE's small battery resulted in a lot of time waiting for charging (the reviewer must not have a place to charge at home). Like @teslarati97, the reviewer also complained about the iDrive rotation not being intuitive. However, after noting how the MINI has grown over the years, he appropriately ended with, "Big as this Mini might be, it's still bursting with personality."

 

To correct a slight error, @revorg's great site is a news feed for all MINI Coopers, not just the best ones.

 

The problem is that BMW is designed with the 3 o'clock position as the starting point and 9 o'clock starting for the MINI. I can put up with the iDrive dial reversal, but heated seat and separate heated steering wheel subscription for BMWs in the UK and South Korea...that's a deal breaker!

 

Can you explain to me in plain English what is subscriptions for heated steering wheel and heated seat in UK and SK . Im in USA for 40 years are they cancel my heated steering wheel too. I’m using English as a second language do I need subscriptions walking I NY streets too? You do me a fiver explaining.

 

With BMW in some models, they are installing all the equipment to have heated steering wheels. However, they will not turn the feature on unless you pay them a subscription to have it turned on.

So they want you to buy the car. And then they want you to pay them to use the features of the car you bought.

Article: https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/03/business/bmw-options-software-subscription-features/index.html

 

BMW says you can order a car with those options and use them without a subscription. Which makes me wonder, which is cheaper, buying heated seats outright or just paying to use them 3-4 months out of the year?

 

No, just no. Turning car features into subscription services is bad. Imagine trying to trade the vehicle in (or sell it), all of the non-functioning installed features will reduce the resale value tremendously. BMW wanted to charge a monthly fee for CarPlay even though it costs BMW nothing since it's actually the iPhone providing the functionality. Fortunately the outcry from owners put the kibosh on that. And yet BMW is back at the well trying once again. BMW is a horrible company for trying this.

 

Excellent - thanks for posting that article.