Article URL: https://www.theautopian.com/bmw-is-showing-commercials-on-their-cars-dash-screens-and-they-want-you-to-think-its-a-treat/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/it…

You know what would be terrible? Terrible in a sort of dystopian, capitalism-run-amok sort of way? Imagine buying a brand-new, fancy, premium-grade car. From an automaker with a respected name. Like, say, BMW. This is a machine with some status! Let’s say it costs, oh, $61,500, and you’re paying, what, about $1300 a month? Something like that. Anyway, let’s say you’ve done that, you have your fancy new car you’re dropping over a grand a month on, and then you get in the car one morning, you start it up, and you’re greeted with an ad – a commercial, with visuals and sound – right there on the big screen in the center of your dash. That would be terrible, right? I mean, hell, even on our little website here, if you just pay a tiny fraction of that car payment a month, we get rid of the ads – so the idea of a carmaker blasting commercials into your car, the car you’re paying for, that sounds miserable. And yet, somehow, it’s true. We’ve seen carmakers like Stellantis do it, and now it appears that BMW is in on this soul-crushing, avaricious bullshit as well. Look at this: Got this commercial in my car today as part of the Spider-Man – Brand New Day campaign byu/Milanista58 inBMW Reading the comments, it seems that the ad appears when the car is started, with an option to play it or not being displayed on the screen. I suppose that’s better than it autoplaying, but just barely. It’s still the car taking your time and attention and control of your car’s display to ask if you want to see a damn ad. I reached out to BMW to get more information about this and to confirm it was actually real, and here is what I was told: “The in-vehicle animation is part of a broader brand partnership with the film. A few of our vehicles – including the BMW iX3 – were in the film, and a special edition iX3 was featured on the red carpet during last night’s premiere in Los Angeles.” There was also a link to a BMW press release about this ad campaign, and here is how this in-car ad is described in that release: