Your Car Features Can Be Remotely Disabled Overnight — And It's Legal

A BMW owner in Germany woke up to find that the heated seats in her car — seats she had been using all winter — no longer worked. The hardware had not failed. The car had not been in an accident. BMW had simply turned off the feature remotely because her subscription had expired. The heating elements were still physically present in the car she owned. They had been deactivated by a software command sent over the internet.

This is not an isolated incident or a future scenario. It is happening now, across multiple manufacturers, with increasing frequency. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Tesla, and General Motors have all implemented or announced subscription-based models for features that were traditionally included in the purchase price of the vehicle. Heated seats, enhanced acceleration, lane-keeping assist, remote start, navigation, and even rear-seat entertainment are being moved behind monthly or annual paywalls — activated and deactivated at the manufacturer's discretion through over-the-air software updates.

For South African consumers, this raises urgent questions about ownership, consumer rights, data privacy, and the growing power of manufacturers to control products long after they have been paid for.

The Shift from Ownership to Subscription

The traditional model of vehicle ownership is straightforward: you buy a car, and everything in it is yours. The engine, the seats, the stereo, the air conditioning — you paid for the hardware, and you own it in perpetuity. Maintenance and fuel are ongoing costs, but the features of the car itself are permanent.

The connected car model upends this entirely. Modern vehicles are software-defined. The hardware is installed at the factory regardless of what the buyer pays for. A base-model BMW may have the same seat heaters, the same processors, and the same sensors as the top-of-the-line model. The difference is not in the hardware — it is in which software features are unlocked. And what can be unlocked can be locked again.

This creates a fundamentally different relationship between manufacturer and consumer. Instead of selling a product, the manufacturer is selling access to features of a product. The car sitting in your driveway contains capabilities you have paid for through the purchase price (since the hardware is included) but cannot use without an ongoing subscription. If you stop paying, the manufacturer reaches into your car — a car you own — and switches off the feature.

The economic logic is clear for manufacturers. A subscription model creates recurring revenue from every vehicle sold, long after the initial transaction. BMW reportedly projected that subscription services could generate R14 billion annually by 2025. But economic logic for the manufacturer does not mean legal or ethical acceptability for the consumer.

The Consumer Protection Act: What Does South African Law Say?

South Africa's Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 (CPA) provides several protections that are directly relevant to the practice of remotely disabling vehicle features.

Right to Fair Value, Good Quality, and Safety (Section 55)

Section 55 of the CPA provides that every consumer has the right to receive goods that are of good quality, in good working order, and free of defects. When a consumer purchases a vehicle equipped with heated seats, acceleration boost, or lane-keeping assist, they have a reasonable expectation that those features will function for the useful life of the vehicle. Remotely disabling a feature that was operational at the time of purchase raises the question of whether the goods remain in "good working order" after the manufacturer has deliberately degraded their functionality.

The manufacturer's argument is that the consumer purchased only certain features, and the subscription-dependent features were clearly disclosed as such. The consumer's counter-argument is that the hardware is physically present in the car, the car was sold at a price that reflects the inclusion of that hardware, and the consumer has a right to use what they have paid for.

Unfair Contract Terms (Section 48)

Section 48 prohibits contract terms that are unfair, unreasonable, or unjust. A contract term that allows a manufacturer to remotely disable features of a product the consumer owns, without the consumer's active involvement and potentially without adequate notice, could be challenged as unfair. The key question is whether the consumer was adequately informed and whether consent to these terms was truly voluntary — or whether the subscription terms were buried in lengthy terms and conditions that no reasonable consumer would read.

"You bought the car. The hardware is in the car. The manufacturer can still reach in and switch it off. The question is not whether this is technically possible — it is whether South African law permits it."

Right to Information (Section 22)

Section 22 requires that consumers receive information in plain and understandable language. The disclosure that certain features are subscription-dependent must be clear, prominent, and made before the purchase. If a consumer discovers after purchase that features they assumed were permanent are actually subscription-based, this is a potential Section 22 violation. In practice, the disclosure is often made in the vehicle's terms of service — a document that most buyers never read and that is often presented only after the purchase transaction is complete.

Right to Choose (Section 13)

Section 13 of the CPA grants consumers the right to choose. If a manufacturer bundles hardware into a vehicle and then charges a subscription to activate it, the consumer has effectively paid for hardware they cannot use without an additional ongoing payment. This is a form of forced bundling — the consumer cannot purchase the vehicle without the subscription-locked hardware, and cannot avoid paying for hardware that will only function if they continue to subscribe.

POPIA and Telematics Data: The Privacy Dimension

The ability to remotely disable vehicle features depends on the manufacturer maintaining a persistent connection to the vehicle. This connection is bidirectional: it allows the manufacturer to send commands (enable/disable features) and to receive data (vehicle location, driving behaviour, system status, feature usage patterns).

Under POPIA, this data collection constitutes processing of personal information. Vehicle telemetry data can reveal where you go, when you travel, how you drive, who is in the car (through seat occupancy sensors), and what features you use. This is personal information as defined in Section 1 of POPIA, and its processing is subject to the conditions for lawful processing in Chapter 3.

Several POPIA requirements are relevant:

• Purpose limitation (Section 13): The personal information collected through the vehicle's connected systems may only be used for the specific purpose disclosed to the consumer. If the consumer consented to data collection for "vehicle maintenance and safety," using that data for subscription management, marketing, or behavioural profiling exceeds the stated purpose.
• Data minimisation (Section 10): POPIA requires that personal information be adequate, relevant, and not excessive. Does the manufacturer need to know your vehicle's location 24/7 in order to manage a heated seats subscription? Arguably not — but the persistent connection that enables feature management also enables continuous surveillance.
• Security safeguards (Section 19): The same connection that allows the manufacturer to disable your heated seats could, if compromised, allow a malicious actor to disable your brakes, steering, or engine. The security implications of maintaining always-on remote access to vehicle systems are severe, and POPIA requires that appropriate safeguards be in place.
• Automated decision-making (Section 71): If subscription management is automated — your payment fails, and the system automatically disables the feature without human review — this may constitute automated decision-making with significant effects on the consumer.

International Precedents: What Other Countries Are Doing

The international response to vehicle feature subscriptions has been varied but increasingly hostile to manufacturer practices.

In the European Union, the Digital Content Directive and Consumer Rights Directive are being interpreted to restrict manufacturers' ability to degrade product functionality after sale. Several EU member states are investigating whether subscription-based feature activation violates consumer protection laws, particularly when the hardware is included in the purchase price.

In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission has expressed concern about "subscription traps" and "dark patterns" in automotive software. Several state legislatures have introduced "right to repair" bills that would prohibit manufacturers from using software to restrict the functionality of products consumers have purchased.

In South Korea, the Korea Fair Trade Commission fined BMW for misleading consumers about the nature of subscription-based features, holding that the company's advertising created a reasonable expectation that the features were included in the purchase price.

Australia's Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued guidance stating that manufacturers cannot degrade product performance or functionality after sale without the consumer's informed consent, and that consent obtained through buried terms and conditions may not satisfy the requirement.

The Broader Pattern: Digital Rights Management Comes to Physical Products

What is happening in the automotive industry is not new in principle. It is the extension of digital rights management (DRM) — long familiar in the software, music, and publishing industries — to physical products. When you buy a Kindle book, you do not own it; you license it, and Amazon can revoke that licence. When you purchase a video game, the publisher can disable online features or shut down servers, rendering the product partially or fully unusable.

The automotive industry is applying the same model to a product that costs an order of magnitude more and that consumers have historically understood as property, not a service. The difference is not just economic — it is psychological and legal. People expect to own their cars in a way they have never expected to own their Spotify playlists.

The risk is that the subscription model will spread beyond heated seats and performance boosts to safety-critical features. If lane-keeping assist, automatic emergency braking, or blind-spot monitoring become subscription-dependent, the consumer protection and road safety implications are severe. A driver whose subscription lapses could lose access to safety systems mid-journey. South African regulators need to consider this trajectory now, before it becomes a reality.

What South African Car Owners and Regulators Should Do

The Resale Problem

The subscription model creates an additional problem for the second-hand car market, which is economically critical in South Africa where most vehicle purchases are pre-owned. When a subscription-equipped vehicle is resold, what transfers to the new owner? If the original owner subscribed to heated seats, acceleration boost, and advanced driver assistance, does the new owner inherit those subscriptions? In most cases, the answer is no. The new owner receives a vehicle with degraded functionality unless they enter into their own subscription agreements with the manufacturer.

This effectively means the new owner is paying full market value for a vehicle while receiving reduced functionality. The hardware is in the car. It was paid for by the original purchaser, reflected in the original sale price and therefore in the vehicle's residual value. But the new owner cannot use it without additional payment. This has the potential to distort the second-hand vehicle market and disadvantage consumers who rely on pre-owned vehicles — a significant portion of the South African car-buying public.

Key Takeaways