Plug-in hybrids are practical electric cars – because they have engines and you don’t have to plug them in (and wait for them to recover electricity). Put another way, they are a way around electric cars – and that is why BMW wants to punish people who buy them to avoid having to deal with the hassles of owning an electric car.

BMW’s Supervisory Board Chairman – Nichols Peter – says “those who are not charging must drive slowly.”

What he means is that BMW plug-in hybrids that are “charged too infrequently” – that rely chiefly on their engines (and gasoline) for propulsion – will be throttled back in retaliation. The “sanctions” – that’s the word – would be applied to vehicle owners who “consistently fail to keep their vehicles in electric mode.” Most plug-in hybrids have this “mode,” which is driver-selectable via a button (typically) that causes the vehicle to move exclusively on battery power . . . assuming the batteries have enough charge. If the vehicle hasn’t been plugged-in and fully charged before driving.

If not, the vehicle will default to IC – internal combustion “mode.” The engine will provide the lion’s share of propulsion, although the engine will still be automatically cycled off when the vehicle is not actually moving (as when stopped in traffic) or during coasting/deceleration. Regular hybrids operate the same way, with the difference being they don’t have battery packs powerful enough to actually move the vehicle for more than very limited distances (about a mile or so) and only at crawl speeds. A plug-in hybrid can typically be driven about 30 or so miles at normal road speeds on a fully charged up battery.

It’s not very far, though – even if the owner is a Good German and faithfully plugs in (and waits) for a full charge. Effectively, BMW wants to throttle driving down to the radius of a plug-in hybrid’s electric-only driving range.

This would make the plug-in hybrid even more absurd than a fully electric car, because the latter can usually take you at least 150 or so miles down the road before the long wait to get going again and while it it lugging around a ludicrously heavy battery pack to be able to do that, at least it is not also lugging around a vestigial engine, transmission (and gas tank) that’s verboten to be used.

“If a driver never charges their batteries,” explains Herr Peter, “the engine power could be reduced; technically this is feasible.”

Ja, it is.

Rather, ja – it already is.

A software-driven vehicle is controlled by its programming. If the vehicle is programmed to work a certain way – more finely, to not work a certain way – that is exactly what it will do. Irrespective of what its (cough) owner wants it to do. The vehicle is conscious of your driving, to begin with. It knows how fast you are driving – and (of course) it knows, if it is a plug-in hybrid, whether the engine is running, how long/often the engine has been running and also how often (or not) you have been charging the battery pack. All of this data is collected and recorded by the software-driven vehicle and can be used by the vehicle’s programming to govern the vehicle’s operation. The really creepy part however, is that the vehicle’s programming can be externally controlled also – via the over-the-air “updates” sent to the vehicle and in response to whatever data the vehicle transmits to the Hive Mind; i.e., to BMW Command Central.

The latter term is my made-up term, but it conveys the point – which is that the manufacturer of a software-driven vehicle (not just BMW vehicles) retains ultimate control over the vehicle. Not the (cough) owner who paid for the thing. Ownership has been subtly hijacked, in other words. You pay for the use of the thing but someone else control the use of the thing. It is kind of like the way no one really owns their home anymore, either – unless you believe a homeowner who is subject to eviction if he does not pay thousands of dollars every year to the government in order to avoid being evicted owns his home.

“This is a behavioral problem that discredits a climate-friendly technology that could actually be a good way to introduce people to e-mobility – especially where the infrastructure is still too sparse. One measure would be for car manufacturers to be able to document and even penalize usage patterns,” says Herr Docktor Peter.

Diesel-powered vehicles are already gimped via programming that puts the vehicle into “limp” mode if the owner hasn’t topped up the DEF tank. “Limp” mode means the vehicle barely moves. It is effectively undrivable. This is what Herr Peter has in mind for recharge refuseniks who prefer to drive rather than wait.

BMW – and it is not just BMW – is pushing this regime not so much because it beee-lieves (say it like old time TV evangelist Ernest Angley) in “climate change” but because BMW (and every other vehicle manufacturer) is under regulatory pressure to force people to comply.

The German government is “concerned” that plug-in hybrids burn (and “emit”) more gas in real-world driving than they are given “credit” for – and this cheating has got to be dealt with. It falls to the manufacturers to deal with it – by exerting control over their software-driven vehicles, as by throttling down the engine and limiting the speed of plug-in hybrids that aren’t running on just electricity often enough.

This is what comes of buying a car you think you own that is in fact not under your control.

Many people, of course, have no idea that their new/late model car is not really their car, because it gives them the illusion of control. But that illusion is dissipating. It’ll become crystal clear what the situation is when the software-driven car shows what it can do – by showing you what you’re not allowed to do anymore.

It will be the Ultimate Non-Driving Machine.

. . .

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