Same situation here, my friend. Two more things for you.
1. The center arm rests do not appear easily removable, as was communicated in the pre-production press drives that occurred 10 months ago. So no easy aisle access to the third row
2. Even if you can get by without tether in second row, the bench seems to have better folding functionality. The button on the side of the bench that starts the process of making room for a third row passenger to get in or out does not exist on the captains. What is in its place is that lever on the top of the chair. That seems to be the only want to get the chair to start its "slide forward, tilt up" process.
However, the captain seems to need to fold its back forward 15 degrees (as you can see in your picture) before it starts that process. So not only is the tether location limiting, but if that lever is the only way to get the cap chair to tilt up for third row ingress/egress you can't even have an
untethered child seat in the second row. With installed, untethered child seats you'd be able to slide the seats back and forward but that's it.
There is a ray of hope. I touched on this in a previous thread. Look at this video. It's slightly edited, and BMW USA doesnt even know how this was done, but it appears the guy who shot this had the captain tilt up and forward without the back rest first folding forward. Would love to know how he did it cause then, at least, we can have third row people get in and out pretty easily.
Let me know if you figure anything else out with this and I'll do same. Here is the video I was referencing. Go to the 5:40 marker to see what I'm talking about. I've called the "Geniuses" and they claim that can't be done and it's magical video editing. I'm going to call BS on that and that there is some way to do what this guy did in this video. I sure as hell hope so, cause this vehicle does kind of drop the ball for people like you and I without being able to do this, the tether, and the center arm rests.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=89rnETIfjoc