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Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

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Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like in politics, voting with your wallet only works if alternatives are available.

It also implies that money is worth more above all else. What happens when every car company decides to follow this model because it looks great on the short term? Am I suppose to vote with my wallet and start a new car company single handedly? Well no. This is why we need to legislate these issues and concerns. Saying vote with your wallet is already a losing position, the corporations already have a much larger wal…

And, a lot of these consumer hostile moves are death by a thousand cuts rather than line-in-the-sand deal breakers. There are plenty of people who will not buy a Toyota specifically because of this, but I assume most people would be upset but still make the purchase, knowing they're getting a Toyota and all that comes with it.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#132
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have both a new electric Audi and new Tesla. In either car I can just remove the sim and it'll completely disable all of the internet based features. A lot of the FUD around new cars is spread by grumpy old automotive journalists.

What happens when they (inevitably) move to eSIM?

The Audi has a "cellular off" option in the MMI. I'd have to dig into the Tesla to verify.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#133

If this was pitched to me at the dealership I'd just laugh at the salesman's face and leave. Or get all the add-ons "forever for free" as part of the sale. This makes (any) brand look incredibly cheap. However, If someone wants to sell me Car as a SaaS, I'm interested. By that, I mean as soon as there's an issue with the car, I simply flag it in the App and an employee comes to my place and swap it over for the same…

>Or get all the add-ons "forever for free" as part of the sale.

This all the way. People seems to be intimidated of car shopping, but if you have financing in place (or cash), you are in such a position of power you can pretty much get anything thrown in. Try it. By the time they say no it'll be because you're eaten all their margins; they are a business after all.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#134
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it isn't. There are tons of examples of whole industries just switching to user-/customer-hostile practices/products, meaning there's simply no more way to vote with your wallet. Happened like that with even trivial things like the milk market in Germany. Within a year or two, fresh milk had suddenly all but vanished from the shelves. Once pay-for-fob becomes the norm, good luck trying to enter that market w…

I digress but what happend to the milk market? Could you post a reference?

I can't find a good reference for the German market specifically, but in some countries/regions most milk is ultra-pasteurised and unrefridgerated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-temperature_process...

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#135
I've been a Toyota Tacoma guy for the last 22 years (and counting). Three Tacomas and I have a son that we're deciding on a vehicle for in the coming year. This is how you take someone with massive brand affinity, someone who would even likely pass that brand affinity to the next generation, and push them to look at other options. Charging monthly for a service that isn't cloud enabled? If this is true, Toyota, you are literally dead to me.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#136
post #12

If this keeps up, some used cars will have a higher value than new ones. People will have to break EULAs to drive cars in mines or buildings with no radio access. "Error: please tow your car to an RF access area to enable movement..."

> If this keeps up, some used cars will have a higher value than new ones. That's already the case with construction equipment and farm equipment[0]. Right now, used cars often have a higher or near-new value because you can get one today - a new car, at MSRP, may be 6+ months wait, which doesn't help if your car just got totaled. But, yes, everything is doubling down on toxic dystopian surveillance systems, subscrip…

I had to wait 2 months before my car was available that I just bought. The difference between a 2022 and a 2018, was $3k. So to prove your point, the used market is doing so well, they can sell them for basically MSRP if they aren't too old padded with a warranty you'll likely never use.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#137
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have both a new electric Audi and new Tesla. In either car I can just remove the sim and it'll completely disable all of the internet based features. A lot of the FUD around new cars is spread by grumpy old automotive journalists.

What happens when they (inevitably) move to eSIM?

Remove the antenna, or break the wire trace antenna.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#138
post #9

The solution is to vote with your wallet. These days consumers are pretty weak willed though and are willing to put up with almost any level of abuse for their shiny new toy. Look at what consumers are willing to (overpay) for during the pandemic as an example of that. $500 NVIDIA graphics cards going for $2000... Eventually people fed up with it will "jailbreak" their cars like the farmers did with John Deere tracto…

>"The solution is to vote with your wallet."

I don't think it is. I sense this might play out the same way it did with all the intrusive spyware on SmartTV's. Sure, I could try to vote with my wallet and find a TV that doesn't have all that bloat, but they are becoming vanishingly rare. The market has 'decided' that this is a standard feature now.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What monthly fees of this nature are required to use other Apple products? OS updates are free. The basic version of iCloud is free. "Find My iPhone" is free. Apple Maps is free. The App Store is free. Hell, CarPlay is free on the Apple end of things; it's some car manufacturers who've been charging for it. "Public will buy into it because the cost of the car is significantly less than their competition." Are we talk…

Other than purposely slowing down your devices with updates to try and coerce you into buying the new model year? https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

That is absolutely false. They didn't try to coerce people to buy the new model. It's quite the contrary - they were extending the battery life of devices where the overdrawn power would cause them to shut down completely. They also communicated this in the patch notes but most people don't read those.

Your comment is completely ignorant.

Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start

#140
post #35
post #6

That is just bullshit. A $8/mo charge for a app based remote start? I could live with that. Servers need power, the app needs updates etc. A $8/mo charge for something which does not incur costs for Toyota? Hell no. It seems like bit by bit - every single industry is going down a fucked up route. TVs with built in ads? Cars with pay-by-month features? DRM locked coffee machines? I really hope, there is some sort of e…

If the Apple Car actually materializes, I fear this will become the new standard. All cars come with all bells and whistles, but you have to pay monthly fees in order for them to function. - Want heated seats? $1/month - Want remote lock/unlock? $2/month - Want to remove rate limiting? $5/month - Want GPS in your car? $10/month - Want to use your "frunk"? $10/month - Want Apple CarPlay? $15/month - Want to activate h…

I think it will be more like this, as parts of what you say seem very unApple like:

The Apple car is electric, with two charging point, the batteries last a long time but the special Apple charge connection hub costs $1199, there is a part of it that is really smartly designed but somehow also more fragile than you would expect and as a consequence you replace these one per year because it breaks beyond repair.

The first year you replace it fine, and the cost is actually down to $1099.

The second year the old model is no longer available but the new model that will work with your car and the newer Apple cars both also will work to charge any apple device if you lay it on the Apple car dashboard while charging with the new model charger. It's some sort of clever design innovation that you're not sure why it couldn't work without the new charger but ok, anyway the new charger costs $1330.

You have 3 forms of heated seat pads, these are the simple at 199, the integrated at 499 that has a dedicated app to monitor optimal healthy sitting posture and maintain vitals connection to your Apple Watch, and the Pro at 1100 that allows you handle racing speed Gs.

You need to have the Pro to unlock the Racing Speed Gs because of safety features that would kick in without the Pro helping to handle that speed.

In the end of year 3 the next level Pro brings in massage capabilities at 1400, but you find that it uses up too much battery requiring more and longer charging unless you update to the new Charger Pro which costs also 1400.

Want Apple debug data for your car, you get extra data on your Apple iCloud, but not enough to actually make it usable in fact basically the car uses up the data you had so quickly that you have to pay for iCloud+ Andretti, which gives you a basic 3 TB storage, and a revolving time series data for car usage that can be used for diagnostics etc. $15 a month.

The Car camera array is really sweet but you find that road trip you made to the keys maxed out your iCloud, so you opt in for the iCloud+ Trixie account $20 dollars a month but with 7 TB, you figure that will probably last.

Most of the apps for the car are free, if you call advertising supported apps free, but there are a few ones you find essential that you pay for of course.

One of them is the top notch autonomous driving app AutoDRave which costs a basic $120 but if you want the continually updated road conditions and newest ML edge case determination routines you should really pay for the $25 a month subscription.

I think we all get the picture here....

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