Maybe we need some kind of "truth in owning" analogous to truth-in-lending regulations.
Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
251–260 of 744 posts
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#252If 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.
Assuming the manufacturer creates such a mechanism for dealers to offer at all.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#253Does anyone have a good lead on where I should direct my outrage, where decision-makers might be listening?
(I'm a Toyota owner, but not effected by this.)
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#254That 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…
$8/mo is genuinely a lot of money for this kind of infrastructure, even if there are developers and servers to be paid for. Assume that there are only 100,000 users. This would imply $9.6M per year in revenue to cover infrastructure and dev salaries for a system that handles ~2 queries/day/customer! And 100,000 is a very small number. Presumably Toyota has millions of customers. If you think that's reasonable, consid…
Tesla has a mobile app that can remotely turn on the climate controls, lock the car, open/close/crack open the windows, enable sentry mode, show the exact GPS location of your car, and more. In the car, you get GPS that is constantly updated.
And you pay $0/month for any of that.
They DO offer a $10/month "Premium Connectivity" package. That adds music streaming via Slacker Radio, Tidal, and Spotify, enables satellite images for the GPS, and allows video streaming (I don't recall the entire list of supported services, but it's pretty comprehensive, and I know includes Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, and Twitch, might also include Hulu and HBO).
Of course, if you're connected to WiFi (ie, using a hotspot on your phone, or parked at a location with WiFi), you can get all that streaming without paying the $10/month. Even if you don't pay for the premium connectivity package, you can play Spotify from your phone over Bluetooth.
The fact that Toyota would charge $8/month just for remote start is just evil. It's a charge designed purely to extract as much money from their customers as possible that does not at all reflect the actual cost to them.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many other car makers do this too. My Volvo has a remote start feature installed (that I paid for in buying the car) that is not accessible without enrollment in a (pretty much useless otherwise) monthly subscription service. It's flat out criminal considering that I could have just bought the device with a remote at Auto Zone for 1/4 of the price (that also doesn't allow the auto maker to track/log each time I use i…
Yeah - not sure why Toyota is getting hammered for this. Subaru does this as well. You can get app enabled remote start from your phone, if you buy their subscription service. I love Subaru, but that is a trash system.
Subaru at this point is a sub brand of Toyota. (they're part of the "Toyota Group" as of last year)
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#256As a Tesla stock owner, I'm glad Toyota introduced this feature. If every car company keeps stepping back 20 years of technology, soon Tesla will own the entire market.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#257Yep. No thanks.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#258Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of this tragic but true story about a man and his dog that died in a Corvette because the door failed to open electronically. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/06/11/te... If your car door uses electricity to open, you best know what to do when that system fails. Death should not occur due to failure to RTFM for a door.
Wait what, do Corvettes not just unlock and open when you pull the handle? Every vehicle I've ever owned, from the 80s to now, manual or electric lock, the front doors both open when the handle is pulled, locked or not. If this isn't the case, I'm almost inclined to consider that criminally negligent.
Sure enough, Corvettes since the mid-00s (at least) have electronic doors.
Here's a video describing how to use the manual overrides (none are in plain sight)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDqmGQU6L0
Here's a photo of thee door interior (with no mechanical door pull)... https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7I8AAOSwF-tgN5U1/s-l300.jpg
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Snark has been removed from original post. But I look at it as unnecessary feature creep, just more stuff to break. It's like they mastered making cars reliable (if cared for), and now the industry giants want to undo that but tacking on tons of "hey, what about this?" gadgets. Just run out to your car and start it: costs you 30 seconds and some precipitation on your collar?
It breaks in a robust way. Like an escalator. If it breaks, it just becomes that run-out-and-start. If it costs next to nothing then it's a good feature. It's like the remote for my TV. Sure I can get up and change channels, or I can walk and start the car. but chances are I'm gonna say "nah" and just cold start it. I'm not paying $8 month but I do pay $40/yr for the volvo version (although that has a bit more than j…
> I mean if the heater is remote started then why wouldn't the engine be. It's just the 2nd step of the heating process.
Ok, that just registered in my brain. If it is a feature where people need to warm their cars before the cars even work, then it is pretty shitty to start charging a subscription fee for it. And if it is incremental, then I see your point. Can I still hate on touchscreens and lack of knobs, tho? :)
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#260It is a common opinion in this thread that it is unethical to charge for enabling a feature that only needs the local communication between a key fob and a car. And that it is fine if there is a cloud in-between, such as remote start from a smartphone, because it has maintenance costs.
If majority of the car buyers agree with this distinction, it would simply create an incentive to route more communication through the cloud. Besides, this option makes tracking and control easier.
I would argue that the maintaining a server does not have a substantial difference that singles it out from the other work that a car maker does to support the car owners: downloads of manuals, managing recalls, parts inventory, etc. Subscription business model has no place here.