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

arstechnica.com

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

#271

Post by arsenic64 »

barbazoo wrote: post #244

Why people remotely start their car is beyond my comprehension most of the time. Unless you're in an extreme climate and absolutely have to bring the car's interior temperature to something survivable, what's the point? We don't have to warm up the engine anymore past a few seconds either. All I can think of is the waste of fuel and unnecessary GHG.

In colder climates you usually need to heat up the car to defrost the windows in order to drive safely. That can take 10+ minutes by the time the engine heats up. It's actually the law in some states in the US now.

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

#272

Post by nicce »

notJim wrote: post #201
nicce wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are practically useless outside of cities. No range so they are not an option.

They're not great for long roadtrips, but they would be fine for weekend or short trips to places with charging. For example, from where I live to the coast is about 80 miles, and many of the coastal cities have at least L2 and some L3 charging. This would be fine with many of these cars. You might not need to charge at all with some of them.

My scenario might be a bit extreme, but closest food store is 40 miles away. Closest charger is 200 miles away. (Talking from Europe) Visiting my parents take 300 miles trip (one direction), and requires charging stop. And this is considered here as relatively normal driving trip.

And in winter, the range drops significantly. It is 7 month winter here.

Why would I buy a car which is useful only for short weekend trips when there are better options available?

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

#273

Post by hunter2_ »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #212
matthewdgreen wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$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…

The infrastructure is completely paid for. Automotive companies extensively monetize telematics data even for cars which do not have telematics purchased . Where you go and when - and things like air temperature, whether the wipers are on, etc - is all sold. It wouldn't surprise me if they pass along data from the infotainment system as well. Ford offers a bunch of free telematics services for fleet operators. You ca…

I recently got a letter from VW informing me that my 2017 vehicle's connection to AT&T will end in early 2022 due to the 2G sunset. I never subscribed to the service anyway, so I just get to chuckle about how they can't spy on me anymore. The fact that they equipped their vehicles thusly without the network operator agreeing to support it for at least a decade or so blows my mind.

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

#275

Post by comeonseriously »

judge2020 wrote: post #205
silisili wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Police believe that when James Rogers got into the vehicle, a cable became loose and cut off the power to the operate the horn and locks. Rogers did not know how to manually unlock the vehicle and became trapped inside > the 2007 Corvette has a manual release located on the floorboard by the driver's seat Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation, but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the…

> Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation, but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the latch and not having an emergency window breaker.

Is it, is that really the issue?

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

#276

Post by skykooler »

silisili wrote: post #178
phkahler wrote: post #109

Earlier 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.

That hasn't always been the case. For example, our 1991 Saturn station wagon (with mechanical locks) would only open if you unlocked the door first with the lock lever.

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

#277

Post by wikibob »

judge2020 wrote: post #205
silisili wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Police believe that when James Rogers got into the vehicle, a cable became loose and cut off the power to the operate the horn and locks. Rogers did not know how to manually unlock the vehicle and became trapped inside > the 2007 Corvette has a manual release located on the floorboard by the driver's seat Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation, but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the…

This is absurd victim blaming.

The problem is there is a door handle that is designed with a failure mode such that pulling the handle DOES NOT OPEN THE DOOR.

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

#278

Post by [deleted] »

zeroflow wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#280

Post by LAC-Tech »

dharmab wrote: post #44
dls2016 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar: Libertarian Police Department https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...

Also, Private Police by Fry and Laurie https://youtu.be/vLfghLQE3F4

In 2021 the real government funded police would have zero interest in hearing about that kind of crime - assuming UK police are anything like police here.

So this seems like a bit of an improvement :)

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