I've always liked and bought Toyota brand cars for the past 13 years, but not anymore. Good job, Toyota, because I am currently in the market for a car and between this type of thing, telemetry crap, and no electric cars that are decent, you've lost a loyal customer. I hope one of your marketing/sales/exec employees see this and realize you're not doing the right thing.
Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
331–340 of 744 posts
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#332Earlier 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…
The elements you're referring to are procedural mitigations to a poor design from a human factors standpoint. Those mitigations are always less preferred than managing those risks from an engineering perspective.
OSHA actually outlines the preference:
1) Eliminate the hazard outright (not possible here, you need the door to lock sometimes)
2) Engineer out the risk (they tried to do...poorly...with the manual unlock)
3) Administrative controls (e.g., the manual)
4) Personal protective equipment
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It's not useful in my specific scenario, which I acknowledge is extreme, therefore the cars are useless outside cities." Not everything has to work for everyone in every situation to be useful. These cars are perfectly useful for many people, including outside cities.
This applies almost my whole country, including many others, maybe less extreme. It is a bit different outside of US, what I’m trying to say.
It sounds like the charging infrastructure isn't there yet where you live. Doesn't mean the cars are useless for many many people, including people in rural areas. In the US, I don't think most rural people are 40 miles from the nearest food store, and I'd be surprised to learn that's true in most European countries either.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#334Earlier 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.
Anything that's mechanically supposed to happen is irrelevant after the mechanism, with 2 tons of metal behind it moving at high speed, slams into something significantly more substantial than the thin layer of decorative sheet metal protecting it. You can not design things to be invincible, no matter how robust something is, with sufficient force applied in a certain way, it will fail. It's honestly an engineering m…
This is why I carry a safety hammer utility tool in my cars for breaking glass and cutting seatbelts.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#335That 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…
They are simply copying software industry. Tableau, Jetbrains... none of these need to be subscription based, but they are. They weren't, until a few years ago. I wonder whats next? My toilet won't flush unless I pay $5 for it, in addition to the water bill? It would be hilarious if every single item at home was subscription based, lol
Jetbrains is only kind of a subscription. If you end your subscription, you retain permanent access to whatever version was current when you last paid. That doesn't seem drastically different from how software worked before and their prices are pretty reasonable for an IDE.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#336Earlier 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…
> not having an emergency window breaker.
Tip for readers: if your car has removable headrests, they can serve effectively as emergency window breakers.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#337Earlier 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.
On most(all?) Modern cars you can't unlock the door from the inside if the door got locked from the outside. I think it was made law to work like this? In order to prevent thefts where someone just runs a tiny rod through an opening and pulls a handle - that doesn't work anymore. If you get locked in the car while inside there is no way to open the door, you'd have to break a window to get out.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#338was posted here sometime ago: The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please." He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in the purchase contract you signed when you boug…
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.
Yikes! Makes me think twice about being in a newer Corvette.
The DeLorean (DMC-12) is known for having the lock solenoids that get stuck energized when a relay fails. Fortunately you can pull the relay to de-energize the solenoids. (Climbing out of a window on a DeLorean isn't an option for normal-sized people.)
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#339I love my 2020 RAV4 hybrid. Like absolutely love it.
But after an incredible horrible experience with Toyota connected services support re renewing and issues with the connected services not working, this is my last Toyota EVER.
When this lease is up, I will go shop for a new car at any vendor other than Toyoya.
Re: Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start
#340The 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…
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…
True. Sometimes you gotta vote with the pen (legislation).