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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

#451

Post by Jenda_ »

lkozma wrote: post #8

was 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…

There is a Soviet children's book with the same topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capita...

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

#452

Post by gbrown »

heavyset_go wrote: post #439
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a similar strategy of targeting 2 to 4 year old used cars in good condition, and then swapping out when they get around 10 years or 100k. It's worked quite well for me. I have no idea what I'm going to do next time I'm in the market for a car, because every trend I see in the industry is stuff I do not want. And it's not just cars. It's freakin' everything. I don't need a touch screen on my fridge. Like that jo…

> I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things from 1990 or older running. I'm at the point where I'm considering physically disabling the radios in my appliances.

"Error: cannot start (no connectivity). Please call a licensed repair technician to service your vehicle."

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

#453

Post by darkerside »

Thaxll wrote: post #354
servytor wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unrelated, but one of my favorite quotes from PKD is this one from Now Wait for Last Year: --- “All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying with her would…

Very similar to the great movie Arrival. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life

Based on the incredible work of Ted Chiang

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

#454

Post by frosted-flakes »

drewzero1 wrote: post #443
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the front doors both open when the handle is pulled, locked or not The fact that the front doors both unlock when a single handle is pulled is because there's an electronic sensor and solenoid that unlocks everything when one handle is opened. I had a Pontiac Vibe (really a Toyota Matrix) that had a cable in the door unlock assembly fail. You could open the door from the outside - the external door handle was physi…

I think what GP might mean is that whether you are on the driver's or passenger's side, when you pull the handle that door opens even if it is locked. I've noticed that on both our 1995 and 2014 Fords, when you pull the door handle it mechanically unlocks that door and opens it. (On the 2014 the other doors may additionally be triggered to unlock. However, in a no-power situation pulling the handle will still mechani…

Chevy Express vans and trucks didn't unlock the door when you pulled the handle. You had to manually slide the unlock toggle or hit the electronic unlock button before opening the door.

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

#455

Post by aaaaaaaaaaab »

mauvehaus wrote: post #431
brokenmachine wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too late now for her of course, but you can take the headrest off the seat and use the metal prongs to smash the windows to get out.

Having watched a burly firefighter take three good swings with an axe to bust out a window (to get to the hood release of an unattended car fire), I am extremely skeptical of this claim. Somebody on YouTube tested those emergency hammers and concluded they're basically useless. If you really want to break a tempered glass car window (I.e., any of them but the windshield), their recommendation was an automatic center…

You’re supposed to do it like this: https://youtu.be/tZTa8Nh0VlE

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

#456

Post by gbrown »

reducesuffering wrote: post #448
silverpepsi wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally on the same page. After my millionaire frugal friend told me he managed $88/mo TCO, I've been chasing that target nonstop

10 year old Toyota Prius is going to be roughly $45/mo TCO for registration, insurance, and minimal maintenance. Depreciation is probably another $40/mth. I'm pretty sure that and a Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf (for low range reqs) is the best you can do.

Time will tell, but in theory the Volts should last a really long time also. The generator only directly powers the drivetrain at highway speeds, and in the gen-1 they were really conservative with allowed pure electric range on the battery.

I'm planning to drive mine until it dies, and suspect that salty winter Midwestern roads will render it unsafe/broken before anything else does.

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

#457

Post by greggman3 »

When I found out you could pay $2000 to make your Tesla accelerate 1 second faster 0-60 it made me wonder what's next. Want to role you windows down more than half way? $500. Want your air-conditioner to run on high? $600. Want you seats to recline 15 degrees more? $550. Want the car to make sharper turns? $2500 Want the radio to remember more than 3 favorites? $150

Etc etc etc.... I'm sure it's coming because it can.

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

#458

Post by [deleted] »

tqi wrote: post #347
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…

$8 is a lot but to be fair, Disney+ is almost certainly losing money per subscriber. $8 in this case also has to cover the cost of the 4G connection, which likely is in the $1 to $2 range.

[deleted]

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

#459

Post by mhandley »

otikik wrote: post #265
donmcronald wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were people in a thread on Reddit saying they have cars with $40/month of subscription services. That seems absolutely insane to me. My family buys used cars, usually in the 3-5 year old range, we do our own repair work, and drive everything for 10-15 years. It's usually close to 15 than 10. We drive them until they drop. I figured it out one day and the lifetime TCO has been about $100/month per vehicle. We re…

It seems there is a market there for people like you and your family: removing/disabling/hacking the DRM on those used cars.

The market is already there. I have a 2010 Mercedes C180 and the car suddenly wouldn't start. Turns out it has an coded electronic steering lock which talks to the electronic ignition and won't enable the car if the lock doesn't disengage. Of course the steering lock itself failed - turns out this is a design flaw. Would have cost way too much money to transport the car to the Mercedes dealer at the only time the dealer would accept it for repair and then have them replace it. Turns out there's a thriving market in folks who will come to your house, completely remove the steering lock, and replace it with an emulator that just pretends to unlock when its told to.

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

#460

Post by WWLink »

donmcronald wrote: post #40
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…

There were people in a thread on Reddit saying they have cars with $40/month of subscription services. That seems absolutely insane to me. My family buys used cars, usually in the 3-5 year old range, we do our own repair work, and drive everything for 10-15 years. It's usually close to 15 than 10. We drive them until they drop. I figured it out one day and the lifetime TCO has been about $100/month per vehicle. We re…

I ponder the same thing. On My Jeep all that nonsense is tied explicitly to the radio. If you yank the 4G modem out, it's all as good as gone - though then the GPS map feature doesn't work either. If I replace the radio entirely I gain control, but lose the auto emergency braking system. That's unfortunate lol.

Luckily no required monthly services. I have no interest in a car with that.

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