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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

#471

Post by selimthegrim »

chris1993 wrote: post #299
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.

My wife's cousin almost died from heat-stroke in her drive-way when her car trapped her inside the vehicle in full Australian summer sun because the battery failed while she was inside checking something. Doors and windows wouldn't open. Nobody heard her calls because the new car had good sound-proofing. She eventually managed to crawl through the panel behind the back seat to get into the boot (luckily she's quite p…

The horn depending on the battery is frightening

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

#472

Post by elzbardico »

The author is very naive if he thinks the feature was made open in the older cars with 3G connectivity because of the sunset of 3G as a courtesy for those customers.

Given the context it is far more logical to assume they did not enhance the older cars, but instead, they decided not to cut access while they could because then they wouldn't be able to enable it remotely should the customer renew their subscription.

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

#473

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

amelius wrote: post #378
gentleman11 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I need a new car sometime soon. Is there a company that makes cars that are reasonably reliable but that are without anti features like tracking, electronic everything, bs parts replacement costs due to ip, features you are locked out of via software, subscriptions, software preventing you from working on the car without a special license, ads, etc? Look at the ways software is making the world a better p…

This is like buying a dumb TV, and is probably close to impossible.

What's wrong with 2017 Kia Optimas?

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

#474

Post by charcircuit »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #92
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…

$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…

There are two main strategies in pricing something. Bottom up pricing is where you take the price to create / run the product / service and then add a profit margin. Top down pricing is where you find a price based off the value it provides independent of what it costs to actually make.

Right now you are looking at it from a bottom up pricing perspective when Toyota priced it using a top down strategy. The price isn't from being able to do those two queries, but from the value of being able to remote start your car or whatever.

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

#475

Post by BuildTheRobots »

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.

I always thought this was the case until I owned a 2004 Nissan and accidentally locked my brother in.

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

#477

Post by elzbardico »

chris1993 wrote: post #299
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.

My wife's cousin almost died from heat-stroke in her drive-way when her car trapped her inside the vehicle in full Australian summer sun because the battery failed while she was inside checking something. Doors and windows wouldn't open. Nobody heard her calls because the new car had good sound-proofing. She eventually managed to crawl through the panel behind the back seat to get into the boot (luckily she's quite p…

if you can get inside the boot you can open it, no need to break the windows. It is a shame this is not more widely know.

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

#478

Post by DarylZero »

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.

Saves time. Defrost the windows while you get ready to leave the house.

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

#479

Post by elzbardico »

notJim wrote: post #447
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.

Also in the "too late" vein, at least in the US, I believe cars are still required to have a latch to open the trunk from the inside. Not sure if other countries have these.

As far as I know this is widely disseminated across the world.

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

#480

Post by charcircuit »

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…

This wouldn't be a problem if it just charged your credit card. I do think it should be a cheaper. $0.005 would be a more reasonable price. I would definitely pay $0.1 a day to use all my doors. Maybe like my front door since its more heavy duty would be a $0.05 / use door.
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