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

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

#561

Post by simondotau » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:14 AM UTC

gentleman11 wrote: post #302

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…

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…

I'm not suggesting that they're perfect in any regard, but Hyundai/Kia do tend to implement electronics and software well enough that they're not going to infuriate you for the next five to ten years. Except even they're falling prey to over-electronicification — their absolute latest models are following an industry trend of replacing some physical buttons with touch-haptic panels. Yeesh.

Mazda are still fairly sane and their cars are quite lovely.

In the luxury German segment, BMW are the least worst. (This definitely wasn't the case 15+ years ago, but from 2010 onwards they have been quite good.)

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

#562

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:17 AM UTC

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.

> $8 in this case also has to cover the cost of the 4G connection, which likely is in the $1 to $2 range.

I could get a suitable data line myself for $1, at quantity one. I doubt Toyota has to pay anywhere near that much.

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

#563

Post by ses1984 » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

edmundsauto wrote: post #559

Fezzik wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subaru has the same thing on their new cars - subscribe annually to Starlink or no remote start for you! I live in a winter wonderland where remote start would be a dream but no way I am paying a cent for this feature. I’ll have to look in to the after market options.

You’re not interested in paying for something that provides you with very clear value? So instead you wil go pay money for a different system to bolt on? I don’t mean to criticize, but I have to admit that I cannot empathize.

If I put a gun to your head and then sell you a service of not shooting, that's a clear value too right?

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

#564

Post by s1artibartfast » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

selfhoster11 wrote: post #537

s1artibartfast wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't vote with their wallet because they don't care.

Read my comment again. A lot of them don't have anything in their wallet, so they have nothing to vote with. They buy the cheapest food because that's the only option. And yes, food poverty is still around despite food banks.

My point isn't that everyone in the country is in a position where they can afford luxury eggs, but that that very few care to.

The idea of voting with your wallet does not mean that there are no costs to doing so. Eggs are a good example because the cost is very small to upgrade. Yet, the vast majority of consumers, who could easily spend $1 more per carton, do not.

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

#565

Post by betwixthewires » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:22 AM UTC

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #556

betwixthewires wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just auto manufacturers. It seems literally everything is being designed with a philosophy of "fuck the user" in mind. I cannot think of a single thing more complicated than a concrete block that functions better now than previous versions did 10 years ago, and I'm sure there are some things that work at least as good, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

Quite a lot of electronics test & measurement equipment. Notably modern spectrum analyzers & network analyzers. Also modern arbitrary waveform generators & RF generators are vastly better than a decade ago. Other bits haven't improved nearly as much, eg the HP 3458A is still one of the best meters in the world. The Fluke 5720A Calibrator is likewise an old workhorse.

I forgot about engineering hardware. I've used some of that stuff, lots of it is good but tons of it is vendor lock in stuff as well, NI comes to mind.

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

#566

Post by gonehome » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:38 AM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #466

Thaxll wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Note that the meaning in the book was almost wholly changed for the film. A big part of the book was that by learning to think 4-dimensionally (via the alien language), the scientists found that free will did not exist. The narrator had no choice in how to act with her child - she was simply acting out a predefined narrative... "I suddenly remembered that a morphological relative of 'performative' was 'performance,'…

I thought the movie implied this as well?

I include Arrival alongside Children of Men as an example of a case where the movie is better than the book (and I'm a big Ted Chiang fan) - changing the daughter's death from a climbing accident to a disease was much better imo.

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

#567

Post by Robotbeat » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

MAGZine wrote: post #423

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 satellit…

As a reminder, "Premium Connectivity" package was originally included for with an unpublished end date for their vehicles, until it wasn't. All of the remote controls you talk about being free are provided over cellular connections, in addition to nav, voice support, and telemetry being sent back to tesla. as such, tesla is subject to the same economics as toyota, they have just decided to hide it in the price of the…

Honestly, though, I'd rather they have a revenue stream than not. Premium connectivity doesn't add any kind of necessary features; it's all just sort of nice to have.

The main experience is free and the premium connectivity fee helps pay for that infrastructure.

I had premium connectivity for a few months and didn't miss it one bit when it expired. navigation still works great and THIS really is a killer feature for Teslas as it makes roadtripping a breeze, since it's well-connected to the Supercharger network's status. The non-premium connectivity also helps facilitate payment for the Supercharger network, so it's not just a pure burden for Tesla.

I'm pretty satisfied with the service fee structure for Tesla. I'd rather have reasonable fees for things that make sense (like Premium connectivity, which has to pay royalties to geospatial mapping companies, artists, and a non-trivial data usage, or Supercharger which uses electricity and requires the chargers to be maintained by technicians) and a long-term sustainable financial situation than free, but crappy and declining, service. And certainly am glad it's not requiring me to pay for super simple things that should be free.

(So the AT&T fee for non-premium connectivity can partially be paid for by Supercharger fees since that's what it helps facilitate. ...supercharging ALSO being reasonably priced, less than equivalent gasoline for a comparable ICE car)

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

#568

Post by ayemiller » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

senortumnus wrote: post #544

aaaaaaaaaaab wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This reminds me of the spark plug ceramic demos. Little ceramic tip on a spark plug (isolated from the rest of the plug) make an effective car window smashing projectile. No idea if it would work from inside the car / if you could get enough speed on it sitting right next to the window! https://www.reddit.com/r/mythbusters/comments/130js6/breakin...

Technically it's not the tip of a spark plug, but a shard of the ceramic insulator when shattered- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninja_rocks

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

#569

Post by sjwalter » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

black_puppydog wrote: post #28

klipklop wrote: post #9

The 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…

Can you explain what you mean with the German milk market? You can't buy fresh milk anymore?

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

#570

Post by Robotbeat » Tue, Dec 14, 2021, 3:46 AM UTC

adrr wrote: post #513

josephcsible wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're using a different definition of "ads" than most people do.

A notice or announcement that promotes a service or feature. Standard definition.

Sure, but it's for Tesla stuff (often for stuff consumed on the app itself, so where else would they put it?) and it's not intrusive. You're right that it fits the standard definition, but this isn't the kind of annoying internet ads for 3rd party stuff that people associate with app ads.