Potentially unpopular take but I don't think free services linked to physical goods are a good idea in practice. Maintaining such services costs money forever, companies can't sustain that as a business model, so the market is littered with hardware that is now useless because the services it required has gone offline. If there's something to gripe about here it's that Mazda removed the fob-based remote start, or that $10/month is too high, but it should not be that they're charging a maintenance fee for something they have to maintain.
Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
61–70 of 92 posts
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#62I'd love if there were a bring-your-own option. A usb-a port you can plug in your kwn always on cellular controller to.
It's unfortunate as hell for car companies that they need to become maintainers of Internet of Cars infrastructure that needs to stay running, that brings legal obligation & maintenance. It's be better for consumers if there were free market options, and it's save so much pain and development costs if car companies could get out of having to DIY all these IoT offerings.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The problem is it does work, a lot, and not enough people push back to hurt their sales All the evidence in the car industry to date I've seen appears to show charging subscriptions for hardware functions that were previously free or included from factory with no ongoing cost tends to back fire - BMW famously first tried a few years ago to make heated seats subscription based, and has fully backtracked etc. > https…
> People feel that they paid double – which was actually not true, but perception is reality, I always say. Do you have any ideas on why the double cost is not true? Maybe manufacturing efficiencies make it cheaper to install the parts despite whether the customer paid for the upgrade?
It's likely just economies of scale, similar to how almost all cars, even the cheapest ones, have electric windows. It's cheaper to include them in all model tiers than to keep a separate SKU for roll-ups that'll barely sell anyway, because they exist so they can say "Starting at [lower $]" than what dealers actually keep in stock.
This kind of stuff happens in tech all the time, like lower tier CPUs that are actually manufactured as higher tier ones, but with CPU/GPU cores disabled even if they weren't defective.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#64I can't wait to read about renters not only having to pay their landlords rent, but also extra subscriptions for common amenities, like central heating, A/C, and even shower. The dream is a subscription for everything.
Remote start requires an internet connection. Is your internet service included with your rent?
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#65I would like to know when people will realize again the power of being united: a vendor start to screw it's customers? Few hours and all socials invite to boycott it. All intentions to order, reserved test drives etc got deleted "sorry, we hear the news, due to the vendor behavior we are not anymore interested not only in this specific car but in the brand altogether".
People are tired and only have so much energy. I can keep tilting at windmills about the loss of the headphone jack, but the public response is a big meh. Companies will incrementally capitalize on tiny inconveniences for any potential profit.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remote start is very nice if you park outside during the winter and prefer not to sit in a car that's 20 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 10 minutes of your drive.
Remote start is accidental carbon monoxide poisoning waiting to happen if your garage is directly connected to your residence. I live in an area with brutal winters in Wyoming and just bought a new Ford Bronco, wish I could fully disable it (there's a button on the key fob as well). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/13/business/deadly-convenien...
Ford's remote start has a 15 minute cutoff without any intervention. Using numbers from a cold-started 2011 F-150 Raptor during a driving test and trapping it in a single car garage, 15 minutes with zero circulation results in ~40-120ppm carbon monoxide* which would still take multiple hours of exposure before symptoms occur. Your bronco probably has lower emissions and with good circulation to the much larger air volume of the rest of the house CO poisoning really shouldn't be a concern. Obviously don't use the feature with the door closed but accidentally triggering it wouldn't be that big of a deal. It also is pretty hard to accidentally trigger from the fob, requiring pressing the lock button and the remote start button twice in quick succession.
* 0.263-0.725g CO/min in a 12x22x10 ft garage. higher number is from testing under load before the cat is warmed up
https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-...
https://www.lenntech.com/calculators/ppm/converter-parts-per...
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#67As some in the comments correctly point out, this service requires a cellular connection. Which involves costs for Mazda. It's appropriate for them to charge a small monthly fee for the service. My only real complaint about this is discontinuing the keyfob-based feature. All that said, I see no need for remote start, anyway.
They have cellular so they can do telemetry, not so I can start the car.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#68I would like to know when people will realize again the power of being united: a vendor start to screw it's customers? Few hours and all socials invite to boycott it. All intentions to order, reserved test drives etc got deleted "sorry, we hear the news, due to the vendor behavior we are not anymore interested not only in this specific car but in the brand altogether".
It's not enough of an issue to sway regular people into doing that. It's a, "yeah that's shitty" but not a deal breaker.
That's why we are here: people do not react for tiny annoyances/changes, so a step at a time they got TFU without realizing. Since we are in the information era hopefully a significant cohort of people have realized that and react at first sight to avoid being played in the long run. If not, well... We are TFU, only waiting to discover how much a step at a time...
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can't stop buying if no options exist. I need a car. Toyota has done this for a while. BMW has IAP heaters in chairs. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I agree that people will think they don't have a choice, and will even act like they don't. But the reality is that there are plenty of new vehicles without subscriptions or in-app purchases, and even more used vehicles without them. Those are all options. With this process, it's always a series of choices, where choosing what the company wants is slightly easier than not choosing it, but it's still a choice.
For now. Give it a few decades when all those used cars are no longer on the market. We're already entering the age where media is solely released on streaming platforms with no legal physical copies ever produced, let alone available to consumers. Cars will go much the same way.
The only way to counter it would be some kind of legally enforceable "right to ownership", which could be argued is the next step after "right to repair". Relying on consumer choice is a libertarian fantasy, right up there with corporate self-regulation. Yes, both exist and have substantial impacts, but they lack the teeth to create sustainable economic systems that support a prosperous middle class. Only well-written government regulation can do the latter.
Re: Mazda's $10 Subscription for Remote Start Sparks Backlash
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that people will think they don't have a choice, and will even act like they don't. But the reality is that there are plenty of new vehicles without subscriptions or in-app purchases, and even more used vehicles without them. Those are all options. With this process, it's always a series of choices, where choosing what the company wants is slightly easier than not choosing it, but it's still a choice.
For now. Give it a few decades when all those used cars are no longer on the market. We're already entering the age where media is solely released on streaming platforms with no legal physical copies ever produced, let alone available to consumers. Cars will go much the same way. The only way to counter it would be some kind of legally enforceable "right to ownership", which could be argued is the next step after "ri…
If you give up in advance of an expected loss, you create that loss, whether your expectation was right or wrong. On the other hand, if people didn't buy these vehicles, the companies who sell them would have to stop or be outcompeted. If, in the future, companies again try the same tactic, rinse and repeat until they go away. I think we both agree about what the outcome will be, but I am placing much of the blame on the above attitude and behavior by consumers, rather than on some sort of invisible force of the universe that leads towards enshittification. We're the enshittifiers.