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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

#651

Post by ClumsyPilot »

elzbardico wrote: post #512
LanceH wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't really be the monthly subscriptions. The engine wouldn't be bolted in, everything would be welded into place. Parts to repair it would not be accessible, except at Apple dealerships. If it doesn't start, you could expect to replace the Main Driving Unit at a price roughly 90% of buying a new one.* The entire car would have tamper sensors. Also, they would make the car one inch shorter every year. I can't…

This is the same for any other flagship notebook sold in the marketing, manufacturing has changed, most people want thinner and lighter machines with great battery life and good reliability. We are not in the 90s anymore.

"most people want thinner and lighter machines"

Not at the cost of repairability and reliability they don't.

In my dell XPS, friends lebovo, etc. I can replace battery, ssd, or any other part with just a screwdriver.

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

#652

Post by gambiting »

alistairSH wrote: post #263
winternett wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many other car makers do this too. My Volvo has a remote start feature installed (that I paid for in buying the car) that is not accessible without enrollment in a (pretty much useless otherwise) monthly subscription service. It's flat out criminal considering that I could have just bought the device with a remote at Auto Zone for 1/4 of the price (that also doesn't allow the auto maker to track/log each time I use i…

Toyota is being lambasted for forcing a subscription on a function between the key fob and the car (RF signal). There is no app to port to various device OSes. There is no server infrastructure to maintain. Subaru's subscription is for remote start via app. Which is Volvo's service?

Volvo has a subscription called Volvo On Call, and it's app based. You can't remotely start the car from just the fob. So yes, you are paying basically for the server upkeep + the sim card installed in your car that enables all those services.

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

#653

Post by gambiting »

nuccy wrote: post #245
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.

VW diesel cars can be equipped with Webasto (auxiliary heater which burns diesel). One gets a remote (in my experience reaching up to 500 meters) which can be used to start this heater along with car's climate control. The advantage is that it consumes 1/3-1/5 of what an idling engine does, while heating interior and engine coolant much faster. The disadvantage is that it consumes battery charge, but to counteract th…

So in my Volvo XC60 T8, the car just came with a Webasto preinstalled from factory, it was standard fit on all models(in 2020 in UK anyway). But you can only start it from the app, they don't give you a separate fob like the one you can buy from Webasto, so you have to pay Volvo's subscription to use it.

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

#654

Post by gambiting »

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…

Dacia cars are pretty much as barebones as it gets. You get a fully functional car for a low price, with very few electronic gadgets(I think the peak of sophistication is having bluetooth integrated with the radio).

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

#655

Post by fdjsafdsjl »

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…

Depends if you are trying to break the window from the inside or the outside. It's very difficult from the outside, and much easier from the inside (I cracked my windscreen and needed a replacement, because I was carrying a long piece of wood and it moved a little and contacted the windscreen).

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

#656

Post by solididiot »

Karsteski wrote: post #2

Sigh... While I look forward to having an electric car someday, the trend in new cars does not look promising. Far too many instances of car companies having too much control, because of the advent of internet-connected vehicles. Is there a solution to this? I don't know. Especially because I can see legislation cementing these sorts of practices in very much convoluted ways. One can only hope competing car brands em…

Yeah. We've had the same hopes for mobile phones and at best you can hope for makes that do not overload their models with their own sh1tware on top of Android.

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

#657

Post by null_object »

brokenmachine wrote: post #595
null_object wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the Apple Car actually materializes, I fear this will become the new standard. All cars come with all bells and whistles, but you have to pay monthly fees in order for them to function Wow I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant. Writing this on a 2013 Apple iPad Air that has not cost me a single cent to use every day for the last 8 years.

>I have NO IDEA how anyone managed the jump from this story about Toyota to a totally imaginary anti-Apple rant Because Apple are the nickel-and-dime masters . From removing headphone sockets in order to sell stupidly expensive wireless headphones, to stupidly overpriced soldered memory and storage upgrades, to the 30% appstore fee scam, to disallowing local backups to promote their iCloud storage racket, to unrepair…

> They are usually the first to do every terrible consumer-hostile action because their victims are locked-in suckers with Stockholm syndrome whose devices don't work with any other companies devices or accessories. > any conversation about companies being assholes will skew towards discussing Apple, because they are the biggest and most successful assholes.

It's a pity I'm unable to downvote answers to my post because this really was one of the most worthless things I think I've ever read on HN.

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

#658

Post by erklik »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #604
errcorrectcode wrote: post #200

Ownership is evaporating due to technology and a lack of viable alternatives. The idea is to make personal ownership more expensive and trouble that it's worth (monetize misery) so that manufacturers can run their own FSD car sharing fleet so they can charge you whatever they want. Rent-seeking, oligopoly FTW.

I pay a $6 yearly subscription for a frikkin’ calculator app. It has a handy feature which I use and the price was low enough I didn’t actually care that much. But I never imagined renting a calculator.

Would you mind sharing what the handy feature is? or the Calculator even?

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

#659

Post by dghlsakjg »

sokoloff wrote: post #336
judge2020 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I’ve seen this tip pop up a few times, but it is worth noting that the way to break a window isn’t to hit it with the metal bits.

You have to insert the metal rod between the bottom of the window and the door card and use leverage to pry at the window until it cracks

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

#660

Post by dotancohen »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #254
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…

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…

> It's a charge designed purely to extract as much money from their customers as possible

I don't think that it is. I think that it is a charge designed purely to normalize the idea of paying for everything as a subscription.

The next generation of car buyers might not realize that this is ridiculous because by then _everything_ is a subscription, from their shoes to their haircuts.

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