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

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701–710 of 744 posts

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

#701
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.

You picked out the tongue in cheek part of my comment, but sure, people like thinner computers. Not sure what battery life has to do with that sense the overall lifetime of the batter is probably worse with everything packed in and the battery experiencing more heat.

Some other problems from their obsession with thin. Broken keyboards for multiple years. And that's moving from already bad chiclet keyboards into broken keyboards.

There was also a couple year period when ethernet ports were on the corners and it seemed everyone had their macbook dented right at the ethernet port. It could have been reinforced at that point along the edge, but they have to aggressively bevel those edges for the marketing glamour shots that make them look impossibly thin.

Oh, speaking of the beveled edges, the early airs and ipads were rounded so far toward the center that if you placed them on a table, and pressed near the edge with any force at all it would flip the far side of the device off the table. A real problem for an ipad which is a touchscreen and for anyone who touches their palms to their keyboard while typing.

Those are problems from making things minimally thin, or worse, making them appear thinner than they are. I don't expect them to actually make cars one inch shorter every year. I do expect them to have some weird obsession that they will tout as the best thing ever and min/max it to death.

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

#702
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the hard choice here was to decide to have a child even knowing that [they] will die Knowing that my children will suffer and die is the main reason why I didn't want to have any. Now I have two. Funnily, it's the same reason my own mother didn't want to have kids either. Yet, here we are. I suspect it is a pretty common feeling.

I still think it's the right decision not to have kids. I myself would prefer not to been born (while my life is relatively easy) In dune there is a story part were the ruler knows what he needs to do but also realizes that he is not strong enough and knows that his son has to fullfil it (I forgot what it is about) but I feel as soon as we achieve the ability to self determine things like if we want to make kids, we…

I think this reasoning doesn't hold up imo.

The vast majority of people are happy to exist, even people that experience a lot of suffering. Even if you ignore everything else, just that metric suggests on net it's better to have kids.

> "We should stop doing it as we might not have the right to create new life."

You can't get consent before hand so the best we can do is look at results after. By that it seems choosing to not have kids would be the less ethical position (though I don't personally hold that view - people should do what they want).

In addition to just being a fundamental part of humanity, a spark of intellectual curiosity in an otherwise indifferent universe, and a way to have companionship when you're old.

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

#703
post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electronically, through the settings in the touchscreen panel on the dash. These are not child locks, but rather set the behavior of the door latch when the door is locked.

Does it have a fail-safe configuration if electricity is lost like in the examples above? If not, the ability to change configuration may not actually mitigate the failure mode

Yes, there is a manual door lock button-thing on the door next to the door latch. Though honestly I don't know if that works when the power is dead. As cars move to "fly by wire" this becomes a larger concern - less mechanical linkages, more buttons/switches + wires.

For example to open the back you push a button on tailgate and then pull to open. That button is definitely not a mechanical latch, so if the battery is dead then you're not opening the tailgate.

This would be an interesting experience - go to an auto dealer and ask them to disconnect the battery, then see what still functions.

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

#704

I wonder if this, too, is a symptom of near-zero interest rates. With an interest rate of zero, future cash flows are valued equal to present cash flows. That increases the net present value of recurring payments (approaching infinity, actually). So it becomes increasingly attractive for companies to discount the initial sale price in exchange for a recurring payment. In a higher interest rate environment, that would…

Maybe.

But, I think it's more likely that the downstream revenue from car sales has changed dramatically, and they need to find clever ways to fix that.

Historically, cars needed a ton of work and maintenance and dealers got significant revenue from their mechanic's shops. Now cars are far more reliable, go far longer between standard service calls and oil changes, and there's just far less money being spent at the dealer after you drive away with your initial purchase.

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

#705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pray tell what make and model this was so I can run as fast as my legs can take me in the opposite direction if Hertz tries to palm one off on me

I rented a Ford Edge two months ago that had one. It was quite distracting. At the end of a week, I still hadn't internalized how it worked. I had to think about it every time. On my old Chevrolet Tahoe, I can tell what gear I just shifted into by feel (shifting into D, it has a slight tendency to overshoot the normal overdrive mode and end up locked into 3rd). And of course, this is essentially a nonissue on manual…

Most cars have a stop at D; e.g. for the ones where you pull the stem towards to to leave park, you can let the stem spring back at neutral and push it down until it stops at D, and for the ones with a button you can release the button at neutral.

[edit]

Honestly if the rotary dial had similar tactile feedback, it would probably be fine. No worse than when they moved it off of the tree as bench seats were retired for safety reasons.

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

#706
post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think it's the right decision not to have kids. I myself would prefer not to been born (while my life is relatively easy) In dune there is a story part were the ruler knows what he needs to do but also realizes that he is not strong enough and knows that his son has to fullfil it (I forgot what it is about) but I feel as soon as we achieve the ability to self determine things like if we want to make kids, we…

I think this reasoning doesn't hold up imo. The vast majority of people are happy to exist, even people that experience a lot of suffering. Even if you ignore everything else, just that metric suggests on net it's better to have kids. > "We should stop doing it as we might not have the right to create new life." You can't get consent before hand so the best we can do is look at results after. By that it seems choosin…

That's the problem: evolution drives life otherwise Evolution wouldn't exist.

Now we circumvent already things evolution purports like the strongest survivies. We also compensate for errors or flaws like eye sight, mental illness etc. We question eating meat. We cook meat. We self control and we evolved evolution by inventing the internet (highspeed human interconnect) and computers. Potentially the internet itself with all it's inputs (blogs, comments, news), processing power in-between and outputs will become a new thing.

We also do not support not lifing. If I would tell my parents that I want to stop/end my life I would not be allowed.

Why? Because of course the only true answer can be that lifing is good.

Now let's question this: we have no impact (universe will disintegrate), we have a lot of pain in the world, we can't guarantee to anyone that they will ha e a good life and there is no purpose in life either besides the purpose you create for yourself.

We can't ask someone if they want to be a life before they get born either.

In my logic the most social thing would be to be aware of everything around you and stop creating new brains to entertain yours.

How many brains in agony are okay? What is the perfect ratio? 1:10000? 1:100?

Making kids is not a logical answer it's an evolutionary one.

Lucky enough for our society my type of thinking will not propagate much anyway. ----

People are doing what they want anyway. It's just a discussion :)

Moral and ethics is a construct of a self-sufficient, sustainable and fair society. Nothing else.

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

#707
post #39

Honda charges something like US$15 for a CR2032 for the key fob. The person who was dealing with my car was too embarrassed to charge me, so I got it for free. Still, it makes me want to rethink my relationship with Honda. It seems that Toyota might not be the way either.

Honda charges $15, or your local dealership charges $15? Given cars are selling well above MSRP these days, I don't think manufacturers dictate fixed prices to dealerships.

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

#708
post #310

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.

As someone who's lived both near the equator and in snowy climates, having a car interior thats not 110F or 10F is very nice, especially if you have leather seats/steering wheel.

It's not just interior temperature - it's about being able to defrost the windshield so you can just drive off in winter.

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

#709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iCloud's free storage tier still being stuck at 5 GB as the base phone storage has grown to 128 GB is the main thing I'd criticize. You realistically can't use iCloud for photo storage or backups with that plan. I bet most people can blow through that just with Messages history if they have anyone sending them videos. I think the upgrade prices are reasonable, $1/month for 50GB and $3/month for 200GB, but I can see c…

Don't forget disallowing local backups for no reason other than moneygrubbing. $3/month for 200Gb is reasonable in your opinion, but people who don't buy Apple can buy a 2T drive for $50.

Local backups still work fine, you just do it in Finder now instead of iTunes. Not sure what the situation is for Windows users.

As far as comparing prices, yes, a bare hard drive is cheaper but I'm paying for that storage with services and backups attached to it. A hard drive won't automatically sync photos between my phone and my computer, and I'm more likely to have that hard drive fail than I am to lose iCloud.

Replacing iCloud storage with a big hard drive is a bit like replacing a car with a motorcycle. Yeah you can buy way more acceleration for less money, but good luck moving your furniture.

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

#710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tesla probably makes back all the money they spend on AT&T bandwidth through the Supercharger network. As long as the math continues to work out there's no need to introduce any new fees. I will say it is kind of strange that Premium Connectivity has no data limit. If I could just figure out how to launch a personal hotspot from my Model 3, I could cut the cord with Comcast...

> I will say it is kind of strange that Premium Connectivity has no data limit. If I could just figure out how to launch a personal hotspot from my Model 3, I could cut the cord with Comcast...

I think you just highlighted why they will likely never allow a personal hotspot from the car.

How many people would gladly drop their home internet connection if they could just tether to the car which is only $10/month for unlimited data? It would cost Tesla a fortune unless they charged a hefty premium for hotspotting.

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