[HN Gopher] Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their ...
___________________________________________________________________
Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for
remote start
Author : slobotron
Score : 397 points
Date : 2021-12-13 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| lykahb wrote:
| It is a common opinion in this thread that it is unethical to
| charge for enabling a feature that only needs the local
| communication between a key fob and a car. And that it is fine if
| there is a cloud in-between, such as remote start from a
| smartphone, because it has maintenance costs.
|
| If majority of the car buyers agree with this distinction, it
| would simply create an incentive to route more communication
| through the cloud. Besides, this option makes tracking and
| control easier.
|
| I would argue that the maintaining a server does not have a
| substantial difference that singles it out from the other work
| that a car maker does to support the car owners: downloads of
| manuals, managing recalls, parts inventory, etc. Subscription
| business model has no place here.
| tantalor wrote:
| > it is fine if there is a cloud in-between
|
| But there doesn't _need_ to be cloud in-between for an app to
| talk to your car. You don 't even need Internet. In fact my
| phone already talks to my car via the King of Denmark, so I'm
| told.
| nyx wrote:
| This is such a sleazy game to play, and it looks to be getting
| more popular as corporations realize the average consumer just
| accepts it. Zero Motorcycles, the longest-standing electric
| motorcycle manufacturer, has announced for their 2022 flagship
| models that things like battery capacity and charge rate will be
| gated behind one-time in-app purchases, which is mind-boggling.
| Having to lug around batteries you can't charge to full capacity
| on a bike, where space and weight are at a premium, actually
| makes the product worse if you don't pay the rent. Hoping this
| strategy blows up in their face, but all indications suggest it's
| going to be lucrative and the angry minority will just have to
| eat it.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| 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.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| If it's buried in the fine print, I wonder how long it'll be
| until a major class action suite forces Toyota to enable the fob.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If this was pitched to me at the dealership I'd just laugh at the
| salesman's face and leave. Or get all the add-ons "forever for
| free" as part of the sale.
|
| This makes (any) brand look incredibly cheap.
|
| However, If someone wants to sell me Car as a SaaS, I'm
| interested.
|
| By that, I mean as soon as there's an issue with the car, I
| simply flag it in the App and an employee comes to my place and
| swap it over for the same model/trim (transfers whatever I have
| in the trunk too). Then I just keep using the replacement car
| until either I stop using the service or it has an issue or is
| due for maintenance.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Or get all the add-ons "forever for free" as part of the
| sale._
|
| This all the way. People seems to be intimidated of car
| shopping, but if you have financing in place (or cash), you are
| in such a position of power you can pretty much get anything
| thrown in. Try it. By the time they say no it'll be because
| you're eaten all their margins; they are a business after all.
| BHSPitMonkey wrote:
| Assuming the manufacturer creates such a mechanism for
| dealers to offer at all.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| I don't know how could anyone think it is a good move inside
| toyota. $8 falls in the range that it is irritating for consumers
| yet the lifetime revenue per car is probably 1% of the average
| car value(5 year lifetime with 2 years free means $250 lifetime
| revenue). Is it worth it for 1% increase in revenue.
| csours wrote:
| Disclosure: I work for GM, anything here is solely my own
| opinion.
|
| Different revenue to a different organization inside the OEM.
| When you sell a $20k car, you get maybe $1k in profit, maybe
| less. If you can get $8 monthly recurring revenue you get maybe
| $7 in profit. Also consider that the lifetime is not 5 years.
| The AVERAGE age of cars on the road now is over 12 years. My
| parents drive 20 year old cars.
|
| Also consider the friction to cancel. Maybe you get a few more
| months of revenue with someone sells the car or after it gets
| scrapped.
|
| To be clear, I am not arguing in favor of this kind of thing at
| all.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Also consider that the lifetime is not 5 years. The AVERAGE
| age of cars on the road now is over 12 years._
|
| Do 2nd owners typically subscribe to optional services?
| [deleted]
| shitlord wrote:
| Where did you get the 5 year lifetime figure? Toyota's vehicles
| are known for their reliability and longevity.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Right? I'm in the market for a new SUV and I just took Toyota's
| off my list.
| petre wrote:
| Subaru is doing it as well.
| stvsu wrote:
| Yup. Subaru offers remote start via an app at $75 for the
| first 3 years when you buy a new car, but it renews at $300
| (prepaid for 3 years) after that.
|
| Ridiculous
| brewdad wrote:
| I have no idea what Toyota's margins are like at the
| manufacturing level but it's not uncommon for dealers to only
| make a few hundred dollars profit on the sale. $250 of
| additional lifetime revenues could be quite significant.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| ~6% to 7%
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TM/toyota/profit-m.
| ..
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| It actually makes a lot of sense, unfortunately.
|
| For the new car buyer, you pitch it as cost savings for the
| time you own the car. The OE Toyota Long Range remote starter
| is $1000 so if you go with the app, if you only own the car for
| 8 years then you're saving money as the new car owner.
|
| However the overwhelming majority of car sales in the US are
| used, and the average age of the American car is now 12 years
| old. Outside of maintaining a spare parts supply chain, you
| don't gain any additional revenue from used car sales. With
| subscriptions, a 2020 model year car can still be generating
| revenue for a company in 2035. Plus you can adjust the
| subscription price year after year as desired.
|
| I don't like it personally, but I can see method to the
| madness.
| yumraj wrote:
| Actually this is fantastic for someone like _me_ - assuming there
| are no security holes of course.
|
| I _don 't_ want my next car to have remote start or remote
| anything. If not paying the subscription allows me to make sure
| that that feature is not enabled, it's great news, for _me_.
|
| Of course, different people have different preferences and needs.
| hermannj314 wrote:
| I assume if you dont pay the convenience fee for the fob, then
| you will be auto-enrolled in their legacy program which has a
| maintenance fee due to its legacy status.
| jgust wrote:
| The reality is that it's probably still there, you just don't
| have access to it.
| ptudan wrote:
| It's definitely still there. If you're worried about hackers
| etc, they can surely bypass this control if they've bypassed
| everything else.
| yumraj wrote:
| I fully understand, that is why I noted: _assuming there are
| no security holes_
|
| Ideally there should be a hardware switch :)
| QuotedForTruth wrote:
| "Im in! Wait! $8/month?! Go get mom's credit card"
| freedomben wrote:
| Whether you pay or not the car will have the capability and it
| will dutifully ask the home server what it should do. Toyota
| will still be able to see exactly where you, what you're doing,
| and be able to unlock/start your car whenever they want. _you_
| just won 't be able to.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Not with the antennas removed.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| To keep breathing the air on mars, please top up your Musk-ways
| air card. Until then please apply the asphyxiation device or
| expect to pay for air outside of your tariffed rate.
| barbazoo wrote:
| 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.
| arsenic64 wrote:
| In colder climates you usually need to heat up the car to
| defrost the windows in order to drive safely. That can take 10+
| minutes by the time the engine heats up. It's actually the law
| in some states in the US now.
| beervirus wrote:
| Is Texas an extreme environment? Not particularly, but still,
| it's nice to get the air conditioner going a minute or two
| before getting into a car in August.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Open the windows maybe? Sure it's nice but I wonder if we
| should consider living without the luxury of having an ICE
| bring your car to the perfect temperature. I guess people
| have less GHG emission guilt as me.
| andiareso wrote:
| Likewise, Midwest (ie: ND, SD, Minnesota, etc) can get down
| to -20 easily few weeks out of the year in January/February.
| Not "unsurvivable" but definitely not good to shift into
| drive without letting things flex from heat a bit first.
| andiareso wrote:
| Side note, without remote start, it is illegal to run a
| vehicle without an occupant in many states (** with keys in
| the ignition).
| 0xJRS wrote:
| 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.
| ok_dad wrote:
| I've always liked and bought Toyota brand cars for the past 13
| years, but not anymore. Good job, Toyota, because I am currently
| in the market for a car and between this type of thing, telemetry
| crap, and no electric cars that are decent, you've lost a loyal
| customer. I hope one of your marketing/sales/exec employees see
| this and realize you're not doing the right thing.
| rajbot wrote:
| My Volvo has a remote start option, but it costs $200/year to
| subscribe to the Volvo On-Call service to be able to use it.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think they lowered it quite substantially, at least now mine
| is around $40, which is much more reasonable.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| I added an app-enabled remote start to a car years back. First
| few years were included. Then $80 or $10 / year after that. The
| fob still worked after I canceled though, super wack that
| Toyota would burn a feature that clearly doesn't rely on the
| web.
| more_corn wrote:
| This is bullshit. I will never own a car that does that (or a car
| from a company that does that). I recommend everyone here also
| refuses to abide such behavior. Vote with your wallet. If you
| don't fight back against the dystopia you hate, you'll get it by
| default.
| jbay808 wrote:
| 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 wouldn't be the case,
| as recurring payments would discount the further they are in the
| future, converging to a much smaller sum, while revenue in hand
| from the initial purchase would be valued higher.
| olliej wrote:
| I'm sorry, you don't get to retroactively remove features like
| this :-/
| Animats wrote:
| Stellantis (the current owner of Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge/etc) has
| announced that they hope to get $22 billion a year from their
| customers through post-sale service charges.[1]
|
| _"Software will improve our business model, disconnecting
| hardware from software ... shifting the center of gravity of our
| business," Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares said Tuesday during the
| company's "Software Day." Tavares said profit margins for those
| services are expected to be more comparable to those of a
| technology company rather than a traditional automaker. The
| additional revenue stream could potentially double what the
| automaker makes today, CFO Richard Palmer said._
|
| [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/stellantis-plans-to-
| generate...
| randomizedalgs wrote:
| This is a classic example of price discrimination. Slowly but
| surely, companies such as Toyota will converge to a state where
| every consumer individually pays the maximum amount that the
| consumer is willing to pay for the product.
|
| $8 a month may not seem like much compared to the cost of a car,
| but that's the point. Toyota will be able to get free extra money
| from a large population of people (many of whom will later barely
| even remember that they are incurring this regular cost).
| hncurious wrote:
| SaaS is eating the world. Software, music, movies, games, books.
| Now the car industry and big pharma are flirting with this model.
| rabuse wrote:
| You're not excited for your monthly Pfizer booster subscription
| to stay employed?
| Karsteski wrote:
| 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 emerge whose competitive
| advantage is along the lines of "Your car, you can do whatever
| the fuck you want with it".
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| I have both a new electric Audi and new Tesla. In either car I
| can just remove the sim and it'll completely disable all of the
| internet based features. A lot of the FUD around new cars is
| spread by grumpy old automotive journalists.
| Karsteski wrote:
| If you were to remove the sim card, would that void your
| warranty with either of those manufacturers? If so, that is
| not a long term solution, unfortunately.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| No. They just stop calling home to the mothership. My Audi
| actually had a faulty sim module for a few months until I
| had time to get it fixed and other than not being able to
| check the charge status while away from the car it didn't
| really bother me.
| foobarian wrote:
| > In either car I can just remove the sim
|
| For now!
| petre wrote:
| Wait until they put in eSIMs. Those you can probably disable
| as well but with a different level of expertise. Or you can
| damage the antenna or just stick aluminium foil tape onto it.
| luma wrote:
| Does this impact your access to Tesla services or charging
| infrastructure? Can you still supercharge?
| darknavi wrote:
| Should be able to supercharge. It communicates with the
| charger over the charging cable to tell it what account to
| charge.
|
| You might lose access once you're on old enough software
| though.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| As far as I know yes you can still supercharge. The only
| thing I lose is the ability to remote control the car when
| out of bluetooth range as well as all the map & streaming
| features.
| jen20 wrote:
| What happens when they (inevitably) move to eSIM?
| anakaine wrote:
| Remove the antenna, or break the wire trace antenna.
| rabuse wrote:
| "Just void your warranty with this simple trick!"
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| The Audi has a "cellular off" option in the MMI. I'd have
| to dig into the Tesla to verify.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I've been driving a 2014 BMW i3 ev for 7+ years; it works
| great, but has about 100mile range, since it's using smaller
| batteries.
|
| I wish it WERE internet connected: for BMW to update the maps
| of the nav system can (supposedly) only be done at the BMW
| dealer, costs something like $180 for the map updates (North
| America), and requires a two day stay at the dealer, with
| associated labor-time fees.
|
| BMW is just a laughable Big Money Waste.
| rabuse wrote:
| I own a BMW also. Will never own one again after the
| maintenance nightmare they are.
| Faaak wrote:
| There are many electric cars on the market that are just plain
| "old" cars: hyundai ioniq, renault zoe, peugeot e-208, etc...
| No subscription and they work quite well.
| nicce wrote:
| But they are practically useless outside of cities. No range
| so they are not an option.
| notJim wrote:
| They're not great for long roadtrips, but they would be
| fine for weekend or short trips to places with charging.
| For example, from where I live to the coast is about 80
| miles, and many of the coastal cities have at least L2 and
| some L3 charging. This would be fine with many of these
| cars. You might not need to charge at all with some of
| them.
| nicce wrote:
| My scenario might be a bit extreme, but closest food
| store is 40 miles away. Closest charger is 200 miles
| away. (Talking from Europe) Visiting my parents take 300
| miles trip (one direction), and requires charging stop.
| And this is considered here as relatively normal driving
| trip.
|
| And in winter, the range drops significantly. It is 7
| month winter here.
|
| Why would I buy a car which is useful only for short
| weekend trips when there are better options available?
| notJim wrote:
| "It's not useful in my specific scenario, which I
| acknowledge is extreme, therefore the cars are useless
| outside cities." Frankly I find your comment incredibly
| stupid. These cars are perfectly useful for many people,
| including outside cities.
| mleonhard wrote:
| Your comment violates the site guidelines [0]. Please
| edit it and remove the personal insult.
|
| > When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead
| of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3"
| can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| nicce wrote:
| This applies almost my whole country, including many
| others, maybe less extreme. It is a bit different outside
| of US, what I'm trying to say.
| notJim wrote:
| It sounds like the charging infrastructure isn't there
| yet where you live. Doesn't mean the cars are useless for
| many many people, including people in rural areas. In the
| US, I don't think most rural people are 40 miles from the
| nearest food store, and I'd be surprised to learn that's
| true in most European countries either.
| lvs wrote:
| The idea that a car would automatically download an update that
| changes how something on the car works is insanity. I'm not
| buying a car with that "feature."
| r00fus wrote:
| That ship is departing as we speak [1] - that article was
| from 3 years ago. I'm sure it's worse now.
|
| BMW was definitely ahead of it's time charging a service fee
| for enabling AndroidAuto/CarPlay (among other car features).
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-
| technology/automa...
| mavhc wrote:
| The idea that a computer would automatically download an
| update that changes how something on the computer works is
| insanity. I'm not buying a computer with that "feature."
| caymanjim wrote:
| I'd like to get a Tesla, but I won't, because you can't own a
| Tesla. You can only pay licensing fees to be the user, and
| Tesla can modify or disable the car at their whim, while also
| tracking and recording your every motion.
|
| We need lawmakers who actually care about privacy and ownership
| rights.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| When I worked in mortgages in a previous career, we had a
| presenter talk to us about Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI).
| Back in the day, banks by default would just tack it on as an
| extra insurance for them in case you were to default. You're
| basically paying insurance against yourself to cover the
| banks losses. Once it was added, it was basically permanent
| for the life of the loan.
|
| Then one day, a senator I think from Utah was asking about
| his his costs after signing. The bank explained to him that
| it was PMI and he couldn't remove it.
|
| Thanks to that situation, PMI cannot be enforced if the loan
| to value ratio is below a specified threshold and the banks
| cannot force it on you if you meet that threshold prior to
| closing or after you reach it.
|
| In a nutshell, this is what needs to happen before a lawmaker
| bothers.
| xwdv wrote:
| This is why it's important for many of the software
| engineers from hackernews to consider a career in politics
| after reaching a certain level of wealth and seniority in
| their career. If some of the greatest minds in the tech
| industry can rise to positions of power in government we
| can build a better world the way we know it should be,
| rather than hoping decrepit politicians come around to good
| ideas eventually.
| avelis wrote:
| I simply can't understand the reasoning other than a cash grab.
| OEMs, like Toyota, are really showing their true colors to the
| consumer. They don't care about you.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Guys this is remote start. Not a key fob entry/start service.
|
| Sometimes this can be done via cell phone app. And there is
| always a monthly subscription for this option.
|
| But no it is not a monthly subscription for starting your car
| with your key fob in the pocket.
| egberts1 wrote:
| Ummm, no.
| justusthane wrote:
| Starting the car using the key fob in your pocket is literally
| what the whole article is about.
|
| > Key fob remote start has nothing to do with an app, nor does
| the car or the fob communicate with any servers managed by
| Toyota.
| nashashmi wrote:
| That's not what I read. Starting the car with the key fob or
| previously known as "remote start" which you had to pay like
| 800$ for, is what the subscription is about.
|
| You can still open the car with key fob in hand. And sit in
| and start the car with key fob in pocket.
| egberts1 wrote:
| One less car to shop for.
|
| _scribbling out Toyota_
|
| (heading out to the delearships, non-Toyota, that is.)
| mavhc wrote:
| Toyota was never an option as they failed at electric cars
| loudmax wrote:
| FWIW, my 2019 plug-in Prius has worked out well for me. It
| has a little over 25 mile electric range, and when the
| battery is out it switches to gas. My commute to the office
| is short so I can make it to work and back on a single
| charge, and if I happen to need to make a detour I just burn
| a little gas.
|
| The caveat here is the short commute. If my commute were
| significantly longer the 25 mile electric range wouldn't
| amount to much and the weight of the empty battery would
| negate its benefits.
|
| Of course none of this justifies an $8 monthly charge for
| basic functionality, which is frankly outrageous. I have no
| intention of subscribing to this service.
| mavhc wrote:
| They invented the completely BS term Self Charging Hybrid,
| so they're evil by definition.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I consider this a totally unnecessary thing. When they start
| charging to start my car, then we've got a problem. However, I do
| resent them inflating the base price by putting more unwanted h/w
| into the base model only to be activated as SaaS.
|
| EDIT: Snark removal.
| alkonaut wrote:
| > Totally unnecessary thing only kids do.
|
| I use remote start when it's really cold. I thought that was
| the whole point of the feature (When the regular gasoline
| heater isn't enough, it can also run itself warm for a few
| minutes).
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Snark has been removed from original post.
|
| But I look at it as unnecessary feature creep, just more
| stuff to break. It's like they mastered making cars reliable
| (if cared for), and now the industry giants want to undo that
| but tacking on tons of "hey, what about this?" gadgets. Just
| run out to your car and start it: costs you 30 seconds and
| some precipitation on your collar?
| alkonaut wrote:
| It breaks in a robust way. Like an escalator. If it breaks,
| it just becomes that run-out-and-start.
|
| If it costs next to nothing then it's a good feature. It's
| like the remote for my TV. Sure I can get up and change
| channels, or I can walk and start the car. but chances are
| I'm gonna say "nah" and just cold start it. I'm not paying
| $8 month but I do pay $40/yr for the volvo version
| (although that has a bit more than just remote start. I use
| the remote _heater_ start 100x times more than remote start
| though).
|
| I mean if the heater is remote started then why wouldn't
| the engine be. It's just the 2nd step of the heating
| process.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > I mean if the heater is remote started then why
| wouldn't the engine be. It's just the 2nd step of the
| heating process.
|
| Ok, that just registered in my brain. If it is a feature
| where people need to warm their cars before the cars even
| work, then it is pretty shitty to start charging a
| subscription fee for it. And if it is incremental, then I
| see your point. Can I still hate on touchscreens and lack
| of knobs, tho? :)
| alkonaut wrote:
| Thats how cars work in very low temps :) Or rather, they
| work anyway but it's less friendly to the environment
| plus if you drive it cold you also need to spend a lot of
| time getting the ice off the windows, which at least
| comes "for free" with a 15 minute heating and a 3 minute
| pre-start.
|
| The heater I think isn't even possible to start from the
| car. Might be deep in some menu in that case. I only know
| the touchscreen way...
| aspectmin wrote:
| I love my 2020 RAV4 hybrid. Like absolutely love it.
|
| But after an incredible horrible experience with Toyota connected
| services support re renewing and issues with the connected
| services not working, this is my last Toyota EVER.
|
| When this lease is up, I will go shop for a new car at any vendor
| other than Toyoya.
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's ridiculous. For a fixed cost feature you can charge $8k
| once if you want. Even if that's more than what I'd pay over the
| cars entire lifetime in $8/mo fees, I can choose whether or not
| to purchase the fixed cost fee. I don't mind that the fob costs
| $5 or that the disabled fob is shipped to customers that didn't
| get the $8k fob option.
| paulkrush wrote:
| If this keeps up, some used cars will have a higher value than
| new ones. People will have to break EULAs to drive cars in mines
| or buildings with no radio access. "Error: please tow your car to
| an RF access area to enable movement..."
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _If this keeps up, some used cars will have a higher value
| than new ones._
|
| That's already the case with construction equipment and farm
| equipment[0].
|
| Right now, used cars often have a higher or near-new value
| because you can get one today - a new car, at MSRP, may be 6+
| months wait, which doesn't help if your car just got totaled.
|
| But, yes, everything is doubling down on toxic dystopian
| surveillance systems, subscription systems, and it's damned
| near the only option left anymore. I'm not sure what I'm going
| to do when the current fleet of vehicles needs rotating,
| because in 10 years when I plan to buy something newer, I'm not
| sure if anything won't be simply toxic. My car doesn't need a
| cell connection, sorry...
|
| [0]: https://www.thedrive.com/news/31761/enormous-costs-of-new-
| tr...
| themaninthedark wrote:
| "The Encyclopedia Galactica defines a robot as a mechanical
| apparatus designed to do the work of a man. The marketing
| division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a
| robot as "Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun to Be With. The
| Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy defines the marketing
| devision of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation as "a bunch of
| mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the
| revolution comes,"
|
| Sometimes I wonder if anyone in the meetings that decide
| these things ever have the moment of realization that "We are
| the baddies"
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I had to wait 2 months before my car was available that I
| just bought. The difference between a 2022 and a 2018, was
| $3k. So to prove your point, the used market is doing so
| well, they can sell them for basically MSRP if they aren't
| too old padded with a warranty you'll likely never use.
| yosito wrote:
| Imagine when no one can drive their car because AWS is down.
| ptudan wrote:
| This happened to me with zipcar once. Truly sucked
| npteljes wrote:
| Would you please share the story?
| dont__panic wrote:
| This already happens to some rideshare cars -- I've read a few
| stories of people who drive their Zipcar out to a hike, but
| can't get back in the car after their hike because there's no
| cell signal.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| I for one will never buy a new car again unless there is a
| massive move back away from these "features" - even the ones
| that don't require a monthly charge. I don't want a car that
| phones home (much less that has components that phone home) to
| send information that has been harvested from my activities. I
| don't want a car that beeps or flashes when people pass me or
| the car thinks I have driven to close to something. I don't
| need a camera to back up. I don't want headlights that
| intermittently decide to change to brights. I don't want a car
| that is a glorified computer that's open to contact by blue-
| tooth and wifi. Its all just something else that will break and
| need to be repaired.
|
| Looking forward to paying up for a 1975 era 4x4 when my current
| car gives out.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| It has already happened. There was a case where somebody's new
| Ferrari straight from a dealer brought to some store to have a
| baby seat installed. Some sort of anti-tamper or anti theft
| system apparently triggered while they were trying to see if
| any of the baby seats fit (nope!). And this happened down
| inside a concrete garage, so no signal reception.
|
| Ferrari apparently has some means of disabling these interlocks
| over the air, but well, no reception. A technician gets flown
| out, but apparently is unable to fix it, so it will need to
| towed to a dealership to fix. Apparently whatever interlock
| tripped will try to make the car phone home, and if that fails,
| it locks down harder than normal such that it can only be fixed
| with tools found at a dealer.
|
| To summarize: Car: I think I'm being stolen. I'll lock down,
| and call for help. The lines are dead?!?! I really am being
| stolen. Activate computer self-destruct.
|
| Also the technician had to manually release the handbrake to
| allow it to be moved, since apparently it was locked down
| enough that doing that the normal way was not possible.
|
| I'm as skeptical as you are about the details of the story, but
| it was posted second hand, and I'm not sure the poster even
| understood all the details. The most details exist in the
| comments of the third reddit post. The linked Hacker news
| discussion was based only on the first, and some of the
| discussion there occurred before OP had clarified some things.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24754662
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j914...
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9ji...
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Justrolledintotheshop/comments/j9qn...
| analog31 wrote:
| Maybe we need some kind of "truth in owning" analogous to truth-
| in-lending regulations.
| pokstad wrote:
| I just bought a new Toyota truck this past year. It blows my mind
| that I have to pay extra for remote start in 2021. I didn't
| realize it when I bought it, otherwise I would have thought
| twice.
| sas224dbm wrote:
| A.R.S.E. Automated Remote Start Enrollment
| jscheel wrote:
| My Lexus (owned by Toyota) costs more than that per month, iirc.
| I refuse to pay it.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Gentlemembers, I thought that after posting about the news from
| Stellantis ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29469914 ) a
| week ago:
|
| we now now need an Open Source Car.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Coming to Smart TV remote controls soon!
| donmcronald wrote:
| It's only half a joke though. I have a Roku TV where they
| didn't bother putting some of the advanced picture controls in
| the OSD. You have to use an app instead. Guess what? The app
| doesn't work on my Android phone and I wouldn't be able to
| adjust picture settings on my TV if I didn't have an iPad to
| use instead.
|
| What happens if they turn that app into a subscription service
| because they don't like the cost of maintaining it?
|
| I'm pretty cynical and I didn't even consider the possibility
| of _needing_ an app to control my TV when I bought it. Now I
| know to watch out for it, but device manufacturers aren 't
| exactly going out of their way to advertise cost cutting
| measures that make you dependent on something you have no
| control of (ie: apps).
| jetsetgo wrote:
| What an absolute capitalist nightmare. Tech becomes worse every
| passing day. Modern tech a money leeching parasite that has
| planned obsolescence built in as final money drain.
| s1k3s wrote:
| I just want to point out that the overall sense of superiority in
| the comments here is somehow funny. I feel like we're also the
| "dumb average Joe" for a lot of companies, and most often for way
| more than $8/mo.
| thedudeabides5 wrote:
| booooooooooo
|
| this is why SaaS sucks
| exabrial wrote:
| Other than a Tacoma, no reason to buy a Toyota.
| timeon wrote:
| I would prefer old Yaris.
| DaveSchmindel wrote:
| Uh oh. Putting off their original plans to shift to EV
| production, increasing their contract & temp worker pool only to
| then lay them off in certain "down" quarters to maintain their
| "no layoff" of FTEs policy, and now this.
|
| Pun intended; what the heck is happening under the hood there?
| XorNot wrote:
| Wow. So Toyota are just going to burn a generation of goodwill
| from their customers in one swoop?
| timdellinger wrote:
| Does anyone have a good lead on where I should direct my outrage,
| where decision-makers might be listening?
|
| (I'm a Toyota owner, but not effected by this.)
| kmano8 wrote:
| Acura also charges an annual fee for remote start -- though it's
| through an app vs. fob.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| And the toxic trend of corporate short-term-ism continues...
|
| This is clearly set up as a gotcha with a 3 year/10 year "trial"
| included, then suddenly $80(!) a year. The irony is that both
| periods are right around the time different demographics start to
| consider a new vehicle, and Toyota has just pulled this nonsense.
|
| You may be thinking $80/year isn't so bad if it includes
| breakdown coverage/SOS button, but you'd be mistaken. The
| $80/year is ONLY for their "Remote Connect" service (app stuff,
| remote lock/unlock/start and notifications), you also need to pay
| another $80/year for "Safety Connect" (breakdown, SOS, stolen
| vehicle location), "Wi-Fi Connect" starting at $420/year for 2GB,
| and "Destination Assist" for $80/year.
|
| So you could be paying $660 per year OR MORE for your Toyota
| vehicle subscriptions alone.
|
| edited/fixed: "per year" now, instead of a confusing mix of per
| month _and_ per year. Also, originally miscalculated the per year
| total and mislabelled it on top (was "$275 per month" which is
| double-wrong).
| jhenkens wrote:
| Yeah - it's infuriating. I think you meant to be 240/yr for
| services, plus 35/mo for data, but the point still stands.
|
| Keyfob remote start should not be gated on cell-related
| packages. Additionally, $8/mo should cover remote connect +
| safety connect. Honestly, all these features should be "free",
| provided you can provide a data connection, IMHO. The hosting
| cost must be negligible compared to the other costs Toyota has.
|
| Toss in a IoT sim of your choice, and that's that. I don't use
| Google Fi, but they provide free data-only SIMs on their
| unlimited plans. Could pop one in the car, and then have the
| vehicle-based hotspot enabled anytime you drive. Presumably the
| car has a slightly better antenna (though likely outdated) than
| a phone.
| [deleted]
| kristjansson wrote:
| Surely its $51/month (8 + 8 + 35)? Not that that isn't
| outrageous, but it's not 275/month outrageous
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I fixed the above and added an edited note.
|
| I originally erroneously calculated $80 + $80 + $80 + $35
| mixing up "per year" on the first three with "per month" on
| the last. It should be $80 + $80 + $80 + $420 or $660 per
| year.
|
| Toyota charges $8 per month or $80 for an annual
| subscription[0].
|
| [0] PDF warning:
| https://www.toyota.com/content/dam/toyota/connected-
| services...
| bigwavedave wrote:
| I think it's 8 + 8 + 8 + 35. OP just worded things a little
| strangely. They're saying it's:
|
| * $8 remote connect * $8 safety connect * $8 destination
| assist * $35 wifi connect
|
| So $59/mo unless op has multiple Toyotas, I guess? I'm
| probably missing something.
| pnathan wrote:
| I pay for the Safety Connect. It is in the nature of insurance.
|
| the other stuff is fairly gizmo
| new_guy wrote:
| Related: Safety as DLC? Motorcycle Airbag vest will not deploy if
| you miss a payment
|
| https://linustechtips.com/topic/1335312-safety-as-dlc-motorc...
| zeroflow wrote:
| 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 evil-bullshit-corp ranking homepage.
| dannyphantom wrote:
| >... TVs with built in ads?...
|
| Hah, I have an Amazon Fire TV, not the stick, the actual TV.
| So...built in ads...huzzah... the UI on the TV has gotten
| progressively worse.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| $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, consider that Disney+ charges
| $8/mo for a system that streams gigabytes of HD video, and they
| still have money left over to pay actual movie stars.
| noahtallen wrote:
| Even worse, D+ streams 4k HDR at no extra cost. And,
| subjectively, seems to have a higher bitrate or better
| compression than other popular services. (Looking at you and
| your garbage compression, Netflix!)
| adrr wrote:
| Do they also push ads in their app like Tesla? Like referrals
| or upgrades? Seems to me like they are fleecing the owners.
| josephcsible wrote:
| You're using a different definition of "ads" than most
| people do.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Disney is still in the lose-your-ass phase. The price will go
| up soon enough.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| The infrastructure is completely paid for. Automotive
| companies extensively monetize telematics data _even for cars
| which do not have telematics purchased_. Where you go and
| when - and things like air temperature, whether the wipers
| are on, etc - is all sold. It wouldn 't surprise me if they
| pass along data from the infotainment system as well.
|
| Ford offers a bunch of free telematics services for fleet
| operators. You can pay them and get more functionality, but
| they'll track your fuel economy, odometers, fault codes, etc
| - with a really slick web UI.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I recently got a letter from VW informing me that my 2017
| vehicle's connection to AT&T will end in early 2022 due to
| the 2G sunset. I never subscribed to the service anyway, so
| I just get to chuckle about how they can't spy on me
| anymore. The fact that they equipped their vehicles thusly
| without the network operator agreeing to support it for at
| least a decade or so blows my mind.
| moooo99 wrote:
| Toyota wouldn't be doing it to cover costs, it would be there
| to generate profits. I wouldn't even mind if the app is good.
| We have a BMW with connected drive, the connectivity included
| is basically useless. It has a latency of around 2-3 minutes,
| depending on your cell signal.
|
| The price of a service rarely does reflect the actual cost of
| providing the service, especially with SaaS margins. And
| $8/mo is not a whole lot of money if you consider your
| monthly expenses to use your vehicle.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Yes, I understand that people will charge what the market
| will bear, and in this case Toyota has decided they can
| charge a lot -- because you bought the car and now they
| have you at their mercy. I was responding to the GP poster
| who explicitly justified it by the cost of operating the
| service.
|
| This might not be a big deal if Toyota was the only company
| contemplating this business model (what's $8/mo, after
| all?) but I doubt they will be. If every product in your
| life adds a "small" subscription fee (calculated at
| 50-1000x actual service costs), things are going to get
| painful very quickly.
| tqi wrote:
| $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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| 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 satellite images for the GPS, and allows
| video streaming (I don't recall the entire list of supported
| services, but it's pretty comprehensive, and I know includes
| Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, and Twitch, might also include
| Hulu and HBO).
|
| Of course, if you're connected to WiFi (ie, using a hotspot
| on your phone, or parked at a location with WiFi), you can
| get all that streaming without paying the $10/month. Even if
| you don't pay for the premium connectivity package, you can
| play Spotify from your phone over Bluetooth.
|
| The fact that Toyota would charge $8/month _just for remote
| start_ is just evil. It 's a charge designed purely to
| extract as much money from their customers as possible that
| does not at all reflect the actual cost to them.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Kia wants $15 a month for the same app-based signal. It's
| straight highway robbery.
|
| I suspect what you aren't accounting for is the 4G modem in
| the car that the manufacturer puts in largely to collect data
| from you, but would love to offset the cost of with
| upcharges.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| Yeah. We consumers are going to have to band together to defend
| ourselves and take back our power. (Funny, and true -- I did
| not start with socialism in mind when I said that).
| quitit wrote:
| Subscription pricing for things which aren't subscriptions is
| bullshit.
| kazamaloo wrote:
| All companies try to get in on it, too.
| sokoloff wrote:
| When I contemplate buying something, I care about the value it
| delivers to me, not the cost required to provide it.
|
| If I get $8 of value from something, it doesn't reduce my
| willingness to pay if I suddenly learned that it cost $0 or $1
| to provide it rather than $5 or $6. Likewise, if I learned that
| it cost $10 to provide it, that doesn't make me suddenly
| willing to trade away $10 or $11 for something that's worth $8
| to me. (In a negotiation, I might negotiate differently if I
| knew the other side's cost structure, but in a "take it or
| leave it" sale, I decide based on the value to me not the cost
| to the other party.)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| https://ouraring.com/product/heritage-silver
|
| This is a health monitor ring. It is a service, though: You pay
| $400 for the hardware, then $6 for the privilege of accessing
| the data it collects, locally, to your device.
|
| I was going to buy it until I saw they were looking for such a
| predatory revenue stream.
| bushbaba wrote:
| And yet it opens the door for new competition to enter.
|
| If China is smart they'll start selling cars that "just work".
| Much like the appeal apple originally had against the crapware
| loaded windows laptops of the early 2000s
| p0wn wrote:
| They got your money... now they want more. It's capitalism.
| Consumers are getting sick of it though - losing trust in the
| system. Tired of being taken advantage of.
|
| Pure unregulated capitalism dictates that the corporation make
| more money... TODAY. Very little foresight required. People are
| tired of being sold out.
| pfortuny wrote:
| It is as much capitalism as usury is interest: a false
| version.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| Given the history of the word, it's exactly the meaning of
| capitalism:
|
| > Meaning "political/economic system which encourages
| capitalists" is recorded from 1872, originally used
| disparagingly by socialists.
|
| https://www.etymonline.com/word/capitalism
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| There's a difference between "capitalist" and "rentier",
| though. These people are rentiers, not capitalists.
| gaganyaan wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. Rentier capitalism is a
| subset of capitalism:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rentier_capitalism
|
| But I'm merely pointing out that the original usage of
| "capitalism" was not a compliment, and certainly included
| these sorts of practices.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > It's capitalism.
|
| Good thing they renamed "fraud". The old name got a bit of a
| bad reputation.
| pradn wrote:
| You're right to point out that these problems arise across
| entire industries. You can't vote with your money if all
| otherwise good TVs have crap built into them. And it's not easy
| for a new entrant to gain a foothold in such a high-tech
| market. And even if they do, there's plenty of temptation to go
| down the same route of milking customers who already bought
| your product.
|
| Sooner or later, we won't even remember how it was before. Who
| even remembers the internet before advertising morphed it into
| something completely different? How long was that period? 5
| years?
| zeroflow wrote:
| The topic with the TVs is going to be a problem for me in a
| few years. My current TV is from 2013 - it may have some
| years to go, but at some point, it will fail.
|
| I've had a short look at the market, and all the "good"
| brands (Samsung, LG, Sony) show horrific ads. It looks like
| the cheap brands simply sell your data. Then there are some
| local brands, which sell non-TV TV's (no tuner, there's a tax
| on that). They don't have any smarts at all, but the one I've
| seen had terrible picture quality
| 14u2c wrote:
| What you are looking for are generally sold as "large
| format displays". Basically tvs for commercial purposes
| that do not have any of that crap. Most projector
| manufacturers, even the consumer ones, have also been good
| about avoiding "smart" features.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Dell sells a 55" conference room monitor at a decent price.
| That - or something like it - will be my next "TV"
| mavhc wrote:
| Just don't connect them to the internet, now you have a TV
| that's cheaper than it should be because they expect to
| show you ads, but they can't
| nanidin wrote:
| This remains true for now, but expect the ubiquity of
| things like Amazon Sidewalk, Helium network, and embedded
| cellular modules in devices to make it hard to avoid a
| device that phones home.
| brewdad wrote:
| My Sony would pop up a nag screen in the middle of a
| movie or show to remind me that it wasn't connected to
| the internet. Eventually, I caved and connected it.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Won't be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn't
| your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G,
| cars have started doing that, Tesla trains AI on all
| owner driving data, VW new electric (ID3?) will be their
| first with a mandatory perma HQ connection, IIRC.
| mavhc wrote:
| Kindle with 3G was great, free internet globally. Never
| once showed me an ad, and most Kindles didn't have it.
|
| When that day comes buy a monitor, or hack the firmware.
|
| You can always break off the aerial.
| feanaro wrote:
| > Won't be long before they have 5G chips in and that
| isn't your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since
| 3G
|
| How do these things work? Do they have a contract with a
| phone service operator in each country in the world for
| unlimited data, or what?
| pygy_ wrote:
| You can vote with your wallet.
|
| Don't buy a TV, let that market die already.
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| > Sooner or later, we won't even remember how it was before.
| Who even remembers the internet before advertising morphed it
| into something completely different? How long was that
| period? 5 years?
|
| That's what worries me. After a long stint of playing
| entirely only smartphone games, going back to play some older
| titles on PC was... really weird. None of the usual pay to
| play friction or engagement traps that are so ubiquitous.
|
| I did not feel happy that the lack of these things that I
| actually hated was making me uneasy.
|
| Is the memory hole effect really that strong?
| donmcronald wrote:
| Most kids don't even know what it's like to play a game
| that's not riddled with ads and designed around
| microtransactions.
|
| There are a lot of things that require a generation (of
| people) to change. For example, the latency of game
| streaming services is awful if you're used to a local
| experience, but if you ask a 12 year old that's never
| experienced low latency, local gaming, they don't even
| realize it could be different. They'll happily play high
| latency streamed games.
|
| So when you see things like the investment that's going
| into things like game streaming and it seems stupid, you
| have to consider there may not be any expectation of
| capturing the current market. They're after the market
| that's in elementary school right now.
| derekp7 wrote:
| I don't know -- when I was a kid, in the arcade, the
| machines constantly prompted me to insert another quarter
| to continue playing.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Yeah, but we solved that problem, and now it's back.
| akudha wrote:
| They are simply copying software industry. Tableau,
| Jetbrains... none of these need to be subscription based, but
| they are. They weren't, until a few years ago.
|
| I wonder whats next? My toilet won't flush unless I pay $5 for
| it, in addition to the water bill? It would be hilarious if
| every single item at home was subscription based, lol
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| You mentioned Jetbrains but not worse actors like Adobe, or
| Microsoft. Seems disingenuous.
| p_j_w wrote:
| Jetbrains is only kind of a subscription. If you end your
| subscription, you retain permanent access to whatever version
| was current when you last paid. That doesn't seem drastically
| different from how software worked before and their prices
| are pretty reasonable for an IDE.
| [deleted]
| xyst wrote:
| 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.
|
| - Want heated seats? $1/month
|
| - Want remote lock/unlock? $2/month
|
| - Want to remove rate limiting? $5/month
|
| - Want GPS in your car? $10/month
|
| - Want to use your "frunk"? $10/month
|
| - Want Apple CarPlay? $15/month
|
| - Want to activate heads up display (windshield)? $5/month
|
| - Want autonomous driving? $20/month
|
| - Want to update your car's computer? $199 per update
|
| - ...
|
| - Want all the features in your car? "low cost" of $49.99 per
| month (bundled)
|
| Apple will be seen as a visionary for optimizing the car
| manufacturing process (no more designing for multiple types of
| configuration types, can buy all parts in bulk, ...). Public
| will buy into it because the cost of the car is significantly
| less than their competition. But the true cost of ownership
| (will all features activated) is actually equivalent to the
| cost of their competition.
|
| Don't forget to buy an Apple Car Care+ warranty ("only
| $4999.99, will be included if you finance with Apple Card")!
| martin8412 wrote:
| So like Tesla with FSD, though not monthly(yet)
| flutas wrote:
| > though not monthly(yet)
|
| It's already available monthly ($199/mo), thankfully
| there's the one time purchase option still though
| ($10,000).
| [deleted]
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I think it will be more like this, as parts of what you say
| seem very unApple like:
|
| The Apple car is electric, with two charging point, the
| batteries last a long time but the special Apple charge
| connection hub costs $1199, there is a part of it that is
| really smartly designed but somehow also more fragile than
| you would expect and as a consequence you replace these one
| per year because it breaks beyond repair.
|
| The first year you replace it fine, and the cost is actually
| down to $1099.
|
| The second year the old model is no longer available but the
| new model that will work with your car and the newer Apple
| cars both also will work to charge any apple device if you
| lay it on the Apple car dashboard while charging with the new
| model charger. It's some sort of clever design innovation
| that you're not sure why it couldn't work without the new
| charger but ok, anyway the new charger costs $1330.
|
| You have 3 forms of heated seat pads, these are the simple at
| 199, the integrated at 499 that has a dedicated app to
| monitor optimal healthy sitting posture and maintain vitals
| connection to your Apple Watch, and the Pro at 1100 that
| allows you handle racing speed Gs.
|
| You need to have the Pro to unlock the Racing Speed Gs
| because of safety features that would kick in without the Pro
| helping to handle that speed.
|
| In the end of year 3 the next level Pro brings in massage
| capabilities at 1400, but you find that it uses up too much
| battery requiring more and longer charging unless you update
| to the new Charger Pro which costs also 1400.
|
| Want Apple debug data for your car, you get extra data on
| your Apple iCloud, but not enough to actually make it usable
| in fact basically the car uses up the data you had so quickly
| that you have to pay for iCloud+ Andretti, which gives you a
| basic 3 TB storage, and a revolving time series data for car
| usage that can be used for diagnostics etc. $15 a month.
|
| The Car camera array is really sweet but you find that road
| trip you made to the keys maxed out your iCloud, so you opt
| in for the iCloud+ Trixie account $20 dollars a month but
| with 7 TB, you figure that will probably last.
|
| Most of the apps for the car are free, if you call
| advertising supported apps free, but there are a few ones you
| find essential that you pay for of course.
|
| One of them is the top notch autonomous driving app AutoDRave
| which costs a basic $120 but if you want the continually
| updated road conditions and newest ML edge case determination
| routines you should really pay for the $25 a month
| subscription.
|
| I think we all get the picture here....
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Want to update your car's computer? $199 per update
|
| $210 after shipping for navigation updates in a GM vehicle.
| Welcome to the future!
|
| https://gmnavdisc.navigation.com/product/Catalog/Catalog_Che.
| ..
| vkou wrote:
| My car's running on a 12 year old set of navigation data...
| And I can't say I've ever felt the need to drop $199 on
| updating it.
|
| We just don't build new roads in North America.
| brewdad wrote:
| You obviously don't live in a rapidly growing suburb.
| Half of my town's roads either didn't exist 12 years ago
| or have been reconfigured to handle the additional
| traffic flows.
| sokoloff wrote:
| A 3-year old phone has a _way better_ navigation system
| than a brand-new automobile OEM nav system. Plus it auto-
| updates and will usually tell you where the cops are as
| well.
| mcguire wrote:
| And vice-versa.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Sure, but we fuck with one way systems all the time.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| What monthly fees of this nature are required to use other
| Apple products?
|
| OS updates are free. The basic version of iCloud is free.
| "Find My iPhone" is free. Apple Maps is free. The App Store
| is free. Hell, CarPlay is free on the Apple end of things;
| it's some _car manufacturers_ who 've been charging for it.
|
| "Public will buy into it because the cost of the car is
| significantly less than their competition."
|
| Are we talking about a different Apple entirely?
| joenathanone wrote:
| Other than purposely slowing down your devices with updates
| to try and coerce you into buying the new model year?
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-
| pay...
| dkonofalski wrote:
| That is absolutely false. They didn't try to coerce
| people to buy the new model. It's quite the contrary -
| they were extending the battery life of devices where the
| overdrawn power would cause them to shut down completely.
| They also communicated this in the patch notes but most
| people don't read those.
|
| Your comment is completely ignorant.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Apple still got fined millions in France for doing that.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The alternative in cold, old batteries was an unexpected
| shutoff of the device.
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2017/12/20/apple-statement-iphone-
| perfor...
|
| > Lithium-ion batteries become less capable of supplying
| peak current demands when in cold conditions, have a low
| battery charge or as they age over time, which can result
| in the device unexpectedly shutting down to protect its
| electronic components.
|
| They fucked up not notifying people when it's happening,
| but technologically the feature itself is entirely the
| right call. (You can also turn it off, and accept that
| it'll just die randomly if you do something CPU intensive
| in the cold.)
|
| Regardless of which setting you choose, there's hardly a
| monthly fee for it.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| They did notify people. It was just in the patch notes
| that most people don't read.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's not "when it's happening"; I think the new
| approach they've taken of a dialog popping up is far more
| transparent and user-friendly. I've gotten used to patch
| notes saying stuff like "Every week we fix bugs and add
| improvements!"
| biztos wrote:
| Is Apple Maps really free, or do they monetize your
| attention and collect fees from the (suspiciously few,
| outside major US metros) businesses?
|
| Serious question, I don't know, I only use Apple Maps for
| satellite since it doesn't do transit where I live. But the
| quality level definitely feels like an "eat what you kill"
| product without much food, as opposed to a loss leader for
| the Apple brand.
| robertoandred wrote:
| But don't you see, Apple bad.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Also, their entire office suite, GarageBand, iMovie,
| XCode... these are all things that you would have been
| shelling out serious $$ for back in the MSFT days.
| wedowhatwedo wrote:
| I don't understand why non-apple customers feel that apple is
| this way. I have a Mac and an iphone and haven't paid Apple a
| penny since the purchase of the devices.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I will definitely admit that I was guilty of this
| right up until I bought a Macbook Air in 2014. I had just
| assumed that Apple was a nickel-and-diming corporation, and
| just worked to extract cash from its customers.
|
| But I really didn't experience that at all. Outside of
| Apple Music and Apple Arcade (both of which are optional
| and neither of which I use/pay for) what exactly are the
| ongoing costs for most Apple hardware? Yes you have to buy
| some of the software, but that's true of basically every
| operating system; my 2014 Macbook _still_ gets free updates
| as of about 8 months ago (I haven 't checked since then
| since I gave it to my sister in law).
|
| In fact I actually have found that Apple-centric apps seem
| to give me more options in which to pay for them outright
| instead of ongoing costs. Most of the the Omnigroup's
| software has a "just buy it once and you're done" feature,
| unlike something like, for example Microsoft Office.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The only things Apple charges subscriptions on are actual
| content services or server usage charges which are inline
| with literally every other business. Many people, even on
| HN it seems, have a completely distorted idea on what the
| products Apple sells actually are.
| tombert wrote:
| Yeah, I can't really blame them for charging a fee for
| Apple Music or Apple Arcade. Presumably they have to pay
| a recurring fee to the record labels for the rights to
| the songs or to the game publishers for the rights to the
| games, even if we pretended that the server costs were
| free (which of course they are not) and since they are,
| you know, a business and not a charity, _of course_ they
| have to charge a subscription fee for it, just like
| Spotify (ad free), Youtube Music, Deezer, etc.
| dlsa wrote:
| It could be argued that the icloud etc costs were included
| as part of the purchase price. In which case the cost was
| estimated over the useful life of the product and then
| factored into the up-front price. That or the icloud
| service cost is covered another way as a form of marketing.
| Customer retention etc.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| 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 characterizing
| that as nickel and diming. They should have bumped up the 5
| GB base plan years ago.
| jldugger wrote:
| I agree it's possible, but their services offerings are all
| paid, and there are enough of them now that a discount
| bundle exists[1]. And then there's the App Store / iTunes /
| iTunes Match. Even checking out to buy hardware tries to
| upsell you AppleCare+ service.
|
| There are many reasons it's done this way, but I can see
| the reasons people might compare it to being turned upside
| down and shaken for loose change like a piggy bank.
|
| [1]: https://www.apple.com/apple-one/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > but I can see the reasons people might compare it to
| being turned upside down and shaken for loose change like
| a piggy bank.
|
| How?
|
| Licensing music requires ongoing payments from Apple to
| music owners.
|
| iCloud requires Apple to maintain data centers and
| bandwidth.
|
| TV+ requires ongoing investment into creation of new
| video productions.
|
| News+ is similar to music, Apple has ongoing costs to pay
| the owner of the journalism.
|
| Games also gets new games all the time, so presumably
| there are ongoing expenses there also.
|
| And fitness+ might be one where there is less need for
| ongoing expenses, but they do seem to be adding content
| regularly.
| jldugger wrote:
| I'm not saying there aren't costs associated with
| building or running these services that need to be paid
| for. But owning the OS and pushing subs in the default
| apps is just as annoying when Apple does it as when
| Youtube does.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| People like simple good guy vs bad guy stories, and some
| people designate Apple a bad guy.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| The _seriously_ overpriced accessories they sell is
| probably part of the reasons non-apple customers tend to
| assume this. Like they have a few accessories that cost
| about 10x more than pretty good quality third party
| alternatives, and often more than double what it costs for
| literally better build quality third party alternatives.
|
| And I'm not talking about the accessories that have enough
| active electronics to possibly justify it (pencil, or
| airpods), but things like cases, wheels, stands, dongles,
| etc.
|
| Apple accessories very much are trying to nickel and dime
| people (on top of hardware that is already quite
| expensive), so it is unsurprising that people would
| (mistakenly) assume that Apple would try to do the same
| with digital subscriptions.
| crooked-v wrote:
| In the car analogy that would be more like all the trim
| levels and hardware addons being hugely overpriced... but
| that's definitely not a new thing in the car world.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The wheels and stand on the mac pro stuff is weird but
| they are kind of in line with the pricing of the
| competing products. If you look at the cases for the
| iphone, all of the cases they sell in the Apple Store are
| pretty expensive, but all of them are quite good. If you
| go to a 3rd party store and look for things of the same
| quality, they cost the same. Good cases just cost a bit
| of money.
|
| Now the lightning adapters I agree on. Those were absurd.
| But now they have USB-C on most of their products and
| they have dropped the cost of adapters quite a lot. The
| USB-C to AUX adapter contains a full DAC which is tested
| to be one of the best you can get, and it costs $9.
| qybaz wrote:
| You will own nothing and be happy.
| spoonjim wrote:
| I don't think that this is a problem if it's marketed clearly
| upfront. The violation here is for Toyota to add this fee on
| without informing the user of this when they bought it.
| ajross wrote:
| I can't believe I had to read this far down to find someone
| making this point. Exactly! There's nothing wrong with a
| subscription-based feature at all. Lots of people would
| love the ability to price-discriminate ("Do we actually
| need remote start? Is it worth $8/mo?").
|
| The ethics problem here isn't the subscription at all, it's
| with the clear and good faith communication of what the
| product is to which the user is subscribing.
|
| In this particular case, it seems like the Toyota Remote
| Connect service was sold and marketed as a phone app, but
| when terminated it also removes the capability of remote
| starting the car over local radio (probably bluetooth I
| guess) from the key fob, which no one seems to have known
| was part of the product in the first place. That's bad, if
| so.
|
| (But to be fair, a better article would track down some
| Toyota owners for quotes about what they were told, and
| maybe a copy of the original license agreement. This
| coverage from Ars is IMHO a little weak.)
| null_object wrote:
| > 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.
| ribosometronome wrote:
| What features like that does Apple hide behind paywalls
| today? That doesn't sound at all like their strategy with iOS
| or Mac OS. I guess there's stuff like the Apple Developer
| Program, which I know a lot of folk have complaints about.
| But that's hardly a feature most folk would desire -- whereas
| all of those things you listed for a perspective car are.
|
| That said, if Apple did bring some of these features to
| market at that price, they'd be doing considerably better
| than some of their competition. Tesla's Full Self Driving is
| locked behind a $10,000 cost or a $199 monthly subscription.
| You'd have to subscribe to your speculated service for 42
| years before it cost more than that getting the upgrade on
| Tesla you had 4 decades ago.
| LanceH wrote:
| 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 imagine Apple as a car company.
|
| * Seriously, the main logic board seems to always be the
| culprit and the replacement cost is up there with a new
| item.
| bitwize wrote:
| > Apple will be seen as a visionary for optimizing the car
| manufacturing process (no more designing for multiple types
| of configuration types, can buy all parts in bulk, ...).
|
| There are two types of product in the computing world:
| shameless ripoffs of Apple products and rough prototypes for
| some future Apple product.
|
| Guess this would make the Model T the "rough prototype" for
| the Apple Car...
|
| Ford even used to make Apple-like demands of his supply
| chain. He insisted that parts be shipped in crates conforming
| to specific, peculiar dimensions. The suppliers were baffled
| by the request -- why _those_ dimensions? Until a supplier
| representative looked down at the floor of a Model T one
| day... the crates had been broken down to form floorboards
| for the car.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I was with you until:
|
| > Public will buy into it because the cost of the car is
| significantly less than their competition
| bserge wrote:
| > Apple will be seen as a visionary
|
| By "journalists* they pay and drooling fans.
|
| No one with half a brain thinks any Apple shit is visionary
| or revolutionary.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Do you have to pay for the car itself?
| rafale wrote:
| You will own nothing and you will be happy.
| donmcronald wrote:
| There were people in a thread on Reddit saying they have cars
| with $40/month of subscription services. That seems absolutely
| insane to me.
|
| My family buys used cars, usually in the 3-5 year old range, we
| do our own repair work, and drive everything for 10-15 years.
| It's usually close to 15 than 10. We drive them until they
| drop.
|
| I figured it out one day and the lifetime TCO has been about
| $100/month per vehicle.
|
| We really, really need legislation that says advertised
| features can't require an ongoing subscription. The whole
| scheme of giving the original buyer a "free trial" that lasts
| long enough that they'll sell the vehicle is just a tactic to
| seek rent in the secondhand market. The thing is, there are _a
| lot_ of people buying second hand because they don 't have
| money to waste.
|
| How do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps if the bootstraps
| require a subscription you can't afford?
| otikik wrote:
| It seems there is a market there for people like you and your
| family: removing/disabling/hacking the DRM on those used
| cars.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > We really, really need legislation that says advertised
| features can't require an ongoing subscription
|
| I recently bought a new car. All of the things on the window
| sticker that required a subscription said "(subscription
| required)". Is this not enough?
|
| Or are you talking about things like TV/Internet/Radio
| advertising?
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _How do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps if the
| bootstraps require a subscription you can 't afford?_
|
| Can't have those upstarts worming their way into elite
| circles now, can we? I thought you'd understand. Once a poor,
| always a poor, you know.
|
| There's a rather depressing trend of this sort of stuff
| lately, and a lot of it is coming from people who claim they
| care about lower income classes - but then conveniently just
| so happen to do things that are the opposite of what they
| claim to support. When called on it, you mutter "unintended
| consequences," "nobody could have foreseen that," and shut
| the mic off for anyone who predicted exactly what just
| happened.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| I use a similar strategy of targeting 2 to 4 year old used
| cars in good condition, and then swapping out when they get
| around 10 years or 100k. It's worked quite well for me.
|
| I have no idea what I'm going to do next time I'm in the
| market for a car, because every trend I see in the industry
| is stuff I do not want. And it's not just cars. It's freakin'
| everything. I don't need a touch screen on my fridge. Like
| that joke tweet from a decade ago, I feel like it's just a
| matter of years before all the couches on the market are wifi
| connected.
|
| I'm just sitting over here hoping there's blowback that keeps
| some reasonable stuff on the market. Otherwise, I'm gonna
| have to become some sort of personal expert on keeping things
| from 1990 or older running.
| rurp wrote:
| I just went through this, buying a car to replace the one
| I'd had for 13 years. Oh man, I had no idea how terrible
| the car industry had gotten; it was every bit as bad as
| you're fearing.
|
| I had a slight preference for an automatic transmission but
| ended up looking mostly at manuals since those often lack a
| few of the "modern" anti-features. I wish I had better
| advice to give, the experience honestly bummed me out quite
| a bit.
| silverpepsi wrote:
| I'm totally on the same page. After my millionaire frugal
| friend told me he managed $88/mo TCO, I've been chasing that
| target nonstop
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's impressive. We're around $100/mo for everything
| excluding fuel on our 2005 CR-V, bought by us in 2011. It's
| going to have to last several more years to get down under
| $90/mo. (If your friend said that 10 years ago, I guess I'm
| under that already.)
| ghaff wrote:
| I fully expect that, assuming we get to autonomous driving
| someday, either the system or the entire car will only be
| available as subscription services. It just won't work any
| other way given the manufacturer will be on the hook for the
| proper maintenance and updating of a safety critical system.
|
| And it probably applies even more broadly as things that were
| historically just hardware have an increasingly large
| software component.
| arsenic64 wrote:
| GM charges ~$15/mo just to use the remote start from their app. I
| would be fine paying a fee, but $15 is just insane.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A Carmaker's $23 Billion Plan To Keep You Paying Long After
| You've Bought Your Car
|
| https://jalopnik.com/a-carmaker-s-23-billion-plan-to-keep-yo...
| paulkrush wrote:
| The joy of AAAS! (Automobiles as a Service)
| lkozma wrote:
| 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 bought this conapt." In his desk drawer he found
| the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer
| to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for
| opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip. "You
| discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded smug. From the
| drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with
| it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his
| apt's money-gulping door. "I'll sue you," the door said as the
| first screw fell out. Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a
| door. But I guess I can live through it."
|
| (Philip K. Dick: Ubik)
| kps wrote:
| > _Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began
| systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly_
|
| Joe clearly doesn't have an Apple door.
| winternett wrote:
| 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 it and where I am when I use it).
| alistairSH wrote:
| 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?
| Fezzik wrote:
| 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.
| nuccy wrote:
| 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 that the car is equiped with
| 30-50% bigger battery. Though this was never a problem for
| me, from my experience on 94Ah battery it can run for hours
| without any effect on engine starting, while heating the
| car in some 10-15 minutes when it is below freezing
| outside.
| baq wrote:
| and, in the models that use the engine coolant as a
| working fluid, your engine is heated up to a cozy
| operating temperature right from the start, so you end up
| about even on fuel.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| I think some of the reasoning behind the fee is that there's
| a simcard in the car that needs to be payed for and if you
| opt out then they don't have to pay for it. I have the same
| service and I can't live without the remotly started heating
| so for me it's worth every krona.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| That might very well justify some fee, but $8/month is
| excessive if one only cares about remote start.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Yeah I pay less than 40EUR per year(390 sek) and with it
| I also get emergency services with towing etc. There's a
| button in the ceiling.
| gambiting wrote:
| Btw I also own a Volvo and at least here in UK you get
| emergency services regardless of whether you pay for the
| Volvo On Call subscription or not. Breakdown cover is
| provided for every new Volvo as long as you do the
| service at a Volvo garage, nothing to do with On Call
| subscription either.
| winternett wrote:
| A remote RF device could do that without the Sim card, the
| same key that unlocks the car... My problem is that I paid
| for a device (the starter device already installed on my
| car) that I can't use without a membership. People have had
| remote start on cars for decades without needing a
| bloatware subscription to XM radio.... _sigh_
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Ok so your device is not supplied by volvo?
| winternett wrote:
| No, not the issue at all. The problem is that I refuse to
| pay a fee and use a tracking app just so I can use remote
| start features already installed on my car that don't
| need to be part of any paid monthly service.
|
| My car should not require a cell phone with the maker's
| app installed on it, or even an Internet connection to
| fully operate... It's insane to think it should from a
| reliability standpoint.
| mcguire wrote:
| According to the article, the remote start feature from the
| remote does not use the cell connection.
| Loughla wrote:
| Yeah - not sure why Toyota is getting hammered for this.
|
| Subaru does this as well. You can get app enabled remote
| start from your phone, if you buy their subscription service.
|
| I love Subaru, but that is a trash system.
| criddell wrote:
| I have remote start on my Subaru and I think it's
| essentially this:
|
| https://www.subarupartspros.com/sku/h001sfl300.html
|
| On that page it says:
|
| > This Genuine Subaru Accessory is an alternative for
| customers who do not enroll in STARLINK Safety and Security
| Plus.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| That feels like apples-and-oranges to me if you're talking
| about a smartphone app feature. A smartphone app has to be
| regularly upgraded to pay nice with new OS versions, has to
| have back-end servers, etc. Toyota is disabling remote
| start functionality between the key fob and the vehicle if
| the vehicle doesn't have a subscription. I'm not surprised
| a smartphone app requires a subscription but I am surprised
| and disappointed that a feature on a car's key fob does.
| acomjean wrote:
| Subaru at this point is a sub brand of Toyota. (they're
| part of the "Toyota Group" as of last year)
| bserge wrote:
| > I could have just bought the device with a remote at Auto
| Zone for 1/4 of the price
|
| But you didn't? I hope your realize at least half of the
| responsibility is on you as a consumer. You pay for and
| enable these idiotic ideas.
| winternett wrote:
| Incorrect, all of their cars come without the option.
| Buying an alternate car just because of one corrupt feature
| is not reasonable nor effective as a protest, many new cars
| now leverage this tactic and there is no real choice
| because they get away with it based on leverage.
|
| The responsibility is on regulators, not me as a consumer.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| 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 place...
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| According to plenty of preppers, the 12V Cummins Diesel
| trucks were the last great EMP-resistant vehicles
| https://dieselresource.com/diesel-resources/2nd-
| generation-5...
| phkahler wrote:
| 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.
| chris1993 wrote:
| 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 petite) and get a tyre lever and smash a side-
| window so she could call out to a neighbour for help.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Yikes! Makes me think twice about being in a newer Corvette.
|
| The DeLorean (DMC-12) is known for having the lock solenoids
| that get stuck energized when a relay fails. Fortunately you
| can pull the relay to de-energize the solenoids. (Climbing
| out of a window on a DeLorean isn't an option for normal-
| sized people.)
| silisili wrote:
| 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.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| In my 2021 Honda CR-V this is a configurable option - you
| can decide which behavior you want.
|
| For example, you don't want your kids to open the doors
| while you're driving. Or you don't want a car-jacker to
| reach through the window and open your door.
| bumby wrote:
| How is it configured? Electronically or through a switch
| on on the door jamb?
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| 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
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| Child locks are usually different. Also, there is
| typically no child lock option for the driver's side
| front door.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| These are not child locks. Child locks prevent opening
| the door regardless of its locked state.
|
| This is about whether pulling the door latch auto-unlocks
| the door, or if you have to unlock the door first before
| pulling the door latch.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Anything that's mechanically _supposed_ to happen is
| irrelevant after the mechanism, with 2 tons of metal behind
| it moving at high speed, slams into something significantly
| more substantial than the thin layer of decorative sheet
| metal protecting it. You can not design things to be
| invincible, no matter how robust something is, with
| sufficient force applied in a certain way, it will fail. It
| 's honestly an engineering marvel that people consistently
| are able to get out of their cars after an accident.
| silisili wrote:
| There was no accident here, unless I missed something.
| The guy just lost power to his door locks after he got
| in.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I'm talking more generally about cars not always
| unlocking after an accident.
|
| In this specific scenario, you still have a component
| failure. Something that was supposed to be connected
| wasn't. It would be nice if they designed a better fail
| safe but it's not a case of "corvette handles aren't
| designed to unlock."
| dv_dt wrote:
| This is why I carry a safety hammer utility tool in my
| cars for breaking glass and cutting seatbelts.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > 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 latch
| and not having an emergency window breaker.
| bumby wrote:
| The elements you're referring to are procedural
| mitigations to a poor design from a human factors
| standpoint. Those mitigations are always less preferred
| than managing those risks from an engineering
| perspective.
|
| OSHA actually outlines the preference:
|
| 1) Eliminate the hazard outright (not possible here, you
| need the door to lock sometimes)
|
| 2) Engineer out the risk (they tried to
| do...poorly...with the manual unlock)
|
| 3) Administrative controls (e.g., the manual)
|
| 4) Personal protective equipment
| comeonseriously wrote:
| > Having random cables cut doesn't help the situation,
| but the issue was not knowing how to manually release the
| latch and not having an emergency window breaker.
|
| Is it, is that really the issue?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It was certainly an issue. If you have a bright red
| override lever on the door, then they would have known
| and not had a problem.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > not having an emergency window breaker.
|
| Tip for readers: if your car has removable headrests,
| they can serve effectively as emergency window breakers.
| wikibob wrote:
| This is absurd victim blaming.
|
| The problem is there is a door handle that is designed
| with a failure mode such that pulling the handle DOES NOT
| OPEN THE DOOR.
| rabuse wrote:
| Exactly. Couldn't they just have some system where the
| door handles have a magnetic dead-switch, that reverts to
| manual operation when no power is applied?
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| I agree; it's like all the rollaway accidents that happen
| now because of electronic shifters:
| https://www.safetyresearch.net/the-persistence-of-
| rollaway/
|
| Design matters, and bad designs can literally be deadly.
| Why auto mfgs feel the need to "innovate" with shifter
| designs is beyond me. The worst part is how every mfg
| seems to be implementing a different design of bad
| electronic shifters, from wheels and touchscreens to one-
| click-at-a-time joysticks to single-function pushbuttons
| for some gears with others on a scroll wheel. They've
| taken something and made it worse with no benefit to the
| user. At least with those auto-flushing toilets, the
| intention was good, even if the implementation is still
| somehow so awful decades later.
| bumby wrote:
| My Nissan Versa has manual locks that do not unlock when
| the door handle is pulled from the inside, to include front
| doors (not a child safety lever issue). Granted, they're
| manual so it's easy to just unlock but from a human factors
| perspective I can see people panicking and just yanking on
| the door handle in a critical emergency like a fire.
|
| I've always considered this a serious safety design flaw.
| skykooler wrote:
| That hasn't always been the case. For example, our 1991
| Saturn station wagon (with mechanical locks) would only
| open if you unlocked the door first with the lock lever.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _the front doors both open when the handle is pulled,
| locked or not_
|
| Unfortunately, this is not anymore warranted. Already in
| models of ten years ago, there do exist "full lock non
| mechanically overridable" and "lock which is unlocked
| through the handles". Disabling the "feature" requires
| intervention from the manufacturer - if it can be disabled
| at all.
|
| Look, I am informed that in _at least many_ of the current
| cars with RFID based keys, it is impossible _to lock
| yourself in the car_... (And the idea seems to have spawned
| from manufacturers coming from the territories in the world
| most notorious for carjacking.)
| gambiting wrote:
| On most(all?) Modern cars you can't unlock the door from
| the inside if the door got locked from the outside. I think
| it was made law to work like this? In order to prevent
| thefts where someone just runs a tiny rod through an
| opening and pulls a handle - that doesn't work anymore. If
| you get locked in the car while inside there is no way to
| open the door, you'd have to break a window to get out.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What do you mean by modern?
|
| My 2013 car has a physical lock pull, which the door
| lever is connect to, so the lock opens when you pull the
| lever to open the door.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sure enough, Corvettes since the mid-00s (at least) have
| electronic doors.
|
| Here's a video describing how to use the manual overrides
| (none are in plain sight)...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLDqmGQU6L0
|
| Here's a photo of thee door interior (with no mechanical
| door pull)... https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/7I8AAOSwF-
| tgN5U1/s-l300.jpg
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > the front doors both open when the handle is pulled,
| locked or not
|
| The fact that the front doors both unlock when a single
| handle is pulled is because there's an electronic sensor
| and solenoid that unlocks everything when one handle is
| opened.
|
| I had a Pontiac Vibe (really a Toyota Matrix) that had a
| cable in the door unlock assembly fail. You could open the
| door from the outside - the external door handle was
| physically the same part as the latch mechanism - but the
| external handle was back by your shoulder, while the
| internal handle was forward by the mirror and connected to
| the latch by a steel cable swaged to some aluminum pins;
| that connection eventually failed and the internal door
| handle flapped impotently.
|
| I spent an embarrassing amount of time ignoring the problem
| and instead rolling down the window to open the door...
|
| Regardless, it's not that much of a stretch to imagine that
| an automotive engineer might decide to replace cable
| actuator with a wire and solenoid.
| seanp2k2 wrote:
| They have a button that you hit with your thumb, not a
| mechanical handle. The manual door open lever is down by
| the driver's left foot (passenger's right foot)
| https://www.edmunds.com/chevrolet/corvette-
| stingray/2014/lon...
| duck wrote:
| > Isabel Moreno told reporters he owned a 2006 Corvette and
| was trapped inside when the battery went out. Fortunately, he
| said eventually the battery started recharging itself enough
| to be able to roll the window down, and he was able to get
| out safely.
|
| Curious how this is possible or was this just misreported?
| jmiserez wrote:
| Regardless of model it's a good idea to put a emergency
| hammer / glass breaker in your car. _(addendum: also to
| rescue someone else, not blaming the driver)_
| olivermarks wrote:
| I have the one with the seat belt cutting blade in the
| handle hanging on a loop on my truck dashboard. Separately
| I think all cars should be required to have manual door
| locks (as well as electric locks if it's a luxury car). I
| also think all BEVS should have a manual battery ungang
| lever for trapped energy emergencies.
| beeboop wrote:
| If your headrests can be removed, the metal poles in them
| work well for this too. You jab one of the poles into the
| window seal, then pry like a crowbar. If done in the corner
| of the window it will break easily.
| [deleted]
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Be careful with those. Plenty of cheap ones have metal
| hammers that will simply bounce off the window like the
| window was rubber (I assume the cause is wrong metal used,
| or point not sharp enough). And this is assuming tempered
| glass.
|
| When AAA tested 3 different hammers, only 1 of the three
| successfully broke tempered glass. All three punch style
| tools broke the tempered glass.
|
| But a lot of car windows now have laminated glass. While
| the tools may be able to shatter the glass for those, they
| still stay in one sheet, (just like shattered windshields
| in most car, since those are laminated glass too). And it
| is really hard to break through that shattered but still
| intact sheet, with neither style of escape tool really
| being much help.
| errcorrectcode wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/s?k=rescue+hammer
|
| A quality rolling ballpoint pen would also work (given
| enough force) because it contains a small ball of tungsten
| carbide.
|
| My knife also has a tungsten carbide window breaker on the
| base of it.
| bluepaper wrote:
| Finished reading Ubik just the other night - the paying for
| every little thing was haunting, almost claustrophobic with
| this passage about the door (amongst other things - fantastic
| book though)
| KingFelix wrote:
| Its brilliant!
| csours wrote:
| Reading Ubik was a real trip for me. Highly recommend.
| servytor wrote:
| Unrelated, but one of my favorite quotes from PKD is this one
| from Now Wait for Last Year:
|
| ---
|
| "All right," Eric agreed. "If you were me, and your wife were
| sick, desperately so, with no hope of recovery, would you leave
| her? Or would you stay with her, even if you had traveled ten
| years into the future and knew for an absolute certainty that
| the damage to her brain could never be reversed? And staying
| with her would mean-"
|
| "I can see what it would mean, sir," the cab broke in. "It
| would mean no other life for you beyond caring for her."
|
| "That's right," Eric said. "I'd stay with her," the cab
| decided. "Why?" "Because," the cab said, "life is composed of
| reality configurations so constituted. To abandon her would be
| to say, I can't endure reality as such. I have to have uniquely
| special easier conditions."
|
| "I think I agree," Eric said after a time. "I think I will stay
| with her." "God bless you, sir," the cab said. "I can see that
| you're a good man."
| Thaxll wrote:
| Very similar to the great movie Arrival.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life
| dr-detroit wrote:
| Chilling when you think of all the demi humans that "walk"
| around in 2021 with those big plastic smiles.
| ameen wrote:
| Thank you for sharing this. I've often wondered how some
| folks deal with misfortune, take it in stride and work
| through them than abandon all hope for an easier route.
|
| Perseverance and Endurance are a rarity in today's society.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| > Perseverance and Endurance are a rarity in today's
| society.
|
| No, they're just quiet.
| phailhaus wrote:
| How are you measuring perseverance and endurance? I find
| that such claims tend to be completely made up, based on
| some "sense" you get from hearing a couple of viral
| stories.
| dls2016 wrote:
| Similar: Libertarian Police Department
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
| dharmab wrote:
| Also, Private Police by Fry and Laurie
|
| https://youtu.be/vLfghLQE3F4
| mdp2021 wrote:
| In the sketch, the "client" states that he called the
| police and all he could get was on-hold music.
|
| I am afraid one can inform the international public: in
| some countries, this is exactly what happens, since years.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| In 2021 the real government funded police would have zero
| interest in hearing about that kind of crime - assuming UK
| police are anything like police here.
|
| So this seems like a bit of an improvement :)
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Reminds me of "drink a verification can" greentext
| https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/1ggg4u/please_drink_...
| Y_Y wrote:
| We can do better than a link to a Reddit thread with a
| screenshot of some text. I found this on GameFAQs slightly
| modified from the original and posted the day after, on
| 2013-06-16. -2018 -wake up feeling sick
| after a late night of playing vidya -excited to play
| some halo 2k19 -"xbox on" -... -"XBOX ON"
| -"Please verify that you are "annon332" by saying
| "Doritos(tm) Dew(tm) it right!" -"Doritos(tm) Dew(tm)
| it right" -"ERROR! Please drink a verification can"
| -reach into my Doritos(tm) Mountain Dew(tm) Halo 2k19(tm) War
| Chest -only a few cans left, needed to verify 14 times
| last night -still feeling sick from the 14 -force
| it down and grumble out "mmmm that really hit the spot"
| -xbox does nothing -i attempt to smile
| -"Connecting to verification server" -...
| -"Verification complete!" -finally -boot up halo
| 2k19 -finding multiplayer match... -"ERROR! User
| attempting to steal online gameplay!" -my mother just
| walked in the room -"Adding another user to your pass,
| this will be charged to your credit card. Do you accept?"
| -"NO!" -"Console entering lock state!" -"to
| unlock drink verification can" -last can
| -"WARNING, OUT OF VERIFICATION CANS, an order has been
| shipped and charged to your credit card" -drink half
| the can, oh god im going to be sick -pour the last half
| out the window -"PIRACY DETECTED! PLEASE COMPLETE THIS
| ADVERTISEMENT TO CONTINUE" -the mountain dew ad plays
| -i have to dance for it -feeling so sick -makes
| me sing along -dancing and singing -"mountain dew
| is for me and you" -throw up on my self -throw up
| on my tv and entertainment system -router shorts
| -"ERROR NO CONNECTION! XBOX SHUTTING OFF" -"PLEASE
| DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE"
| exo762 wrote:
| Greentext, as the most relevant form of art.
| NotPractical wrote:
| Does this content really have a place on here?
| ljm wrote:
| They're not so different from the old bash.org quotes (as
| in hunter2) or the old b3ta ones. It's just classic
| internet culture.
|
| I think this particular one satirizes a patent Microsoft
| filed showing how to detect how many people are watching
| a TV (via the Kinect).
| duskwuff wrote:
| There's also some inspiration taken from Sony's patent
| "System for converting television commercials into
| interactive networked video games":
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US8246454B2/en
|
| (Note in particular "SAY MCDONALDS TO END COMMERCIAL" in
| Figure 9.)
| dijit wrote:
| Honestly. This is quite pointed satire at the current
| state of things.
|
| If you showed someone from the 70s how things are today,
| they would view these two things as not as dissimilar as
| we do.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I was going to say! Since quite a large number of HN's
| readership is hard at work actually building these
| paywalls, digital restrictions and gatekeepers,
| unnecessarily Internet-connected devices, and other
| corporate-mediated dystopias, I'd say _Please Drink
| Verification Can_ is exceedingly appropriate here.
| mrlonglong wrote:
| Well said!
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Humor is an effective medium for exchanging ideas and
| concepts. I would say satire in small doses is perfect
| for HN.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| Well, it's not a greentext without the green text.
| KingFelix wrote:
| Just had a conversation about this exact idea. Such a brilliant
| book
| goda90 wrote:
| It's either micro-transactions, or mandatory ads:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/rcka8s/new_c...
| Aerroon wrote:
| I think I would prefer lootboxes. With lootboxes once you get
| the fob it's yours to keep, rather than having to keep paying
| for it.
| irrational wrote:
| Or do without.
| Loughla wrote:
| In terms of the remote start, yes, you can do without.
|
| But how long until BASIC functions become subscription
| service? Like electronically locking doors, or some other
| such nonsense?
|
| Once money finds a path, my belief is that the path gets
| widened.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Exactly; as well, in some situations (cold Canadian
| Winter with an infant etc), remote start is higher
| priority than remote doors, or electric windows, etc.
| "Basic" function vs "Luxury" can get awfully relative
| awfully fast...
| epberry wrote:
| This feature does not prevent you from unlocking the car. Just
| pointing your key at your car outside your building and turning
| it on in the cold.
| johnorourke wrote:
| Honorary mention also of Cory Doctorow's Unauthorized Bread
| short story:
| https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
| lapetitejort wrote:
| And of course the 4chan greentext "Please drink a
| verification can": https://imgur.com/r/4chan/dgGvgKF
| klipklop wrote:
| 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 tractors. Then people might face
| legal action or maybe even jail just to drive their cars as
| intended. Fun future.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"The solution is to vote with your wallet."
|
| I don't think it is. I sense this might play out the same way
| it did with all the intrusive spyware on SmartTV's. Sure, I
| _could_ try to vote with my wallet and find a TV that doesn 't
| have all that bloat, but they are becoming vanishingly rare.
| The market has 'decided' that this is a standard feature now.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The solution is to vote with your wallet._
|
| Right on. In 99% of cases, your choice of vehicle brand is
| fungible. Corolla's are good, cheap cars, but so are Accords,
| Mazda 3s, Focus', Altimas, Imprezas...
|
| Buy something else.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"your choice of vehicle brand is fungible"
|
| I disagree wholeheartedly. One of the things Toyota has done
| is to establish itself as a reliable automaker of quality.
| People specifically think of Toyota/Honda as the vehicle
| makes which are most likely to last a long time and put up
| with abuse. Contrast this to the reputation of GM or Daewoo.
|
| You also have the human element, where people are attracted
| to brand marketing and how certain models make them feel.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Yeah, brand absolutely matters unless you're in the cycle
| of never ending car leases. Then I suppose it doesn't
| really matter since you're likely to get a new car again
| before longterm maintenance ever becomes a problem.
|
| For those who buy CPO's or with cash, longevity and
| maintenance are the prime factors for budget car
| purchasers.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| consumers aren't 'weak-willed' there are simply not the vast
| amount of choices that capitalism promised, instead we have
| huge conglomerates that care more about continuous leeching off
| your wallet.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Eventually people fed up with it will "jailbreak" their cars
| like the farmers did with John Deere tractors
|
| This wouldn't be new. People have been "jailbreaking" their
| cars since the 80s. We had a BMW in 1990 that we replaced the
| transmission chip on with a 3rd party chip so that we could
| unlock extra functionality that they only had in Europe.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| 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 with the pitch "well we give you the fob for free".
| It's hard enough for a venture like Tesla, which has some
| serious technological upside. This? Not so much.
|
| Edit: another nice example would be news. Good luck finding a
| news outlet that's willing to let you pay a moderate fee in
| exchange for a truly ad & tracking free experience that
| actually covers your reading needs. Seems like a market gap,
| no?
| brewdad wrote:
| My local news used to offer an ad-free experience for about
| $10/mo. I happily paid it. One day they updated their site
| and starting nagging me to turn off my ad blocker. Wouldn't
| let me read anything. I canceled that day and told them why.
|
| Now they get $0 a month from me. They keep begging me back
| with $5/mo offers. Nope. That bridge has been burned.
| nanidin wrote:
| Similar experience with my local newspaper also. They don't
| get it. We don't want ads and their content is not worth
| the slap in the face of paying for and then getting shown
| ads in return.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| WaPo has an ad-free version for a reasonable fee.
| [deleted]
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Seems like a market gap, no?_
|
| The problem is that the backend analytics they're collecting
| are worth so much that they would either have to lose a ton
| of money with subscriptions, or admit just how much they're
| making from your "free" eyeballs.
| DantesKite wrote:
| True. Sometimes you gotta vote with the pen (legislation).
| klipklop wrote:
| It is the solution, just the consumers don't have the guts to
| go through with not buying. The average buyer now seems to
| have little self control. The companies as you pointed out
| take advantage of it and work together to screw everyone.
|
| I do recall the non-fresh milk in Germany. Shelf stable ultra
| pasteurized milk tastes terrible. In the US you can still get
| even raw milk.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Where in the US are you referring to? I know it's
| available, but I can't say I've ever seen it for sale in a
| large grocery store. I've only seen it at farmers markets
| or similar small farm ventures.
| daxuak wrote:
| I digress but what happend to the milk market? Could you post
| a reference?
| bckygldstn wrote:
| I can't find a good reference for the German market
| specifically, but in some countries/regions most milk is
| ultra-pasteurised and unrefridgerated:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-
| temperature_process...
| andi999 wrote:
| What do you mean fresh milk has vanished?
| Schiendelman wrote:
| It's now all hyper-pasteurized and shelf stable. Not even
| refrigerated.
| xwdv wrote:
| Good lord, this is true dystopia. I drink fresh milk
| every damn day.
| MandieD wrote:
| The two glass liter bottles of fresh milk min my fridge
| beg to differ - though they are proudly branded
| "Frankenmilch"... which just means that it's produced in
| Franken (Franconia), the region I live in.
| gentleman11 wrote:
| Actually, are technica does offer an ad and tracking free
| subscription option
| selfhoster11 wrote:
| Vote with your wallet never worked, and is never going to work
| if your wallet is empty in the first place. Why do you think
| people don't all buy free range eggs and organic produce?
| Because it's out of their reach, even if they care.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They don't vote with their wallet because they don't care.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Like in politics, voting with your wallet only works if
| alternatives are available.
| azemetre wrote:
| It also implies that money is worth more above all else. What
| happens when every car company decides to follow this model
| because it looks great on the short term? Am I suppose to
| vote with my wallet and start a new car company single
| handedly? Well no.
|
| This is why we need to legislate these issues and concerns.
| Saying vote with your wallet is already a losing position,
| the corporations already have a much larger wallet better to
| act collectively and enforce legislation.
| nostrademons wrote:
| > Am I suppose to vote with my wallet and start a new car
| company single handedly? Well no.
|
| That's exactly what you're supposed to do, except probably
| not single-handedly. You're supposed to find investors with
| cash to burn, engineers who are frustrated with their big
| corp wage-slave jobs, and frustrated consumers and bring
| them together.
|
| There's about 4300 EV startups funded in the last 15 years
| [1], and 27 have gone public or are in the process of going
| public via SPAC in the last year [2]. Some of them (eg.
| Nikola) don't even have the "hire qualified engineers" and
| "build a working product" part down and still managed to
| raise billions.
|
| [1] https://tracxn.com/d/emerging-startups/electric-
| vehicles-sta...
|
| [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-07-06/h
| yperd...
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| And, a lot of these consumer hostile moves are death by a
| thousand cuts rather than line-in-the-sand deal breakers.
| There are plenty of people who will not buy a Toyota
| specifically because of this, but I assume most people
| would be upset but still make the purchase, knowing they're
| getting a Toyota and all that comes with it.
| akvadrako wrote:
| Are you suggesting there are no car makers without monthly
| key fees?
| robofanatic wrote:
| car companies are slowly becoming phone companies. Hope we don't
| see days when we'll have to subscribe to a plan to use the car.
| forinti wrote:
| 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.
| xxs wrote:
| If they were half smart they'd have used cr2016 instead.
| Slimmer!
| graton wrote:
| Well are they installing the CR2032 battery in the key fob for
| that price. If so that will probably require a 5-10 minute
| transaction in order to sell and install the battery. Not
| making much money on that. Now if it is just the battery, it is
| a high mark-up. Though looking at Target they charge $6.50 for
| a two-pack.
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| As a Tesla stock owner, I'm glad Toyota introduced this feature.
| If every car company keeps stepping back 20 years of technology,
| soon Tesla will own the _entire_ market.
| otikik wrote:
| Yep. No thanks.
| influx wrote:
| BMW tried to add a subscription for iOS CarPlay. Seems they had
| enough backlash that they canceled it. Total bullshit they would
| even try that.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| BMW wants something like $180 to update the maps in my 2014 i3,
| and a couple days stay in the service shop to be sure blah blah
| blah.
|
| Nope.
| FredPret wrote:
| I decided that day to never consider BMW. If they can do it
| once they can do it again
| hoffspot wrote:
| I've been a Toyota Tacoma guy for the last 22 years (and
| counting). Three Tacomas and I have a son that we're deciding on
| a vehicle for in the coming year. This is how you take someone
| with massive brand affinity, someone who would even likely pass
| that brand affinity to the next generation, and push them to look
| at other options. Charging monthly for a service that isn't cloud
| enabled? If this is true, Toyota, you are literally dead to me.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| FYI, remote start is a pretty easy aftermarket add on,
| especially for Toyotas.
| tomp wrote:
| I read a quote once, paraphrasing:
|
| _> geek will figure out cars before car people figure out
| computers_
|
| Between this and similar issues (e.g. Porsche / BMW charging
| subscription to their updating map data), it's clear how true
| that quote was.
|
| Not only are they massively losing to Tesla, they don't even
| _know_ they're losing, or why. This is what you get when you hire
| MBAs and consultants.
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