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

[Chrysler375Freeway]

From Ars Technica:

Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for remote start
Feature requires subscription even though it doesn't use connected services.

Automakers keep trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet subscription income. Now, it's Toyota's turn.

Nearly every car company offers some sort of subscription package, and Toyota has one called Remote Connect. The service offers the usual fare, letting owners use an app to remotely lock their doors, for example, or if they own a plug-in vehicle, to precondition the interior. But as some complimentary subscriptions for Remote Connect come to an end, Toyota owners are getting an unexpected surprise–they can no longer use their key fob to remote-start their vehicles.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Why am I getting an "Oh, what a fleecing" vibe from this? This is the same company that, for several years, refused to introduce Carplay and Android Auto integration into their autos, thus putting them several years behind Korean carmakers Kia and Hyundai. Should I purchase a new car (which probably won't occur for another eight years), Android Auto is an absolute requirement.

I don't get the logic behind that. I bought my 2021 F-150 (before the chip shortage, of course) and I have FordPass and it's free for the lifetime of the vehicle. I use the app to check how much fuel there is left in the tank, to remote start it without having to move my keyfob, and even use it to get flat tire assistance when I can't change it (i.e. bad part of town, rain, etc.). The cost of the UConnect Access system kept me from signing off on buying a Ram because it was subscription-based when I asked the salesman about the UConnect Access. The FordPass mobility app was free, and Fords come with remote start from the factory depending on trim, options, etc., and you can use it from the time you take delivery without extra cost. I like the convenience of remote start, but adding a price tag to it doesn't seem right when you can use it on other vehicles the moment you take delivery.

[kalvado]

From Ars Technica:

Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for remote start
Feature requires subscription even though it doesn't use connected services.

Automakers keep trying to get a piece of that sweet, sweet subscription income. Now, it's Toyota's turn.

Nearly every car company offers some sort of subscription package, and Toyota has one called Remote Connect. The service offers the usual fare, letting owners use an app to remotely lock their doors, for example, or if they own a plug-in vehicle, to precondition the interior. But as some complimentary subscriptions for Remote Connect come to an end, Toyota owners are getting an unexpected surprise–they can no longer use their key fob to remote-start their vehicles.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Why am I getting an "Oh, what a fleecing" vibe from this? This is the same company that, for several years, refused to introduce Carplay and Android Auto integration into their autos, thus putting them several years behind Korean carmakers Kia and Hyundai. Should I purchase a new car (which probably won't occur for another eight years), Android Auto is an absolute requirement.

I don't get the logic behind that. I bought my 2021 F-150 (before the chip shortage, of course) and I have FordPass and it's free for the lifetime of the vehicle. I use the app to check how much fuel there is left in the tank, to remote start it without having to move my keyfob, and even use it to get flat tire assistance when I can't change it (i.e. bad part of town, rain, etc.). The cost of the UConnect Access system kept me from signing off on buying a Ram because it was subscription-based when I asked the salesman about the UConnect Access. The FordPass mobility app was free, and Fords come with remote start from the factory depending on trim, options, etc., and you can use it from the time you take delivery without extra cost. I like the convenience of remote start, but adding a price tag to it doesn't seem right when you can use it on other vehicles the moment you take delivery.

One of the issues here - and it is also a part of Toyota situation - is technology obsolescence. Cars can last way longer than cool IT, and with deep integration upgrade becomes more involved, if possible.
Toyota ends support - with no plans to update - to 3G equipped cars as networks plan to drop 3g support. Cars with 3g were made until 2018.
I wonder if Bluetooth or USB connection would be of any use on my car in 10 years. And car lifespan keeps growing.
So self-contained features, which do not require external support, have a different type of value from my perspective.

[hotdogPi]

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

This concept isn't new, but because of the increasing interconnectedness of modern life it has become much easier to accomplish when a company wants to say "you 'bought' it but we can take it away from you". When you bought a CD, you didn't "own" the music on it - the CD was essentially a license to use the contents privately for yourself with restrictions (however unenforceable they may have been) on non-personal usage. Of course, they can't "shut off" a CD sitting on your shelf, but I've heard stories that songs you buy digitally may magically disappear - even though you paid for it, you never "owned" it and they can do that for any reason no questions asked, and I've noticed some stuff in the deeper corners of my library I bought years ago no longer "exists".

And I agree it's a pain in the ass.

From a quick Google search, you actually do own the music if you buy a CD, unlike digital downloads.

[Henry]

SMH...and yet Toyota finds a new way to alienate potential buyers once again. Before the chip shortage issues, Cadillac charged a subscription fee to use SuperCruise (which, TBH, was a dumb idea to begin with), and I'm sure the other GM brands did as well, but thankfully I don't have it on my Equinox, so I may have dodged two bullets here.

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

This concept isn't new, but because of the increasing interconnectedness of modern life it has become much easier to accomplish when a company wants to say "you 'bought' it but we can take it away from you". When you bought a CD, you didn't "own" the music on it - the CD was essentially a license to use the contents privately for yourself with restrictions (however unenforceable they may have been) on non-personal usage. Of course, they can't "shut off" a CD sitting on your shelf, but I've heard stories that songs you buy digitally may magically disappear - even though you paid for it, you never "owned" it and they can do that for any reason no questions asked, and I've noticed some stuff in the deeper corners of my library I bought years ago no longer "exists".

And I agree it's a pain in the ass.

From a quick Google search, you actually do own the music if you buy a CD, unlike digital downloads.

Of course, vinyl is an attractive alternative to digital downloads, which reverses the trend on CDs in which one made the other obsolete (although you can still buy blank CDs at a store near your home). Circle of life, friends.

[vdeane]

The issue with connecting a phone to one's car is that such then downloads a bunch of data from the phone, which then lives on the car with no ability to wipe it, which can be a problem when one inevitably gets rid of the car.  Car software has traditionally not been written with security/privacy in mind, so it's a nightmare for anyone conscious about those issues.

I personally have zero confidence in Apple/Google maintaining compatibility. That's just not in the nature of commercial software companies. Eventually we will reach a point where Apple/Google estimates that too few cars of a certain model year are left on the road (or to be more accurate, there aren't enough cars of that model year still being driven by people who have the cash to shell out for a new phone every year) to make it economically feasible to keep porting that version of the car interface protocol forward to their new OS version. And so we will get the inevitable end-of-life announcement. You'll end up having to do something silly like keep an outdated phone in your car with your music on it if you can't afford to trade your car in as often as you trade your phone in.

Defiantly, especially since it's already happening to streaming services on smart TVs.

[hbelkins]

As I've said before, I have no desire to hook my phone into a vehicle's computer system. I've noticed that on some of the work fleet vehicles I've driven, if you plug a charging cable into a built-in USB port, the video screen takes over the phone (or maybe I should say the phone takes over the video screen). I also have no desire to use my phone as a vehicle audio system, as I have independent players with much larger storage for those purposes. An AUX cable suits my needs perfectly.

My current daily driver is a 1990 Scottsdale 1500 pickup. It's the one that had the radio head unit and the cassette player as two separate pieces in different areas of the dash. I used to use the cassette player with one of those adapters that plugs into the headphone or line out port of a player, but the cassette deck quit working. The FM radio is crap, so my current audio setup is an inexpensive Bluetooth/AUX standalone speaker with which I can use my little iPod Touch or the cheap Motorola Android phone I bought to use as a music device when my iPod Classic's battery went kaput.

Cell service around here is so spotty that paying for any kind of streaming service would be a waste of money. And I have such an extensive music collection that I dropped my XM subscription years ago and haven't missed it.

Whenever I buy a new release (which is very rare, because today's music is garbage compared to what was released 50, 40, 30, or even 20 years ago) I buy it on CD, and immediately rip it to MP3 and usually burn a duplicate audio copy.

For those who are concerned about losing copies of music they've purchased digitally, I recommend doing what I've done anytime I've downloaded something off iTunes or Amazon. I immediately burn an audio copy of the album, which means I can play it in a CD player. I also save several copies of the digital files in separate places (a data CD/DVD or an external hard drive) as backups. That way, I'll always have access to the music in case my main hard drive craps out (or if Big Tech reaches into your computer and deletes your files).

I hate this shit where you "buy" something but don't actually own it.  The future wasn't supposed to suck.

This concept isn't new, but because of the increasing interconnectedness of modern life it has become much easier to accomplish when a company wants to say "you 'bought' it but we can take it away from you". When you bought a CD, you didn't "own" the music on it - the CD was essentially a license to use the contents privately for yourself with restrictions (however unenforceable they may have been) on non-personal usage. Of course, they can't "shut off" a CD sitting on your shelf, but I've heard stories that songs you buy digitally may magically disappear - even though you paid for it, you never "owned" it and they can do that for any reason no questions asked, and I've noticed some stuff in the deeper corners of my library I bought years ago no longer "exists".

And I agree it's a pain in the ass.

From a quick Google search, you actually do own the music if you buy a CD, unlike digital downloads.

But did you ask Lars Ulrich if you actually own the music? He might think differently.

[ran4sh]

You'll end up having to do something silly like keep an outdated phone in your car with your music on it if you can't afford to trade your car in as often as you trade your phone in.

Or just listen to FM/AM radio or put your music on a USB drive

[zzcarp]

It's not really hard to start a car with a key.  Remote start always seemed like a gimmick that wasn't worth an extra cost.

It comes in very handy on extremely cold mornings when you want to warm up your car and defrost those windows. Not to mention the hot summers when your car is under the hot sun and you want to get it partially cooled off. Of course, I garage my vehicles, so I don't have to worry about scraping the windshield as much. The procedure for remote starting my car requires that you first hit the "lock" button on the remote, followed by the "remote start".

I have a 2017 Highlander and remote start (which won't be disconnected under this plan). I never thought I'd use it until I got my dog. I can run into a store in the summer and leave the pup in the car without worrying about the sun overheating him (or some good samaritan busting my window) since he can chill in the air conditioning.

[Scott5114]

You'll end up having to do something silly like keep an outdated phone in your car with your music on it if you can't afford to trade your car in as often as you trade your phone in.

Or just listen to FM/AM radio or put your music on a USB drive

Assuming USB-A doesn't go obsolete by then too. Which isn't too likely, as USB-A has been around for about 20 years at this point, but the shift in phone chargers from USB-A to USB-C gives me pause. (Of course, my first phone using USB-C for its charger arrived right after I installed a bunch of USB-A wall outlets...)

As for radio...we rented a Ford Focus for a recent Thanksgiving trip, and it had the most garbage radio I think I've ever heard on a car. We couldn't pick up anything. Even with a good receiver, though, radio is clearly on its way out as a medium, and I'm not sure the existence of FM radio stations worth listening to in 20 years is something that can be taken as a given (AM is already a total wasteland unless you bear a strong resemblance to the subject of a Grant Wood painting).

[vdeane]

Yeah, the primary market for FM radio these days seems to be people listening while at work or stores playing something while people shop.  As Millennials and Generation Z become increasingly dominant, those areas will likely shift away from radio, leaving those stations with... not much.  Already finding stations worth listening to in some markets is fairly hard (I thought about trying to get the all-Christmas stations off my presets but aborted that once I realized that there was nothing I was interested in listening to around Syracuse that didn't switch to all-Christmas for two months of the year).

It's too bad.  FM radio is far more local to wherever one is traveling than streaming music options or Sirius FM.  This is true even for iHeart and Audacity stations.

[ZLoth]

Assuming USB-A doesn't go obsolete by then too. Which isn't too likely, as USB-A has been around for about 20 years at this point, but the shift in phone chargers from USB-A to USB-C gives me pause. (Of course, my first phone using USB-C for its charger arrived right after I installed a bunch of USB-A wall outlets...)

I haven't even bothered putting in USB outlets for charging. I'm not seeing the cost-benefit ratio.

Even with a good receiver, though, radio is clearly on its way out as a medium, and I'm not sure the existence of FM radio stations worth listening to in 20 years is something that can be taken as a given (AM is already a total wasteland unless you bear a strong resemblance to the subject of a Grant Wood painting).

Yeah, the primary market for FM radio these days seems to be people listening while at work or stores playing something while people shop.  As Millennials and Generation Z become increasingly dominant, those areas will likely shift away from radio, leaving those stations with... not much.

I'm approaching three years living in the DFW area, and I can't name any radio stations beyond WRR 101.1 Classical. I know that I have the two EBS stations programmed in (WBAP, KSCS), but I had to look at a online radio listing to know that one is a news/talk station and the other a country music station. Now that I have "unlimited Internet" on my mobile device, I'm more likely to be listening to a station on a streaming application such as Radio Garden rather than actual terrestrial radio. I think that HD radio was introduced in 2003, but I'll be darned if I heard anyone say "I got to have it in my vehicle". This is from someone who remembers when vehicles came standard with AM radio, and FM radio was an option that the parents didn't want to splurge for.

Since we are going through that rabbit hole, cassette desks are essentially dead, with the automakers removing them as an option from 2005-2010. The same with CD players in the past decade, and quite frankly, I'm not surprised. It's five pounds of mechanical parts that can easily be used elsewhere. I don't think I even used the CD player for more than an hour in the current vehicle that I've owned since April, 2014.

Even if Carplay/Android Auto is made obsolete (a plausible scenario), there is still the fallback to Bluetooth audio. That technology became extremely commonplace around the 2008 model year thanks partially due to the hands-free laws. As for FM modulators (essentially mini low-power FM retransmitters), those I had extremely mixed luck with. I remember listening to a radio station on a previous vehicle when a car pulled up to me, and wham, my radio locked on to that vehicle's FM modulator, and I was listening to the voice mail that was playing back. (uhhhh, privacy????) I had to get one hard-wired into my 2005 Chevy Malibu as there was no way to retrofit an audio adapter in that radio, and it was cheaper than replacing the barely-used but no-longer-functional CD player.

[hotdogPi]

When listening to 104.9, if I stand in a particular location in my room, I get 104.5 instead.

[Rothman]

I don't know my local stations, but I do enjoy radio.garden.

[1995hoo]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

[Scott5114]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

There's no manual hour and minute adjust? Who signed off on that?

[SectorZ]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

There's no manual hour and minute adjust? Who signed off on that?

Consistent Honda engineering I guess, considering my wife's 2015 Honda CR-V can be adjusted, as could my 2009 Accord, 2006 Civic, and 2001 Civic when I had them.

Any car with built-in GPS does it automatically due to the GPS itself.

[CoolAngrybirdsrio4]

Cars with subscriptions? How on earth did this idea fly through? 

[tolbs17]

With that, I think I have to cross out Toyota as my top car list.

[rickmastfan67]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

Here's a solution, move to the CT time zone during those 8 months.  Problem solved. 

[1995hoo]

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

There's no manual hour and minute adjust? Who signed off on that?

In theory, there is, using the touchscreen–but that feature no longer works, and it's not a problem with my car's touchscreen because there are all sorts of reports of the same problem from other people with 2004 to 2006 TLs.

[vdeane]

Radio Garden looks interesting, though it only has three of my presets in their system.  Also, they should probably remove CKOI from their system since the stream is geoblocked.

Regarding things that stop working, the digital clock in my 2004 Acura TL can no longer be adjusted. The software for the time and date worked up to 2021 and now no longer functions; Acura is unwilling to update it. So during DST the clock is about 57 minutes slow (at this time of year, it's off by a couple of minutes). If I want it to be accurate, I have to pull a certain fuse and reinsert it at the correct time of night, and that's too much trouble. So I just have to remind myself not to rely on the in-car clock for eight months a year.

Here's a solution, move to the CT time zone during those 8 months.  Problem solved. 

The Connecticut time zone?

[ran4sh]

If it were me I would probably just pull the fuse and reinsert it at an arbitrary time, far enough off the actual time that I wouldn't be confused by it.

[dlsterner]

Or just put some masking tape over the clock so that you don't have to see an incorrect time.

Optionally, take a Sharpie and write some arbitrary time on the masking tape.  This way, the clock will be correct twice a day.   

[D-Dey65]

You'll end up having to do something silly like keep an outdated phone in your car with your music on it if you can't afford to trade your car in as often as you trade your phone in.

Or just listen to FM/AM radio or put your music on a USB drive

Instead of a standard flash drive, I just use SD cards and MicroSD cards with adapters, and stick them in the card reader... and then I stick it in the USB drive.


As for the keys, it's nothing but the remote alarm and the old standard manufacturer's key for my 2002 Camry.

And this is my 3000th post! I was going to post a joke claiming that if I don't get a prize I'll pout and throw a tantrum like a baby, but I changed my mind.

[rickmastfan67]

Looks like Toyota is going to back track on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDoc6wegss