from the complaining-is-often-worth-it dept.
Earlier this month, we broke a story about Toyota locking its key fob remote start function behind a monthly subscription. If owners of certain models aren't actively enrolled in a larger Toyota connected services plan, the proximity remote start function on the fob—that is, when you press the lock button three times to start the car while outside of it—will not work even though it sends the signal directly to the car. Obviously, this sent people into a frenzy whether they own a Toyota or not, because it was seen as a dark harbinger of the perils of fully-connected cars. Automakers now have the ability to nickel and dime people to death by charging ongoing subscription fees for functions that used to be a one-and-done purchase, and it looked like Toyota was hopping on the bandwagon.
At the time, Toyota declined to give us a detailed answer on why it chose to take a feature that doesn't need an internet connection to function and moved it behind a paywall. Today, we've got answers. Toyota now claims it never intended to market the key fob remote start as a real feature, and it also says the subscription requirement was an inadvertent result of a relatively small technical decision related to the way its new vehicles are architectured. Finally, Toyota has heard the outrage over the last week—a spokesperson told us the company was caught off guard by the blowback—and its executive team is currently examining whether it's possible to reverse course and drop the subscription requirement for key fob remote start.
Previously: Toyota Owners Have to Pay $8/Month to Keep Using their Key Fob for Remote Start
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Toyota owners have to pay $8/mo to keep using their key fob for remote start
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.
In terms of technology, this remote-start feature is no different from using the fob to unlock the car. The fobs use a short-range radio transmitter to send the car a signal that is encrypted with rolling codes. The car then decrypts the signal and performs the requested action, whether it's to lock or unlock the doors, beep the horn, or start the engine. RF key fobs have been around since the 1980s, and GM added a factory-installed remote-start option in 2004 (no subscription needed).
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.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 25 2021, @07:40PM (1 child)
Pay $30 per month or 1000 miles, whichever comes first and the dealership will do ordinary preventative maintenance on your car as needed, including oil and filters, bulbs and general checkup.
Pay $3 per month (per car) for ad free satellite radio.
Pay whatever makes sense for periodic cleaning, detailing, waxing etc.
Paying $8 per month so the ECU doesn't Nerf a convenience feature? Way to drive customers away in droves.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by sjames on Saturday December 25 2021, @08:32PM
Very much this. The lies don't help either. Claiming it wasn't an official feature (except that salesmen showed it to prospects and used it as a selling point) That it was an 'accident' that disabling the cell-phone access also disabled the FOB (if so, among the dumbest architectural decisions in software) and not being sure they can fix it (of course they CAN fix it, they have the source).
(Score: 5, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 25 2021, @07:59PM (3 children)
This sort of crap really needs to be stopped. Yeah, Toy deserves all that blowback, and more. I really wonder if I even want a newer car. Can't repair anything yourself if the Treacherous Motor Oligopoly gets their way. It'll be pay for every little thing. Then law enforcement will muscle in for a piece of that action, and next thing you know, your car will rat you out every time you exceed the speed limit by so much as 1 kph, don't come to a complete stop, turn or change lanes without signaling, or take your eyes off the road or your hands off the steering wheel for one second. That's what connectivity is for, right?
How the heck are we to transition to electric if we can't have cars without such anti-social features?
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @08:48PM
Amen.
I'm in no hurry to transition to anything electric for just these reasons. Have several older cars in the family (newest is 2014) that run fine and we'll stick with them for awhile. Maybe some of this crap will settle out?
(Score: 2) by corey on Sunday December 26 2021, @11:38AM (1 child)
I didn’t read the article nor the original one from a month ago, but is there any sign that this is just a big fabricated beat up by whoever the article is written by? I mean, maybe Toyota we’re never intending on this but somehow the idea was leaked and it was just a brain fart, and the media went hysterical to drive clicks?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 26 2021, @02:43PM
Yes, the media does overdramatize everything. But also, big, powerful companies are wont to do just as accused-- Right to Repair is a real issue. Which elements of this story are fact and which are drama, time will tell. Meantime, if it was an innocent mistake, as claimed, or a trial balloon to see if the public would let them do it as I think more likely, the blowback should warn them off. Seems most likely it was deliberate, if only by a small part of Toyota, perhaps just one senior manager, and their claims of it being a mistake and not something they really meant are just lies, to try to mend things.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @08:29PM (1 child)
No, you didn't. They only said "they'll look into it."
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday December 27 2021, @05:09AM
Yes. I'm with you on this one. I think they'll wait and see and hope this blows over and then they'll offer some sort of incentive for the user to get it or they will try and make it out like this is some kind of feature you just can't live without. Or they'll just like give you a year for "free" when you buy the car so you get used to it, like any good drug dealer the first hit or hits are free. They'll just sell this as the deluxe mega-package that you deserve cause you are special and should have all the finer things in life and not have to resort to doing things manually like some fucking caveman. People will lap that shit up.
If people accept paying about $100 a year for this crap there is no limit to the amount of other crap in the car they'll pay $100 a year for. Any old feature that was once a standard or luxury feature can more or less then be fob activated as a subscription service -- hey the radio could be playing your theme song when you enter the car or a tune that is in line with your current mood that we have used out advanced AI and tracking software to detect, we could preheat the assprint in the drivers seat to the temperature you like it to be when you come and sit down etc etc
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @08:43PM
Their mission really is to ask how much it will take before people go back to horses.
"You know, saleshole, if I'd wanted the cosmic suckage experience I wouldn't be here, but sticking to public transport."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday December 25 2021, @08:55PM (13 children)
We need equal outrage focused on all the other corporations trying to pull such nonsense. John Deere could use about 30 million emails expressing outrage over their tractors. Apple could use about 300 million emails. Microsoft needs at least a billion.
When you buy it, it's yours. No telemetry. No subscription. No snooping for law enforcement. No data collection. No advertisements. It's yours, you don't need to share it with anyone. Any denial of the use of your property should be answered with pitchforks and torches, and people on Wall Street as well as people in Washington should tremble in fear.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @09:46PM (2 children)
300 million letters is more effective. Fill the front office and "mail room". Toss in a few confirmation cards / delivery recepts.
That will actually get notice. Emails queues are click away from clearing.
Remember: "Miracle on 34th Street"? What saved Santa?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @10:11PM (1 child)
300,000 letters? Nobody writes letters but prisoners. That's who writes physical letters these days. Are you in prison? You plan on buying stamps for 300,000 prisoners?
You know, only like 84,000 people watched the James Webb launch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 25 2021, @10:33PM
In which the rent seekers come out of the woodwork to discourage you from any actionable plan.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday December 25 2021, @10:48PM (2 children)
I send notice to Microsoft every time I boot a new machine with Windows on it - at a minimum: first address typed into the Browser (Bing, these days) is a search for "Download Chrome" sub with Firefox or your favorite as desired. As soon as Chrome is up "Make your default browser?" Yes.
Over half the time, they don't boot into Windows at all, but get brain-wiped to Ubuntu before any telemetry goes out to Redmond. I honestly believe there's a department somewhere keeping track of number of Windows machines that should be "phoning home" vs the number that actually are.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday December 26 2021, @01:17AM (1 child)
I would say them tracking how many "one and done" machines they lose to another operating system is a good thing, but they won't respond with any sort of positive measure. We are far more likely to end up with something like "Total Platform Management" in response to make installing another O/S more difficult.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday December 26 2021, @03:13PM
The cynic in me agrees, but they have had TPM capabilities for years and the hardware manufacturers only half heartedly implemented that on some corporate targeted laptops, and even they mostly have weak backdoors with websites that will translate your serial number to the passcode. Mostly the corporations just want to be sure their data is secure from theft, even while they continue to enforce password rotation policies that virtually guarantee sticky notes...
Dell offers Dell installed and supported Ubuntu on some models, apparently they value the market perception enough to keep that up. And of course smaller vendors have been offering preinstalled Linux for 25+ years now.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday December 25 2021, @11:03PM (3 children)
No amount of mail is going to change how large companies do business unless they not only threaten that companies profits but also prove that it isn't an idle threat.
People let MS know that they didn't want their desktop computer UI to be like a smartphones. And yet we still have tiles in Windows 10.
Apple knows that the outrage over their products being made with effectively slave labor is just noise because their sales don't drop.
John Deer knows that the farmers can't afford to replace all their hardware even if there was viable competition in an area.
And above all else, these companies, and others like them, or just think they are like them, know that in the end most customers are just sheep that will accept whatever is given them because its easier than going with something different.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 26 2021, @12:46AM (2 children)
John Deere has viable competition. There are a few tractor companies out there, not all of which use telemetry.
Mine doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 26 2021, @09:55AM (1 child)
Neither do the companies that make most of my equipment. And more and more of my friends and neighbors are switching too. You are even seeing less of the older guys using it too. I am really starting to think that Deere might just start changing their act because they have really burnt into their goodwill and reputation the past few years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 27 2021, @02:49AM
Also, as smaller and more efficient equipment becomes more effective, you get more and more farmers changing their approach. Yeah, you still want the monstrous oil burner if you're planting fields by the thousand acre stretch, but if you're a market gardener, or a no-till pasture cropper, or a permaculture or orchard cropper type, there's a hell of a lot that you can do with a UTV these days. Many market gardeners have gone with the two-wheel tractor approach, and I'm pretty sure Grillo isn't putting telemetry in their things.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 26 2021, @02:57PM
That's one of the things I despair of. All this outrage against, for instance, vaccines, that could have been so very much more useful for so many other things. Yes, Big Pharma and US healthcare generally deserve a heck of a thumping, for their price gouging. But vaccines are not the issue over which that battle should be fought.
I hoped tech enthusiasts would be smarter, but no. Else, we wouldn't have near as much bull there either. All the walled gardens, the all-in-ones that won't scan until the user replaces an ink cartridge that it claims is empty but really isn't, unconscionable EULAs, and so on.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday December 26 2021, @05:28PM (1 child)
A lot more people buy automobiles than heavy machinery. Toyota's customers have a bit more power than Deere's customers; Deere doesn't have nearly as many competitors, or customers.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 26 2021, @05:51PM
The size of the market may be less important than the percentage of the market that is being alienated.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 26 2021, @04:04PM (1 child)
we will get a society where the completly same car/device has a 100% satisfied user and another user with constant problems.
one is a facebook, tiktok, etc user with "above average social credit score" whilst the other is complaining about "teh constant surveillance in modern society".
" plausible deniability harassment" is gonna be a real thing ... or maybe it always has been, only now with more "remote" and "plausible"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 26 2021, @06:00PM
Truly crazy times are ahead for anyone who is actually a schizo. Gangstalking by algorithm.
(Score: 2) by Username on Sunday December 26 2021, @06:16PM
They'll just keep doing it. When they get caught again, claim ignorance. Like with a cloth or something.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Coligny on Monday December 27 2021, @12:52AM
I’m wondering a bit if it was not a giant Toyota troll move to open people’s eyes on the stupidity of the market these days.
A feature being “pay to use” after 10 years…
Honestly… aside from Toyota buyers who expect their car/keyfob remote to still perfectly works after 10 years ?
Audi… sometime it a day 0 nightmare
Mitsu… yea… No…
Renault/Nissan… please make it stop please make it stop please make it stop…
If I wanted to be moderated by mor0nic groupthinking retards I would still be on Digg and Reddshit.