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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 14 2021, @11:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the send-out-your-kid dept.

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.

Toyota has been offering factory-installed remote start on 2018 and newer vehicles equipped with Audio Plus or Premium Audio. To use it, owners have to be within 50 feet of the vehicle and double-press the fob's lock button before holding the lock button down for a few seconds.

Yet recently, as 2018 Toyotas have passed their third birthday, owners have been discovering that the fob's functionality is dependent on maintaining an active Remote Connect subscription. Vehicles equipped with Audio Plus receive a free three-year "trial," while Premium Audio vehicles receive 10 years. Once those subscriptions expire, though, the key fob remote start stops working. Toyota didn't change the rules, though that detail was buried in the fine print. When the time comes, Toyota simply cuts off access to one of the functions on the key fob already in the owner's possession. To get the feature back, owners have to pony up $8 per month or $80 per year.


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  • (Score: 1) by mce on Wednesday December 15 2021, @11:40AM

    by mce (2811) on Wednesday December 15 2021, @11:40AM (#1205267)

    Keyless fobs really do not need a cell network to work. They talk directly to the car using short range technology. The scenarios you describe are some of the reasons (but not all - think also about energy consumption and battery life) why things are done this way. Car OEMs don't want to be bothered with support calls just because a car can't be started due to lack of a cell phone network. They also don't want to be bothered with bad press about people dying in the desert or in another country because their car wouldn't start for no "good" reason.

    As an aside, note that a driver not having coverage is not the same as the car not having coverage. Any modern car most certainly does have the capability to phone home - or be phoned from home - even if/when the driver is not carrying any phone at all. The car has a phone with (soldered) SIM card built in. That SIM for sure is such that it will still have coverage when it ends up outside the car's native country - as long as there is "any" network at all, that is. So maybe not hundreds of miles into a desert or rain forest, but that's another topic, and - as said - is one of the reasons key fobs don't depend on cell coverage.

    Warning: I used to work for the company that developed most of the the core technology behind keyless fobs. I also used to work for that and other companies that developed cell phone modules for automotive use. So I might know a few things for real for once... :-)