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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
(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.
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