Toyota Made Its Key Fob Remote Start into a Subscription Service

Toyota, which has spent decades building a strong reputation for reliability, value, and innovation, seems poised to erase those efforts.

- They are doing everything they can to slow the transition to electric cars.

- More than any other car company they seem to be happy to price gouge with the most unfavorable financing available.

- Now this. Price gouging and requiring a subscription for something every other car company includes in the price

“ What's even more unknown is how technology might affect something like this in the future. For example, cellular providers in the U.S. have earmarked the end of the 3G cellular network, a technology that many vehicles rely on today in order to call home to the mothership, so to speak. We've got a whole explainer on that available here, but the long and the short of it is that the situation is particularly dire for Toyota owners.

While some other manufacturers are retrofitting vehicles to be compatible with newer LTE networks, Toyota is discontinuing Connected Services support for the affected vehicles, all of which are model year 2019 or earlier. A Toyota spokesperson confirmed to The Drive that it has no plans to offer an upgrade, paid or otherwise, to vehicles affected by the 3G shutdown. Perhaps not coincidentally, the automaker also announced that it has "enhanced" vehicles built before Nov. 12, 2018, to no longer require a subscription for the key fob's remote start feature to function.”

The old ‘be cautious of what you build on’ advice applies here.

Ah corporate greed ... will it last?

Like everybody can afford $8 monthly subscription to tens of thousandth pseudo-micro-services ! Madness.

I just bought a Tacoma. To be clear, the "remote start" is not what you are paying for. You subscribe to their remote connect service, and that is only one aspect.

You can also see where your car is in near-realtime, set a speed governor, stop the car, and a myriad of other data analytics are available.

If my truck was stolen, not only could I track it, but I could set it to not move.

Anecdotally, I have been told remote start via the keyfob will continue to work if the service ends. You just lose the app connectivity, which means I wouldn't be able to start my car while still in the mall

Presumably this uses a SIM card, where Toyota is paying a network provider for connectivity. So... it seems reasonable to ask for a subscription payment?

Although, I think making a key fob with a SIM card makes it unnecessary complicated, I wonder if on the fob side it's Bluetooth instead, and requires a smartphone with connectivity, plus a Toyota app.

I guess it'd be better for them to add the x years' (x = average car's lifetime) worth of SIM subscription fee to the base price of the car, to stop this complaining.

Just to clarify, this is the normal remote fob that operates on 433mhz, same as the one that opens and closes doors. This is not anything cell based. The same fob that has been doing this for free since the early 90s. Toyota has ZERO opex to provide this. It is not cellular. It doesn’t need a sim. This is just a money grab. Next year maybe you’ll need to pay extra for remote door unlocking. And in 2025, the panic button on the remote will be $5 a press.

So I never had a car with ”remote start” and maybe that’s why but is this feature actually something people use a lot? And if so then why?

Genuinely curious.

A lawyer's take on the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLlzAv2GTdc

Subaru too