Toyota 'reviewing' key fob remote start subscription plan after blowback
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
Also the cell connection seems problematic. Like, 4 years ago I bought my uncle a phone, and I just got notice that I have to upgrade him because t-mobiles 3g is going away. How many of my cars fancy connected features will work in 4 years?
In other words, they primarily care about the first owner, and then primarily the first three years of the first owner. Everything outside that first owner's first three years is only baked-in as a matter of "resale value" -- if the entire industry adopts stuff that goes obsolete after two years, there is no competitive advantage in being err, less-obsolete.
e: also, whoever finances the car doesn't really care either, the financing will just be more expensive.
Resale value also affects the quality of the car as experienced in the first few years.
For these reasons, the brand is positively affected by being associated with a high resale value, assuming it wants to stand for quality.
Clog up downstream and it will affect upstream.
No, a consumer won’t do that kind of calculus, not directly, but a leasing firm sure will.
It hit me like a brick when I walked into a Toyota dealership to get some transmission oil from the parts department recently.
The saleroom was luxurious. You could eat off of the floor and check your teeth in it afterward, it was so shiny.
All of the sales people looked tip top.
I felt like I had just walked into a casino.
Then I found the parts desk... a dingy, tiny window in a cramped area in the back of the dealership where I had to stand (no chairs) for literally 10 minutes until somebody was able to even notice I was there.
Seemed pretty clear what their main goal was.
The parts dept does not want to sell to you directly, like autozone, they want to sell to you via your "service advisor" when you bring your car in for them to change your fluids for you
US makes (big 3, not Tesla) are just fine selling you parts. Not only are they fine with it they aren't marked up as insanely high as I remember with decades of Honda and Toyota ownership. In fact you can go to AC/Delco, Ford, or Mopar's website and just buy parts directly with lots of diagrams and cheap prices sent right to your home. If you go to the dealer parts dept desk its usually right behind the sales area and they share the same space for the most part. Displaying lots of fancy part upgrades and options you could be purchasing from their parts department.
Its a pretty different experience after 25 years of Japanese vehicles.
My Toyotas were built like tanks, they were virtually indestructible, in over 15 years, I had one major repair that I needed a shop for (and that was related to the seatbelt). Now, with my Ford (and arguably in homeoffice, meaning I do not drive that much anymore), it feels the car's more in the repair shop than on the road.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_used_vehicle_exportin...
Anyways, official sites:
* https://parts-catalog.acdelco.com
I'm not sure how all of them work but mopar the dealerships decide if they want to be part of it. If they do then the website is already made and maintained. If somebody buys parts off of it they will direct the sale to a given dealership based on some criteria I don't know. Maybe just whats closest and in stock according to their inventory.
It is telling that the "Big 3" have their own branding for their parts divisions, where I dont believe any of the other manufacturers do?
It’s like rockets. The cheapest bidder gets the contract, and they make the worst quality stuff that they possibly can, just enough to get them across the line.
If you want actual good quality parts, you have to go elsewhere.
The problem is that the industry works very hard to hide where that “elsewhere” might be, so that you can’t find them and work your way around the system.
I would call up the dealership parts department and order something, they would either deliver it or let me know what the ETA was. All net-30 terms, and a stupidly low friction process. Even the chain parts stores have separate phone lines for commercial customers, I never had to hold when buying from Advance Auto b/c there was a different commercial number that they only gave to commercial customers. The garage mechanic isn't really the focus of even the chain parts stores, they make their money on commercial customers.
However, I'm glad they at least maintain the retail friendliness that they do. Try walking into your local Fastenal or Grainger without a commercial account, some of their stores just won't sell to the public. Dealer parts departments have a very similar model to a specialty industrial supplier, where retail sales aren't enough of a priority to really bother with.
And frankly, retail sales take a lot of time for them, since the customers need a lot more help. Half the time, if I was calling I already had the part number available and knew if they needed the last 8 of the VIN number and a $500 transaction only took 2 minutes of the parts managers time.
It isn't a conspiracy, they just prioritize their high value customers way more. Same applies in software. I get way better support from our specialty ERP provider than I do from Google. We pay decent money to Google, but they wouldn't notice losing us as a customer, while the ERP firm would.
It isn't some conspiracy to keep you from fixing your car. That conspiracy is their engineering management doesn't want the cars to be fixable at all, and they want any unfortunate mechanic who has to deal with the abomination to properly suffer. --insert stackoverflow post about using regex for html--
Simple fact is competition is fierce, a good shop is worth thousands per day, and don't tie up your time. Compared to Jim who wants to explain the sound his car makes, show terrible pictures of nothing important, and buy just one off brand sparkplug...well you see where this goes.
They provide tiered pricing -- If I tend to buy a lot of xyz, then I get better pricing on it, etc.
Being a reasonable folk, I only mark up a handful of % off my price -- I hunch many in my industry do a similar markup off retail.
Pricing is a very strange world.
As others pointed out, they require a minimum purchase volume typically.
We had one guy who wasn't a business per se, but we made him an account because he spent so much money. He was an enthusiast who was always working on other people's cars. We didn't deliver to him, though.
Electronic injection control, ABS, suspension control, tire pressure sensors, near objects detection, backing monitor, automatic climate control etc.
The buggy stuff stands out while the careful done part doesn’t get much attention, as usual (and I think it should be so, we’re supposed to use as naturally as possible)
PS: most 20 years old cars are death traps compared to current cars, I’m not sure it’s a good advice to push people to keep using them for that long.
False, just because a car is "new" does not make it better. There is a global marketplace, and cars manufactured in China, Japan, India do not meet the same safety standards as if they were made in Japan for the USA market, or EU/USA manufactured cars.
Cars made by Japanese Manufacturers for Japan Domestic market do not have to meet much modern standards by EU/US (rightly so, becuase it isn't sold in those markets) but your statement itself is egregious.
I present to you:
Toyota Wigi/Agya/Ayla (Also badge engineering it's actually made by Daihatsu!)
I wrote so much about this car in another blog, because it's quite fascinating actually, you can buy the base, base, no ac vent model for new at $7,000 or 100,000,000 IDR - Indonesian Rupiah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kzxn_Vob94
or
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGIZgVPvE1g
No Airbags, NO Radio, no ac vents, no real b or c pillars. Just a cheap mass manufactured car that has no need to pass true safety tests.
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When I'm abroad, and I want to buy a car, I look for one that was manufactured and sold also in the USA market so that it meets NTHSA standards - Even if the car was assembled in the country, e.g. indonesia or Philippines, the chassis is 99% half assembled before entering due to tariff engineering - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_engineering (also why the Subaru Brat had seats in the truck bed that were, basically useless)
So that means a 10-20yr old Honda CR-V, Fit, etc is much more safer than a new car from a major manufacturer.
Then we get into the fun cars manufactured by Chinese companies. But that's another post. :)
If you stay within a category there will be progressive improvements that cumulate enough to be a big difference 20 years after.
I also totally agree that some cars don’t need to be built to handle getting crushed by a tank if they’re supposed to be lightweight low speed convenience vehicles. Now those still see enough improvement to be changed after a few decades IMO.
This seems like a super reliable way to purchase a totaled vehicle, no?
Manufacturers make different models. A and B.
A is sold in USA, EU, Rest of the World.
B is only sold in APAC market.
Due to economy of scales, it's much easier to manufacturer the same car that fits all standards as model A and not to remove or replace parts.
This means that there will be a general manufacturing plant of chassis, or that there are similar manufacturing plants around the world. This is common for Toyota, Subaru, Mercedes, BMW. BMW has plants in South AFrica, Germany and south Carolinia. You can see where the car was built by the first VIN number, if it's a number like 4 it's USA, if it's W it's Germany.
This means also if a car is sold in another country, it has tarrifs upon entering, so the manufacturer would semi build up the car in Country of origin, and then finish the assembly in Country where it's finally sold which usually has cheaper labor but since employs locals, has a lower tariff rate and sells for a lower price new.
This means that it will meet USA/EU safety standards because the assembly line in the country of origin is not going to defer to make cars that far from a base acceptable standard. This makes more sense if you know/read of the Toyota Production System, TPS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Production_System basically Henry Ford and Assembly Line production x4.
tl;dr if car model/trim is sold in USA, EU - car companies save money by basing design/safety standards to meet US/EU and will give that away for rest of the world with no such standards because it's more expensive to deviate from the assembly line process or even from vehicle branding.
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For car model B, that has no USA/EU release schedule, car manufacturers then will deliver a much cheaper car w/o the safety equipment because it isn't required. Most of APAC barely only requires a speedometer, seatbelt and wipers on windows with default lights. E.g. no reverse camera, no bumpers that can withstand 5-10mph incidents w/o impaling people, very small B and C pillars (less roll over protection(, no airbag, no side airbags, etc.
These small things add up to the BOM or build of material, reducing them reduces part cost, labor cost, manufacturing cost, shipping cost, and reaches the goal of more sales in APAC Where people are much more price sensitive. The average car purchase price in APAC is $13,000, e.g. Suzuki Carry, Mitsubishi Mirage G4, Toyota Wigo and in certain parts of Asia, less than $8000.
Which is why this example works - I'm buying a car that was marketed and sold in the USA but not necessarily "FROM" the USA. So it would not be crashed or totaled or that insurance video/car max tactics of fear.
It would be a car that was imported by the manufacturer as NEW, sold as NEW in the country and then go through deprecation, but since it meets USA/EU spec, it can very much be a better car than a "new" car because it has more safety built in, alongside other better creature comforts like power seats, actual HEAT (most cars in Asia do not include heat, only A/C - no heater core.) ABS, (still pretty rare in Asia), rear camera, etc - the thing is it has airbags, enforced B and C pillars, proper seat belts and also a bigger engine over 2L. Most Asian cars made for Asia market are sub 2L because of tariffs anyway.
tl;dr buying basic USA/EU cars in Asia is a luxury all around. You'll live if you have a roll over accident.
The only major safety feature it doesn’t have compared to current cars is side air bags and rear view camera. Calling them death traps is a little much.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29486093
It’s not just about feature checkboxes, there is gradual improvement on how the car handles impacts inside and outside the car.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/life-saving-benefits-of-esc...
Lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise control could be considered safety features also. I would rate them lower than the first two things I mentioned though, in terms of positive safety impact.
I've had lane assist try to slam me into a divider on a highway repeatedly. That definitely falls under the buggy part of the car.
VSC/ESC/TCS/VDC & etc. is like ABS as it uses the same wheel speed sensor, but instead of pulsing the calipers to prevent lock-up, it reduces the vehicle's engine output to prevent wheel slippage.
Its pretty good (especially in snow) but nowhere near as critical as good quality tires or ABS unless you drive like a maniac. Most of those older cars are still gonna be good in a crash, if you need some extra peace of mind consider a Volvo or an S-class MB for the crash stuff.
ESC/VSC is scattered around vehicles well into the 1990's.
Well that is very relative, especially in the case of a 2001 Honda Accord that had(/was designed for) Takata ammonium nitrate based airbags. So those have had to have One or more recalls, IDK whether the replacements are 'fixed' or if they still have a service life.
Broadly speaking, check the owners manual. Older cars (i.e. 10+ years old) are likely going to be more conservative in estimates the further back you go as the tech was newer.
> My experience is that all safety related items like airbags are treated as radioactive by independent shops and you have to go to the dealer to get them replaced.
I think this is a fear of liability; I think it might? be difficult for non-dealers to get proper-channel replacements. Ironically, the Takata incident only reinforces this mindset, as the potential liability exposure vs perceived competence if something does happen will cause most small shops to avoid them.
I know a guy who bought a 2007 (?) Toyota Tacoma and his frame cracked which was a recall but Toyota will not fix it now.
There were holes behind the steering, through which you can push a single steel wire clip going around at three points, and the whole horn pad comes off. Behind the pad was a soft steel frame sandwiched between the bag and the inflator by threaded rods from bag side.
A thick yellow cable and a ground wire was attached through steering “clockspring”/“spiral cable”. A tab cleverly designed locked it so as to never loosen from vibrations. Ground wire seemed to double as the horn switch wire.
The particular inflator I had removed was a charred metal can with a flange that looks a bit like a small sachertorte or a large Korean chocolate pie with dozen 2-3mm(~1/10”) gas holes punched along its circumference.
As far as I can see, the thermoplastic horn pad alone seems to be somewhat distribution controlled, but the whole bag with cover and frames is through dealerships for $300-600. There seems to be remarkable cost saving is going on, and there seems to be much less variations, to the wheel, the above-mentioned frame, and the inflator, than for cars and trims and horn pads, looking at internet auctioning websites. Some parts are just the same, it seems.
These nitrate or any of explosive charges in common uses generally has expiry date and even shelf lives at temperatures; X months at 100F, Y years at -30C, and so on, but rarely going as long as a decade or longer. Obvious intuition is that total energy must decrease over time, but often their peak pressure of explosion increases dramatically, especially after experiencing high heat and/or vibration. This is what lead to Takata recalls: the peak became so high that the can didn’t hold.
With these pieces of knowledges, I think that airbags ideally should be temperature monitored and regularly replaced once per few years. It’s almost trivial to do, at least for driver’s front airbag. It might even be possible for drivers to do. The heavy caveat to it is that replacing all airbags for a car would cost couple grands every year or two per car for tens of millions of cars on the road. That’s difficult.
He popped the airbag/horn assembly off the steering wheel by inserting a screwdriver in a hole I never noticed on the side of the steering wheel. He unplugged the whole assembly, plugged in the new one, clipped it in place and was done. Took maybe one minute.
This could EASILY be a service part, based on what I saw. I assume it isn’t for liability reasons. Presumably that is also why the parts are expensive. Not for manufacturing but for R&D and liability.
That means they can only be transported by vehicles classed to carry dangerous goods (with many regulations).
I would also assume that they have specialty storage requirements - the warehouse shelf for normal parts would not be regarded as safe.
I am in New Zealand, but I am guessing that the requirements in the US are probably more restrictive than here because we rarely sue over here.
Surely has a rear view mirror which does the same thing.
Death traps? No.
Memory leaks? No.”
So I know when my tire pressure is low? Roads have hazards on them, I'd prefer to know something is causing my tire to slowly leak well before it starts to cause a problem.
Also TPMSs aren't critical path tech, if they break down the car still runs fine.
> ABS? Learn to brake.
Is this a joke? ABS has saved countless lives. In emergency situations higher order thinking goes out the window. ABS is a "do what needs to be done to save my life right now" system.
Heck even automatic climate control is pretty damn simple. While I don't prefer using it, a thermostat that turns a heater on or off is not exactly new technology. Setting up a feedback loop to narrow in on "how hot" the heater should be set to for the fan to kept continuously while keeping ambient air at a constant temperature is also quite simple. This is 40-50+ year old tech.
My car has a full blown ECU for my seat memory. And a second one for the passenger seat memory. Another one for my soft close trunk. One for my HUD. One for my gauge cluster. One that exists entire for... playing fake engine sounds. One for the head unit, which is a separate ECU from the one for the amplifier, which is in turn separate from the DVD changer ECU. One climate control... but only in the rear! Front gets a separate ECU for AC. One for interior accent lighting (not lighting your dashboard, I mean dim lights around your door handle).
And if you think ECU is a stretch here, these are individually versioned ECUs all residing on a shared bus. If my amplifier ECU dies, the optical fiber ring it's connected to might go down. Things connected to that bus include 911 emergency dialing the headunit's RTC...
I never said that.
I said the examples pointer out by the GP post were all terrible examples to demonstrate too many computers in a car.
Also ECU is Engine Control Unit. Your seat probably has a tiny microcontroller in it, MCU.
And yes, your examples are all great examples of complexity that can break.
Anti-lock breaks, bad example. Tire Pressure Monitors, bad example.
Computer controlled LED accent lighting, good example.
I mean they're mostly right in their comment, a large number of people don't even know what the tpms light is (https://www.aftermarketnews.com/forty-two-percent-of-drivers...)
Climate control is a largely overcomplicated system in many cars, using everything from humidity sensors to skin temp scans and then refusing to work when any one part stops working
Adaptive suspensions have left entire generations of vehicles pretty much unusable as they slowly fail and essentially "total" perfectly good cars
Even if they're wrong on one or two counts, the point is clear enough...
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Also anyone who knows cars knows when ECU is referring to an Electronic Control Unit from context...
It's been a few decades since anyone really got confused by that one.
The ECU in charge of the engine in this car is called the "Digital Motor Electronics" ECU or DME.
They are proper ECUs with a lot more complexity than a single MCU. Every single one is a node interconnected with separate firmware versions that need to sync up in certain ways.
The DME in charge of the engine is treated with exactly the same as the ECU in charge of accent lighting when it comes to manufacturer tooling, the tooling simply enumerates over these ECUs and provides an identical interface to them.
1. ABS is banned in Formula 1. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether humans brake as well as a computer
2. You only have one brake pedal. How can you achieve maximum braking effort without ABS if not all wheels have equal traction?
Not at all. It tells you something about whether Formula 1 drivers brake as well as a computer. Most humans driving cars have a very different level of driving skill from a Formula 1 driver -- especially when it comes to handling extreme conditions that they don't often encounter.
On the Kia, the first day I used it the radio just froze up. I had to get a tooth pick to push the hidden reboot button. Every time I start the car the volume on the radio is deafening even though I turned it off at a low volume. It also attempts to download my music off my phone even though Im using spotify. Every time. There are firmware updates... if you have the 2014 model. The worst thing it did is randomly dial 911 when my phone was connected despite absolutely nothing having happened.
My BRZ has a more modern setup, that absolutely does not work with apple car play. I had it working for ten minutes and then it just randomly stopped. This is a brand new car and a brand new phone. Also replacement keys are absurdly expensive in order to provide me the benefit of... not turning a key? Its a stick shift so remote start is pointless since someone has to press the clutch in.
Im basically better off with the aux port.
Yes the internal engine electronics are nice but my experience with anything in the cabin is that it quickly becomes trash. The thing that annoys me is that when I inevitably have to replace these things, Im certain its going to be incredibly overpriced and I will have used like zero of its broken features.
The car I used to have, a 2013 FRS... perfect. Very basic stereo. All analog guages. Nothing went wrong ever.
Sometimes the whole stereo just freezes up even when I'm not using Car Play, or the FM radio just stops with some Android error message.
Generally I find the Bluetooth is more reliable than Car Play so I just use that. I now keep my old iPhone around and tether it to my new iPhone and use the old one for navigation.
Unfortunately the car does not have an aux jack, so Bluetooth is the next best thing.
I've thought about replacing it but Crutchfield flatly says they don't recommend replacing it at all, which makes sense - the backup camera displays on there and the whole unit has controls on the steering wheel, which I doubt would work with a third-party replacement. If a company that sells car stereos recommends that I don't buy one, I'd be a fool not to listen.
I have rented newer cars that have better infotainment systems but they make other changes I'm not crazy about - they now have entertainment information in the main instrument panel, leading them to shrink the speedometer to make space for it. Speed is the most important thing I need to know when driving, so don't shrink the speedometer. So I'm just not convinced a new car will be any better on the whole (and it's hard to get a new car now anyway) so I'll just keep driving this one.
I have really wondered how fun they are to drive. They are super fun, right?
They seem really fun and they look great.
Also, Be honest: Initial D fan?
I have driven stick shift cars my whole life, and never encountered one where I had to press in the clutch to start the engine.
On the other hand my 1990 Honda motorcycle must be in neutral to start (there is no clutch position switch) and I don't use the clutch there. Very handy because people love to sit on it for selfies when I park it and they tend to jam it into gear while crawling on it. I assume it is in neutral (I always park that way) and if I hit the starter in gear it would shoot across the street. Thinking about it I suppose that protects me from bumping the starter while riding as well.
It had to be in neutral to park but no guarantee randos haven’t crawled on it. So far the switch did it’s job.
Every stick car I've owned (2.5 Saturns, 1 Subaru) has had some sort of interlock switch set up such that if the clutch pedal was not pressed in, turning the ignition would do nothing, whether or not the Car is in gear.
This was in the UK where driving a manual is the expectation for a test - if you take the test in an automatic you are issued a limited licence which prohibits driving manual cars (which is the large majority of cars in Europe).
I have noticed when driving/being driven in the US that handbrakes are hardly used. I have partly assumed as 'P' on an automatic is sufficient most of the time, and also that education seems to be different - lots of people call it the e(mergency)-brake, i.e. not something to be used regularly.
That all being said, all the manuals I've driven in the last ten or so years require the clutch depressed to start the engine, which always felt like a strange requirement as I knew it was in neutral. I've never driven a manual in the US so I have no idea what's standard there.
Every car I've had since then has required me to depress the clutch before it will attempt to turn over the engine.
I think it's mostly a USA thing? Too many lawyers.
My 90s BMW (US market) didn't need the clutch pressed to start, but all my other cars have had that annoyance. I usually disable it so I can start the car normally.
The built-in mapping/nav system is light years ahead of even the latest apps by Apple and Google. With just a couple taps of the iDrive knob I can add a stop for a rest area or gas station en-route. There is even a prompt for this when the gas reserve is reached. Maps are easy to read and convey useful information like street names and arterial/freeways even when navigation is disabled.
I was impressed by the tech package on the vehicle but had all the same concerns: What is this thing going to be like in a few years?
Well. I have a 2013 Golf which came with a pretty sweet 2 DIN media head unit. 250 dollars and I have an android replacement head unit which supports all the steering wheel buttons and shows various status info based on a direct connection to the CANBus.
Granted: my car is far simpler than a 2022 Sonata. However there is a bustling aftermarket which can future proof your vehicle (somewhat). Assuming the car companies do not manage to lobby congress into outlawing aftermarket parts (and you can bet they would love to).
That's very exagerated. 20 years is 2001 (2002 models, really). By then you had really good ABS, modern airbags (not the early 90s type), often good traction control, crash structures. Anything added since it's either mostly unnecessary or just asymptotically incremental.
20 years isn't "that long", the useful lifetime of a car is way more than that.
But a Prius is effectively an electric car with a gas engine bolted onto the drive train.
We are upto some finance offering 84 mo;s now for a new car purchase, 7 years
Image buying a car today, still making payments on it 5 years from now, and many of the core features stop working because cell network drops support
When I bought my car three months ago, the dealer said (and thought it was as insane as I did) that they had multiple lenders who would write 96 and 108 month loans.
>> the longer loan gives you way more financial flexibility with very little downside.. so yeah.
Yea if there is no prepayment mentalities, it make sense to get the longest loan you can as long as they are not massively increasing the rate with length. never know when something else in your life (job loss, medical, etc) may make it necessary to have that lower payment.
I just bought some LED headlights, and Ima gonna replace the old dim halogens with them next week. Already replaced the tail lights with LEDs, and what a nice improvement!
I refuse to drive at night anymore. Headlights are way too bright and a big reason is people putting poorly made and poorly aimed aftermarket headlights on.
The LED headlights come with a shade so they shouldn't shine upwards into traffic.
Turns out all I need is basic functionality, no infotainment and focus on driving experience and reliability. Sold my BMW, bought 2001 Mercedes-Benz Compressor, restored the hell out of it. After a year, repeated this with X308 Jag and Honda Civic R 2005. Now I have a fleet of cars with no problems and versatility for my use-case.
I will wait patiently for the option to electrify all of them. New cars are not exciting for me, to much "tech" for my taste. May be this is professional deformation, but I need a place in which I am in control all the time, with no distraction from the road and no "notifications", except the valuable ones related to the driving. I use a Garmin navigation and old iPod touch for infotainment needs.
You only notice it when it's buggy, that it saves you a lot of mpg, makes the car behave better, ... one hardly notices.
As soon as I replaced the battery, the car went back to normal. I had no idea how many electric systems were factoring into my every day experience, even with a manual transmission.
No onboard wifi, no remote start, no infotainment, no over the air updates. The simplicity also makes the parts super cheap. When I bought it, the headlights were very foggy and I considered taking it somewhere to have them re-polished. I assumed new headlights would cost several hundred dollars each but when I looked i was able to find a pair of headlights and new bulbs for under $250 (for comparison, one enclosure for a Stinger is like $600).
I think what I like most about the old SUV is the idea of self-reliance. Get into a modern car and you're reliant on the towers for WiFi, servers for OTA updates, service centers to work on your car, I could go on. My 4Runner is the opposite, it's not reliant on anything except my attention to it's care.
Existing vehicles may get it re-enabled for free, but next major vehicle refresh I suspect we'll see the RF remotes dumbed-down as hard as possible that you'll pay them a monthly fee to regain the functionality.
I have a hard time understanding how a feature like this may be "unintended". Someone needs to add this functionality to the car, it's not like it's an undefined behavior of the circuitry, akin to a C compiler. If they wanted to remove it, they should've just removed it.
Obviously remote start can't be unintentional, but this is the kind of thing that's usually a simple config change away from working. Likely 3rd parties would have RE'd how to enable it in the aftermarket like they have for other cars too.
I think they saw an easy way to monetize something most might not realize they already have (share holders love recurring revenue).
The backlash now leading to a poor back-pedaling, with the final act being to remove the included non-centralized feature. Overall just an early introduction to the app that will take precedence, leading to the desired subscription income.
They could have taken the route of, 'sorry for not documenting this better' - and keep remote start separate, and actually mention it in the manuals.
Instead they nearly shame users for learning about having the feature and being upset.
Hasn't Toyota differentiated itself in the past specifically by trying to provide lasting value?
With thousands of workers marching toward that goal for years?
What happened?
Even the less savvy consumers say WTF, so you can only imagine the cluelessness of the actual "businessmen" involved.
This is not the direction we want to go. Imagine if it was required the be on the subscription plan to use the remote at all, even to unlock your doors. And if you don’t pay the bill, you have to use the key by hand.
As anyone who has built internal infrastructure knows, giving a third party access to a system never designed for third party access isn’t always trivial. Even if the tech is up to scratch, there would still be a need to audit the system top to bottom. Documentation will need to be checked and improved.
Disabling a feature for a tiny number of customers is, by comparison, extremely simple.
- remote lock, unlock, start, check status
- see where my car is
- set alarm email notification if my kid leaves a predefined area or drives over a certain speed limit
- blue button for concierge
- red button for emergencies
Three free years then they want $20CAD/yr. I’m usually cranky about these things but this seems like a no brainer.
I’d pay that amount simply for the “human will see if your airbags went off and will cal 911 with your GPS position if you don’t respond.”
With this service I can lock my car from a different city. I can see where it is. I can set a polygon zone where it emails me if my kids leave the city and whatnot.
It requires cell service and servers. So I get that it requires a subscription.
That is really interesting. How did you handle that conversation with your kids? Or am I imagining that it's a bigger deal than it really is since they've grown up in a world where everything and every one is connected to the internet and tracked all the time?
Also - tracking when a vehicle leaves a polygon zone feels like a minor subset of the already more privacy invasive "Where is this vehicle" that presumably exists already.
But I think it’s a very good question. The way I would handle it is:
“I won’t set an alert. If I ever feel like I have to, you won’t be loaned the car. As always, please endeavour to text me a couple times to help me rest easy that you’re safe. You’ll understand when you’re a dad. If I don’t hear from you I might peek at your location just to know you’re where you planned to be.”
Naturally the conversation is much longer and spans a great many years.
It would work on any car. And have some with cell service capable as well. You can use it to monitor specifics on a car (ie oil pressure) in real-time. But you can get cellular enabled ones that would alert you or track the vehicle as well.
You absolutely don’t need something new for this and you can decouple it from your make/model so if you want to swap/change/upgrade or cancel it’s trivial.
Not sure if I believe that.
Cell phone based remote starts handy. I can start the car while out of fob range.
I really only use the cell unlock when I forget to grab the key to get something out of the car. I could walk back inside to get the key, but it ain't worth it.
Skiing is the most common case for me. On my last run, I'll typically get the car going while I'm on the lift. That means it's ready to drive (not just pre-hot) when I get my ski gear put away.
I think my wife uses it sometimes at work. She's on the far end of the building from her vehicle, so out of range of the fob.
I'm quite glad that we have mandatory eCall system for all newer cars in EU that must work regardless of any subscription. I think the only difference (but it may vary from manufacturer to manufacturer) is that without subscription it will only call 112, instead of allowing either 112 or their own call center.
If I pay $200 per year, I get the full mobile hotspot, wifi, 25GBs per month.
If I don't pay (& I didn't), it does NOT give me wifi access, but remote start from app, location, mileage, any notifications or messages all work, along with journey trackings.
It's just as absurd. I had an aftermarket remote start/keyless unlock installed on a car that didn't even have autolocks for less than a year's worth of proposed subscription fees for this. Greedy bastards justs being greedy.
With the service, you can click channels up or down. Without, you can only change channels in one direction which forces you to view all channels similar to the scene in Toy Story. This also gives all channels impressions, so it would benefit them. Who cares about the user.
Also with the service, the keypad on the remote can also be enabled so you can dial in the channel number directly. This is an upgrade of the basice service to the Pro version for an extra small nominal fee.
For example:
https://parts.subaru.com/p/Subaru_2021_Crosstrek/Remote-Engi...
Note that in the description they say:
> This Genuine Subaru Accessory is an alternative for customers who do not enroll in STARLINK Safety and Security Plus.
It’s still lame when you spend $45K on a car and you have to carry and extra device, if you don’t buy the subscription. They definitely want you to buy it though. Interesting to see Toyota try to force it on folks who are used to it being a given.
You are correct this is not the direction consumers want to go, but it is absolutely without a doubt the direction companies want to go.
I used to work at a very large Telco, and it was common practice at the end of the month for the Marketing team to sit around with their feet on the boardroom table and say things like "How about we introduce a $50 fee for event x (i.e. customer downgrades package / customer disconnects / customer changes payment method, etc.) - the event happens 10,000 times per month, so that means we just added half a mil in revenue a month. Done, the whole Marketing team gets a bonus.
A few months later they think of another similar idea, get bonuses again, around and around.
That is literally how it happens.
Dumb cars might be ridiculously hard to come by, and sooner — maybe — than anticipated; but this seems like a space just waiting for innovation.
All I have to offer is an idea for branding:
LobotomizeMyDevice
Skip the internet setup, plug in a chromecast, and never utilize any of the built in "features" of the TV. It's worked great for me so far.
I'm having flashbacks to certain trends in the video game industry. Can't wait for an ad on my dashboard when I start the car offering to unlock AWD for a "season pass" promotion because the always on GPS told the manufacturer the weather forecast was bad.
#BuyDumb
Edit: You people need to compare MSRPs and check out what adorns the driveways of "nice" places before you tell me Toyota is the people's car.
Not something I've ever associated with the brand. Are you referring to Lexus? (made by Toyota).
A Toyota? Think you're mistaking with a Land Rover or something.
In other countries with either lower income or lower income to car price ratio due to import taxes and road taxes on vehicles I can definitely see a Toyota possibility being a middle class symbol.
The Honda Accord was one in the late 90’s and early 2000’s in quite a few places around the world so the Camry which is quite comparable to the Accord might have been just that too.
Also the Land Cruiser might fill the same niche as the Land Rover does in some places (especially in countries where Land Rover doesn’t have good market penetration or it’s priced way above what the middle class can afford), whilst not a premium SUV per say it too shabby and it ain’t cheap the 5 door version is around £60K in the UK…
And regardless of price of the car the Prius was very popular with the middle class and upper middle class in its early years when it served essentially as an easy virtue signaling for many. At least until plenty of other hybrids/plug-in hybrids came out and ofc Teslas…
Now the Prius is pretty much relegated to Uber and Co. and even that would shift soon enough to full on EV’s at least until governments around the word would start taxing EV charging to compensate for drop in income from fuel duties.
I would say that in say Romania or Poland circa 2007 owning a new Camry would definitely make you an upper middle class, owning a Volvo or a BMW Series 5 would you make you quite rich…
What costs $30K in the US can easily cost double as many countries levy high taxes on imported vehicles and that while $30K in the US puts you near the bottom it’s upper middle class salary in many places around the world still.
The average gross wages across many EU members are still below what a new Camry costs…
Looking at hey.car a 2019 Camry Executive with 33K km on it goes for €30K in Germany… The Camry isn’t available in Greece but the Prius Plug-in is and it starts at €40K.
Considering that the average yearly gross income in Greece in 2020 was just under €17K even owning a new Yaris might make you middle class…
Most mid class or smaller SUVs, local or locally assembled (like Toyota or Ford) are around 10-15k dollars, brand new.
Interestingly, the Ford I bought in US was made & assembled in India..
Kia: Picanto - €15000
Toyota: New Yaris - €20000
Citroen: C3 - €20000
Nissan: Micra - €20700
Mazda: Mazda2 - €21000
Ford: Makes you go through a configurator, so assuming here this is the cheapest model: Fiesta - €22000
Volkswagen: Polo - €22000
Honda: Civic - €25000
Fiat: Call us or visit a dealer
BMW: i3/X1 - €44000
Kia being the cheapest is no surprise, but Toyota is joint for second place.
Of course, no new car is "the people's car", rather that's usually whichever car from the lower end of the market sold the most 5-10 years ago to be cheap now on the used market. Which ends up mostly being Ford focuses, Toyota corollas and various Nissan and Kia models.
It baffles me why anyone ever thought this was a good idea. Even if they back down, I'm left with an uncomfortable feeling that Toyota has lost their way.
Brand loyalty is hard to earn and apparently easy to fritter away.
Because C-level people are judged based on their revenue for the next quarter, not the legacy of the company.
Yet another company ruined by Wall Street, and greed disguised as "maximizing shareholder value."
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/15/business/corpor...
> Toshiba Corp. said Friday that a subsidiary booked fictitious sales of ¥43.5 billion in 26 transactions recorded only on paper. The scandal may again throw Toshiba into a crisis similar to its massive accounting fraud in 2015... In the troubled conglomerate’s 2015 accounting fraud, Toshiba padded profits by more than ¥200 billion.
However, Toyota corporate in Dallas is second fiddle to the Toyota in Japan and has decision making power for only some things. They certainly listen to the customer.
I have two Toyotas and have been considering a third, if we give my wife's old car to our daughter when she starts driving. But this $8/mo for remote start really irked me. The idea of $8/mo for something I use a few times a year, that'd just stick in my craw.
I understand it in the case of cellular network sorts of features, but remote start doesn't seem like one of those.
Everything will be a subscription, probably even the air you breath
It’s like the perfect year car. I still have a backup camera (in the rear view mirror) and automatic windows but it’s otherwise a dumb car and simple 3 dial AC controls. I’ve even repainted it and replaced much of the trim/headlights etc.
It’s by far my favorite truck ever, minus the size, though it’s gotten me out of totally unreasonable situations and even was able to help pull my buddies 2500 diesel out of the woods. So he no longer makes fun of me for it.
With that said, yeah, if I can’t find a similar alternative (no computer dash, none of this type nonsense. ) I guess I’m looking at alternatives. Maybe I’ll get a 2019 tundra in a few years.
BMW did something similar recently. A few years ago, they announced a plan to make Apple CarPlay a subscription service, then walked it back. And now it sounds like they've made plans for similar options (like heated seats) to be a subscription service.[1]
Not like I have any room to talk, I suppose, since I paid for an OTA feature on my Tesla (basic Autopilot, when it was cheap for 1 week), and at least in theory, the "premium connectivity" is a subscription service, even though it's "lifetime" on my car. (Whether or not it's lifetime when I sell the car to someone else is anybody's guess). And heated seats and homelink are standard on my car, but optional on others -- I wouldn't be surprised if heated seats were installed in all cars but just turned on in software. On the flipside, I was actually shocked to learn the non-homelink cars are, in fact, missing parts. It's actually somehow satisfying when an option you don't pay for is not physically installed, and therefore saved the automaker money. I'm not sure why, I guess I just like the feeling that it's not merely a software flag that you're paying for, or not.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/34547/bmw-is-planning-to-sell-...
I'm not sure why, I guess I just like the feeling that it's not merely a software flag that you're paying for, or not.
Agreed 100%; alternatively, it's because you actually got what you paid for, nothing less --- or more. The "your car already has the equipment, but you're not allowed to use it" mentality is what really angers people because it violates the concept of ownership.
And to be fair this also means that it's cheap enough to ship it to everybody then charge later. Hence, they're being ultra petty.
but everybody knows the big money is in brakes-as-a-service
Configuration complexity has a cost, too. In some cases it may be cheaper to build them all the same, especially if the low-spec option didn't sell many units and therefore would've had to make/save a lot of money per unit to justify its existence.
But in that case, my humble opinion is that they should simply enable the feature for everyone. Stop pretending there's a no-heated-seat version at all. The complexity of managing a software licensing mess is also significant, and I don't know that they've assigned a cost to the goodwill/bitterness when customers know they're hauling around stuff they can't use unless they agree to be nickel-and-dimed.
It seems Toyota might've just learned that has a cost.
Good.
Toyota owners have to pay $8/month to keep using their key fob for remote start - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29543194 - Dec 2021 (716 comments)
But there's so many layers. How is the car presentable? Can i being my own sim? What if i want to upgrade to 6g? 7g? Can i upgrade the modem?
Then the fob... kind of an interesting counter challenge. Anything with an internet connection, that can control the iot device? Does it work across public internet? Does it need to join a personal vpn? Does the car have it's own vpn it signs into? Can the fob be controlled? Maybe i want to geolocate the fob, or make it beep. Who iot controls the iot controller?
Imo i still really really though Webinos project had their heads best screwed on to handle all of this. It was a neat vpn ish system. I really want to get out of the days of all products being totalized experiences, that the product has tonhave all possible control options built in that you'd want. I want tech to be a start, to offer options. We've really walked back the great intertwingularizing, de-api'ed the world, after a very promising exciting ~2010 that failed to deliver every prpduct has gone on it's own. It sucks for this world, is evolutionarily so limited; we shouldnt make each piece of hardware have to produce each and any kind of software anyone might need for it, & we should not limit users to having to suffer what limited offerings the maker can muster.
Remote start (and entry) was a relatively common aftermarket option long before most people had Internet access, and you can probably still get such systems today.
Every item he listed existed before the internet, and in no way requires an internet connection. Except for one thing about using the car as some kind of surveillance camera.
It makes sense to me to want to be able to pre-heat a car, even if it's slightly out of wifi range, maybe parked down the street a bit or around the block. I don't have the experience, but I'd like to see some more willingness to accept or consider without jumping to reject. I feel like we're being rash to judge. I don't know what else this is good for, why I'd want it, what it's for. But I believe very strongly in making means possible, in using connectivity to open doors of possibility, extending people's range of agency, giving them force multipliers.
Given the very very very tiny amounts of data it needs, this stuff should be easy, should be free; it's just embarrassing to me that 99.99% of cellular providers make this stuff incredibly difficult/complicated for consumers: it's something Google-Fi for example shamed these fools with, by giving away free data-only sims that use your existing plan. Anyone else doing anything else feels like an old world exploiter. There's nearly no real marginal cost to the network, it's all just profit-motive, and it's a stupid brake on possibility.
Let's take the brakes off. Let's try to leave the doors of perception & possibility open.
I do payments via NFC and I can also use NFC to tap onto public transport.
My apartment complex lives in the 1990s still and issues key fobs for elevator access and hard keys for door access. Their fobs use some esoteric encryption method and cannot be copied so I broke open my apartment key fob, extracted the chip+coil, dremiled a housing into my phone's case and hot glue gun-ed it flush into my phone case.
My office HID card slips under my case.
Tried to extract and embed the chip/coil of my AnytimeFitness gym fob into my phone case but I broke the fob (costing $80 for a replacement - yikes). I might try to find someone that can clone it before trying that again - doesn't work with my $100 FOB scanner.
The building manager won't let me install a smart door lock on my door so I still have to carry keys.
So far, I need to carry 1 key for my door and a fob for gym - everything else I can do by just tapping my phone.
The device could be a phone, it could also be a smart watch. It could be a "smart" fob designed for key exchange. It could be a smart fob surgically embedded offering key exchange.
0. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/drive-nfc-hack-work/ 1. https://ajinabraham.com/blog/stealing-card-details-from-cont...
If the card is embossed you wouldn't even need to flip it!
> using it for payment at the moment is only secure through obscurity
EMV payments over NFC are mostly secure - there might be one-off exploits here and there but I wouldn't call it insecure. There are other protocols besides EMV such as magstripe contactless which are insecure but they're intended to replicate equally-insecure magnetic stripes, but that's more down to a certain country's reluctance to adopt modern payment systems rather than a fault of NFC.
With regards to stealing card details, keep in mind that the cardholder is not liable for card-not-present fraud unless 3D-Secure authentication was used.
Given NFC payments require you to unlock your phone, does that make them secure?
If access is granted digitally (rather than being statically issued via fob), then you could be able to grant people permission to enter dynamically. That way any number of devices could service the role of being a key.
You could use a phone, you could use a smart watch, you could use a QR code, you could use a smart fob or even something like a surgically embedded smart fob (into your hand).
Perhaps something as simple as SSH style private/public key exchange would suffice.
You could allow access to your apartment, car, workplace, gym through a web portal. Much like Github repository permission, match access to a person's identity. Perhaps you give some people free access while others you'd like to see a push notification for.
As far as security goes, while a fob is stealabe and cloneable, digital identities (think oauth-oidc) are significantly harder to obtain ilictly and it's also probably cheaper than the fob system.
Speaking as someone who's intimately familiar with automotive maintenance (its my job) your best bet if you're in the market for a car is always used. You'll miss out on the latest fad gadgets but most cars in the last decade are reliable to at least 250k miles and don't pull these kind of cash grab gimmicks.
The nicest thing you can get is off brand luxury. Hyundai equus or any Acura is going to meet and exceed your expectations for comfort and performance well after 100k miles, .and your insurance is lower because they aren't a painted target for theft. Crooks want Mercedes rims, they generally don't care about what's rolling along on a Chrysler 300
[1] Yes I know they don't make it anymore, I was going for the alliteration.
as for auto start-stop, it smacks of desperation. every one of these systems more than doubles the load on the starter motor without giving any concrete numbers for expected fuel or carbon savings. its also worth remembering starting a car includes a fueling requirement itself.
Due to the way taxes work here, you can get effectively more than 40% off a company car EV lease through salary sacrifice. All in, I could get a 4 year lease for more than 60% less than a 4 year car loan - with the caveat that I won't have the option of paying a balloon payment to take ownership at the end, but it still works out far better financially to do the lease. The lease also includes insurance, servicing and various other things. I also have heard pretty sketchy things about second hand EVs so would rather wait for that market to develop more.
The problem with leases is I can't pick my trim. If every car was manufactured with the same trim but used software unlock for features, I could just lease the standard model then pay for extra performance, better autopilot, keyless unlock, etc. month to month. It would also be great for hired cars where I could get in the car and pay £5 to unlock the upgraded model for 2 weeks.
Basically, what I'm saying is being able to subscribe to a car and add-on features at runtime is actually an improvement for me. I get it's absolutely not for everyone, but I personally would like it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUBtKNzoKZ4
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/12/29/the-b...
Even without a remote start most people will go out and start their car and let it warm up and the windows defrost so they can safely drive. Sure you can also scrape them to get ice/snow off but you typically also need the heat running for a bit to get them defogged or whatever.
These “experts” must never have actually been in a harsh winter. Apart from electric cars, modern cars are absolutely not pleasant when it’s 0F out after just 30 seconds of running.
Auto experts who have never lived anywhere north of Tucson, maybe.
Never buying new again at this point.
I buy a good car so I don’t have to have a lot of reoccurring costs…
Hopefully third parties can still install things?
With remote start you can walk up with an ice scraper/snow shovel and push the slurry right off then be on your way. Otherwise, you'll have to sit in the cold car for 5~10 minutes while the ice softens, then get back out and push it off (and that assumes your doors haven't frozen shut).
A lot of people in warmer climates think idling is something only jerks do, those in colder areas realize you cannot safely operate your vehicle without idling with the heater running full-bore.
PS - And while garages are an even better solution, it isn't realistic to expect nobody to live in town homes/apartments.
And we get winters where temperature drops to below -25C
It's not super strictly observed but people are concious of that and try to keep the defrost time to minimum rather scraping the ice physically than running engine for 10 minutes so the can just push off the slurry.
That said...it might be the LAST one you buy, and you'll take the opportunity to tell everyone you know how slimy the manufacturer is.
Potentially much more financially damaging than one person returning one car.
(I'm looking at YOU, Samsung.)
Cars are going the same way as phones, EVs will have substantially less mechanical maintenance required and will be much easier to recycle.
The "used" car market will disappear in the same way that people recycle phones. Yes, there might be some transfer of the physical car, but using it will require your subscription to "Personal Mobility As A Service", combined with road usage charges that are derived from distance charging, instead of the proxy of an excise/tax on gasoline/petroleum.
The Tesla business model is where the industry is headed. Dealerships, with the franchised model that developed, will disappear.
For EU, it's happening faster, as part of the phase out of ICE cars. Expect it by ~2030.