• BCsven
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    8 months ago

    Oh I hate it. Like Toyota was offering remote car start but only if you subscribed online, otherwise your remote start button would get blocked by software. They walked it back because of consumer backlash, but not enough consumers complain. Meanwhile Ford pattented a drive home feature so if you miss a car payment it cripples your car, and further non payment the vehicle will drive itself back to the dealership

    • barsquid@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Imagine telling this to a time traveler from the 20th Century. “You have self-driving cars?” “Yeah, how else will they get back to the dealership when you miss a payment?” LOL fuck this timeline.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Toyota was offering remote car start but only if you subscribed online

      That’s different - it relies on having an active cellular connection in the car and older cell towers (5G has improved this dramatically) could only handle a hundred or so active connections at once, so Toyota is absolutely paying a monthly fee to access the cell network. It makes sense to pass that on to the customers who wish to use the feature.

      Those fees have gone down, since not only is 5G much cheaper per customer (for the cell network), everyone switching to 5G has taken the pressure off older wireless protocols so they’re almost never crowded anymore - so they can pretty much have as many cars connected as they want for near zero cost.

      • BCsven
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        8 months ago

        There is no need for access to a cell signal amd a server though, when you wamt to clicl start.from your living room… You can use the same fob tech as lock umlock your car like cars had prior. Or. you can buy after market remote start kits, Toyota waa juat frying to jump on the SaaS bandwagon