Mazda recently surprised customers by requiring them to sign up for a subscription in order to keep certain services. Now, notable right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann is calling out the brand.

It’s important to clarify that there are two very different types of remote start we’re talking about here. The first type is the one many people are familiar with where you use the key fob to start the vehicle. The second method involves using another device like a smartphone to start the car. In the latter, connected services do the heavy lifting.

Transition to paid services

What is wild is that Mazda used to offer the first option on the fob. Now, it only offers the second kind, where one starts the car via phone through its connected services for a $10 monthly subscription, which comes to $120 a year. Rossmann points out that one individual, Brandon Rorthweiler, developed a workaround in 2023 to enable remote start without Mazda’s subscription fees.

However, according to Ars Technica, Mazda filed a DMCA takedown notice to kill that open-source project. The company claimed it contained code that violated “[Mazda’s] copyright ownership” and used “certain Mazda information, including proprietary API information.”

  • imposedsensation@lemmynsfw.com
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    9 hours ago

    I think it’s fair if Mazda has to operate a server to enable it, but I think Mazda should have to pay car owners to allow them to connect the car to a mobile network, especially for operating their spyware/telemetry.

    • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      Well it’s double shit if you can’t get the remote start on a FOB now. Fuck Mazda for that bullshit.

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
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      5 hours ago

      I think it’s fair if Mazda has to operate a server to enable it

      No. Either you support it for a predetermined few decades as part of the vheicle cost, or let the consumer switch to a different service.

    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
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      8 hours ago

      OK, they can add $1 to the price of the car for a lifetime subscription (and no the load probably will never add up to that).

        • T156@lemmy.world
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          2 hours ago

          But not that much more.

          A consumer mobile connection is about $30 a month. A car company could get it cheaper, not just by buying in bulk, but also because by not needing that much bandwidth for their connection.

          • SaltySalamander@fedia.io
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            5 hours ago

            A car is is multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars

            Fucking what?

            This is the equivalent of “I mean, it’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?”