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.”
Subscription services or software restricted features for cars should just be outlawed entirely.
Nobody likes these, if someone is willing to deal with a subscription product then they can do that aftermarket. The car itself should never come with something that will require recurring payments.
Nobody likes these
Shareholders love them
I think I can speak for most Americans (and as someone who owns stocks) fuck the shareholders.
I’m conflicted. On one hand, I’m a shareholder due to broad market investments in my 401k. On the other hand, I’m a consumer.
On net, screw this nonsense, just make good products and the recurring revenue will happen due to happy customers.
Should they though? The average lifespan of a car is 12 years. Even if they got someone to pay the subscription the entire time, that’s like 5% of the value of the car, spread over a length of time that makes it almost worthless. They could more easily charge an extra 1500 for the car, which is more money and it’s money they get now and isn’t picked apart by inflation.
It’s not especially good financially in the short or long term and is harmful to the brand image and customer loyalty.
Even if they got someone to pay the subscription the entire time, that’s like 5% of the value of the car, spread over a length of time that makes it almost worthless.
It’s a revenue stream you can collect after the vehicle is sold. Continuous cash flow means long term revenue stability for the business.
And its the introduction of a model that can scale. Once you’ve got someone’s account information, you can sell them more shit (or just sell their data to advertisers). This is just the tip of the spear. Tesla, BMW, and Mercedes are all experimenting with Vehicle as a Service product models.
Investors love the possibility of revenue growth, and these programs promise the possibility of high margin after market sales for the life of the vehicle.
harmful to the brand image and customer loyalty
Not when everyone is doing it
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.
I was considering a Mazda for my next car. Now I’m not.
I live in a place that gets fucking cold in the winter. If the normal fob option were always available and you get the option to pay for the convenience using an app, that would be one thing - though $10/month for that is ridiculous. But removing the fob option and locking this basic feature behind a subscription is exactly the sort of game I don’t want my vehicle to play with me.
Go ahead and sell roadside coverage, parts/repairs, batteries, get royalties from Sirius or whatever for extra cash flow. Make a great app that adds new convenient live-service features and is worth paying for, even. But fuck all these new subscription un-gimping games.
The subscriptions is free for the first few years so if you plan on trading it in definitely still worth it. While this does piss me off I still really like my mazda 2020
That’s called giving the drugs for free then taking it away so the addiction kicks in. Fuck that noise. Stop justifying it because it’s ‘free for now’
ISPs do this too…go look for new service, it’s a royal pain in the cock trying to find the actual cost before bullshit sales that can be taken away with minutes.
“you wouldn’t download a car” was prophetic
I don’t want anything smart in my car. I want a(n electric) engine that starts with a goddamned physical key that turns in a physical ignition. I want a volume knob that turns with a 1:1 ratio to the volume, ditto for climate control fan speed and temperature. The only thing I want my phone to do in conjunction with my cLilar is display the GPS.
So true… for me personally, I’d love to have a battery EV vehicle, but i just want a regular vehicle with a battery powerplant. I don’t want a mobile IOT advertising surveillance DRM non-repairable planned-olsolescence mobile which is how so many new vehicles are designed.
I feel like this is what we all signed up for vs what they delivered.
“capitalism promotes healthy competition”
But but, did you see the new “brand x brand x brand” product? The one where all the brands are owned by the same mega-corp and they just decided to smoosh their products together?
Innovation is dead and buried.
One of the biggest lie of all time.
Don’t forget innovation:
Hilariously, due to the teardrop shape, cars like this would be more aerodynamic if the shell was reversed.
Car companies do not want to innovate, because aerodynamic cars are “lame”, “soy”, etc.
People seem to have a low tolerance for what is considered weird when it comes to cars. That’s why most cars look the same. (Likely due to marketing and peer pressure)
Bar Atera, Ariel and a couple of other “unconventional” designs, and a handful of other concept cars. (Fuck the cybercrap, it’s the opposite of innovation)
TL;DR: cars could be way more aerodynamically efficient, but they aren’t, because people are peopleing.
Interesting and strange that there really as a car “uncanny valley”.
And Communism does so much “better”:
Why don’t you go to Cuba and ask how they’ve been able to do it for ~100 years. Those people have self-reliance down to a fucking science at this point, and the cars they have been keeping running for 60+ years are a perfect example of it. Imagine if they were actually allowed to participate in global commerce.
This needs to be banned. In fact, “licenses” for things you buy should be outright banned entirely.
Car manufacturers are being so blatant about this stuff. It goes to show that they know how slow regulation is and they can milk it for all its worth.
Having a car without internet connectivity would be a feature for privacy minded consumers
Everything is becoming public and opt-out. Privacy is beyond dead.
Bets on which car company is going to be the first to EOL a server and brick a bunch of cars because some key feature is now “unsupported”?
I remember a time when these features were just “standard” and car makers ad campaigns all around features just being standard, making the car more enticing than their competitors.
Now I dread the idea of getting a vehicle in the future because of bull shit like this.
But fuck the consumer amirite?
When did customers become consumers?
I’m more concerned with the transformations from customers to product.
“Hey, buy our expensive shit but also give us all your data so we can also sell it to other companies.”
I don’t think unlocking or starting your car from an app was ever standard
Y’know you’re likely correct and that’s totally my bad. I got confused about the remote start from the key fob. I can understand the remote start from the app being a paid thing for sure, like OnStar or specifically in my case the myChevrolet app.
I can understand the remote start from the app being a paid thing for sure.
But why would it need to be? The connectivity from the app is there already, it takes the manufacturer very little to handle the occasional web request. Especially if it can be done for free through third party software.
There is no need for the internet to use remote start
Nice for you to live somewhere mild enough your car doesn’t need to pre-heat but some people live in Chicago and other places where it still snows and pre-heating the car is a must 3 months of the year.
I live in a snowy climate and we did just fine before the invention of wireless starters. My car does not have one and we manage just fine.
That is a great QoL, but let’s not pretend this is necessary.
My main point is fuck subscription for every fucking thing to try and squeeze more money, even worst by removing features and putting them back behind a paywall.
However, we need to stop saying that things are necessary when most of the time they are convenient.
Because that is how they get us to pay. Every little inconvenience is treated as if it absolutely needs to be adressed.
Then, we can say fuck off to these companies and live with the inconveniences they left on purpose to sell a subscription.
But until, companies will push these hardware subscriptions because it nets them more money.
When I was like 20 or so and needed to drive every morning and it was -25C or colder outside, I’d go outside in my t-shirt, start the engine, remove the key (because the ignition lock was so worn, I could remove it), lock the car, go back inside
Woke me right up and afterwards when I went outside with proper winter clothing, I didn’t feel the least bit cold. Plus the car had a nice big gasoline V6 as opposed to the diesels I mostly drive nowadays, so it actually did manage to defrost the windshield in <10 minutes no problem.
An API is not copyrightable 🤔
it seems everything is copyrightable if you are rich enough
deleted by creator
There are no penalties for filling a bogus DMCA takedown and the legal cost for restoring the content falls on the victim of such a takedown: the DMCA legislation was designed exactly for it to be used as Mazda and many other use it against individuals and small companies who can’t spend thousands of dollars fighting bogus takedowns.
Why is there no big alternative hosted outside of the US where your DMCA does not apply?
And if they want to attack car owners for doing what they want with their own car let’s go to court and see how fast their bullshit holds up.
Can’t wait for the inevitable “You don’t actually own the car, you just have a lifetime licence/lease to use the car”
That’s being normalized right now with video games. It’ll happen with other things soon enough too.
