In the end, the KIA car company made its cars into subscription models, I really hate this because in the end the car we buy with our own money doesn’t feel like it belongs to us.
Should we finally buy an old school car ? so as not to be affected by this subscription models or is there a way to crack the software installed in it ?
Maintaining the infrastructure needed for all the shite that modern cars are packed with, including the person cost of maintenance is not “pennies”. You don’t just spin up a EC2 instance and call it a day. You need infrastructure across multiple countries, service level agreements, people on-call to handle issues, account management with third-party downstream services, etc.
With that being said, you’ve already paid. You paid for the car, which costs an obscene amount already. If you own the car, you don’t need a separate payment for the software.
All of these functionalities can be provided by a simple WebSocket + REST server. The car connects to the WebSocket, and you can access these functionalities from your phone either with WebSockets or regular HTTP requests.
Cheapest servers with backend written in JS can easily handle thousands of WebSocket connections, and written in Go tens of thousands WebSocket connections. They would not ever need like over 100 of these servers GLOBALLY, which would cost them around $3000 monthly.
That’s the price of 60 subscriptions, which is freaking ridiculous.
Or “for free” as in paid for by your data and the unskippable targeted ads you wil get on your infotainment system. I’m sure in the future some cheap car brand will blast commercials trough your speaker system to pay for all the free services
The KIA app has three trackers in it. (Can’t scan the latest version, however) Not exactly a lot by contemporary standards, but more than many. Two of my banking apps have 7. One weather app has 10. The apps I respect have none or only a single tracker, and only for crashlytics, and still optional.
They could be paying licensing per user for some third party solution that meets the security requirements of stuff like remote unlocking. (Yeah, they also could do it themselves, at the cost of hiring a couple security experts, and the scale should make it pretty cheap per car, but a lot of the times companies like to hire it out so they have someone to point to if there are flaws.)
They could also just not care and do a shitty job, but doing the software part correctly isn’t free either. But yeah, cellular with how little they use it and economies of scale isn’t going to be a massive outlay, but it’s something that makes some sense to have behind a paid service. Right now it’s not a huge cost, but down the road, if they’re paying for 20 years of cars worth of connectivity when most of them aren’t used, it could add up to meaningful expenses that are pointless.
low-bandwidth data plans in bulk are pretty cheap. it’s what many atms, vending machines, redbox and similar, etc., along with sensors and gauges, and what-not for a variety of applications, use.
over the expected lifespan of a car, it would cost the manufactures less than they charge for a set of floor mats.
Agreed, as long as they don’t go the BMW route and charge for heated seats, or the Toyota route and charge for remote start using the key fob.
Unless that “more” button is doing a lot of heavy lifting, this is basically paying for the Internet connection for your car to be able to connect to a phone app through Kia’s servers.
You’re excusing their asshole design of requiring the server in the first place. They never needed it before. It doesn’t make sense having to pay a subscription for a fucking car.
Even if all of the intermediate server tech is on the car, somebody still has to pay for the car’s internet service, either cellular or satellite, it something.
Otherwise, you’re not going to be doing remote start over IP.
Beside all that, with how absolutely terrible car companies are at providing software updates and writing code, I’d rather have a pull based cloud API thing than a server implementation full of security holes.
This is only half the issue. You can put a server in the car, but that doesn’t solve the networking issue. Most have a cellular connection now that needs to be paid for by someone. Then there is the issue of discovery. When you open that app on your phone, how does it know where to connect? Sure, it could look for a local or Bluetooth network. But that would only work if you’re already close to you car like when it’s in the garage.
Outside of that home network, something needs to facilitate the connection between your phone and the car. since neither will have a static IP address, it’s essentially impossible to achieve without some server elsewhere to broker that connection.
Just package it into the car warranty. Most people wouldn’t care then. For the most part new car people buy new cars and used car people buy used cars.
It’s a really good idea for the car manufacturer, as it would add one more annoyance to buying a used car. New car, no worries unless you plan to drive it into the ground. Used car, now you have to go online to see what subscription costs might be.
They make you use the app to get the advertised features. Hyundai/Kia are terrible about this.
Oh and the entire implementation is half-assed. I bought my Hyundai used and can’t even use the paid features because they won’t transfer the account to me.
I actually like Hyundai, but I will never again purchase one of their vehicles because of subscriptions and what I mentioned above.
Yeah my car has remote start. I can do it with no subscription with my remote. Additionally I can pay for OnStar and do it through the app. It also has heated seats and a heated steering wheel, and unlike some brands those aren’t locked behind a subscription since they are literally just vehicle hardware, not cloud services.
You assume they are only collecting usage data with their apps, which is typically not the case. Some of them request every permission on your phone just to collect as much as they can.
It doesn’t matter where the data goes, or if it’s kept proprietary. Businesses wouldn’t collect metrics if it didn’t translate to dollar signs for them. It forms their business decisions.
And it not being shared with other businesses is only one point of concern from a privacy perspective. Another is that large corporations are hacked or otherwise infiltrated quite frequently, resulting in user data leaks.
My car offered a remote start on the key fob and even the dealer told me not to buy it because the range was so short. I ended up installing an after market Viper system that is cellular and costs ~$100 per year when I get 3 years at a time. So even the after market solutions have subscriptions. If you need a cell connection you have to pay for it
I think the remote start is through the Kia app, not the remote. I would imagine the idea is you can turn on the car and turn on the heat when it is cold outside so you can stay in your home a little bit longer.
yeah, the last 2 cars ive bought had this. no subscription, no app, and it works fine from the very nice remote that is also the key. maybe kia just sucks
By removing the feature from the remote and moving it to an app they turn a cost of a more complex remote into a profit of constant subscription money.
Ok, roadside assistance is maybe worth that price, but the rest are just API calls that cost them virtually nothing to operate. There’s no need for them to keep these functionalities hostage behind some roadside service, other than to be anti consumer.
Not to mention that by paying $90 extra you unlock the functionality to remote unlock your car. What’s the justification for this price? There’s no way it costs this much extra.
Yeah, unless there are features hidden that are hardware based and doesn’t rely on KIA servers then this is not a problem in the slightest.
It’s vastly different from the paid unlocks of Tesla or subscription for hardware of BMW.
Don’t group them under one banner and muddy the waters because if we do then all it will do is normalize what Tesla and BMW does and allow it to spread. Either that or make it so we won’t get the features listed or the features will have an exorbitant cost attached when new to ensure they don’t lose money from maintaining the service for the service life of the vehicle (or do Tesla shit of not letting the feature transfer when resold effectively impacting resell value negatively which is bad for the original buyer).
It plays on the classic consumer mindset of “if it’s an option, I need it!” Spoiler: you don’t need it. I understand you want those features, they’d be a nice luxury… but you don’t need them.
It would be reasonable if what that app did was anything that actually needed internet servers to work. Why not just pair up the phone with the car, ad-hoc like you could with a PSP, or any sort of peer-to-peer between car-phone, and call it a day? Oh, right, because then you can’t create a service you can charge monthly for.
That people are willing to pay for effectively a remote temperature control and shutdown timer, that does not need to be an internet service to work properly, can and should be dunked on.
It’s for office workers or inner city dwellers in cold regions. They can start their car which is in the parking garage blocks away. It makes sense and it costs money to run.
Theres nothing wrong at all with this. At all. Image is FUD
Because you actually believe you didn’t already paid for about 5 years of the service when you paid for the car?
Human stupidity and laziness is the accurate reason for manufacturers doing this.
When you buy the car, you also pay for that integrated, albeit disable, service. To enable it you have to pay a subscription.
I agree with the OP. This should never be the case.
Now, the culprit is not the car manufacturer, but the people that pay for it. If nobody, or aven few people, paid for this, they wouldn’t have a business for that and they would likely stop.
Bottom line is, you don’t like it? Give your money to another brand.
Something like the XBUS seems like a good choice. They seem to focus on the important and practical stuff, and I can’t find any information about any sort of related subscription.
My “dream” car is a V6 Accord from the last year they made them, which I think is 2016. I’d buy one of those right now and just keep repairing it, and hope no one t-bones me. Unfortunately I think my wife is still in the mindset of “we should buy a new car and keep it forever”, which used to be my mindset, too. But she’s not seeing the news on this stuff like I am, either. I suspect if I explained “heated seat subscription” to her (a feature she will not buy a car without) she would object strenuously.
But I don’t like where new cars are going, at all. I don’t like subscriptions, I don’t like the backseat driver nanny features that blare out false alarms, and on the whole I’d rather not have adaptive cruise control (there are times when adaptive cruise is nice, but overall I prefer the old-style cruise control).
We have a 2020 Mazda that I absolutely hate driving; if that is the future of cars, I’m not interested.
I’m hoping my car and our pickup last forever. The other day we took the Mazda for an errand in poor weather because, as I said, “It’s the most expendable car.”
A jeep from ww1 can still function today with regular care a maintenance, and so can a 5-10 year old car. The point isn’t the age, it’s how you treat the vehicle.
I agree with that.
And my point being “Start the movement (of buying older cars instead of new ones) now and change the status quo (of high demand for new cars) while also being able to get older cars that cannot be subscriptionified, because later, even the older cars will be such, that they will have a subsciption, making even 2nd handers to pay the OEM”.
Change the status quo now and stop buying cars. Move to walkable Transit orientated communities where you don’t need one. Stop supporting this shitty industry that’s always been pay to play with gas / electricity, insurance, maintenance, payments.
Honestly, doesn’t even have to be old. My Toyota Yaris is a 2023 model and it has no subscriptions. Such cars still exist, but they are mostly in the lower end market, because automakers assume if you have the money for an expensive car you also have the money for a subscription.
The list of manufacturers I can morally buy from is ever shrinking… Soon Dacia will be the sole manufacturer I could buy from without weird BS attached.
Kia and Ford were EVs I considered but ultimately turned down.
Do you walk into the dealer and state affirmatively “I am not buying a car here because I don’t want a subscription!” and then turn around and walk out?
Won’t matter. The company knows you don’t want this. They also know that enough other people will pay for it that it won’t matter. These subscriptions are not new. If people put their foot down and refused to pay for them they would go away, but the opposite it happening.
Are you spending 50k on new vehicles? Have you ever bought a brand new car? Are you commenting on a sub brought together buy a common thread of stealing content?
New cars have magically new never-die batteries, never puncture tires, radiators that never crack, pipes that never split or come loose, etc now?! Holy cow, why haven’t we heard about this before?!
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You realize that maintaining a server that would allow that costs pennies?
You wouldn’t pay $150 for a lollipop, but somehow people think this is ok.
This problem exists exactly because of people like you, thinking it’s OK to pay for the features you already paid for.
Maintaining the infrastructure needed for all the shite that modern cars are packed with, including the person cost of maintenance is not “pennies”. You don’t just spin up a EC2 instance and call it a day. You need infrastructure across multiple countries, service level agreements, people on-call to handle issues, account management with third-party downstream services, etc.
With that being said, you’ve already paid. You paid for the car, which costs an obscene amount already. If you own the car, you don’t need a separate payment for the software.
All of these functionalities can be provided by a simple WebSocket + REST server. The car connects to the WebSocket, and you can access these functionalities from your phone either with WebSockets or regular HTTP requests.
Cheapest servers with backend written in JS can easily handle thousands of WebSocket connections, and written in Go tens of thousands WebSocket connections. They would not ever need like over 100 of these servers GLOBALLY, which would cost them around $3000 monthly.
That’s the price of 60 subscriptions, which is freaking ridiculous.
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Or “for free” as in paid for by your data and the unskippable targeted ads you wil get on your infotainment system. I’m sure in the future some cheap car brand will blast commercials trough your speaker system to pay for all the free services
The KIA app has three trackers in it. (Can’t scan the latest version, however) Not exactly a lot by contemporary standards, but more than many. Two of my banking apps have 7. One weather app has 10. The apps I respect have none or only a single tracker, and only for crashlytics, and still optional.
Thanks for linking to the tracker site, I’ve been meaning to find more ways to audit the amount of trackers in my apps for a while now.
Happy to help
I’m betting they’re paying more than the servers per car for the cellular connectivity.
It’s not what we pay obviously. But it’s not free either.
The traffic and compute for this kind of application is very minimal, a cheap server can hold thousands and thousands of users.
It’s the cellular connectivity that costs a lot, difficult to imagine that would be less than 50 cents a month
They could be paying licensing per user for some third party solution that meets the security requirements of stuff like remote unlocking. (Yeah, they also could do it themselves, at the cost of hiring a couple security experts, and the scale should make it pretty cheap per car, but a lot of the times companies like to hire it out so they have someone to point to if there are flaws.)
They could also just not care and do a shitty job, but doing the software part correctly isn’t free either. But yeah, cellular with how little they use it and economies of scale isn’t going to be a massive outlay, but it’s something that makes some sense to have behind a paid service. Right now it’s not a huge cost, but down the road, if they’re paying for 20 years of cars worth of connectivity when most of them aren’t used, it could add up to meaningful expenses that are pointless.
low-bandwidth data plans in bulk are pretty cheap. it’s what many atms, vending machines, redbox and similar, etc., along with sensors and gauges, and what-not for a variety of applications, use.
over the expected lifespan of a car, it would cost the manufactures less than they charge for a set of floor mats.
Agreed, as long as they don’t go the BMW route and charge for heated seats, or the Toyota route and charge for remote start using the key fob.
Unless that “more” button is doing a lot of heavy lifting, this is basically paying for the Internet connection for your car to be able to connect to a phone app through Kia’s servers.
You’re excusing their asshole design of requiring the server in the first place. They never needed it before. It doesn’t make sense having to pay a subscription for a fucking car.
Then maybe don’t make them rely on external servers? Your car has a computer, put the server there.
Even if all of the intermediate server tech is on the car, somebody still has to pay for the car’s internet service, either cellular or satellite, it something.
Otherwise, you’re not going to be doing remote start over IP.
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But you have that, except on one central server.
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This is only half the issue. You can put a server in the car, but that doesn’t solve the networking issue. Most have a cellular connection now that needs to be paid for by someone. Then there is the issue of discovery. When you open that app on your phone, how does it know where to connect? Sure, it could look for a local or Bluetooth network. But that would only work if you’re already close to you car like when it’s in the garage.
Outside of that home network, something needs to facilitate the connection between your phone and the car. since neither will have a static IP address, it’s essentially impossible to achieve without some server elsewhere to broker that connection.
Just package it into the car warranty. Most people wouldn’t care then. For the most part new car people buy new cars and used car people buy used cars.
It’s a really good idea for the car manufacturer, as it would add one more annoyance to buying a used car. New car, no worries unless you plan to drive it into the ground. Used car, now you have to go online to see what subscription costs might be.
looking through that list fully half are internal only , or tied to the remote that comes with the vehicle. no 3rd party required.
i understand all the cellular-required bits… ‘find my car’… but remote start? my brand new vehicle has remote start with no subscription.
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They make you use the app to get the advertised features. Hyundai/Kia are terrible about this.
Oh and the entire implementation is half-assed. I bought my Hyundai used and can’t even use the paid features because they won’t transfer the account to me.
I actually like Hyundai, but I will never again purchase one of their vehicles because of subscriptions and what I mentioned above.
Yeah my car has remote start. I can do it with no subscription with my remote. Additionally I can pay for OnStar and do it through the app. It also has heated seats and a heated steering wheel, and unlike some brands those aren’t locked behind a subscription since they are literally just vehicle hardware, not cloud services.
They’ll make you pay for it, while simultaneously collecting usage data via the app, and further turning a profit off you.
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If it was worthless they wouldn’t put a fucking 4g modem on all of them “for free” and siphoning all the telemetry away
You assume they are only collecting usage data with their apps, which is typically not the case. Some of them request every permission on your phone just to collect as much as they can.
It doesn’t matter where the data goes, or if it’s kept proprietary. Businesses wouldn’t collect metrics if it didn’t translate to dollar signs for them. It forms their business decisions.
And it not being shared with other businesses is only one point of concern from a privacy perspective. Another is that large corporations are hacked or otherwise infiltrated quite frequently, resulting in user data leaks.
My car offered a remote start on the key fob and even the dealer told me not to buy it because the range was so short. I ended up installing an after market Viper system that is cellular and costs ~$100 per year when I get 3 years at a time. So even the after market solutions have subscriptions. If you need a cell connection you have to pay for it
I think the remote start is through the Kia app, not the remote. I would imagine the idea is you can turn on the car and turn on the heat when it is cold outside so you can stay in your home a little bit longer.
yeah, the last 2 cars ive bought had this. no subscription, no app, and it works fine from the very nice remote that is also the key. maybe kia just sucks
By removing the feature from the remote and moving it to an app they turn a cost of a more complex remote into a profit of constant subscription money.
In the winter I’d remote start my car from the top floor and even I got to the bottom my car would be heated; their remote start uses server time.
Now if they charged me to use the remote start from my keys, that’d be a different story.
@originalucifer @devilish666 @skullgiver Kia definitely sucks
$59 is still too much to ask for what amounts to just a few API calls to some cloud service.
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Ok, roadside assistance is maybe worth that price, but the rest are just API calls that cost them virtually nothing to operate. There’s no need for them to keep these functionalities hostage behind some roadside service, other than to be anti consumer.
Not to mention that by paying $90 extra you unlock the functionality to remote unlock your car. What’s the justification for this price? There’s no way it costs this much extra.
Yeah, unless there are features hidden that are hardware based and doesn’t rely on KIA servers then this is not a problem in the slightest.
It’s vastly different from the paid unlocks of Tesla or subscription for hardware of BMW.
Don’t group them under one banner and muddy the waters because if we do then all it will do is normalize what Tesla and BMW does and allow it to spread. Either that or make it so we won’t get the features listed or the features will have an exorbitant cost attached when new to ensure they don’t lose money from maintaining the service for the service life of the vehicle (or do Tesla shit of not letting the feature transfer when resold effectively impacting resell value negatively which is bad for the original buyer).
Remote lock & unlock? It’s literally been a feature of dumb cars since the 90s.
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It plays on the classic consumer mindset of “if it’s an option, I need it!” Spoiler: you don’t need it. I understand you want those features, they’d be a nice luxury… but you don’t need them.
Can’t wait for the ads projected by a heads up display…
Yeah this is totally 2.5 milliseconds down the road
The only problem with services as a subscription is THE FUCKING IDIOTS THAT PAY FOR THEM
If nobody fell for shit like that, manufacturers would drop it like boiling diarrhea
This is where capitalism is failing because people are dumb 🤷
Fixed. It thrives on human stupidity and laziness
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It would be reasonable if what that app did was anything that actually needed internet servers to work. Why not just pair up the phone with the car, ad-hoc like you could with a PSP, or any sort of peer-to-peer between car-phone, and call it a day? Oh, right, because then you can’t create a service you can charge monthly for.
That people are willing to pay for effectively a remote temperature control and shutdown timer, that does not need to be an internet service to work properly, can and should be dunked on.
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It’s for office workers or inner city dwellers in cold regions. They can start their car which is in the parking garage blocks away. It makes sense and it costs money to run.
Theres nothing wrong at all with this. At all. Image is FUD
Because you actually believe you didn’t already paid for about 5 years of the service when you paid for the car? Human stupidity and laziness is the accurate reason for manufacturers doing this.
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=Z6UaZSZAOA4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Finally someone who gets it
Glad to see you here my fellow comrades
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When you buy the car, you also pay for that integrated, albeit disable, service. To enable it you have to pay a subscription. I agree with the OP. This should never be the case. Now, the culprit is not the car manufacturer, but the people that pay for it. If nobody, or aven few people, paid for this, they wouldn’t have a business for that and they would likely stop. Bottom line is, you don’t like it? Give your money to another brand.
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Until they take that away from the fobs
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I’ll take that bet in the next ~10 years.
deleted by creator
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=Z6UaZSZAOA4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
This is true.
Go and buy a car from a manufacturer who doesn’t insist on subscriptions… whilst you still can!
Something like the XBUS seems like a good choice. They seem to focus on the important and practical stuff, and I can’t find any information about any sort of related subscription.
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Simple. Buy an older car and spend the extra money maintaining it. Reducing demand is the only language consumers have that businesses understand.
It doesn’t have to be ancient; even 5-10 year old cars don’t have this bullshit.
My “dream” car is a V6 Accord from the last year they made them, which I think is 2016. I’d buy one of those right now and just keep repairing it, and hope no one t-bones me. Unfortunately I think my wife is still in the mindset of “we should buy a new car and keep it forever”, which used to be my mindset, too. But she’s not seeing the news on this stuff like I am, either. I suspect if I explained “heated seat subscription” to her (a feature she will not buy a car without) she would object strenuously.
But I don’t like where new cars are going, at all. I don’t like subscriptions, I don’t like the backseat driver nanny features that blare out false alarms, and on the whole I’d rather not have adaptive cruise control (there are times when adaptive cruise is nice, but overall I prefer the old-style cruise control).
We have a 2020 Mazda that I absolutely hate driving; if that is the future of cars, I’m not interested.
I’m hoping my car and our pickup last forever. The other day we took the Mazda for an errand in poor weather because, as I said, “It’s the most expendable car.”
Not even 5 years man my 2022 is nice and doesn’t have subscriptions.
I mean okay but in 5-10 years these are going to be those older cars.
A jeep from ww1 can still function today with regular care a maintenance, and so can a 5-10 year old car. The point isn’t the age, it’s how you treat the vehicle.
Which is why we have to stop it now if we don’t want unfeatures.
We’re talking about now 🙄
Yeah, the point is, do it now and change the status quo, because later, it will be too late.
The comment you’re replying says to buy older cars so we’re not buying the new cars, hence decreasing the demand.
I agree with that. And my point being “Start the movement (of buying older cars instead of new ones) now and change the status quo (of high demand for new cars) while also being able to get older cars that cannot be subscriptionified, because later, even the older cars will be such, that they will have a subsciption, making even 2nd handers to pay the OEM”.
Change the status quo now and stop buying cars. Move to walkable Transit orientated communities where you don’t need one. Stop supporting this shitty industry that’s always been pay to play with gas / electricity, insurance, maintenance, payments.
It seems already too late for that movement - at least in places like the more “developed” states in the US.
I use a bicycle for commute btw.
Yeah but in 100 years the cars from 5 years from now will be 95 years old
Just don’t buy a 5-10 year old Kia or Nissan. Nearly every one on the road is going to have their engine sieze or transmission have issues
Could you unpack the Why?
Honestly, doesn’t even have to be old. My Toyota Yaris is a 2023 model and it has no subscriptions. Such cars still exist, but they are mostly in the lower end market, because automakers assume if you have the money for an expensive car you also have the money for a subscription.
The list of manufacturers I can morally buy from is ever shrinking… Soon Dacia will be the sole manufacturer I could buy from without weird BS attached.
Kia and Ford were EVs I considered but ultimately turned down.
You could say that’s… great news.
Yes and no, I’m never happy about having less options. Plus my boycott does very little.
removed by mod
Yall taking about modern cars, meanwhile my 94’ Citröen works like a charm. Aftermarket alarm with GPS unmbolizer for 50 bucks does al the work.
https://piped.video/watch?v=aTNAghGMnIU
This is freedom hahahaha
It even hasn’t a ECU. Lol
Game console manufacturing companies used to use people for modding a console that the person owned fair and square. And they won.
!fuckcars@lemmy.ml
I bought Ioniq 5. No subs no bullshit and EV (no frozen shit like in a non tropical countries).
Love this car.
Hopefully your battery holds up https://www.autoevolution.com/news/yikes-the-60000-hyundai-ioniq-5-battery-replacement-saga-continues-226590.html
Got 8 years of battery warranty 😀
Besides, if it fails royally because of design issue, there are more than few fails like in the article.
I’m trying to reduce my car dependency and go car-free eventually but If I had to buy one more car it would be a pre-1995 Toyota pickup.
I think the mid-2010s models should be bullshit-free while having most of the modern features (e.g. fuel efficiency)
I’ll keep that in mind.
2016-18 is a pretty good year for those designs without the bullshit.
Noted as well.
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You wouldn’t download a car?
I probably would, but unfortunately I lack the industrial sized 3D printer required to manufacture it.
you should absolutely choose a vehicle without subscriptions, and make a point of stating it at time of purchase
this is your one moment to make a difference
Agreed.
No, you should choose a vehicle with but steal it and pirat the subscription software.
Just download a car
You wouldn’t…oh goddamnit
Not until my 2007 Tundra literally collapses into a pile of rust and plastic. Hopefully it’s not too late by then.
LOL how does one go about that, exactly?
Do you walk into the dealer and state affirmatively “I am not buying a car here because I don’t want a subscription!” and then turn around and walk out?
Won’t matter. The company knows you don’t want this. They also know that enough other people will pay for it that it won’t matter. These subscriptions are not new. If people put their foot down and refused to pay for them they would go away, but the opposite it happening.
Sorry.
Is this just for info to be pushed to your phone? Seems reasonable unless there are features in the car itself that require a subscription.
Is it reasonable? I can hardly imagine it provides $59 worth of value.
Are you spending 50k on new vehicles? Have you ever bought a brand new car? Are you commenting on a sub brought together buy a common thread of stealing content?
Maybe consider that.
I spent $40k, and yes.
Maybe consider that.
Roadside assistance alone can be worth it. AAA’s most basic plan for instance is $64.99 by itself.
Most decent new cars don’t have any major issues that would strand you on the side of the road for the first 10 years
New cars have magically new never-die batteries, never puncture tires, radiators that never crack, pipes that never split or come loose, etc now?! Holy cow, why haven’t we heard about this before?!
Lots of new cars don’t even come with a spare tire. They either don’t have anything or at best include a can of fix-a-flat
True, I suppose I’d have to see how comprehensive their road side policy is to make a decision there.
But for the rest of it, a handful of API calls? Certainly not worth it.