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.”
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.
With your way, now everyone has to pay for the subscription service of remote starting, even those who would never use it and just want to use their keyfob, your idea is worse
What the fuck are you talking about.
There are at the very least trim levels and usually a bunch if options so you literally don’t have to pay for things you don’t want/need
Option 3 take the stop killing games approach and grant the user the server back end when they stop supporting it themselves so users can host it themselves
