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, 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 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.
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
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
As long as they give me a way to run my own server for free, I agree with you.
They can literally just run a server locally on the car itself on a seperate non critical board that handles the functions locally
Well it’s double shit if you can’t get the remote start on a FOB now. Fuck Mazda for that bullshit.
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).
You still have to pay for the cell service to connect the car. That’s going to cost a whole lot more than $1
A car is is multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars and a 3g, low data IoT sim card is less than $100.
I think it’s fair if Mazda has to operate a server to enable it
Do they? Why can’t the 2 devices communicate directly?
Pear to pear multiplayer games work without a server,
Why can’t they install some server on a seperate non critical board that handles those functions locally
