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.”
Yes, but we have had remote start without the internet for decades. It’s nothing but a cash grab. That’s what people are upset about here I think.
They took a feature that did not require the internet, then made it require the internet, for literally no purpose except:
It’s one thing to withhold a feature. It’s another thing to overcomplicate a feature for the purpose of withholding it.
I agree with you all the way. But we can kick and scream all we want, but if enough people buy the subscription, car manufacturers will keep hiding features behind paywalls.