One foundational belief of the “right to repair” movement is that consumers should actually own the technology they pay for. Unfortunately that’s increasingly not the case when it comes to carmakers, who are utterly insistent on not only charging people a flat retail price for a vehicle — but are also increasingly charging you additional fees or subscriptions for tech you already paid for that already exists in the vehicle.
The trend has featured everything from BMW trying to charge users a subscription for heated seats (the tech for which, again, already exists in the car), to Mercedes locking better engine performance behind a paywall. It’s one thing if users get a discount on the overall price of the vehicle in exchange for new fees, but in an industry dependent on pleasing Wall Street’s need for quarterly returns, that doesn’t happen.
Mazda is the latest carmaker to flirt with consumer anger with the recent requirement that some owners sign up for a subscription if they want to keep certain features they already paid for and own.
Previously, users paid nothing to use either their key fob or the Mazda app to remote start their vehicles. Now, Mazda has informed users they’ll be charging them $10 a month to use tech already embedded in the car:
“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.”
Developers and Mazda owners who have developed clever workarounds for Mazda’s restrictions have faced legal threats and DMCA takedown demands.
Increasingly users are having to pay extra to use app-tethered services for remote locking, starting, or vehicle tracking. Ironically, these apps and features usually contain terms of service allowing automakers to collect and monetize your location and behavior data, often without telling you.
So in many instances you’re (1) paying a lot for the car, (2) paying extra for services that used to be free or included in the price, and (3) having your data heavily monetized, but poorly secured.
It’s precisely this kind of behavior that has resulted in surging interest in state and federal right to repair legislation, designed to prevent automakers from nickel-and-diming you to death. Automakers, in turn, have lied and tried to claim such laws would be a boon to sexual predators. It’s obnoxious behavior from an industry with some of the worst consumer privacy ratings of any sector in tech.