Japanese automobile giant in Toyota is now making its customers pay for features that are present on the company’s cars. The company is indeed moving towards a paid monthly subscription package, the start of which actually comes with you paying to use the remote car start feature from the key fobs.
This latest subscription format comes and makes from Toyota’s new Connected Services. This would then of course have the company offering its customers the option to buy one of these new services after buying a car from the brand. The service includes the likes of Remote Connect as well as others. Remote connect lets users remotely start their cars right from the key fob. In other words then, we might end up seeing a shift in the automobile industry as smart features could now be offered under new monthly subscription plans.
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At the current moment in time, Toyota is offering free trials of Remote Control, however, the length of this trial actually depends on the audio package that is included within the vehicle itself. To make matters all the more complicated then, only a few Toyota models currently happen to support the Audio Plus or Premium Audio packages that actually let users access the free trial. Notably of course, Tesla also goes on to offer a similar subscription offering with its paid OTA upgrades that make way and allow for users to activate certain features which are already built in into the car but are locked behind a pay wall.
This also then includes paying to enable “Rear heated seats.” However, Tesla usually takes a one time payment for such features rather than having users pay monthly. And hence, while this might not be all that common in vehicles right now, the future of smart cars with paid DLCs might not exactly be too far off.
