In the end, the KIA car company made its cars into subscription models, I really hate this because in the end the car we buy with our own money doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. Should we finally buy an old school car ? so as not to be affected by this subscription models or is there a way to crack the software installed in it ?
I love all the comments saying “yeah well that stuff isn’t free someone has to maintain it”
YOU’RE PAYING 100K FOR A FUCKING CAR
That’s the payment. That’s what they get their money from.
Wanting more in perpetuity is fucking stupid no matter what the excuse is.
Not only that, but if you have no choice but to buy a car with internet connectivity, these are supposed to be the kind of bells and whistles they give to at least make it SEEM like you’re not being completely taken advantage of. It’s like a double-dip. “We’re giving your car connectivity so we can sell your telemetry, AND we get to charge you for all the useful features, too!”
If it costs SO much to maintain these services, cool. I’d be happy to save the poor little car manufacturers money by buying a model that uses no connectivity whatsoever. But, for some reason, they don’t seem to want to offer that. Gee, I wonder why.
Demand more out of them, because they’ll always be looking to get more out of you.
Not to mention the data they mine from you with their “app” that they can sell to advertisers.
There’s also the fact that remote start, while shorter range, has existed on key fobs for like 20 years. My ex wife’s 2022 Hyundai has remote start, but only through the app, while my 2013 Focus has it on the key fob.
That’s honestly the only feature that’s bundled in those subscriptions that I really want, though the alarm notification is a nice to have.
I have a 22 kia with remote start. I also have the app (that costs the same as this post so I don’t pay either). The remote start sets the car to 72 with nothing else on. No way to change it via settings. Paying for the app remote start is the only way to do the defroster, heated seats, steering wheel, etc. It’s so fucking lame.
The issue is that with ongoing service across time, the longer the service is being used the more it costs Kia. The larger the time boxes Kia uses the bigger the number is and the more you’re going to scare off customers.
Using Kias online build and price, looks like the most expensive Telluride you can get right now is $60k MSRP, cheapest at 30k
Let’s assume Kia estimates average lifetime of a Telluride to be 20 years so they create an option to purchase this service one time for the “lifetime” of the vehicle. Taking in good faith the pricing Kia has listed, using that $150 annual package, and assuming that price goes up every year at a rate of 10% (what Netflix, YouTube, etc have been doing) across those twenty years you’re looking at around $8.5k option. At the top trim thats still 14% extra that is going to make some buyers hesitant, at the base model that’s 28% more expensive.
Enough buyers will scoff at that so Kia can either ditch the idea entirely as they’ll lose money on having to pay for the initial development and never make their money back, or they find some way to repackage that cost and make it look like something that buyers are willing to deal with.
To me the bigger issue is the cost of the service vs what you’re getting. Server time + dev team + mobile data link cannot be costing Kia more than a few million annually, mid to upper hundred K is more likely so they must not be expecting that many people to actually be paying for any of this
And then you can’t use it when the temp is 0F because they decide to do some maintenance
Imagine your car need an updates or you don’t paying subscription fee or but the server are offline & you’re in emergency situation, and the worst of it your car won’t start without it OMG… that’s scarred me the hell out of it
The only problem with services as a subscription is THE FUCKING IDIOTS THAT PAY FOR THEM
If nobody fell for shit like that, manufacturers would drop it like boiling diarrhea
or… we just need more FOSS alternatives to the car manufacturers proprietary OS.
I already see GH issues like: “breaks stop working when going above 200mph.”
Worth noting that these features appear to require your car to be connected to a cellular network. This isn’t the same as BMW charging a fee for heated seats.
They could have just put a SIM card in your car and required you to pay your cell phone provider for a connection.
I have something similar for my Subaru but it’s only 4 dollars a month.
It’s a fee I gladly pay to be able to start my car and set the interior climate from my phone. I imagine there’s some cost the access a network to have that functionality and I don’t see a problem paying for it.
The old style that started from a key fob required you to be a lot closer to the vehicle to start it. Right now I start it a few minutes before I leave my building a quarter of a mile away. I could start it from a different country if I wanted to. Needing to be within a few hundred feet would be pretty useless to me.
The crazy thing is that at the price you are paying for a friggin telluride they could easily raise the price by a few hundred (ie several years worth of subscription) and it would be unlikely to shift sales by much at all but would not piss off the buyers like this. You can’t put this crap on your car loan either. I really get the sense there is a conspiracy level concerted effort to try to indoctrinate generation Z into allowing every corporation they deal with to stick an IV into their bank accounts.
They intentionally didn’t roll the subscription into the sale price. That’s the goal. They want that sweet, predictable, monthly income that they sell their investors on.
They also figured that if you’ve found your car, you’re less likely to walk away for what is essentially a fraction of the car’s price.
I honestly hope the next car I buy has shit like this. Because boy am I going to make it my mission to jailbreak it and release my code open source.
you should absolutely choose a vehicle without subscriptions, and make a point of stating it at time of purchase
this is your one moment to make a difference
Not until my 2007 Tundra literally collapses into a pile of rust and plastic. Hopefully it’s not too late by then.
For $120 a year the Kia boys can total your car anyway!
Simple. Buy an older car and spend the extra money maintaining it. Reducing demand is the only language consumers have that businesses understand.
It doesn’t have to be ancient; even 5-10 year old cars don’t have this bullshit.
Just don’t buy a 5-10 year old Kia or Nissan. Nearly every one on the road is going to have their engine sieze or transmission have issues
Could you unpack the Why?
I miss when you didn’t need a cell connection for remote start, like my fob can lock and unlock my car from the third floor of my building why can’t I just have a button on my remote that does the same as unlocking my doors.
Although, the roadside kinda makes $60 a year worth it just for the peace of mind, gotta atleast give em that.
Game console manufacturing companies used to use people for modding a console that the person owned fair and square. And they won.
While I’m generally against subscriptions, for the most part the above are things that require cellular service and cloud infrastructure…
While the price may be too high. I’m normally ok with subscriptions for things that have on-going costs to the seller.
We should be able to self host the servers and choose the cellular service like i can on my phone then
I own a Kia. I don’t enjoy the subscription anymore than the next guy but I’m calling bullshit.
The only features behind a pay wall are the ones the app provides. The ones that require an always on internet connection and server infrastructure to maintain.
None of the in-car features are limited. The remote start on my key fob, seat heaters, onboard nav, all work fine without a subscription.
This isn’t like the crap bmw was pulling with the seat heaters.
The cost to maintain the servers to send extremely small packets of data to instruct the car for the entire fleet of cars they sold could be less than $100/m.
To find a car and control it remotely will need a server. That’s why it’s not free.
it looks like only way is to somehow imitate their API and change those links in the car. I think it would be cool to selfhost such server.
The car costs a lot of money and they already give you wareanty, free service and will in one way or another milk you for years to come. I don’t think one more connection to a server costs this much.
Especially since all the „telemetry” is uploaded for free.
It’s the cell plan not the server costs unfortunately. When they moved to app based starting from anywhere you need to start paying the cell carrier for that wireless connection.
Servers and engineers to maintain the software and infrastructure are also not free.
Sure, but not $60/year per car expensive
No, that’s still mostly the cellular connection.
Should we finally buy an
Who is we?
Why are you buying a car in the first place?
get as many of the negatives of car ownership away from you.
I lease my Taycan. I do not want to pay for tyres or checkups. I do not want to pay in case the engine blows (not that it can, it’s electric but you get the gist).
