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Toyota wouldn't be doing it to cover costs, it would be there to generate profits. I wouldn't even mind if the app is good. We have a BMW with connected drive,

Toyota wouldn't be doing it to cover costs, it would be there to generate profits. I wouldn't even mind if the app is good. We have a BMW with connected drive, the connectivity included is basically useless. It has a latency of around 2-3 minutes, depending on your cell signal. The price of a service rarely does reflect the actual cost of providing the service, especially with SaaS margins. And $8/mo is not a whole lot of money if you consider your monthly expenses to use your vehicle.

matthewdgreen 5y ago
Yes, I understand that people will charge what the market will bear, and in this case Toyota has decided they can charge a lot -- because you bought the car and now they have you at their mercy. I was responding to the GP poster who explicitly justified it by the cost of operating the service. This might not be a big deal if Toyota was the only company contemplating this business model (what's $8/mo, after all?) but I doubt they will be. If every product in your life adds a "small" subscription fee (calculated at 50-1000x actual service costs), things are going to get painful very quickly.
- dotancohen 5y ago
  People are already getting normalized to this. I paid a few dollars for a better dialer, because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Another few dollars for a good calendar app, again because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Hell, I'd gladly pay for a decent web browser. And I say that as a happy Ubuntu user who has been coding for over two decades in VIM, I know my way around FOSS software.
Swenrekcah 5y ago
To conserve energy and help the planet your phone has now stopped using the lower half of the screen. To unlock whole screen functionality please pay $0.2 for each instance.
mrighele 5y ago
> And $8/mo is not a whole lot of money if you consider your monthly expenses to use your vehicle. $8/mo may not be a lot of money only because it's just your car doing that. Then you will have your TV charging $8/mo so that you can your a remote controller, $8/mo for the remote of your air conditioner...
Dylan16807 5y ago
Yeah yeah yeah profits are not what the conversation thread was about.

matthewdgreen 5y ago

Yes, I understand that people will charge what the market will bear, and in this case Toyota has decided they can charge a lot -- because you bought the car and now they have you at their mercy. I was responding to the GP poster who explicitly justified it by the cost of operating the service. This might not be a big deal if Toyota was the only company contemplating this business model (what's $8/mo, after all?) but I doubt they will be. If every product in your life adds a "small" subscription fee (calculated at 50-1000x actual service costs), things are going to get painful very quickly.

dotancohen 5y ago
People are already getting normalized to this. I paid a few dollars for a better dialer, because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Another few dollars for a good calendar app, again because the Samsung dialer is garbage. Hell, I'd gladly pay for a decent web browser. And I say that as a happy Ubuntu user who has been coding for over two decades in VIM, I know my way around FOSS software.

Swenrekcah 5y ago

To conserve energy and help the planet your phone has now stopped using the lower half of the screen. To unlock whole screen functionality please pay $0.2 for each instance.

mrighele 5y ago

> And $8/mo is not a whole lot of money if you consider your monthly expenses to use your vehicle. $8/mo may not be a lot of money only because it's just your car doing that. Then you will have your TV charging $8/mo so that you can your a remote controller, $8/mo for the remote of your air conditioner...

Dylan16807 5y ago

Yeah yeah yeah profits are not what the conversation thread was about.