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.”
Ok, let’s grant that as true (by that I mean we will ignore arbitration as a whole thing). Suddenly Tesla stock drops, again, and they push an update that puts remote unlock and navigation and heated seats behind a subscription requirement to boost revenue. Your car will lose those functions immediately with no input from you. Then you file a lawsuit. You will not be granted an emergency summary judgment. Which means your car will immediately lack those capabilities. Absolute best case scenario in 5-7 years your car will get the features back after it has turned into a pile of rust. The expected outcome is you will get a class action settlement (which again, you actually signed away your rights to) that cuts you a check for a few hundred dollars. That will only happen well after the expected service life of the vehicle you “own”.
If you read this and think I’m just a cynical jerk, please provide me just one example where the individual consumer won a lawsuit in the US against a large vendor when features were removed after a software update and was made whole in a timely manner. Just one is all I ask for.