The Subscription Model

I’m no spring chicken, and I’ve owned *lots* of cars (OK, I confess I still have a few). I use the word ‘owned’ in its former sense of the word, and not in its apparent form going forward.

What’s that, you say? Well, catching my eye today is just the latest chapter in the seemingly-escalating saga called ‘You Don’t Own What You Bought’. It turns out that Toyotas purchased since 2019 with a remote start option are designed with said option integrated into the car’s audio system. Not that alarming itself perhaps, but the Toyota audio system operates in part via a subscription model, where you the consumer pay monthly or yearly for said service. Unknown to you owners of said late model Toyotas, the remote start system accessed via your key fob also is designed to operate as a subscription service, one payable monthly or yearly. And if Toyota decides to activate it, said ‘service’ will fail to function without a major credit card on file. The official word from Toyota is that all these cars are still in the ‘trial mode’ of the service, and Toyota has not activated the subscription requirement. Yet.

We have seen this model at work in many other facets of life. Working on IT for a *long* time, I have seen a number of products where a ‘kill switch’ is designed into the software such that the vendor can remotely deactivate the software if the user company doesn’t manage to pay the required monthly fees. But large company IT execs enter these agreements with eyes open, with corporate attorneys to eyeball the accompanying license agreements, and there are generally few surprises surrounding these arrangements.

Cars, however, are fundamentally different. They are ‘purchased’ (quotes purposeful) by people not accustomed to reviewing miles-long license agreements for software. In this world, people expect to purchase a product that they then actually own, unencumbered by anything but the monthly car payment to the bank, etc.

But in the new world, it is easy to envision a situation where the buyer may expect the car payment to end, but not expect it to be then replaced by another recurring payment needed to keep said vehicle functioning as advertised. The subtle, underhanded schemes we see now enable just that. If the remote start function is designed to require monthly payments to continue to function, why not the entire car itself? It is not a great leap to envision a automotive future where cars routinely stop running and coast to a useless stop on the side of the road, waiting for the driver to input a major credit card in order to renew the car’s software subscription and thus enable it to run again.

We have all enabled this, accustomed as we are to clicking ‘Agree’ on every software license agreement that pops up without actually reading it first. Do you know what you already agreed to? Did you read all that fine print when you bought that car? (especially you late model Toyota buyers; apparently, you all are first). Do you really own that car, or did you just think you did? Only time will tell.