Your Car Is Becoming a Subscription — What You Need to Know Before You Buy

SUMMARY

Cars are no longer just mechanical machines — they are rolling software platforms.

In this episode of The Straight Shift, The Car Chick® breaks down the growing trend of subscription-based car features and what it actually means for consumers.

From life-saving systems like OnStar and connected services such as Subaru STARLINK and Hyundai BlueLink, to hands-free driving tech like Super Cruise and BlueCruise, we separate the subscriptions that make sense from the ones that feel like a toll booth for your tushy.

You’ll learn:

• How telematics systems actually work
• Why emergency services like OnStar have handled tens of thousands of real dispatches
• How Tesla normalized pay-to-unlock EV features
• What happened with Toyota’s remote start confusion
• Why BMW’s heated seat subscriptions sparked backlash
• What questions you MUST ask before signing a car contract

If you’re financing a vehicle for five to seven years, you need to understand what could stop working in year three.

This episode will help you avoid surprises — and the bullshittery.

TAKEAWAYS

• Modern vehicles are software-defined and can enable or disable features remotely.
• Emergency systems like OnStar have handled nearly 40,000 emergency dispatches in a single year.
• Tesla normalized over-the-air performance unlocks in EVs.
• Some manufacturers have experimented with charging for features already physically installed in the vehicle.
• Consumer backlash has influenced companies to reconsider subscription strategies.
• Subscription fatigue is entering the automotive world.
• Buyers must understand what features expire after trial periods.
• Asking the right questions before purchase prevents expensive surprises later.

RESOURCES

https://DrivingInTheUK.com/

You can view a full list of resources and episode transcripts here. 

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Work with LeeAnn:

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Copyright ©2024 Women’s Automotive Solutions Inc., dba The Car Chick.  All rights reserved.

Transcript

The Car Chick (00:00)
Hey everyone and welcome back to The Straight Shift, the podcast that cuts through all of the automotive nonsense so you don't get screwed. I have a story to tell you. If you remember last fall, I rented a car in England as a part of our transatlantic journey and my bucket list trip. And when I booked it online,

I already knew that there was an extra fee to use the built-in navigation system in the car. That was one of those clearly listed things that they tried to upsell me when I was booking the rental reservation. But, ⁓ navigation's like an extra 20 bucks a day to know where you're going. That's adorable. You know, I have Google Maps. I'll survive. Thank you. So I declined it. When I picked up the car in England, fired it up,

The built-in navigation was there and guess what? It worked. I was like, woohoo free - somebody forgot to push a button. And it was lovely because it was this British female voice to guide me through the countryside with "at the roundabout, take the second to exit". I mean it was just delightful. It's what every navigation system should sound like. But then when we stopped and turned off the car when we turned it back on again - poof

Gone. The navigation screen no longer came up. It said, this feature is not available at this time. Contact blah blah blah. Oh, so they figured it out. They turned it off. Somewhere in a European server farm, a computer decided I hadn't paid enough to know where the hell I was going. So bummer.

The reason I tell that story, and if you haven't seen the video of that trip, you can check it out at drivingintheuk.com. I'll put a description in the link. But it reminded me of what is really happening in the automotive industry right now. Some trends that we are going towards that are a little bit frightening. Cars are quickly becoming software platforms, meaning features can be turned on and off at the whim of the manufacturer, not necessarily you,

the customer. So today we are going to talk about what features in your car may only be available by subscription and which ones of those make sense, which ones are kind of in an iffy area I'm not thrilled about, and which ones are just full-blown bullshittery. We're gonna even name some names. I'll probably throw a few brands under the bus, but they've earned it because I want to explain why these systems are doing this, why the systems work the way they do, and most importantly,

what you need to ask before you buy a car so that you don't get ghosted by the navigation lady six months into ownership. So let's get into it.

One of the first subscription services available in vehicles was from General Motors, and that's OnStar. Most people have heard of it.

It's been around since I think the late 90s. And here's how it works. It's designed to be an emergency services system. Every GM vehicle that is equipped with OnStar, which they all certainly are now, they're embedded with a cellular modem. So it works over the cellular networks. It has a GPS receiver just like your phone so they know where your car is. And it has crash detection systems -

various sensors throughout the car, tied to the airbag system, crumple zones, and of course there is a microphone and speaker system in the car. The benefit of this is if you are in a crash, the car will automatically detect the impact if it's severe enough. If you, tap your own mailbox or, little tiny fender bender, that might not be enough to trigger it. But if it's serious, it is automatically going to dial a call center

where there is a human being who has been trained, not quite to the level of a 911 operator, but very similar. And they are gonna be able to send the GPS location, get information from the car's computer, as well as talk to you, keep you calm, and they are going to call the emergency services, police, fire, medic, as you need. This is really great because...

in an accident, things go everywhere in your car, you may not be able to find your phone, you may be pinned, you can't reach your phone to make that 911 call, you may be unconscious, but the OnStar system will call for you and if they can't communicate with you and know that you're awake, you're conscious, get an assessment of your injuries, they are going to have those emergency services haul butt to get to your location.

And you can also call them on your own. Maybe you're not in an accident, but you're in a flood. This actually happened during the big flooding in Texas just last year. They handled about 4,000 crisis calls and supported multiple rescues. There was an elderly couple trapped in floodwater that was able to use this technology to get rescue services to them, and they were saved. It's an incredible infrastructure.

And this is one of the subscription things that I think makes great sense. Subaru has one called Starlink, Hyundai's Blue Link works very similarly. These are systems that can literally save your life. OnStar has answered over, well over half a million emergency calls since its inception and it gets more and more every year. And they have literally saved thousands of lives. It's been shown that their involvement and the data

that they can pass on to first responders reduces the time it takes for first responders to get to your location because they're better able to prioritize and triage. They can know ahead of time, did the airbag deploy? There's so much information that OnStar and these other systems can give to the first responders.

that they are more prepared when they get to you and that saves lives. So this is a subscription that I personally think is well worth paying for after the free trial expires, especially if you do a lot of driving and especially if you have teen drivers. I love these systems. They are absolutely phenomenal. But of course, things have evolved over the years and now it's not just built into the car. Subaru system and Hyundai system, they've expanded it.

so that you have an app now on your smartphone that you can download and it gives you even more control over your vehicle. This is the benefit of cars being roving computers. They can not only interact with your smartphone simply from an Apple CarPlay Android Auto standpoint, but now you can open your doors. You can close your doors, lock your doors, make sure they're locked. You can remote start the car, get the heater going. This is great for people.

who live in places with very cold weather. It's so nice when the car is already warm, already defrosted, the seat warmers are on, when you get into that car in the morning to go to work. It's absolutely fabulous when it is 10 degrees outside. There's so many other things that it can do. It can also track the car's location, help you recover it if it is stolen, in addition to all of those emergency services.

That works through your phone where your phone is sending a command to the manufacturer's cloud server via Wi-Fi or via the cellular networks. The server then verifies your account, makes sure you have paid for said services, and then it does what you need to do. And again, I don't really have a problem with those services. It is an extra add-on app. Not everyone may wish to use it.

I personally think it's extremely helpful. I'm not so thrilled that all that data gets collected and the manufacturers are using it in ways that we don't even know about. But, you unfortunately that's the trade-off that I've talked about in previous podcasts about is your car spying on you. Sometimes that spying can be helpful and sometimes it can even save your life. So I think those services can be well worth the money.

especially if remote start having the car being nice and warm, those things are helpful to you. Now we get into some things that are a little more complicated. Systems like Super Cruise from GM and the Blue Cruise from Ford. These are the hands-free driving systems that are continuing to evolve in vehicles. What we call self-driving cars. They're not completely self-driving, but...

The manufacturer has mapped out certain highways in detail. The car has all the sensors and the driver safety aids that allow it to control the car to a certain extent. So when you turn that on, the car uses its GPS to figure out, am I in a location that is approved for me to take over to a certain extent? And if it is, and you've paid for it because it also verifies if your account is up to date.

Then it uses all the technology on the car to drive somewhat for you. And it can receive updates over the air. Basically the software can be updated through the airwaves being downloaded from the servers of the manufacturer. Typically you get a free trial period because they want you to try this out and get hooked on it and then wham they slam you with the bill for well if you want to continue this service you have to pay blah blah blah. And sometimes you can pay for it upfront

A lot of the time when you buy a car that has one of these services, you can pay for X number of years upfront. With Ford, I know for example, some of the cars come with X number of years of supercruise already built into the price of the car. And that will be on the window sticker. Sometimes they don't because not everybody wants that feature. They have been pushing it pretty hard. So always check to see.

if that service is included because very often the dealers are going to try to sell you on it but you don't want to pay twice for something that came with the car kind of like how they want to charge you for floor mats like we added this protection package to the car that included rubber floor mats well you know what i looked on the window sticker and those rubber floor mats

We're already on the car from the factory, so I have already paid for them. Don't charge me twice. Always, always check the window sticker to see what you have already paid for so they don't try to charge you again. But a lot of these features are really very useful and you can choose to use them. If you don't like them, then you can cancel your subscription. Unlike being able to cancel your subscription to 2026, which is not necessarily started off so great.

but it gives you a little bit more control over what features you want to use. And I think it makes sense when that feature involves an outside entity, a service, a call center. We pay for things like Netflix for streaming to get extra TV shows. We pay for things like Pandora, and we've been paying for satellite radio, things like that for long time. Those we think of as subscription services, but it starts getting into a gray area when

All of it is already in the car, but you're just paying for whether or not to use it. I still think that the super crews and those systems make sense because there is a lot of software involved with that and they are trying to recover their research and development costs because it took a lot of money and continues to take a lot of money to develop those technologies to map.

are incredibly complex road systems and to be able to figure out how do we handle this in places where the signal might not be as strong or the roads are constantly changing like they are here in Charlotte like I have no idea how those systems would ever work here with the amount of road construction and new roads that we constantly have and the changes they're making to the existing ones.

So I understand that that makes sense as a subscription. Tesla started a lot of the pay for features subscription services that a lot of the manufacturers have started to take note of and are trying to follow in those footsteps.

One example is Mercedes. In some of their electric vehicle models, you can pay annually to unlock additional horsepower. It's like, yes, your car is capable of going this fast, but hey, if you want to go even faster, you can pay another $100 a month or whatever it is. I just made up that number. I didn't actually look up what the cost is because I don't really want to know.

It's I think that falls into one of those great areas because the car is already built to go that fast and it is much easier in an electric vehicle because Electric motors are a lot more capable as long as you have the battery power to be able to deliver the electrons to propel the car at those speeds It's not like turning on and off cylinders. Although don't get me started that they might since they figured out

how to turn on and off certain cylinders in your car like they do with the Hemi engine. They do that for fuel efficiency, but it wouldn't be surprising to me if they figured out a way to turn off like, you only get four cylinders unless you pay for ⁓ two or four more. I can see them doing that. But it's so much easier to do in an electric vehicle because of how that technology works. Tesla really normalized this with being able to pay for

faster acceleration because literally it's just how the computer is programmed to allow those electrons from the battery to flow to the electric motor. All of that can be controlled with software. Makes sense, right? Tesla was a technology company that started building cars. They are still primarily a technology company. In fact, they're building fewer cars now because they're so

focused on building robots and sending us into the iRobot future that Isaac Asimov warned us about. But you're paying just to unlock features that your car is already capable of. But that can be a good solution because most people don't necessarily need the super high performance model. Or maybe they just want to play with it for a little while, but you don't need it all the time. That's what I do with Netflix.

I don't pay for a lot of the TV subscription services. I wait until a show that I like, a new season comes out, like when Stranger Things final season came out, waited till it was all there, paid for one month of Netflix, binge watched the whole season, and then turned it off again because I don't want to pay for it a regular basis. If you could turn on and off some of that technology, like the more power.

more acceleration. Hey, you know, I want to do a track day or I'm going to go up in the mountains today and do a little driving. Being able to turn it on for a short period of time would actually be really cool. And then you turn it off just to go back to your normal life and don't use it. Now, if you're paying for extra power, I do think that they should have a package that you can pay for that not only gives you that extra horsepower, that extra acceleration, all that extra performance in the car.

but possibly comes with a subscription to a lawyer to get you out of the inevitable speeding tickets that you will probably get testing out that extra horsepower. Fine. Maybe that's just me. But I think that'd be a good idea. know, Tesla has always had paying extra for the full self-driving capability. That's where Ford and GM followed in their footsteps with paying for supercruise and blue cruise. Mercedes did the same thing with this permission based horsepower.

And it's not you pay for every horsepower. It's not like, every additional horsepower is another 25 cents. They might do that, but you just pay to unlock like a new level. Like in a game, you're unlocking this premium level of power to be able to access. But you're still just sort of paying for a capability that's already sitting in your driveway.

So I have mixed feelings about it, obviously. Let me know how you guys feel about that and would you use something like that? Or if you have an electric vehicle that has subscription-based turn-on, turn-off these features, let me know if you like it, if you use it, do you pay for it? And if you do, do you feel that it's worth it? Well, between 2018 and 2021, Toyota did a little experiment with this.

And we know that Toyota is not exactly a leader in the technology world. They do things very well. They make cars very reliable. They make them safe, but they are never on the leading edge or the bleeding edge of technology. That's why they have the reliability. But they had this little period of time where they were smoking something and certain models were equipped with specific infotainment systems that had remote start functionality.

that was built into the key fobs. So instead of going onto your smartphone and remote starting your car, which things like Subaru Starlink and Hyundai's Blue Link do, this was actually built into just your normal unlock the damn door key fob. I actually have an aftermarket one of those on one of my old old cars specifically to get it heated up in the winter.

But Toyota tied this in, then they tied it to a subscription that expired after the trial period ended. Wasn't every model, wasn't every trim. But here's what happened. Once the subscription ran out and you didn't renew it, the key fobs entirely stopped working. You couldn't even unlock your car and get into it without paying for the subscription.

Boy did that go over like a fart in a space suit. People were none too happy about that, so I don't think that was Toyota's intention. I just don't think they tested it as thoroughly as Toyota normally tests things. They struggle on the technology side.

So they backed off of that pretty quickly after getting what you would imagine is quite a bit of backlash. And I mean, that was also during the beginning of the pandemic too. So we were already all very pissed off and at our wits end. So do not test our patience at that point. It was kind of interesting. So fortunately, they have backed off that and are moving more towards the things on your smartphone.

And I get, okay, if you want to pay for remote start, having these things through the app, having a subscription. Okay, I can see that. Not everyone's going to want it, and it is more heavily software based than it is actual hardware. But BMW tried to take it a little too far. They tried to charge just to use Apple CarPlay when that first came out.

That did not go over well either. They backpedaled really quickly after the internet completely roasted them over that. But it didn't stop them from continuing to test out some serious subscription bullshittery. They offered a subscription in the European markets, the UK, Germany, South Korea, a few other markets around the world.

a subscription to heated seats. Let's think about that for a minute. The seat is already installed. The heating element in the seat, that's already installed. All the wiring is already installed and hooked up. And the little button to push it is already in the car, connected to everything. The car is physically capable from the factory

of keeping your butt nice and warm. Why should you have to pay a monthly subscription to activate it? That's like a tushy tax. I am not paying a tushy tax. Nothing has to connect outside the car. There is not a human involved in helping you keep your bum warm. The car is fully capable of it. The electrons are already built into the battery.

This is not something that you should have to have a subscription to do. It's ridiculous. They tested it in a couple of US markets, very limited. ⁓ did not go over well, did not go over well. So even in Europe, where they are a little more tolerant of paying extra for lot of things and things being subscription based, they did not like this either. If it

comes in the car, all the hardware, everything you need to make that entire system work is already in the car? You've already paid for it! It's not like paying extra changes the number of electrons running from the battery into the heating element to warm your tuchus. No! That's already there. So it's just absolutely ridiculous. So BMW, that was the epitome of bullshittery.

But Ford is now also contemplating some bullshittery of their own with what is called the frunk. You may have heard of a frunk. That is the storage space in the front compartment of an electric vehicle because there's not an engine up there. So you have this nice little extra space. You have two trunks. Frunk means front trunk, you know, real creative.

Ford is contemplating and testing out charging you to access it. Space that is already in your car. They want to charge you to use air inside your car. It's literally a molded storage bin. There's no cellular data involved. There's no satellite. There is no call center. It's literally air.

space already in your vehicle. Yet, because it's an EV, software has the ability to allow you to access it or not. And so they're kind of testing out, hmm, should we charge people to be able to access a portion of their car that they've already paid for?

Really hope this is not going to actually get rolled out and they will be coming to their senses very very quickly because I don't even think the Europeans would tolerate that we Americans. my god. No, I have already paid for this Cars are rolling computers and I have said that Tesla was a technology company that decided hey, let's make cars now the automakers

are car manufacturers that are saying, hey, let's be a technology company. And obviously there has been some rough going on both sides. But now the cars have embedded SIM cards. They do receive more and more over the air updates. Some of that can be great if you don't have to take your car into the dealership just for them to do recall work because the recall is a software problem.

and they can just send it to you over the air. Fantastic. That is one of the things that Tesla owners love about their cars. And I'm perfectly okay with going in that direction where it's appropriate. But they are using all that data to say, how can we generate even more revenue without spending any more of our own money just to let people use the features that they have already paid for? So.

When you go car shopping and you're looking at cars with all this new technology, especially if the dealer talks a lot about, oh well it has Starlink or it has this BlueCruise or it has these cool technology features. Be sure to ask, does that come free with the car or is there a subscription? Is there a free trial to it? If so, how long is that free trial for and what is it going to

cost me when it expires and then find out, is there a way if I pay for say three years upfront, is there a discount on that subscription versus yearly or monthly, whatever and ask what stops working if I don't renew the subscription. Don't be surprised if the average salesperson at the dealership

may not know those answers, so I would get them from multiple sources. A lot of dealerships have people who are delivery specialists and all they do is set up all the technology in the car. Salespeople sell cars, that's their job. They don't necessarily know the technical nitty-gritty details. So be sure to ask the technology people, so how does this really work and what will I lose?

if I decide not to continue with this subscription? And then what happens if you sell the car? If you paid upfront for say three years or five years or it came with the car like that five year subscription to the Blue Cruise that Ford includes in lot of vehicles, what happens to that if I sell the car? Can I cancel and get a prorated amount of money back like you can with an extended warranty? Or does that money just go poof into the ether?

Or is it transferable if you sell the car privately to the next owner? A lot of extended warranties are. So ask that about the technology as well. Because these are now things that are costing you money that you want to be sure you understand how this works. We're already having to pay for things that we don't use in the car a lot of the time.

simply because of the way the manufacturers package options. I'm working with a client right now who says, I don't even want to think about German cars because I don't like that you have to pay for this super expensive package on this really high trim level just to get this one feature. And I understand that. All the manufacturers package their features and they package them differently. And it sucks when you have to pay 4,000 extra dollars

to upgrade to this super fancy trim level with a bunch of stuff on it that you frankly don't need just to get parking sensors or a backup camera or heated seats. Different manufacturers prioritize these features in their packages differently. For example, your Japanese manufacturers and your Korean manufacturers, they tend to prioritize the safety features.

So you're gonna get pretty much all the driver safety aids, pretty much with the exception of the cruise control, the automated cruise control, maybe some of the little more advanced ones, but your basic driver safety aids, the electronic babysitters, I call them, tend to be on the base models now, because they have given up on our ability to drive and would just rather their cars be safe. Whereas the German cars,

you have to upgrade and pay extra for these features because in Germany they teach people to drive and I guess their philosophy is if you really need these things, yeah we're going to make you pay for it. Maybe you should just learn to drive. So the different manufacturers prioritize different things so be aware of what features come and different trim levels when you are car shopping and that can be extremely frustrating to figure that out. I'm a big fan of creating a spreadsheet.

But resources like Edmunds.com, they really show you very clearly what features are in what trim levels. You typically get a lot of features for your money with Hyundai and Kia, although Kia packages them rather differently. You have to go up to the top level of the Telluride to get a feature that is in the mid-level on the Palisade, but then vice versa. It's really weird. So it's important to really know what features are important to you.

which ones are must haves, which ones are that'd be great, and which ones like you know what I can live without that if it means saving four thousand dollars maybe there's another aftermarket solution to that or I can just live without it and then really look carefully at those subscriptions and understand what the capabilities are that technology how much it's going to cost you how long is your free trial and is that free trial

the full features or is it just a free subset of features just to kind of get you interested and hopefully you'll pay more? Always understand where your money is going and what can be taken away from you. So let me know what feature would you pay for? Now I might for example if they can build cars just build one level of car. Do not give me different trim levels just build one level of car and then maybe I do pay for just the things I want.

I could pay for heated seats just in the three months of the winter that I might need it here in Charlotte and then pay for the air-conditioned seats for the three or four months where I'm sweating my butt off and then turn it off when I'm not using it just like I do with Netflix. That might be kind of cool. I might not need navigation so I might not pay for that. That might be interesting but only if they can make the price of the car itself less because we are already paying through the nose.

for the price of the car. I'm sure as heck not going to pay for something that's already in the car just for the privilege of actually using it. So let me know what would you never pay for? What would you want to pay for? Have you ever had something expire unexpectedly that no one explained to you and suddenly you couldn't use your car anymore? It's not easy out there, folks, but understanding how

all this stuff works will help to save you money in the long run. And as you know, that's already my goal. So next time I'll see you on The Straight Shift. Drive safely.