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.”
I was wondering, what makes the modem that hard to replace?
I get that the embedded systems in cars are complex works of engineering, but I don’t see why there can’t be some sort of standardized physical interface akin to OBDII to be used to ‘upgrade’ the modem.
It’s possible, but it costs money to design the hardware so it’s accessible, it has to use a connector which has to be robust against vibrations (is m.2 robust?), then there needs to be a standardized protocol to communicate with the card. Does the car computer need to know how to authenticate against the cell network or does the card? Is it industry standardized or specific to the manufacturer? All kinds of things need to be designed and car manufacturers have no reason to invest in they.
Nothing, except right-to-repair, or rather the lack of it.
It could just use a standard USB or mini pci-e modem and make it super easy to replace. If the were concerned about unauthorized use, they could easily make it so that a key stored in the cars TPM is necessary for the modem to connect to the tower, making the modem a commodity field replaceable part.
But they choose not to. They choose to make a proprietary part that only works in their cars and is only manufactured by them. They make it so the car won’t recognize it if it isn’t activated by a dealer shop computer.
Then, when the technology it’s based on is obsoleted, either they decide to make a proprietary part to sell you and only they can install…or they say “Wow that sucks. I guess we could knock a few hundred off a new car for you then?”. More than likely, it’s the latter. You probably already had your car for a few years and the honeymoon phase is long past. You don’t even care if it gets a little ding or scratch anymore. They know that.
Or…now hear me out…they could’ve just been using RF fobs for remote start that’s point-to-point, instead of enshittifying fucking remote start by making it rely on a third-party.
But then they wouldn’t need you to install an app that needs a million fucking permissions. To start your car remotely. Something that a postage-stamp sized PCB has been doing since ET was in theaters the first time.
Support right-to-repair when it’s on your ballot. Auto manufacturers put a lot of money into lobbying against it every time. And it’s usually fear-based propaganda that isn’t grounded in reality at all. The fact is, they made the system this way, on purpose, to protect profits and for no other reason. Fuck them. Fuck them right in the tushie.