This happens in the USA without face recognition

As much as I enjoy satire, there are people that will cite this and believe it

There is no need for access to a cell signal amd a server though, when you wamt to clicl start.from your living room… You can use the same fob tech as lock umlock your car like cars had prior. Or. you can buy after market remote start kits, Toyota waa juat frying to jump on the SaaS bandwagon

They may have, Toyota ditched their “subscribe monthly to remote start your car” after outrage

Oh I hate it. Like Toyota was offering remote car start but only if you subscribed online, otherwise your remote start button would get blocked by software. They walked it back because of consumer backlash, but not enough consumers complain. Meanwhile Ford pattented a drive home feature so if you miss a car payment it cripples your car, and further non payment the vehicle will drive itself back to the dealership

Oh I know, its absolute shit. My only point was Tesla doing it is not new, it’s how manufacturers have saved costs on making muliple product configurations.

No different than BMW having heated seats but if you want to use them you have to unlock with subscription plan. This way BMW makes one model and consumer has a choice with paymwnt. Intel CPUs have this too now. Company running servers can buy low performing chip, if they want to expand capability then intel sells them a license code to unlock more performance

It is way cheaper. two assembly lines to assmebly 2 packs, separate work orders, specific assembly per model ordered ( so customet doesn’t pay for low end amd accidentally get highend or vice versa ), CAD and data management of two variations. It is why ModelT only came in black, is streamlines the whole process. You see much simpler examples in other induatries ie. that use stock material. it is cheaper to stock say 3 foot precut lengths and if product only needs 2 feet you chop it off at assembly and throw away the 1 foot scrap, rather than stocking and inventorying 2 foot and 3 foot stocks. Unless you invest in an expensive atock feeder that cuts the stock to length typed in, but that machine isn’t mobile so neesa to be placed at the exact location of assembly. And if you need it two places you need two stock machines, so then you start weighing the crude method vs precise