this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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Remote start, lock/unlock doors, HVAC, windows, and alarm for basics.
None of that shit needs the Internet.
All things that have worked just fine on cars for like at least a decade before the internet was ever invented. You are describing the exact functions of a key fob. They can even open the truck without the Internet!
Off topic, but I noticed your username....China Mieville fan by chance?
Beetle fan hahaha. Maybe I had just watched The Mummy or something before picking that one years and years ago
Oh wow I haven't seen that movie in a while.
Well go revisit that , it is peak 90s overblown comedy action schlock, which is objectively the best genre of movie lol, and I'll go read Perdido Street Station which sounds dope.
That's a good starting point. Mr. Mieville's works are weird amd dark but well written.
They make it go through an app and a cloud service on purpose these days so they have an excuse to upsell you on a subscription.
Why would you buy anything that requires and app, let alone a car? I haven't bought a new car in a while, but if it requires and app, I'm not buying it. I bought a pergola, and originally they said I could use an app to turn the lights on. But I made them install a switch instead. Maybe consider unlinking your life for important/expensive purchases?
Because if literally every new car on the market is doing it, you don't have much of a choice.
(Okay, sure, you could resolve to drive old cars forever -- and that's what I do -- but let's not pretend that's possible for everyone. Even if people were willing and able to accept the maintenance/reliability/safety tradeoffs, which many are not, there simply aren't enough old cars for everybody to drive one.)
There are a lot of 2026 cars that don't require a phone app. They may have other shitty internet connectivity features, but they dont' require an app. And the next time I buy a car i will 100% not be getting one that requires a phone app.
Not all brands sell these features as a subscription.
I chased this up with Ford over my car. They said we get them for free for the life of the vehicle, and as long as the 4g it needs to work exists. That's got atleast 10 to 20 years left in it.
Some don’t sell them as a feature immediately. I think Toyota has an 3-10 year ‘free trial’ for some of their services. So one day your decade old car will just behave differently unless you start paying for the subscription.
Crap like this makes me want nothing to do with service connected vehicles at all. I don’t want to have to dig into all the software policies and durations for every brand I might be interested in a model of. You absolutely can’t trust what a salesman says at the dealer. I’ve shown them in writing that what they just told me was a flat out lie on multiple occasions.
The vehicles in my garage are currently 10-57 years old. People replace vehicles far too frequently.
I've never seen a fob be able to set climate controls. Either way, I'd rather control my own cloud for the car through home assistant
The closest I know of is some VWs and Hondas allow certain click patterns to do things like roll down all the windows or open sunroofs maybe.
Accords and Passats I think maybe Jettas have done it for decades.
Same for remote start. Which my 10 y/o Subaru does with a fob and as long as I set the heat to the right settings before getting out, works a treat on subzero mornings.
That's exactly what I use remote start for. Just leave your car set to 68 or whatever and then when you remote start it will come up or down to temp. Even on my cheapass Chevy that's 10 years old I can remote start it (including the HVAC) and also hold the "unlock" to start the defroster. Now I can't actually change the temp the system is set at without getting in the car, thats true, but that's a real edge case for me when I can just leave it set at room temp pretty much year round. Even the seats and steering wheel will heat up if I left that on beforehand. But maybe you do have a real need to tweak the temp and A/C values on the daily where you live, rather than just have the car resume where you left it at, I wouldn't know.
Some high end models of years and decades past had a fob with a little lcd display that acted as a remote for the heating and cooling.
That doesn't need the internet though right? Like a button on your key fob would achieve the same effect?
I have two cars made after 2020. Both have a phone app where you can set the internal climate settings in the car. You wouldn't practically be able to do that from a keyfob.
Both also allow remote starting from the phone, with a setting for how long to let the car run before it turns off again. From a keyfob it's normally set to 5 minutes with no option to change it.
Both are quality of life features that aren't really required, but I do use them pretty regularly. If the internet stopped working on either car, they'd act just like any older car that didn't have those features.
Wow a whole app just for your car? That's pretty fancy. I don't see the appeal personally, but going by the vote ratio I must be in the minority. I like my stuff to be simple
nah, pretty simple. set the preferred settings in the menu in the vehicle, then have a fob button to activate it. flash the lights to signal acknowledgement, just like locking and unlocking.
although maybe don't actually flash the lights, since everything is stupidly over bright LED now and it's rude af to be using those unnecessarily
My car has a timer to set the cabin at a given temperature by a given time, do you know if your car has a function like that?
That's not the same, though. I don't necessarily know what time I'm going to be done eating dinner when I'm dining out. I can start the car from my phone while I'm waiting for the check, though, even if it's a block away.
I didn't think of that but... I dont go out to eat much anymore.
It's done with your phone without line of sight or proximity of your car. The cars with built in security cameras, you can also remote view as well. I don't know of any fob with a TV screen on it.