It seems that we no longer have what we buy. From films to software to cars, everything seems to be on their way to subscription -based models, and we hate it. Car manufacturers are inexorable in what they will try, and customers push back hard, according to S&P Global’s 2025 Connected Car Survey.
In 2024, 86% of the people surveyed said they would pay for connected services, which is a bit higher than other surveys we have seen. But even in this survey, that number fell considerably to 68% in 2025. 5% more respondents also say that they do not subscribe to no affiliated car services at all. The study mentions the costs of these services as the main reason why people do not subscribe. This can also include people who simply refuse to subscribe to functions that are already built into cars, but require a subscription to activate and use. In many cases, such as Tesla’s ‘full self -driving’, the sensors or cameras are already there, but it costs $ 99 per month to activate.
Moreover, smartphones already offer some of the same services such as navigation, entertainment and remote control of certain functions. Perhaps this is the reason why brands such as GM, Tesla and Rivian Apple CarPlay and Android Auto do not support. However, smartphones cannot offer safety systems for driver or some EV-specific services. Drivers are most likely to expand some extra cash for these subscriptions, which is logical, although they should not be locked behind the paywalls in the first place.
Security as a leng door on a submarine
Another important care that people have about subscription services is security and the privacy of their data, and rightly. DataPrivacy is practically not, with manufacturers, police and the federal government that have fairly easy access to your data. GM was caught on Heterdom that spying the driving habits of his customers, but it is far from the only perpetrator, with Ford and Toyota that is known to collect large amounts of personal data. They can then sell this information to third parties, for purposes as innocent as marketing or, if possible, invasive as insurance companies, as a result of which certain rates of drivers rise based on their driving habits.
Earlier this year, Hackers succeeded in gaining access to the connected services of Subaru to reveal a considerable privacy problems in the past year of location history of a car. Fortunately these hackers were the good boys and Subaru patted the security hole before it was publicly announced. But we discussed a similar story about BMW nine years ago, and the general safety situation does not seem to have improved much since then.
How much we don’t like them, manufacturers do not deteriorate on the range of a subscription. The promise of recurring monthly income is too tempting for them to ignore. At this point they essentially throw things on the wall, see what lingers and what we object to. Hopefully they do not introduce advertisements, pay-per-cylinder, subscription headlights and other poor functions that you have proposed.
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