Cars feeling creepy dystopian
Cars seem to be making a strong play for “scene with the most dystopian AI vibes.” First we’ve got Toyota’s super honorable move to charge owners an $8/mo subscription fee to keep their key FOB working. Then, there’s Tesla aiding a repo biz in getting access to a car whose owner was delinquent on their payments. This is weird, right?
With Tesla I’m not so surprised. The gf and I had the opportunity to speed around in a Tesla a few months back, and while the thing is kind of unbelievable (0–60 in, what, two second?), I defs got the feeling that I was being watched the whole time. A feeling which was confirmed when gf-dad gave us a rundown on his phone of all the driving infractions we made only moments prior. So, the idea that the same car manufacturer would remotely start someone’s car, drive it somewhere, unlock it, and honk the horn so the repo guys could find it and take it away is not surprising.
And yet, with Toyota I expect more. Though I’m not sure why. The fact that Toyota is charging owners a monthly fee to access the car they already paid for just seems unnecessary even by apocalypse standards. For the car manufacturer who beat Volkwagon in sales in 2020, I feel like you shouldn’t be scraping around for an extra couple dozen mil. Tis tacky.