Both are, or at least should be, ridiculous.

Yes, an app costs money. Yes, servers do cost money. But do they need to use servers? No. For example, self-hosting. Or just connecting the car to the cellular network (which they already do, mind you) and just let the phone talk to it directly, no manufacturer server required. Just pay an ISP for cell service and you’re set. Are there problems with such a solution security-wise? Yes. And while I’m not an expert in cybersecurity I think the risks are about the same for this and a server model.

Hell, they might not even use servers for anything other than checking if you’ve paid your subscription in order to lower costs already (as if a few thousand unlock requests a minute couldn’t be managed without a problem on a Raspberry Pi). They don’t need some huge, expensive and power-hungr supercomputer for that, so I don’t see a need for such a steep price.

Are the features useful? Absolutely. Would someone be willing to pay this price? Also absolutely. But the festures objectively don’t cost that much to maintain and competition should and could put an end to it.

It’s just corporate greed, and it feels to me as if we’re getting closer and closer to the fabled oxygen subscription, and we have to call manufacturers out on their bullshit while we still have air to breathe.

Just don’t buy their cars or at least their subscriptions. Get your car ‘jailbreaked’. What will they do, remote disable it? I think we’re still not that far down the dystopia plotline that a boycott couldn’t work.