I hate paying monthly subscriptions for anything, and Toyota just announced that many of their car owners will have to start paying a monthly fee to use the Toyota remote start feature.

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Starting in 2018 Toyota began providing Toyota Remote Connect as a free 3year subscription on their new vehicles. That app allows owners to lock and unlock their cars remotely as well as use the Toyota remote start feature. The app pings Toyota, who then sends a signal to the car to execute the command.

Now the Toyota remote start feature was also part of the remote that came with many of their models. The remote's remote start feature connects directly to the in order to start the car. It does not need to go through Toyota's servers.

Now Toyota has announced that in order to use the remote start feature, you must have an active remote connect account. That is, they tied the remote start feature of the car's remote to the app. So without an active remote connect account, the remote start feature of the car's remote will no longer work.

All those cars in 2018 are not beginning to run out of their free trail period and in order to use the remote start features, Toyota owners must sign up and pay for the remote connect app. The current cost of this is $8/month or $80/year.

Starting in 2020 some of the Toyota car models provided a 10year free account. So those cars will have several years of free use and this will only impact the 2nd or 3rd owners of those vehicles.

As a side note, Most Toyota remotes don't have a remote start button on their remotes. So How do you remote start a Toyota? Using the lock button. Press the lock button three time and the last time hold it for about 3 seconds.