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Asher Davis was vaguely aware that subscription-based car perks had \u201cbecome a thing,\u201d he said. But when the 33-year-old was thrown into the new-car market unexpectedly, after nine years of blissful ignorance, what he found disturbed him: as far as he could tell, the roster of new cars with no subscriptions attached had dwindled drastically.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like eventually I won\u2019t have a choice,\u201d he told Fortune.<\/p>\n
Davis\u2019s frustration is aimed less at any single subscription\u2014offerings run the gamut from remote start to horsepower upgrades\u2014than at the market\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n
Automakers are betting that drivers will get used to paying monthly for features built into cars they\u2019ve already bought. Early evidence suggests consumers will tolerate some of it, but not fees for hardware they\u2019ve already paid for, and their willingness to pay is slipping.<\/p>\n
Why automakers are flipping the switch<\/p>\n
Edmunds doesn\u2019t formally track the spread of subscription-based car features, according to Ivan Drury, the firm\u2019s director of insights. But Drury knows the trend firsthand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got a Subaru that has the location and remote start based upon a subscription fee,\u201d Drury told Fortune. \u201cAnd my prior vehicle, a 2024 F150, had both of those for free.\u201d<\/p>\n
Different manufacturer, different time, he noted, but the contrast is the point. \u201cIt\u2019s becoming more frequent and more annoying,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The appeal for automakers is straightforward. \u201cNumber one, it really is based upon the fact that they can,\u201d Drury said. Modern vehicles are connected to the internet, which means features can be switched on and off remotely.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not like it\u2019s a hard touch point thing,\u201d he said, like swapping leather for cloth. \u201cIt\u2019s the fact that there is control over some things that are actually hardwired into the vehicle, but at the same time\u2014flip of a switch.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dealership, meanwhile, \u201chates it,\u201d Drury said. No salesperson wants to sheepishly explain that some of the bells and whistles on a customer\u2019s new toy sit behind a paywall.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they\u2019re just the middleman,\u201d Drury said. \u201cIt\u2019s shifting where the money\u2019s going, but at the end of the day, who\u2019s bearing the cost? The customer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where drivers draw the line<\/p>\n
BMW briefly test-drove a subscription for heated seats, charging drivers in markets including the UK, Germany, and South Korea a monthly fee to use seat heaters already installed in their cars. The fee was never offered in the U.S., and the backlash was swift and severe enough that BMW dropped the heated-seat subscription in September 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cTalk about leaving a bad taste in your mouth,\u201d Drury said. \u201cIt\u2019s like you bought this vehicle; it\u2019s good to go. You should just be able to hit the button. Get that heated seat. And you paid for a BMW, and you might get yours turned off?\u201d<\/p>\n
The episode suggests a red line for consumers: Charging for something long considered part of the car, in a vehicle already sold at a premium, reads differently than charging for a genuinely new capability.<\/p>\n
Peter Anderson, 36, a luxury car enthusiast who has been driving high-end cars since age 14 and a half (\u201cthanks to the great state of North Carolina\u2019s legal driving age requirements\u201d), agreed. \u201cHonestly, if the technology is something like heated seats, I don\u2019t want to pay for something that\u2019s already built into the car and I\u2019ve paid for the car to be equipped with those seats,\u201d he told Fortune.<\/p>\n
But automakers are banking on his openness to subscriptions in general.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m into [subscriptions] to an extent,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cIf there\u2019s an update to the software that\u2019s capable of giving me better performance or a new feature, I\u2019d pay to enable it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anderson cited upgrades to power, handling, and driving dynamics. \u201cEven if it was just a new mode that could be added because the software had evolved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Volkswagen, No. 1 on the 2026 Fortune 500 Europe, is testing that appetite. In 2025 it brought its \u201cPower on Demand\u201d subscription for the ID.3 electric hatchback to the UK, letting owners of Pro and Pro S versions pay \u00a316.50 (roughly $22) a month to raise output from 201 to 228 horsepower. The extra 27 horsepower is already built into the car\u2019s hardware.<\/p>\n
Online, some Volkswagen customers cried foul (\u201cIf you\u2019re OK with this dystopian nonsense, you\u2019re a sucker,\u201d one Redditor said). Volkswagen, meanwhile, told Fortune that customer feedback \u201chas been positive.\u201d<\/p>\n
A $20 fee on a $787 payment<\/p>\n
The subscription push arrives as vehicle costs hit records. The average monthly payment on a financed new car reached $787 in the third quarter of 2026, up from $756 a year earlier, according to Edmunds data. The average rate on those loans has held near 7%.<\/p>\n
Against payments like that, a $20 or $30 monthly subscription can feel almost negligible, which is exactly what makes it easy to underestimate.<\/p>\n
Sue Helper, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University\u2019s Weatherhead School of Management and a former chief economist at the U.S. Commerce Department, said the monthly sticker price can be a misleading odometer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe important thing is to look at the total cost of owning a vehicle, not just the monthly payment,\u201d she told Fortune. \u201cA subscription that costs a few dollars a month may seem insignificant, but multiple fees can add up over several years. Consumers have to weigh those costs against the value they actually get from the features.\u201d<\/p>\n
Subscriptions aren\u2019t inherently exploitative, Helper said. They can make sense for services that require ongoing investment, like connectivity or software updates.<\/p>\n
Part of the problem is attention, she said. \u201cConsumers have limited time and attention, and they may not fully account for recurring charges when they initially purchase a vehicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
She draws the line at charging for hardware already baked into the purchase price. \u201cOne difference between a vehicle-related subscription and a magazine subscription is that the former is tied to a very expensive investment,\u201d Helper said. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be fair to say that the $50,000 vehicle is in fact not usable if a consumer doesn\u2019t pay an ongoing fee.\u201d<\/p>\n
She pointed to New York City\u2019s \u201cclick to cancel\u201d rule, which Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s administration put into effect Oct. 1, as a policy that can keep tactics that exploit consumer behavior from becoming \u201cstandard business practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
What the market is saying<\/p>\n
The risk isn\u2019t only on the consumer side. \u201cA subscription might generate additional revenue in the short term, but if customers feel they\u2019re getting less value for their money, they may be less likely to buy from that company again,\u201d Helper said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe competitive question is whether consumers see enough value in a paid feature to keep subscribing\u2014and whether the company\u2019s pricing strategy strengthens or weakens its appeal relative to other brands,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The market has started to answer. In S&P Global Mobility\u2019s 2025 Connected Car Study, published in July 2025, 68% of respondents said they would pay for connected-car services, down from 86% in 2024.<\/p>\n
Automakers are betting the decline is about presentation, not principle: that drivers who balk at a heated-seat fee will still pay for a performance upgrade or a connectivity plan if the value is clear.<\/p>\n
Drury worries that the fees will fade into background noise, and that resistance will erode as a new norm sets in. \u201cThere\u2019s huge backlash, but at the same time, if even anybody signs up, they make money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnly older people like myself are going to remember that \u2018Hey, that used to be free, that used to be something normal that my car always had\u2014and now you guys are charging for it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
#Car #subscriptions #remote #start #extra #horsepower #pile #top #record #average #payment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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