Mazda App Will Start Your Car, Lock Your Doors, Improve Life

by Aaron Cole

December 31st, 2020 5:16 PM

mazda app will start your car lock your doors improve life

Mazda announced today a dealer-installed option that’ll let owners start their car, lock their doors and annoy everyone in the neighborhood via panic alarm.

The app, which is free for the first year and $65 annually after, will be called Mazda Mobile Start. The suggested retail price is $500 for the option, but allegedly official kits are selling on Ebay for $419.50.

The remote start will run for 30 minutes to warm up or cool down your car, according to Mazda. The system runs via GPS, but it’s unclear if navigation is a required option on the car. We reached out to Mazda to ask if the system could remotely stop an engine, but haven’t yet received a response.

In addition to remote start, panic and locking, Mazda is also offering a GPS locating system to help frequent flyers find cars in massive, crowded airport parking lots.

The app is available for most major smartphones, which basically means any phone not made by Blackberry.

#Mazda #MobileStart #RemoteStart #Smartphone #Technology

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12 of 23 comments

Ryoku75 on Jul 09, 2015

I'm willing to buy gas and parts for my cars, I ain't paying for what should be a free app. Don't factory key-fobs already do stuff like this?

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- Corey Lewis on Jul 09, 2015
  
  This too. I am buying the product, and paying for the optional app compatibility. I'm not paying you a fee to use something which I already paid for. Just like if my sat nav cost a subscription, I wouldn't pay for that either.
  
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- Carguy on Jul 09, 2015
  
  +1 I'm sure it will also come standard with all sorts of security vulnerabilities.
  
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- Kyree on Jul 09, 2015
  
  Well, with our 2012 Sonata Limited, which has Hyundai's BlueLink telematics system, the app *is* the only way to remote start the vehicle. The key fob does not have a remote start function.
  
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- Ryoku75 on Jul 09, 2015
  
  @Kyree Was the app free for your Hyundai? Lets hope that cars don't go the way of video games via the whole concept of "charge people for what they've already purchased".
  
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- Kyree on Jul 09, 2015
  
  @Ryoku75 Well, the app itself is of course free, but you have to pay for BlueLink, which is a subscription-based telematics system, the equivalent to OnStar. Like OnStar, the car uses a cellular data network to send and receive data, and that costs money, so it's technically not charging you for something you already have. And with most automakers, even if you aren't a paid subscriber to the company's telematics system, the car will still go ahead and phone the police if you are involved in an accident in which your airbags deploy.
  
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- Ryoku75 on Jul 09, 2015
  
  @Kyree Why not just build remote-start into the Fob?
  
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- Kyree on Jul 09, 2015
  
  @Kyree Who knows? I wish they would do that, as well as offer it on the app...
  
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Tosh on Jul 09, 2015

Bet it took ALL DAY to make the five icons all look the same.

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- Kyree on Jul 09, 2015
  
  Oh dear; that is not very user-oriented at all, and I'm glad you pointed it out. The point of icons like these should be to make them instantly recognizable, not to make them cute so that they all look similar and the user, in a moment of hurry or frustration, accidentally presses the wrong one. Mazda could have employed other techniques to give the icons a uniform theme or school of design without making them look confusingly alike.
  
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64andahalf on Jul 09, 2015

The monthly charge by Mazda is total BS. Similarly, I don't subscribe to the low-fidelity satellite radio service (which is now a monopoly).

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Mncarguy on Jul 09, 2015

I hope it works better than the factory installed remote start on my CX5. It works fine when I'm home and the car is parked in the attaached garage. When I am out, usually the car is parked too far away for it to work. Sometimes it will work, but I get the message it didn't work. I don't think it's worth $500, except when it's -20, I may have a different opinion.

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