‘Eventually I won’t have a choice’: Car subscriptions for remote start and extra horsepower pile on top of a record $787 average payment

“I feel like eventually I won’t have a choice,” he told Fortune .

Automakers are betting that drivers will get used to paying monthly for features built into cars they’ve already bought. Early evidence suggests consumers will tolerate some of it, but not fees for hardware they’ve already paid for, and their willingness to pay is slipping.

Different manufacturer, different time, he noted, but the contrast is the point. “It’s becoming more frequent and more annoying,” he said.

The appeal for automakers is straightforward. “Number one, it really is based upon the fact that they can,” Drury said. Modern vehicles are connected to the internet, which means features can be switched on and off remotely.

“It’s not like it’s a hard touch point thing,” he said, like swapping leather for cloth. “It’s the fact that there is control over some things that are actually hardwired into the vehicle, but at the same time—flip of a switch.”

The dealership, meanwhile, “hates it,” Drury said. No salesperson wants to sheepishly explain that some of the bells and whistles on a customer’s new toy sit behind a paywall.

“But they’re just the middleman,” Drury said. “It’s shifting where the money’s going, but at the end of the day, who’s bearing the cost? The customer.”

“Talk about leaving a bad taste in your mouth,” Drury said. “It’s like you bought this vehicle; it’s 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?”

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.

Peter Anderson, 36, a luxury car enthusiast who has been driving high-end cars since age 14 and a half (“thanks to the great state of North Carolina’s legal driving age requirements”), agreed. “Honestly, if the technology is something like heated seats, I don’t want to pay for something that’s already built into the car and I’ve paid for the car to be equipped with those seats,” he told Fortune .

Anderson cited upgrades to power, handling, and driving dynamics. “Even if it was just a new mode that could be added because the software had evolved,” he said.

Online, some Volkswagen customers cried foul (“If you’re OK with this dystopian nonsense, you’re a sucker,” one Redditor said). Volkswagen, meanwhile, told Fortune that customer feedback “has been positive.”

Sue Helper, an economics professor at Case Western Reserve University’s 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.