The problem, according to critics of the pricing plan, is that the app doesn’t seem to have any significant ongoing maintenance costs on Mazda’s side, making the decision to charge it as an ongoing service questionable at best.
We don’t know what motivated Mazda to go this route and what special features the app will offer down the road, but it is something worth reading about before deciding to purchase a subscription for it. It’s entirely possible that we may see further developments of that feature later on, but Mazda haven’t said anything about that so far.
The app allows users to control their cars in various ways remotely, including the ability to start and stop the engine from practically anywhere. They can also check whether their doors have been properly locked, and lock/unlock them remotely too.
Additionally, special features of the app allow the user to locate a vehicle anywhere thanks to GPS tracking and the phone’s camera, eliminating the need for long searches of a car lost in a parking lot. It remains to be seen if everything about that new feature works as smoothly as advertised however, since being as new as it is, we would expect there to be some issues that Mazda will have to iron out over the next months.