New Toyota technology

Toyota is launching a new service called Telematics to compete with On-Star's sense of "Piece of mind", starting in 2009.

http://behindthewheelnews.toyota.com/?id=150&by=&fTrk=Default

 

"Stolen Vehicle Location" is pretty cool. But, ya gotta subscribe to the service.. meh

 

I could be wrong but I thought onstar was subscription based after the included first year.

 

Yep, it is.

I had it on my last vehicle and IMO was a waste of money. Therefore, I never ended up paying for the service. Unless I am mistaken the safety aspects of it are always 'active'. You can contact police/fire/ems at all times, or at least this is what I was told.

 

I would think that de-activating any safety device would cause some HUGE liability issues for GM. Think of someone getting into an accident and GM didn't report it. Lawyers would have a field day.