S&P Global Study: Drivers Ditching Connected Car Subscriptions

Car manufacturers love bragging about all the fancy connected car subscriptions and tech they're cramming into new vehicles these days. But here's the thing – most people aren't buying what they're selling, literally.

A new study from S&P Global Mobility shows that fewer drivers are actually paying for these connected car services, and it's the second year in a row that subscriptions have dropped. Only 68 percent of people said they'd be willing to pay for the stuff, which is pretty telling when you think about it.

Here's how it usually works: Buy a new car and you get maybe one to three years of free connectivity. After that? Time to open your wallet if you want to keep using those features. But despite practically every new car coming loaded with this tech, people just aren't signing up when the free ride ends.

The numbers are pretty interesting when you break them down by country. In places like the US, UK, Germany, and France, the biggest group of drivers are the ones who simply aren't connected at all. American drivers are actually more likely to have paid subscriptions than most – about 35 percent are paying, while 19 percent are still on free trials. But even then, 38 percent just said "no thanks" to the whole thing.

China's a different story entirely – only 10 percent of drivers there aren't connected, but that's mostly because way more people are still riding out their free trials.

So why are people so reluctant to pay up? Well, for starters, most folks already have smartphones that do everything these car systems do, often better. Why pay extra for navigation in your car when Google Maps on your phone works just fine and displays on the same screen anyway?

People also hate the idea of features being built into their car but locked behind a paywall. It's like buying a house and then being told you need a monthly subscription to use the kitchen.

Privacy concerns are huge too. Nobody really trusts how car companies are handling their data these days, especially after all those stories about manufacturers getting sued for selling driver information to insurance companies. The fear of data breaches just gives people another reason to stay offline.

The weird part is that people who do use these services are generally happy with them, though satisfaction levels have been dropping compared to previous years. That's got to be concerning for companies like GM and Stellantis, who were banking on making around $23-25 million annually from subscription revenue.

Looks like car companies are going to have to work a lot harder to convince people that their connected services are worth paying for when the free trial runs out.