Study Shows Fewer People Want To Pay For Connected Services

Automakers have been hard at work in recent years adding more technology and features to new models, though now it seems like they were largely operating without any strong demand for such things. An annual report from S&P Global now shows that interest and adoption in connected car services and software has declined for the past two years, with customers either miffed about paying the fees or concerned about their safety and privacy.

It shows that automakers still have a long way to go in perfecting their package offerings, ironing out technical kinks, and safeguarding their vehicles. And even then, it’s hard to say if buyers will ever warm up to regular subscriptions that go beyond the basic functionality of a car.

China Has The US Beat On Services Adoption

The 2025 S&P Connected Car Consumer Survey asked around 9,000 global participants a series of questions about new connected-vehicle services, including connected features and paid functional updates, feature preferences, and their willingness to pay for these services and features. According to the results, the number of respondents who do not subscribe to any connected vehicle services went up by 5%, after also going up last year.

In the US, 38% have no services, 35% pay a subscription of some sort for a service, 19% benefit from a free trial, and the remaining 9% said they didn’t know. In total, in the US, 54% of respondents know they are subscribed to something, compared to 85% in China, where only 10% of those surveyed didn’t have any services.

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What Are The Issues?

According to the research report, the main factor behind respondents having no services was cost, while the redundancy of smartphone technologies also played a factor in people’s decisions, as functions like navigation can be done with a phone instead of a vehicle system. Apparently, 20% of respondents said they weren’t aware or hadn’t been offered any additional vehicle services. Those who had experienced connected car services were largely satisfied with the technology, though that satisfaction has declined over the past three years.

Who Wants What?

Navigation, personalization, and infotainment features get the highest marks, while people are most unsatisfied with the safety and security category of features. The latter services also typically come with the highest prices added on to the MSRP, so that could also be part of the frustration. Willingness to pay for more common features like navigation was lower, as some tech comes standard from some brands and may warp the customer’s perception of what’s included in the original purchase price. This is also where third-party functionality like Android Auto and Apple CarPlay may factor in as an alternative to paid vehicle services, offering the core tech most people want (the study doesn’t go into any detail about these connected phone services).

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Automaker Software Plans Need An Update

The biggest customer concerns seem to be security and privacy. People want to know they won’t get hacked, and they also want to trust that their information isn’t being used or sold by the automaker for other reasons. Respondents were also reportedly frustrated when additional hardware is present on the vehicle but paywalled behind a software service. There’s also just a huge knowledge gap for most owners, and a failing by the industry to properly inform and advertise its new technologies to customers.

Companies need to do something if they care about customer satisfaction going forward, as the number of respondents who would pay for connected services has significantly decreased from 86% in 2024 to 68% in 2025.

Source: S&P Global