Not all brands sell these features as a subscription.

I chased this up with Ford over my car. They said we get them for free for the life of the vehicle, and as long as the 4g it needs to work exists. That's got atleast 10 to 20 years left in it.

Why would you buy anything that requires and app, let alone a car? I haven't bought a new car in a while, but if it requires and app, I'm not buying it. I bought a pergola, and originally they said I could use an app to turn the lights on. But I made them install a switch instead. Maybe consider unlinking your life for important/expensive purchases?

That's exactly what I use remote start for. Just leave your car set to 68 or whatever and then when you remote start it will come up or down to temp. Even on my cheapass Chevy that's 10 years old I can remote start it (including the HVAC) and also hold the "unlock" to start the defroster. Now I can't actually change the temp the system is set at without getting in the car, thats true, but that's a real edge case for me when I can just leave it set at room temp pretty much year round. Even the seats and steering wheel will heat up if I left that on beforehand. But maybe you do have a real need to tweak the temp and A/C values on the daily where you live, rather than just have the car resume where you left it at, I wouldn't know.

The closest I know of is some VWs and Hondas allow certain click patterns to do things like roll down all the windows or open sunroofs maybe.

Accords and Passats I think maybe Jettas have done it for decades.

Same for remote start. Which my 10 y/o Subaru does with a fob and as long as I set the heat to the right settings before getting out, works a treat on subzero mornings.

Some high end models of years and decades past had a fob with a little lcd display that acted as a remote for the heating and cooling.

Beetle fan hahaha. Maybe I had just watched The Mummy or something before picking that one years and years ago

My car has a timer to set the cabin at a given temperature by a given time, do you know if your car has a function like that?

nah, pretty simple. set the preferred settings in the menu in the vehicle, then have a fob button to activate it. flash the lights to signal acknowledgement, just like locking and unlocking.

although maybe don't actually flash the lights, since everything is stupidly over bright LED now and it's rude af to be using those unnecessarily

Wow a whole app just for your car? That's pretty fancy. I don't see the appeal personally, but going by the vote ratio I must be in the minority. I like my stuff to be simple