GM reveals pricing menu for its in-vehicle 4G LTE service

[Himanshu Arora]

General Motors yesterday announced how much it will cost to convert its cars into a rolling 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot. In a nutshell, there will be a three-month free trial period and several paid tiers going up to 5GB of data.

"We're excited to give millions of customers an opportunity to explore the technology without paying extra for a data plan for three months or three gigabytes,” said Mary Chan, President of OnStar, the partner company that's providing over-the-air security, navigation, diagnostics, and other capabilities.

After the free trial period, OnStar's subscribers will get 200MB of data per month for $5, 1GB for $15, 3GB for $30, and 5GB for $50.  Non-subscribers can also sign up for 4G LTE but they will have to shell out $10, $20, $30, and $50 for the respective bandwidth amounts.

There's also a 12-month, 10GB plan which will cost $150 for OnStar subscribers and $200 for non-subscribers, as well as a 250MB a day plan at $5 for both OnStar subscribers and non-subscribers.

For existing AT&T customers, a 4G LTE-equipped GM vehicle can be added to a Mobile Share Plan for $10 per month.

Citing AT&T's Data Calculator, the company claims that 200MB is good enough to listen more than 6.5 hours of streaming music, 13 hours of internet surfing, and sending more than 10,000 emails without attachments.

Although GM is not the first company to offer Internet connectivity onboard, they are the first to offer the technology on a broad scale, Chan says. The technology will be first available in the soon-to-be-released 2015 Chevrolet Malibu, followed by Buick, GMC and Cadillac.

GM's in-car Wi-Fi hotspot is capable of supporting up to seven simultaneous devices including laptops, game consoles, smartphones, and tablets.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/56737-gm-reveals-pricing-menu-for-its-in-vehicle-4g-lte-service.html

 

[davislane1]

Prices are par for the course, but they are about 5+ years late to the show.

 

[Guest]

They really need to rush out the Self-Driven cars, or Automated. Whats the term everyones going with?
Also they need to do get on the Solar panel road. And in my opinion that needs to be rolled out first, with some added changes. Possibly the slow lane also being an air charging lane for electric vehicles.
Then get the automated cars to work with the solar panel roads, understand the LED lit lanes, and signage. This is necessary because, I am worried an automated car will just slam into that pot hole, that the governing bodies could not be bothered to fix, causing some kind of injury.
Then and only then, put wifi in cars. So the parents can focus on their children arguing about which film or music to stream. Another monthly bill which people could do without quite frankly.
And then while they are at all these so called technological advancements, make a wifi proof car or a stealth car, which will, stop people getting cancer from the barrage of radio waves, (or is that just a cellular phone myth still?), but even should I be takin the mick with one a little, at least this car wont be tracked so easily by the government entities.

 

[tipstir]

Make the vehicles more gas efficient first use onscreen computers or better yet program each vehicle by size to higher mileage. They did it in the 80's but in the 90's and now like they did a full circle in the wrong direction. In the 80's Gas Cars got 35 city and 45 highway. So the tech is there for Gas only. They need focus on that. Design the vehicles without issue and the last major recall is a wake-up call for GM. Just like Toyota they need to care and not care about profits and let the defects just leave the factory.

 

[wiyosaya]

I agree with all the comments. GM is going for bling rather than anything of substance. GM has a long way to go before they will be able to compete with Toyota. Toyota usually does not need government arm twisting to recall vehicles with problems as they are proactive about most recalls and issue one when they see a problem.

GM needs arm twisting to do a recall since they always try to sweep it under the rug and hope no one will notice. The fact that GM needs to be shoved to do a recall simply means that they have no respect for their customers, let alone for human life. IMHO, the world would be a better place if the govt had let GM die, and people who tolerate GM's disrespect should expect problems rather than a quality vehicle.

 

[davislane1]

Make the vehicles more gas efficient first use onscreen computers or better yet program each vehicle by size to higher mileage.

They've been improving fuel efficiency for decades. The problem they have run into – the reason we don't see this improvement in our pocketbooks – is that both vehicle weight and horsepower have increased substantially over that same period of time. This has been driven primarily by regulatory compliance (safety equipment/systems) and consumer demands (more power and features).

They did it in the 80's but in the 90's and now like they did a full circle in the wrong direction.

This is factually incorrect. Note the increase in efficiency on the right side of the graph. They've done this is by better engineering the power plants and further improving their operation with the on-board computers, among other things. It's the only way to overcome the aforementioned gains.

The problem I see with modern vehicles is their over-reliance on computer tech. It makes them inherently less reliable and more costly to repair, in addition to adding weight. They could also stand to lose a lot of the electronic gizmos and gadgets. At the end of the day, though, these will only product marginal improvements. If manufacturers are going to make any drastic improvements to ICE efficiency they''ll need to adopt gas-electric or diesel-electric (one could only hope) hybrid systems.

 

[Guest]

Haha funny!
200MB for 13 Hours of web surfing. I can't see that being enough unless it's pure text; which it won't be.