Tesla vehicles now support Chamberlain MyQ devices, but it comes at a costly catch

In one of the latest software updates that Tesla pushed to its customers over the air, the company brought some impressive new features for the holidays. Some of these include support for Steam gaming (Model S/X only, though), Apple Music streaming, the ability to view the cabin camera from your phone, remote farting controls (because, why not!), and more. This also included support for Chamberlain’s MyQ devices (garage door openers, or its popular MyQ hub), allowing users to automatically close and open their garage as they get home or leave.

However, as amazingly useful as that sounds, it does come at a price. Even though you may already own a MyQ device and your Tesla and have it riding on your own network and internet connection, Chamberlain decided to lock this feature out behind a paywall.

Chamberlain decided to refer to it as a service of its own called “myQ Connected Garage” and then asked that users pay extra for it through subscription. It tried doing this originally for just Google Assistant or IFTTT support, but that didn’t go very well with customers. The company eventually released this support from being behind the paywall. However, it appears to have completely dropped support for Google Assistant later on and added IFTTT back to the paywall that we are talking about now.

So what is this paywall? It is a yearly subscription that can be purchased into at $45/year, $179 for five years, or $299 for ten years. It essentially unlocks access to its API for third-party integrations. Something that most companies don’t charge for.

And here you thought you were buying into a user-friendly garage door opener. Instead, you are buying into a garage door opener that is going to nickel and dime you if you want to actually want to make full use out of it. More than doubling the cost of the garage door opener (if you bought into one vs the hub) if you factor in its life span. If you just bought the hub, that $20 suddenly got a whole lot more expensive.

Or you can opt to simply use the company’s own app that simply allows you manual control of its open/close status from your phone or receive alerts when it has been left open (that’s it). You don’t have to pay for that. You only have to pay additional fees if you want the product to actually rock your world.

So even though Tesla was awesome enough to release support to its customers on its side, Chamberlain is sitting on the other side quietly rubbings its hands together with a deviant grin, waiting for the extra money to come pouring in.

I guess the first move to get away from the paywall wasn’t due to listening to the customers complaining online. It just needed to rethink its approach to how it wanted to make people pay extra in order to unlock all the features of its devices. Chamberlain may not even be listening to those conversations online.

Either way, Tesla now supporting myQ has reignited this chatter online at places like Reddit where users have been sharing their stories of initial celebration followed by an instant crash of all hope. A perfect time for the competition to rise up with a better answer and take control of the market.