Spotify tells customers that its Car Thing dashboard accessory will stop working on December 9, less than a year after it went on sale, without offering refunds
Spotify's brief attempt at being a hardware company wasn't all that successful: the company stopped producing …
The VergeChris Welch
Context & Ripple Effects
Car Thing moved from a $90 U.S. sale with planned software additions to a production halt tied to demand and supply-chain issues. The shutdown notice turns that earlier retail launch and software roadmap into a test of how long a connected accessory remains usable after its maker exits the category.
This matters because Spotify is ending the service layer that makes the device functional, rather than merely ceasing new sales. Related coverage later records a refund process amid consumer lawsuits, underscoring how quickly a product-retirement decision became a customer-remedy issue.
First-order effects
Current Car Thing owners face a fixed December 9 loss of functionality, while Spotify initially says it will not refund them.
Spotify removes an automotive hardware touchpoint from its product portfolio and must manage the support and reputational fallout from a device it previously sold.
Second-order effects
The no-refund position creates pressure for a remedy as affected buyers organize or pursue claims; the subsequent refund-process coverage indicates that customer redress became the next operational issue.
For consumers, the episode raises the perceived risk of buying accessories whose core features depend on a vendor-operated service, favoring products with clearer support commitments or independent utility.
Third-order effects
If connected-device makers continue to retire cloud-dependent products outright, product lifetime and shutdown terms may become more important competitive and consumer-protection issues than the initial hardware price.
Spotify's experience points to the difficulty of extending a subscription service into standalone hardware without durable demand and a support model that survives a product-line exit.
The trend: This is one data point in the growing tension between short-lived connected hardware experiments and customers' expectations that purchased devices retain usable life.
Spotify is bricking their Car Thing devices. The controller has proven to be pretty useful for me as a dedicated desktop music controller. A passionate developer and hacker community had formed in recent years to support the devices, which makes this decision feel a bit cruel. [i…
Spotify discontinuing “Car Thing” after taking our money is quite disheartening. @Spotify should have tested the product with a small demographic for FREE instead of making this a money grab that will now turn into products that are unusable. [image]
Just got an email that Spotify is discontinuing Car Thing. Sure, it's a weird little product that's only mildly useful. Not that surprising. I kind of thought it was already discontinued, tbh. But.. why would it stop working completely? That's annoying. And wasteful.
what part of Spotify's car thing even needs to have continuous work on it? discounting is one thing, but to have it literally stop working is insane. [image]
I stopped using my Car Thing device when I upgraded my vehicle, but this is still disappointing. No option to recycle or repurpose the devices, either #spotify https://support.spotify.com/ ...