“Imagine if your electric car – say, a Tesla – received an automatic software update, but you couldn’t drive on the new version, until you entered your credit card details to pay the full MSRP once again for the upgrade. Tesla would promptly be out of business, especially since you already paid for the car once.”
Another analogy: Imagine if you woke up in the morning to find your five year old car missing, and a brand new car in its place. Brand new, yes, but it’s still substantially the same car. Same make/model, same platform, similar styling, maybe a few minor changes, but when you used to drive a 2019 Corolla, a 2025 Corolla is just not that different.
You had left a bunch of your stuff in your now-missing car, but you can see it inside this new one. You can still climb into the driver’s seat, put the same key in the ignition and start the engine, but before you can back out of the driveway, a voice comes over the speakers:
You have 180 days to complete payment of the full purchase price of this automobile. Without payment, this automobile will revert to limp mode.
The slight difference being that even though the 2019 Corolla still runs just fine, you will be forced to upgrade to the 2025 Corolla regardless, at some point before 2029 (or pay an absurd amount to extend your warranty a few years).
After 2029, Toyota essentially puts a big flashing sign on your car saying “HIT ME!”. You can’t take the sign off. You could run it on a closed track somewhat safely, but you do have to make sure you’ve got some really strong gates protecting the track, otherwise someone is bound to find it and take it for a joyride or smash it with a hammer just for fun.