General Motors will no longer require buyers of all Buick and GMC vehicles to pay for an OnStar Premium subscription, beginning with the 2024 model year.
OnStar Premium adds services like a high-speed internet connection for navigation and music streaming. It also enables automatic download of any recall issue that the automaker can fix with a software update.
For the 2023 model year, GM required all buyers to purchase the subscription, which added between $900 and $1,500 to the price of most models. That effectively made the service standard equipment. Online configuration tools and order forms still showed the service as a separate line-item but didn’t let buyers decline it.
Trade publication Automotive News reports, “For the 2024 model year, three years of OnStar Premium will be included on all GMC Denali trims, and Buick Avenir trims,” as well as the GMC Hummer EV. The Cadillac Escalade and Escalade-V will also include OnStar Premium as standard equipment.
For all other buyers, it will again be an option. Lower trim levels will instead get Onstar Remote Access. That system links the vehicle to a mobile app but does not include many other premium services.
Buyers will still be able to purchase a premium subscription. But they won’t have to.
GM hasn’t published 2024 pricing. So we don’t know whether dropping the mandatory subscription will decrease prices more than inflation drives them up.
Telematics services like OnStar have been in the news recently. Volkswagen made five years of its equivalent Car-Net services free for all buyers after a high-profile incident in which police couldn’t use it to track a stolen car with a kidnapped child inside because of a lapsed account.
