Owners of Spotify's soon-to-be-bricked Car Thing device are begging the company to open-source the gadgets to save some from the landfill. Spotify hasn't responded to pleas to salvage the hardware, which was originally intended to connect to car dashboards and auxiliary outlets to enable drivers to listen to and navigate Spotify.
Spotify announced today that it's bricking all purchased Car Things on December 9 and not offering refunds or trade-in options. On a support page, Spotify says:
We're discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings. We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.
Spotify has no further guidance for device owners beyond asking them to reset the device to factory settings and “safely” get rid of the bricked gadget by “following local electronic waste guidelines.”
The company also said that it doesn’t plan to release a follow-up to the Car Thing.
Early demise
Car Thing came out to limited subscribers in October 2021 before releasing to the general public in February 2022.
In its Q2 2022 earnings report released in July, Spotify revealed that it stopped making Car Things. In a chat with TechCrunch, it cited "several factors, including product demand and supply chain issues." A Spotify rep also told the publication that the devices would continue to “perform as intended,” but that was apparently a temporary situation.
Halted production was a warning sign that Car Thing was in peril. However, at that time, Spotify also cut the device’s price from $90 to $50, which could have encouraged people to buy a device that would be useless a few years later.