Spotify's Car Thing is no longer a thing: remaining units are now disabled

Remember Spotify's Car Thing? Well, Spotify wants you to forget it. The poor Thing is now officially gone and all units that were working have been disabled as of today. Spotify announced it was giving up on the Car Thing earlier this year, but now it's absolutely official: the device has now retired to the great gadget storage bin in the sky.

Born in 2022, the Car Thing was Spotify's first piece of hardware... It was a simple screen with a rotating dial and a few buttons and was able to connect to your phone and your car and give you a way to control your music.

Less than a year after its debut, Spotify decided to pull the plug on its short-lived experiment. The device wasn't that popular and the music-streaming giant announced it would discontinue the device and end its sales. Two years after it was introduced, Spotify said it would cease operation of existing devices, and encouraged people to recycle their units...

Earlier today, the few remaining Car Thing owners started to notice the devices stopped working. Reports have been present on X. Car Thing now boots up with a simple message saying it's no longer operational. The message also reiterates refund terms, the window for which ends in January.

That doesn't entirely mean the device is useless: there are several efforts to make use of its hardware that don't use Spotify on the back end. However, it doesn't have enough power to use Android... some people have found curious solutions thanks to open-source files that Spotify released.

All in all, as most people use their car's infotainment system and Android Auto or CarPlay, Spotify's Car Thing was almost dead on arrival. Despite that though, it managed to last almost a full year, which is surprising in itself. Anyway, not all experiments end in success (surely this one didn't). So farewell, Car Thing. May you find new life as a paperweight or a very niche collector's item.