You buy a new one so the c level can buy another yacht
In a sane world, there would be a law that forces certain types of features to always work.
Cloud connectivity can have benefits but honestly, 95+% of a car’s feature does not need the internet
Most cars throughout history have had zero need for the internet. I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later. Though there are benefits to that model, but recalls exist for a reason.
I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later
Tesla has been selling a “full self driving” subscription for years.
And if Musk hadn’t bought a president, they would have been prosecuted for their crimes.
I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later.
Too late. This is already the case, I don’t know of a single EV that wasn’t buggy on release and still buggy a year or two afterwards as the manufacturer hunts bugs in a leisurely pace. It already is like in the gaming industry. Don’t buy an EV that isn’t at least one year old on the market or you will become their free of charge beta tester…
We need a Stop Killing Cars movement
A lot of people don’t realise SKG is a foothold in exactly that fight. If you establish precedent on something as “frivolous” as video games you can use it on much higher value thing too.
I counter: !fuckcars@lemmy.world
My car is so old it makes its own cloud!
Time to switch to an EV
True. But actually I don’t have a car. My last car decades ago, had a cassette player. But that had Auto Reverse. When it reached the end of the tape it would play the other side without you having to eject the tape and turn it over!
Time to switch to a CD
F that noise. 8 track for the win!
String quartet squeezed in the back seat or GTFO.
Look at the queen of England over here with a car quartet! We just had a couple hillbillys with banjos in the rumble seat of our jalopy AND WE WERE THANKFUL.
Luxury! We had a kazoo strapped to a unicycle and we were glad of it! All 15 of us!
vehicle … cloud
Flying cars sure turned out differently than we imagined in sci-fi.
I’ll never buy a vehicle that requires cloud connectivity for anything. Not a problem!
Well, most cars don’t REQUIRE it, but most cars lose features if it doesn’t have network connectivity.
Good luck finding a car made after 2020 that doesn’t have at least one or two features that require the Internet to function.
I’ve never seen a car like this. Mine was made in 2021 though so I must have caught the last
shipcar out lol. What kind of things do cars even use the internet for? I’m struggling to imagine itRemote start, lock/unlock doors, HVAC, windows, and alarm for basics.
All things that have worked just fine on cars for like at least a decade before the internet was ever invented. You are describing the exact functions of a key fob. They can even open the truck without the Internet!
I’ve never seen a fob be able to set climate controls. Either way, I’d rather control my own cloud for the car through home assistant
The closest I know of is some VWs and Hondas allow certain click patterns to do things like roll down all the windows or open sunroofs maybe.
Accords and Passats I think maybe Jettas have done it for decades.
Same for remote start. Which my 10 y/o Subaru does with a fob and as long as I set the heat to the right settings before getting out, works a treat on subzero mornings.
That’s exactly what I use remote start for. Just leave your car set to 68 or whatever and then when you remote start it will come up or down to temp. Even on my cheapass Chevy that’s 10 years old I can remote start it (including the HVAC) and also hold the “unlock” to start the defroster. Now I can’t actually change the temp the system is set at without getting in the car, thats true, but that’s a real edge case for me when I can just leave it set at room temp pretty much year round. Even the seats and steering wheel will heat up if I left that on beforehand. But maybe you do have a real need to tweak the temp and A/C values on the daily where you live, rather than just have the car resume where you left it at, I wouldn’t know.
They make it go through an app and a cloud service on purpose these days so they have an excuse to upsell you on a subscription.
Why would you buy anything that requires and app, let alone a car? I haven’t bought a new car in a while, but if it requires and app, I’m not buying it. I bought a pergola, and originally they said I could use an app to turn the lights on. But I made them install a switch instead. Maybe consider unlinking your life for important/expensive purchases?
Because if literally every new car on the market is doing it, you don’t have much of a choice.
(Okay, sure, you could resolve to drive old cars forever – and that’s what I do – but let’s not pretend that’s possible for everyone. Even if people were willing and able to accept the maintenance/reliability/safety tradeoffs, which many are not, there simply aren’t enough old cars for everybody to drive one.)
Not all brands sell these features as a subscription.
I chased this up with Ford over my car. They said we get them for free for the life of the vehicle, and as long as the 4g it needs to work exists. That’s got atleast 10 to 20 years left in it.
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Off topic, but I noticed your username…China Mieville fan by chance?
Beetle fan hahaha. Maybe I had just watched The Mummy or something before picking that one years and years ago
The 1999 cinematic masterpiece starring Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser?
Good flick.
Oh wow I haven’t seen that movie in a while.
That doesn’t need the internet though right? Like a button on your key fob would achieve the same effect?
I have two cars made after 2020. Both have a phone app where you can set the internal climate settings in the car. You wouldn’t practically be able to do that from a keyfob.
Both also allow remote starting from the phone, with a setting for how long to let the car run before it turns off again. From a keyfob it’s normally set to 5 minutes with no option to change it.
Both are quality of life features that aren’t really required, but I do use them pretty regularly. If the internet stopped working on either car, they’d act just like any older car that didn’t have those features.
Wow a whole app just for your car? That’s pretty fancy. I don’t see the appeal personally, but going by the vote ratio I must be in the minority. I like my stuff to be simple
nah, pretty simple. set the preferred settings in the menu in the vehicle, then have a fob button to activate it. flash the lights to signal acknowledgement, just like locking and unlocking.
although maybe don’t actually flash the lights, since everything is stupidly over bright LED now and it’s rude af to be using those unnecessarily
My car has a timer to set the cabin at a given temperature by a given time, do you know if your car has a function like that?
It’s done with your phone without line of sight or proximity of your car. The cars with built in security cameras, you can also remote view as well. I don’t know of any fob with a TV screen on it.
None of that shit needs the Internet.
To add, my vehicle (2011) has its date display (as in the date & time) no longer accurate because it’s somehow integrated with the GPS, which has since stopped updating the date, and cannot be set manually. I now keep a little clock in my car that has the date on it to make up for the loss. It’s not that big of a deal compared to what others have mentioned, but it was still a shock to me when I found it.
Wow that sucks… in my car the time is off by an hour half the year because I never bother to update it for daylight savings. I assume it keeps a timer running somewhere to keep it on track
Not to rub salt in the wound, but the GPS signals are hitting the car’s GPS antenna unless you’ve disconnected that wire, pulled the fuse to the receiver, or only drive inside hardened RF shielded bunkers. When I was futzing with a little GPS breadboard module the time is what I looked for first, because if you’ve got that time signal from GPS then you know the thing is working. (PEDANTIC EDIT: The signals will hit the antenna if you’re outside unless you’ve shielded them somehow, even if you disconnect the wire.)
You could use GPS signals to synchronize clocks across the entire planet to within a microsecond while your car could be used to prop a stick up to make a sundial.
I’m going to wager there’s something else going on there. If you have a working GPS receiver, a working display (you said you did), a working “clock” that counts seconds and can give something time-like to the display to show (seems like you do), then a switch might be flipped in software and you have a data point about why GNU does what they do.
Thank you for your input. That might be a bit beyond me at this point, but I’ll keep it in mind.
I was told it has something to do with Microsoft SYNC / GPS. There were some forum posts, too, about it but nothing that lead to a fix. I may try to update the system again in the future (it’s been several years since the last), but my understanding is that it’s not a fix on my end or one that can be done at all.
The date actually reset back to probably the earliest date it had and is continuing on from there. Fun… Lol. Again, thanks for your concern!
Thank you for your input.
No problem. Hope I helped.
I do have a followup question. Will the car’s navigation/display work? As in does it know your position? If you’re able to have it give your directions then that’s enough for a “yes.” The reason why I ask is if that’s the case, then the GPS system is working, handing data off to the infotainment system saying “here’s your position and the time of day,” and your infotainment system is saying “thanks for that position but the time is for suckers.”
Yep. Nav works just fine (though the maps are a little out of date in some areas). It’s just the date that won’t set itself anymore. The date and time display are separate from the nav screen, for what that’s worth.
keeping the navigation database up to date is one. no way to update maps in my Taycan without paying $27 a month for Porsche Connect, which I have never paid.
and I dislike relying on Android Auto given the surveillance inherent in enabling it. it’d be nice to not have fucking subscription navigation maintenance
Not sure why you think Google would exploit your navigation data but Porsche wouldn’t. I guarantee both are finding ways to make a profit by bundling and selling the enormous amounts of data users are feeding back to them by using their systems.
I’m not saying I trust Porsche at ALL with my data. Far from it. In fact I at least trust Google to have better software engineering standards, even if their software is inherently surveillance evil bullshit.
But I haven’t been able to confirm that Porsche actually DOES log and exfiltrate location or navigation data. Certainly not in my Lexis Nexus report, and there’s been nothing I’ve seen reported about them when a bunch of other automakers have been called out for selling surveillance access.
What I do know is that Google is confirmed to be doing so. Unless I’ve missed some reporting or leak, I can’t confirm that Porsche is collecting, exfiltrating from my car without an active data plan, and selling GPS and nav routing data from it.
Oh for sure, I just meant for those people that do subscribe to Porsche Connect, Porsche is very probably finding some way to monetize all that sweet sweet location and navigation data. I feel like any car that generates telemetry data and has a data connection to the manufacturer, those companies are packaging up and selling off that data to someone. But that’s really just speculation on my part.
Problem is, even tho I don’t subscribe, the data connection is still there, and it’s still used to deliver some OTA updates, and a recall on the battery involves some remote monitoring that, so even tho I don’t subscribe I still don’t feel entirely safe from being surveilled.
I’ve thought a bunch about seeing if I can just pull a fuse and kill connectivity without killing anything else, but the battery recall thing is reason enough to avoid that for the time being. Besides, Flock (and other) surveillance cameras popping up everywhere are such a bigger problem anyways that it kinda kills my motivation to bother
You’re getting downvoted, but I’m in the exact same position. Car made in 2021, no connectivity at all. I cannot start it remotely - why would you do that? Is it really more convenient than turning a key or pressing a button once seated? I guess people really do like it, I just find it hard to imagine.
Starting the climate control from a distance sounds comfortable, the first few moments of driving can be too hot or cold.
I don’t have a built-in GPS, but if there was one I don’t see a benefit of using my phone to control it.
Windows? What?
You start it remotely if you don’t have a preheater. Not that idling is great for a car engine, but at least you’ll have clear windows by the time you get in the car.
In the summer you can use it to have a cold car to sit into.
Remote climate control doesn’t work on ICE vehicles without Remote start or auxiliary preheater.
Remote start, even if from the FOB, is a life saver where I live. Leaving the car out on a 90⁰ sunbath and just getting in the car is pure torture.
Yeah it seems strange to me, but it must be popular for some people.
People here often assume I’m being disingenuous or acting in bad faith, I’m not sure what causes that to happen though. Maybe it’s the way I type?
Posted 38 seconds ago and already downvoted. You might have a downvoting bot following you.
I remove my own default upvote from my comments because I’m a weirdo. Maybe that contributes? People see it’s already at 0 votes and join in?
Edit: in my client I can see both up and down votes separately. So in this case it’s a controversial post with currently equal up and down votes
I am so going to follow your weird moving forward. Didn’t even know I could do that. I’ll downvote this one manually now and go search for that setting.
Edit: that will teach me not to get on Lemmy before having coffee. My brain thought that was a setting in Voyager. Thanks for this anyway, I’m going to (try to) remember that until it becomes muscle memory.
I was mentioning this issue with my weird little car in another thread.
My car is old enough that it uses a 3g radio to connect to the internet so that things like the NissanConnect app will work. I don’t know how many 3g towers there are, but the app functionality definitely doesn’t work. The rest of the car works fine, all the accessories work, but the app doesn’t.
The car is a 2018, which i think is before the push for subscription heated seats.
As a side note, heated seats suck, I don’t get the appeal. It makes me feel like I’m wetting myself.
I’ve no clue if I will like them or not. This car I have now is the first I’ve had with heated seats and steering wheel, I’ve only turned them on to see if they work, because every day since I bought the car has been over 90°F/32°C.
Ooh a heated wheel sounds so good in a cold climate
Do you not have harsh winters? I don’t miss them that much in the American pacific northwest (mild 4 seasons climate) outside of a few weeks a year, but when I lived in the American Midwest where the climate is harsher in both directions I really missed not having seat warmers when it was below -5C regularly and sometimes going below -20C
GPS, telematics(the driving data your car collects and sends back to the automotive company who built it), over the air updates, some SOS style features like OnStar, maybe satellite radio.
Edit: Maybe apps, and stuff like updates to the onboard owners manual (because some cars don’t come with a paper one anymore). Oh. And using your phone as a key.
Sounds like I’m not missing much lol. I just use my phone for that stuff
What car is it?
I don’t want to dox myself, sorry
What? 🤣
If you know someone’s rough location, you can narrow it down a lot more if you know their car details. Especially if you get right down to exact make model year and colour. How many of your neighbours drive the exact same car as you?
Dude was just asking type of car, like “Toyota Corolla”, “Porsche Taycan” or whatever, not the VIN number.
I’m curious what you would pick today if you had to.
Something from 20 years ago
I guess I assumed we were talking new or newer cars.
Oh, we definitely were. If you don’t want something connected to the cloud, your options are:
- buy from a very small company
- build yourself something, kitcar style
- buy something from 20 years ago
Everything else is a rolling data vacuum
I’ve had to pick a new car in the last year. I chose a 2012. fuck new cars. fuck their headlights. fuck their spying. fuck their complexity. fuck their non-ownership. fuck their cost. fuck their bloated sizes. fuck their blind spots. fuck their driver assistance that interferes with my control of the vehicle. fuck their touchscreens that are absolutely useless in sunlight.
Do you not read what you write?
Yep… thanks for pointing out my typo, tho!
This is what the GPL was meant to fight against. Having boxes running software that is still under the control of the manufacturer.
Instead people complained that it was hard to use the code at work. YES. THAT’S THE POINT.
Sure but that’s also the reason stuff like this isn’t GPL. For-profit software simply isn’t going to use the give-away-for-free license.
You know it might make sense for automotive. The car is the product after all. The quality of the engine is ultimately what drives sales and most of the entertainment is traditionally third party. Making the on board stuff open helps them make a platform for third parties that are safe from manufacturer trying to push them out or collect fees. That environment also helps the manufacturer in its own sales as their cars are where the cultural impact is.
Sharing code makes sense for everybody. It lets them spend a lot less resources on fixing shit if everyone else is also doing that somewhere upstream. With FOSS you can have your cake and eat it too. At some point Google calculated that committing one developer upstream for the Linux kernel can save a company the equivalent of a couple dozen specialist developers downstream in bug prevention and feature alignment across vendors alone.
Unfortunately many companies continue to think about code as if it were potatoes. It doesn’t fucking matter who owns the code, it’s a functional spec. But hey, look at all the trouble we have explaining why standards are good – nevermind opening code.
Is this article presuming that this isn’t part of the plan? Auto manufacturers think our brains work like “oh no, my connected service was end-of-lifed. Guess I gotta buy a new car.”
With OTA updates eventually they could FORCE you into buying a new one.
I hate the privacy nightmare cars are turning into.
People already have been brainwashed on “how many years of security updates does this smartphone model have?”, and being paranoid about older-than-a-few-years devices, so you’re not far off.
(Not trying to diminish the necessity of software security updates, but at the same time I could not find any Android exploits that do not involve users installing malicious apps, supply chain attacks, or state actors)
My phone has access to my bank app, my car does not.
… yet.
Or it’s just incompetence, short sighted planning to please the shareholders
In response to some customer concerns of a dead battery resulting from the DCM continually trying to access the 3G cellular network, which is no longer available
https://www.theautopian.com/why-subaru-batteries-are-dying-all-across-the-country/
So you’d also get screwed if you routinely are parked somewhere without any cellular access? Nice design.
Just picture it - You drive your Subaru, the off-road adventure car company, to a camp site in a remote area. You wake up after a few days of hiking and camping to return to your car.
The battery is dead. If you camp too close to the car, the key fob being close to the car will leave it in a “standby” mode which drains the battery on top of the car pinging the server for updates.
Yup, lost a battery to that (2019 Impreza). Pulled the fuse for the modem, and it’s been fine ever since. I never used (or wanted) any of those features anyway.
WOW… we were trying to hunt down why my buddy’s forestor’s battery kept dying…
We even disconnected the wire that tells the alternator to stop charging the battery…
Affected Forester
2016-2018 Forester 2.5i Premium 2016-2018 Forester 2.5i Limited 2016-2018 Forester 2.5i Touring 2016-2018 Forester 2.0XT Premium 2016-2018 Forester 2.0XT Touring
Wtf that’s so recent
Yep. My toddler hit the starlink button recently. Absolutely killed my outback.
Crazy the bull shit I had to do to start it again.
it bricks permanently.
I have yet to own a vehicle made in the 21st century.
I’m terrified of having to get a vehicle that requires software updates that eventually will stop receiving support. I’m also terrified of getting a vehicle with just generally shitty software. My gf’s car has awful software and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Just give me 90s era cars again. They last forever and they’re easy to repair on your own.
There’s lot to be said for physical safety features like side and curtain airbags, or better crumple zones that don’t crush your feet, but those were pretty much standard by 2012 so you can have those without all the computer nightmares.
You can get cars as late as 2016 for this
I wonder how much cheaper a car without any crap in it could be today if they still manufactured them at scale
I know I may get flamed for this since it has funding from Bezos but take a look at the Slate Truck (https://www.slate.auto/). Not cellular modem so no tracking (other than app based things. They say like charging and whatnot but you never know). No carplay or android auto, not entertainment dash at all. Hell the windows are old school cranks for rolling up and down.
This, but as a compact and without Bezos.
Why are you buying things you don’t own?
Sooner or later that might be your only choice.
I expect my next car will be a used one. If offline cars will be oulawed I guess it’s time for (cargo) pedelecs. So there are choices, though increasingly shitty ones.
All good and swell until they’re not available and you need to cart around others/start a family/etc. It will work for a subset of the population, but it needs to be gotten in front of now if we want to avoid waste.
Hopefully those in charge will be on this. I know I won’t. :(
My time horizont is 20-25 years. I think I can manage. Younger people should solve it for themselves.
When did you stop dreaming of the future?
Younger people should solve it for themselves.
This is the boomer mindset that got us all into this mess. Fuck you.
I have not created the problem. I used to fight against that problem that corporations and other consumers have created. I refuse to support this behaviour financially. Nobody else has been giving a shit.
And you have the gall to accuse me for not being able to do anything by virtue of being old and then dead? No, fuck you, you useless punk. I hope some young idiot will say that to you, too.
You buy something from before ~2015 and call it day!
My car is a 2009. I’ll be keeping it for the foreseeable future. I’m pretty handy, so as long as the engine doesn’t wreck itself (interference engine), I’ll just keep changing out parts, oil, fluids, etc…
my 2008 is now a piece of shit and things keep breaking that I don’t bother to fix, but I’m considering keeping it alive even though I bought a 2012 to replace it. might want to start investigating that misfiring and why it’s eating oil…
after fixing most of the issues required to get the 2012 safetied, I’ve come to the conclusion that I got a bit scammed and the vehicle might have been partially flooded, so who knows what else might go wrong. every task I’ve started on it has had a hiccup, even just replacing the license plate light bulbs - the brackets the screws for the bulb cover going into disintegrated, so I had to remove the whole trim piece to replace those. since when do things like that rust out‽
Get a ninth gen Corolla and you’ll have no problems
Can’t find any near me, I’d have to fly to another country to get one that’s not full of rust holes and decommissioned due to failing safety inspection which doesn’t allow for perforation.
We’ll need new regulation to stop this. And, we won’t get it with the capitalists in charge.
