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.
Or it’s just incompetence, short sighted planning to please the shareholders
My car is so old it makes its own cloud!
Time to switch to an EV
No worries, your cloud vehicle will not survive the cloud. Its electronics are so noumerous and irrepairable that cloud cars will never reach the age of cars build in the past.
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/
Yep. My toddler hit the starlink button recently. Absolutely killed my outback.
Crazy the bull shit I had to do to start it again.
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
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…
I’ll never but 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 itI 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.
Remote 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!
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
That’s not the same, though. I don’t necessarily know what time I’m going to be done eating dinner when I’m dining out. I can start the car from my phone while I’m waiting for the check, though, even if it’s a block away.
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.
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.
What car is it?
I’m curious what you would pick today if you had to.
Something from 20 years ago
Yep… that’s what I was talking about
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 feel the same way about the new cars which is why I’m still driving a 2012. I genuinely have no idea what I would get if I wanted something newer.
Yeah, I love my 2015 Sonic.
I’m rocking a 2006 VW Polo. Thing’s a beast. Almost no power, endless tiny things wrong, but I got pushed off the road by a cement pump truck…and I mean…yeah it was “written off” but only because popping the dents and repainting it would be more than it’s value. Most of what’s gone wrong I’ve been able to fix myself for less than £100, and going to my friend’s place to use his garage and big jack.
The 2029 Slate Wagon, Vaporware Edition
You buy a new one so the c level can buy another yacht
My European car asks me each time I start it if I want to connect to the cloud. And defaults to “no” after 10 secs.
It’s crazy that “local first” has to apply to cars now.
Slate Auto: “Cloud? Oh, you mean that completely optional telematics thingy that’s intended more for business fleets! Yeah, that’s excluded by default on our vehicle.”
“Don’t be evil…” - Google
Y’all don’t learn.
I preordered one. I think I might see how to use meshtastic to add remote start. Should be able to have bidirectional status and huge range.
It’s an electric truck. You don’t need remote start.
I presume you mean remote climate control.
Yes but Kleenex and Google. Its a generic term for turning your car on away from the “start” “ignition” button.
Sort of like the gas pedal in my leaf.
You have my attention… but with Meshcore and a repeater magnet mounted to the roof.
a repeater magnet mounted to the roof.
What’s a repeater magnet?
Meshcore uses a Repeater & Companion Node setup where as Meshtastic is more peer to peer.
Here’s a quick video showing the concept I had in my head.
The magnet is the antenna mount type, but I personally would use one of the roof rack screw points, to act as structure and a ground plane connection.
…but they’re building a fleet truck…?
You buy something from before ~2015 and call it day!
Although less integrated with the vehicle’s systems, aftermarket telematics and diagnostic-port (OBD) solutions offer limited cloud connectivity to fill the gap left by OE services when they’re phased out. Unfortunately, most are engineered for fleet services
No mention of Open Vehicle Monitoring System (OVMS) here? Its mostly focused on older EVs where the manufacturer has abandoned the cloud portal for remote management of the car. However, that’s nearly the exact problem the article is calling out for other non-EV cars.
My new vehicle has remote start, but only via the app. It’s a useful feature but frustrating that my trim level doesn’t also have it available via the keyfob. Once the manufacturer ends support for my vehicle I will lose the feature out-right.
My father’s Avalon will never show turn by turn navigation on the infotainment screen ever again because the mobile app it requires is dead. Car is 9 years old.
This is why screen projection should be required by law.
Sounds like you own the vehicle and can make whatever modifications you want to it in order for it’s features you purchased to work.
Yeah but that costs extra time and money they shouldn’t have to spend
You bought the vehicle. Do y’all not see that? Despite how you as a consumer is treated you fucking bought the vehicle! I really do feel like I’m taking crazy pills…
What’s the alternative? Not buying a vehicle? If I wasn’t in the US and actually had good public transportation available to me I certainly would forego vehicle ownership. As it stands, it is frustrating to think I will one day lose the remote start feature, but it’s not a deal breaker.
Buy any of the other vehicles out there that don’t pull that bullshit?
Lol it wasn’t a choice between that car and walking. That’s a massive false equivalency.
Basically every new vehicle made in the last 5 years has connected features. That’s why I said “not buy a vehicle” I was using hyperbole to point out that the options are limited if you want a new vehicle without connected features. Options are even slimmer if you have specific requirements for a vehicle outside of basic transportation.
The point is that you shouldn’t buy a new vehicle. Buy used.
Works until it doesn’t. Connected cars go back almost 20 years now. better to research the car and ways to remove telemetry. Base model cars tend to have less telemetry, or none at all.
Those are separate, but equally concerning, things. Connected features are what this article is about, but telemetry is a different issue. On a new vehicle, you might disable the modem but lose several “features,” perhaps ones that you effectively have to have.
On somewhat older vehicles that don’t rely on connectivity to the same degree, disabling the modem only prevents telemetry data being sent to wherever-it-is that that data goes. That seems to be the sweet spot for me.
The people who buy new vehicles usually do it for the warranty that lasts several years so the cost structure of ownership is entirely predictable.
You can also buy a 25 year old Volkswagen 1.9 tdi. Some years your cost of ownership will be fuel and oil changes (and those cars basically take no fuel), but at some point you’ll need new unit injectors costing 2-3x the car’s value for a set. Will it be the month after you buy the car, or will it be in 5 years? It’s a lottery and you’re better off replacing all 4 when it comes to that, rather than doing one at a time.
Cars in the range of 5-15 years of age are even worse because they’re more complex and some of the parts are super expensive. And it takes around ~10-15 years to know if an engine or transmission design is truly reliable (if it has big problems, we might find out sooner).
I’m going to use German cars as an example again because those are the ones I know best, but for example when BMW had the M57 diesel, that was basically the best modern diesel engine. 500k km? 700k km? No problem whatsoever. Only real issues would be the occasional injectors, turbo and maybe some coolant hoses, but those usually started surfacing after 300k or 400k km, at which point you expect SOME issues.
Then N57 came out as its replacement and a few years later we knew about the potential chain and valvetrain issues. Kinda sucks, because they’d also moved the chain to the rear of the engine, but you can get it done for a few hundred euros yourself, or somewhere between 1500-3000€ at a shop. But it took nearly a decade before we knew about the crankshaft issues and those are an engine killer. I’m talking a full rebuild of the bottom end with a NEW, not re-ground crankshaft since these have a special coating from the factory IIRC. Prepare around 10000€, which incidentally could be more than the car is worth by the time you find yourself doing this work.
Now that engine’s replacement, the B57, has been out for 8 or 9 years and as far as is currently known, it has nearly no typical issues beyond some plastic coolant pipes that get brittle over time. But we don’t know what other common issues might start surfacing as more and more of those engines reach high mileages.
Now if what you’re thinking is “just buy a Toyota and you’ll have no trouble”, well, Toyota has made absolutely horrible engines in the past, for example the 2.2 diesel. Head gasket failure was notoriously common. Again, something that you wouldn’t necessarily know when you’re buying a 5 year old car because the issues haven’t started surfacing en masse yet.
I have my eye on a new (to me) vehicle in the next couple of years. I’d gone from planning on buying new but have now settled on the lowest mileage 2019 I can find. New enough to be nice and safe and have physical buttons, old enough not to have all these objectionable “features.”
I refer the newest style of vehicles as “spaceships.” Call me old fashioned and old guy yelling at clouds, but I want my next vehicle to be, you know, a vehicle.
There’s a difference between “has connected features” and “REQUIRES connected features” though. Again, you’re making a false equivalency.
Yes, pretty much every new vehicle has some sort of connectivity, and almost all have some sort of paid subscription to use those connected features in the app.
That’s entirely different than requiring you to have a subscription and use the app. Most new cars do NOT do that. They still have all the basic functionality without using the connected features, and the features are literally extra features so you can do things outside of the range of the fob, or add some extra things that the fob can’t do.
There are plenty of vehicles that have this feature without requiring an app to use it.
Old vehicles? No you want status and convenience.
No in want reliability without massive amounts of maintenance and repairs above all. A 20+ year (pretty much how far back you need to go to avoid telemetry) old car is not going to give that, regardless of what anyone says. They will require lots of time at the mechanic way too often, or lots of hours from yourself.
That’s convenience…
The entire point of cars is convenience…
Our society is built around the automobile… It’s a necessity. Jesus…
We’ll need new regulation to stop this. And, we won’t get it with the capitalists in charge.
My next vehicle will be an early 90s Mercedes.
