I'm fearing the day when my quite old ICE car dies and I end up in a situation where the best option is a newer car that is a computer on wheels running software that I know will stop getting updates very quickly.
Of all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
I'm not really worried about a lack of updates to an embedded device provided that it isn't network connected. To me the root of the issue, and also a far more concerning problem in and of itself, is that from what I understand modern vehicles are connected to the mobile network and phone home.
There are plenty of modern options. Most of my vehicles do not get over the wire updates ('12 honda civic, '15 base model Colorado, '17 Spark). Our tiguan does, sadly.
If my car's engine dies (which at some point it probably will do, after all, these things don't live forever) I'll just rebuild it again. It's got 200K on it and a relatively fresh engine (40K) so I think I'm good for a long time to come but buying a modern vehicle isn't even on the menu for me. If I really want malware I'll disable my adblocker, I really don't need it in my car.
You're driving an old car now; you could just drive a different old car when that time comes.
But if you're talking about new cars, I think the best way to mitigate that is to buy something that is ubiquitous. The popular cars are the most likely to have enthusiasts finding ways to keep them running until the wheels fall off.
> Of all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
Agreed re: Slate, it looks interesting through this lens for sure.
But I also think there's probably a business opportunity here, and wonder why a bunch of thinkpad enthusiasts don't get together and start a classic tech business delivering simple EVs with knobs+levers, and computers that don't suck.
I'm starting to think the short software support isn't a bug, it's a feature. They want the car to feel obsolete in 5 years so you're pushed into buying the next model. It's the smartphone sales model, but for a $50,000 purchase.
You design a new transmission to comply with federal regulations. The transmission is mostly an upgrade of previous designs and built in cooperation with multiple vendors. It's actually not a bad unit.
Which is a problem because it will be too reliable. So you take a small accessory component, like a valve body, and you undersize it and built it out of inappropriate materials. It now starves the transmission, causes it to run hot, and the nice transmission cooks itself to death under even the slightest load.
The hope is you won't even bother to buy and install a new $7000 part. Just scrap the car and get a new one!
If you're buying a new vehicle, find your favorite search engine, then search for "car model year reliability upgrade." You're almost certainly going to want to get a few of those done if you expect the car to be driving in more than 5 years.
Maybe owning a Corolla for ten years as my first car and now a fairly old Highlander screwed up my baseline understanding of how car ownership should work. If I paid that much for a car and it lasted five years I would talk to a lawyer about a lawsuit. I've never done that before and never really think about doing that but that's completely unacceptable.
I certainly would never ever buy from that brand again. I don't know how they expect to have repeat customers. Judging from what I've heard though it sounds like they're struggling to get first customers and the new "cars" are just pilling up.
Between the car scams, the housing scams etc we could be facing a pretty steeply deflationary environment in the next couple years. I can't imagine the banks will continue financing this insanity for too much longer.
On the less-technical side, Hyundai has a corporate-legal mechanism to request "Delete personal information" [0] that might be worth doing, just to round things out.
> one step of which involved removing this "garnish" panel behind the screen. Easier said than done
Different year/model, but same experience with the same task: I really hate situations where the secret is "a suspicious amount of force", especially if there's no sufficiently trustworthy/detailed information showing that things can be pulled or pried in a certain manner.
> Having a couple of non-marring plastic pry tools does help with this sort of thing
IMO these are worth buying, they're quite cheap and trying to make-do with metal tools will cause more scratches and scrapes than you'd expect, no matter how careful you're trying to be.
Having worked in a car factory, getting involved in the rectification side of things, I can say that "a suspicious amount of force" is pretty normal for this stuff. If you're working on a car you need to be able to get behind the panels, but they need to be held on well enough to never, ever rattle.
Looking for trustworthy information these days is much easier than it used to be, there are generally technician training videos on youtube that will show you where and how to pop panels off.
If they had just clipped the antenna wires, how likely would that have disabled all outbound communication? Clearly not as good as disconnecting the modem (which removed some software checks), but more approachable without the multi hour disassembly.
If you install fully shielded resistors it can work, but shorting the antenna completely will have the added benefit of destroying the RF amplifier transistors. From then on the car will just think it’s out of cell range, and there’s not much chance of leaky signal. It’s not too hard to make shielded loads though.
I do prefer the option of removing the entire cellular module though.
Any non-disable-able connectivity will be an absolute deal breaker for me on any vehicle I own. I guess that probably means I’ll be buying used vehicles for the rest of my life, but it is what it is.
The govt should fund $1,000,000 bug bounties on these vehicles. If anyone succeeds in remotely gaining access to the mic, car companies are fined $100,000,000.
Nice work. I'm honestly surprised that the head unit didn't complain about the missing modem. Although it's far from returning to a simpler less software heavy car, removing the cellular connectivity is a promising start that surely hugely reduces the attack surface of the vehicle
I know of some modern vehicles that will not start at all if you go about removing the telematics unit.
I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.
I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.
Had to look up "yuppie button" to figure out what they were on about.
Sounds like a fun fellow. Lights up all of the lights on the back of the car for funsies. Oh they're all DOT-approved, so it's probably a good idea. Definitely a safety feature. Their manifesto makes them totally believe that everyone else on the road is the problem.
I am all for removing this needless communication the manufacturers are equipping cars with now, but between your cell phone associating with towers, the Flock cameras that every municipality has eagerly deployed, the repo bounty people driving parking lots with LPRs, and LEOs with on-car LPRs you're still being tracked.
It’s quite upsetting that if you want a modern car so that you utilise the newest advances in safety, you have to consent to constant tracking, enshitification, subscription services, etc. It would be really cool if you could get something like a ‘67 impala that doesn’t make ‘67 emissions and has actual seatbelts and airbags…
> Somewhat related, an easy early fix was to disable the car's microphone in the headliner light assembly.
This (and maybe the things he does further on) would probably interfer with the eCall system that is mandatory for cars in Europe. The author seems to be in the US so that might be fine, but if you're in Europe, please don't do stuff like this.
I would like to see some legal and regulatory steps. When we purchased our Ioniq, there was no agreement for data sharing, etc. - we have basically a cash register receipt, nothing more.
Whenever there is a major update, an insanely long T&A appears on the screen. No one is going to read it. The only options are "accept" or clicking it away. If you click it away, it comes back the next day. It cannot possibly be legal for them to basically force T&A - a one-sided contract change - on customers.
>Finally I realized that it just took a little more force in the right places, and managed to work it loose one clip at a time.
I f-ing hate this crap. And it's only gonna get worse because "hurr durr snappy plastic" is one of those industry circle jerks that exists because academia indoctrinated a generation into it.
You can have snappy plastic that isn't subject to breaking if you remove it wrong if you a) design it simpler and less trick b) use a couple cents more material c) use better plastic. And before all the stupid professionals start screeching about cost and weight... there's usually no cost difference at the end of the day because doing what I suggested reduces tooling costs and makes your QC pass window wider.
54 comments
[ 79.2 ms ] story [ 1906 ms ] threadOf all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43898280 https://youtube.com/@evbmw
But if you're talking about new cars, I think the best way to mitigate that is to buy something that is ubiquitous. The popular cars are the most likely to have enthusiasts finding ways to keep them running until the wheels fall off.
Agreed re: Slate, it looks interesting through this lens for sure.
But I also think there's probably a business opportunity here, and wonder why a bunch of thinkpad enthusiasts don't get together and start a classic tech business delivering simple EVs with knobs+levers, and computers that don't suck.
You design a new transmission to comply with federal regulations. The transmission is mostly an upgrade of previous designs and built in cooperation with multiple vendors. It's actually not a bad unit.
Which is a problem because it will be too reliable. So you take a small accessory component, like a valve body, and you undersize it and built it out of inappropriate materials. It now starves the transmission, causes it to run hot, and the nice transmission cooks itself to death under even the slightest load.
The hope is you won't even bother to buy and install a new $7000 part. Just scrap the car and get a new one!
If you're buying a new vehicle, find your favorite search engine, then search for "car model year reliability upgrade." You're almost certainly going to want to get a few of those done if you expect the car to be driving in more than 5 years.
I certainly would never ever buy from that brand again. I don't know how they expect to have repeat customers. Judging from what I've heard though it sounds like they're struggling to get first customers and the new "cars" are just pilling up.
Between the car scams, the housing scams etc we could be facing a pretty steeply deflationary environment in the next couple years. I can't imagine the banks will continue financing this insanity for too much longer.
> one step of which involved removing this "garnish" panel behind the screen. Easier said than done
Different year/model, but same experience with the same task: I really hate situations where the secret is "a suspicious amount of force", especially if there's no sufficiently trustworthy/detailed information showing that things can be pulled or pried in a certain manner.
> Having a couple of non-marring plastic pry tools does help with this sort of thing
IMO these are worth buying, they're quite cheap and trying to make-do with metal tools will cause more scratches and scrapes than you'd expect, no matter how careful you're trying to be.
[0] https://owners.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/privacy/data-request/new...
Looking for trustworthy information these days is much easier than it used to be, there are generally technician training videos on youtube that will show you where and how to pop panels off.
I do prefer the option of removing the entire cellular module though.
Any non-disable-able connectivity will be an absolute deal breaker for me on any vehicle I own. I guess that probably means I’ll be buying used vehicles for the rest of my life, but it is what it is.
Even attempting responsible disclosure on vulnerabilities when it comes to cars can quickly result in a gag order.
[Citation needed, but not hard to google, been discussed here before]
https://ownersmanual.hyundai.com/docview/webhelp/Hyundai/46a...
I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.
I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.
Sounds like a fun fellow. Lights up all of the lights on the back of the car for funsies. Oh they're all DOT-approved, so it's probably a good idea. Definitely a safety feature. Their manifesto makes them totally believe that everyone else on the road is the problem.
https://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/yb/
Still, no reason to make it easier.
This (and maybe the things he does further on) would probably interfer with the eCall system that is mandatory for cars in Europe. The author seems to be in the US so that might be fine, but if you're in Europe, please don't do stuff like this.
Whenever there is a major update, an insanely long T&A appears on the screen. No one is going to read it. The only options are "accept" or clicking it away. If you click it away, it comes back the next day. It cannot possibly be legal for them to basically force T&A - a one-sided contract change - on customers.
These companies deserve bankruptcy.
I f-ing hate this crap. And it's only gonna get worse because "hurr durr snappy plastic" is one of those industry circle jerks that exists because academia indoctrinated a generation into it.
You can have snappy plastic that isn't subject to breaking if you remove it wrong if you a) design it simpler and less trick b) use a couple cents more material c) use better plastic. And before all the stupid professionals start screeching about cost and weight... there's usually no cost difference at the end of the day because doing what I suggested reduces tooling costs and makes your QC pass window wider.
(Of course, I can probably get away with buying low miles ICE cars for some decades after)
Some of this feels like fun stuff for us techies but it will bite us and the next gen.
The only way to fix it is to vote for decent regulations.