My 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware carriage someday
To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs.
I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
What if, instead of just attempting to retreat into a shrinking world that will eventually disappear, we all collectively worked together to fix things?
I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?"
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy.
Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.
The last (hopefully only) Stellantis vehicle we owned had trouble with its transmission’s network connection.
“Nothing stops a Ram, except routine driving”.
I’m completely unsurprised they’re pushing spam to the dashboard.
The crazy thing is BMW has been doing this well for years. They should have just copied the playbook. There’s a little shop icon in the app where you can buy digital services, swag and schedule dealership appointments.
Sometimes it has discounts or track day invitations in there.
Imagine you will buy a house and somebody will have so much gall to slap a billboard on the side of your house. Repeatedly. Would you tolerate this behavior? Obviously not, then why companies thinks that it is OK to show ads on my fridge or in my car? This is outrageous behavior and I hope that some nasty regulation will end this nonsense so we can hear crying of companies how big government is bullying them and hampering innovation...
Just when you think Stellantis couldn't do anything worse...
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
And isn't this just weeks after a bad software update bricked a bunch of Wrangler 4XEs?
... Oh, and isn't this the same Stellantis that now requires a fuck-ton of hoops to access your own diagnostics now because of their "secure gateway"? (https://autel.us/security-gateways/)
I bough a new Honda and Mazda within the last year and neither have any of this kind of nonsense. Both are great. I hope people vote with their wallets. I would never have considered anything from Stellantis anyway.
Stellantis makes some of the most unreliable vehicles in the world and charges a small fortune for them. I predicted they'd be out of business a year ago but apparently somebody keeps buying them.
it'd be cool if we had a more consumer-friendly admin who would ban advertising on long-term purchases like washing machines, fridges, cars or require you the seller to tell you about how the advertising works on said things (ad types, whether they are child friendly, frequency, and upfront option to permanently opt out)
It's an interesting phenomenon. Something like this happens every week or two, and then these threads basically just become cope, with vague advice that most people can't easily do ("oh, just desolder the eSim contacts, it'll be fine"), as though that is in any way a longterm solution to corporate overreach in our daily lives.
What if we all decided to actually work together to fix this terrible situation? Unfortunately, it will involve collective action, and holding companies accountable who are otherwise very averse to that sort of thing. But dear God, we can't keep "why don't you just"-ing forver as the world closes in around us, people.
If we want a better world, we are going to have to build a better world.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 41.5 ms ] threadI love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
Cost roughly $150K
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.
The jokes write themselves in 2025
Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them away?"
“Nothing stops a Ram, except routine driving”.
I’m completely unsurprised they’re pushing spam to the dashboard.
The crazy thing is BMW has been doing this well for years. They should have just copied the playbook. There’s a little shop icon in the app where you can buy digital services, swag and schedule dealership appointments.
Sometimes it has discounts or track day invitations in there.
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
Relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPGgTy5YJ-g
... Oh, and isn't this the same Stellantis that now requires a fuck-ton of hoops to access your own diagnostics now because of their "secure gateway"? (https://autel.us/security-gateways/)
2. Disable it.
You call the number, maybe let it ring one time, and hang up. You did your part to opt out.
Then you sue them.
What if we all decided to actually work together to fix this terrible situation? Unfortunately, it will involve collective action, and holding companies accountable who are otherwise very averse to that sort of thing. But dear God, we can't keep "why don't you just"-ing forver as the world closes in around us, people.
If we want a better world, we are going to have to build a better world.
There is a time to put your foot down and that time is now.