The ongoing theme of all these responses was shifting the blame to the consumer.
As expected. I think consumers also need to push back on these practices, but the problem is, majority of consumers are tech savy but not privacy savy.
They say their vehicles have no modem by default, only leaving it as an option for fleet users. They also have no infotainment system to contain any sort of camera or microphone.
IIRC, they don't have a cellular radio in the vehicle (or even a FM radio). All the connectivity is done via Bluetooth with a mobile app.
It's been a while since I read up on them and things might have changed, but I have a lot respect for what they're doing. Full embracing right to repair and customer privacy when the entire industry is moving at lightning speed in the opposite direction.
Would it have killed them to include a standard DIN-sized hole in the dash, with +12V behind it and prewired speakers in the doors? You know, like how every car used to be so I can buy my own radio that fits into said standard-size hole and install it myself?
That would fit into the spirit of "Slate", but no, their idea was a clip-on bluetooth speaker or something equally dumb. The whole point is to not make your car dependent on your phone.
If you buy a completely option-free $24,950 truck, there is no telematics/surveillance in their vehicle.
Which also means there's no remote app features that people enjoy.
The spirit of the vehicle is you can option out just about anything and DIY-it; very, very few "from the factory" options, but dozens upon dozens of DIY accessories from the factory.
The current description for the module on their website:
> A plug-and-play solution that acts as a cellular bridge between your smartphone and your Slate vehicle, enabling features like remote access and battery pre-conditioning.
It's not clear to anyone exactly what features the module has to enable the above, or if it does more than all that.
Once the thing actually ships, there'll be manuals, and there'll be people hacking it to find out exactly what it both does and doesn't do.
And since it's a DIY addition, if you later become uncomfortable with what you added to your vehicle, you can remove it!
I do enjoy watching my friend remote start his Colorado through the app, it only takes 30 seconds for the app to load and sign in, and then he presses a button that used to be on the key itself.
Preorder customer and heavy info-digger here on Slate:
There's no actual wireless on the vehicle out of the box. There's a "secure gateway" module that has a USB Ethernet adapter hanging off it, then that hangs off a USB-C port just inside the dash panels. Job listings basically detail that it's going to be DTLS over USB to the truck to do all the CANbus magic and stuff.
The telematics module also just hooks to a second USB port on the secure gateway that also has access to that same DTLS link.
So far in the truck's development they don't even really have an app yet before launch but the truck's driving along very happy without it.
It looks like lobbying for increased consumer protection laws. Either you put on a suit and talk to politicians, or you work with and donate to groups that do.
DMCA needs to be repealed or at least radically changed. Currently it's used as a cudgel by manufacturers to prevent customers from modifying the software in the stuff they buy. Legislation that requires vendors to provide documentation and stuff like "right to repair" would also go a long way.
Manufacturers laugh in the face of right to repair laws. They have no teeth.
So you can buy repair manual access for 1-3 days or on a subscription. You don’t get car software updates. You don’t get the diagnostic interface documentation. It’s a joke.
Mee, too. And that's why I've made my peace with the idea of never again buying a new car. They're all garbage quality, outrageously expensive, and effectively unrepairable, anyway, so it's not a big loss. Probably most cars and trucks older than about 2018 are safe, I figure...
In many places in Europe, older cars are not viable on account of emissions legislation. So, if you want to drive with an older car, you will have to pay a pretty large daily fee to do so. This is done in the name of pollution.
I would expect this legislative approach will be rolled everywhere.
> Drive a non-compliant vehicle anywhere in London and you pay £12.50 for the day. Check your vehicle first — most newer cars pay nothing — then pay for the day or set up Auto Pay with TfL.
I get it - I'm just telling you what the cost in London is. Most people can't stick paying that amount just to drive their old car. Most people upgrade.
For me, this is another example of how corporations + governments work together to artificially create new markets with the consumer picking up the tab. In this case, car maker sales are boosted by legislation that punishes ownership of perfectly viable cars.
Look at the options on the table for you: Either do nothing and buy new cars, or buy an older car and maintain it for the rest of your life. There is no option C, as you note.
Even the HackerNewsers are quite happy to blame the consumer ("just don't buy it!", "just don't use useful features!", "just drive an old car!") instead of pushing back.
The victim blaming when it comes to enshittification is now so deeply ingrained into culture of Americans that it's pretty much impossible to expect any kind of coordinated pushback for more consumer rights.
No, not at all. Most consumers wouldn't know or care if it's present let alone how it all works...or why they should be aware of it. Not a slight to the non-IT literate either.
> As one notable exception, Honda improved its data collection practices to prevent sending precise geolocation to a third party associated with user tracking.
I already like Honda and own models before they were connected to the cell network. But they are still not 100% there current models:
> Amplitude received from HondaLink: VIN, Location. Cross-context tracking: Amplitude received the VIN plus Location from HondaLink — an unresettable identifier tied directly to other personal data.
They are so close they should say "fuck it, we're going to be different, we'll disable all the crap" and then market the heck out of it.
A “disable spying in just a few taps” approach (“your data, your choice” it’s just opt-out) would catch my attention and they could still sell 90% of everyone’s data since people don’t touch defaults.
Mine got an update with service recently. It now nags me about my opt out every time I start it. Luckily, I don’t have to dismiss it manually, it goes away on its own. Before the update, however, I was never reminded it was disabled.
My Civic reminds me that it's on on every startup. The "don't do dumb things with the screen when you should be paying attention while driving" message (which goes away after a little bit) has a note that data sharing is on, which I have enabled because I have a HondaLink subscription.
Anti-theft location reporting is a feature I pay for, as well as the ability to remote start out of range of the key fob. (Setting temperature before leaving the office is preferable to getting into a 130F car.)
I did briefly see what it does with the data sharing off, and it's basically the same message, but iirc there's an additional button to visit the settings.
I don't trust any of my devices anymore (including/especially my car). At the very least I figure that they're spying on me. In the most extreme cases, such as Israel's terrorist pager attack, they may even kill you.
I wonder if this is going to create a market for older tech/vehicles that were made prior to ease-of-malware integration? I imagine some sort of cyberpunk future where people are scouring landfills for old 16-bit video game console chips that haven't been backdoored.
I feel seen. I used to think rms was just a crank, but maybe he was right all along: I increasingly treat any closed-source software (and even some open-source--vscode for instance) as hostile and untrusted.
Wouldn't be surprised if in a few decades you see the ultra elite start favoring older maybe early 2010s at most cars. The risk surface of a modern car is astounding. I mean cellular connection and drive by wire, screw planting a car bomb, you just steer it off a cliff from your arm chair halfway across the world and it looks like an honest accident to boot. The old cars on the other hand are airgapped. You actually need physical access to sabotage them. Risk surface is so much lower.
They go low tech in other ways as it is. Tech ceos banning their children from their own products for example, because they know the efforts being spent making these products psychologically harmful of course. But still, their solution is not some alternative, but abstention.
Maybe, but the emissions of older vehicles are, on average, very high when compared to newer ones. I expect it will be difficult/expensive to continue driving one.
Spoofing is all well and fine, but you can do more. Put as much bandwidth through that modem as possible. Those connections are meant for light data telemetry and their carrier agreement probably has caps. All the better and more expensive for them if they don't.
I have the Ford Transit Connect "Wagon". It's a 2016 model with no internet connectivity. It can fit a double mattress in the back and is tall enough to sit up on the bed, unlike nearly every SUV. I cannot recommend it enough for an everyday vehicle that doubles as a camper.
Of course, Ford discontinued this model in North America because their margins are better on trucks and SUVs.
As for the aesthetics, we really like it. It's certainly a darn sight better looking than a truck or SUV, which are all aggressive-looking pedestrian killers.
What I hate about this is that there is a minimal amount of connectivity that I would actually want. If there was a bad crash and I'm incapacitated, I would want emergency services to be called. But I want basically nothing else. Well unless you count an FM radio 'connectivity' I guess. I hate the coercive tactics so many modern tech devices use.
That is interesting that they fail safe and don't just brick the car though. Maybe you can still go with a newer car but just wrap the antennae in foil or maybe just unplug it.
Consumer protections are strong enough to prevent that from happening.
My vehicle of choice for the last 16 years has been the Volvo XC70 which, since it was last manufactured in 2016, only ever had 3G modems, which no longer work. It's luxurious, a great form-factor, safe and reliable, and can be had for less than $10K. The one I'm driving now was the proverbial old lady vehicle. It had only 30,000 miles on it when I bought it three years ago. It could be the last vehicle I ever owned since they're good for 200k miles.
Funny story on my previous XC70. I sell my cars through a classic car restorer that also does consignment sales. The manager there wanted another vehicle, so he made me an offer directly which I accepted. I let them have the vehicle for a few days before the transaction. He called me and asked when the last time I changed the oil was. I said that I have no idea. He said it appears that there's no oil in the engine. That's how robust those old Volvo engines are. He went through with the transaction and is still driving it.
Apologies for the long sales pitch on old vehicles and specifically Volvos, LOL.
I want an electric too, but between also wanting a cheap car and one that doesn't spy on me, I just feel I have no choice but to stick to these older vehicles
If you don't mind used, the Ford Transit Connect Wagon is an excellent option for an everyday vehicle that doubles as a camper. We have one and love it. It fits a double mattress with plenty of headroom room to sit up in bed. Ford discontinued it in 2023, hence the used requirement, but I believe you can turn off the internet connectivity on that model. We have a 2016 model (still going strong after 150,000km!) which has no internet connectivity, thankfully.
I taped over all my Tesla cameras (except the backup camera). The real issue was that the person I'm teaching to drive kept checking the screen for things like where to stop at a stop sign, or to see if the car thought they were too close to the curb. Couldn't have that.
Responses are typical: "That's so unsafe!" Imagine the response if they ever learned I routinely ride a motorcycle that doesn't even have ABS!
Then we get to the security aspect. I'm supposed to trust cameras, connected to the internet, on closed-source hardware, run by a vendor that has a history of misusing the data? No thanks.
> Responses are typical: "That's so unsafe!" Imagine the response if they ever learned I routinely ride a motorcycle that doesn't even have ABS!
I'll repeat that. Depending on the model+year of your car you lose out on a lot of safety features, possibly even automatic emergency braking because they had no radar for a while. If you were ever in an accident the fact that the safety features were deliberately disabled may be used against you.
It makes more sense just removing the SIM so they can't get anything. They even have instructions on how to do that in the manual.
It's already happening. Nationwide offers a discount if you agree they get to use the data feed that is already wired to them - they specifically name Toyota as the brand that delivers your driving information automatically. On other manufacturers you get the discount if you enable their app while driving (ironic, since cell phone use is strongly tied to worse driving outcomes)
> Additionally, without pretty extensive work there is no means of physically disabling the telemetry
My car has a fuse for the antenna module. You can remove this fuse to block all data transfer. Have a look at the fuse box diagrams for the minivans you are interested in.
The connectivity may not be fully disabled in a 2025 Acura Integra, but there is a way to disable data sharing. You then have a permanent yellow "nag icon" top right on your infotainment screen, but the spying is "disabled."
While the researchers noted Tesla as having privacy options that can be enabled in the car’s settings, they didn’t seem to test how this changes the # of ATA results. Would have been interesting to see how enabling privacy features changes things.
I'm sure that will go about as well as protecting the privacy of individuals in the face of "but the CHILDREN!" age verification.
In-vehicle monitoring allows car manufacturers to remind the user to buckle up, keep their eyes on the road, stay off their phones, remind them to take breaks, turn the radio down in tense traffic, remind the driver to take a breath based on increased heart rate to minimize road rage, etc.
Heck, we could really reduce lack of seatbelt related injuries and deaths if we could eliminate the 'drive' function while seatbelts are not properly worn (which we can now check with our AI cameras )
I don't know if it's required yet by law, but some cars in the US do as well. My F150 will nag me if it thinks I'm not looking at the road for too long.
What are you some kind of anti-kids-being-able-to-roam nut?
Huge and tall vehicles and distracted and drunk drivers have made prisoners of anyone not in a car in much of the USA. Loss of freedom for people in cars is an acceptable price to regain freedom for people outside of cars.
>Loss of freedom for people in cars is an acceptable price to regain freedom for people outside of cars.
I am an active cyclist who rides at least five times a week.
I'll take the bait. Why is the freedom of the cyclist more valuable than the freedom of the driver?
Restricting the freedom of the cyclist such that they cannot expose themselves to the danger of the driver would have the same result, in terms of incident safety, as restricting the freedom of the driver such that they cannot pose a threat to the cyclist.
In fact, given that there are so many more drivers than cyclists, restricting freedoms of cyclists is the correct move given that you are then creating less loss of freedom.
Where is the camera requirement for the cyclist? Why shouldn't the cyclist be required to have always on cameras to prove that they checked before swerving out of the bike lane to avoid a door rather than braking? Does the cyclist who decided to enter an underused right-on-red cross walk at speed not bare some of the responsibility? Shouldn't they have looked over to see if anyone was in the turning lane and brake accordingly? A law that says they have the right of way will do them no good in their grave.
I, as a cyclist, do not need the government to keep me safe. I understand that I am sharing a space with multiple objects that could kill me at any moment for almost any reason. There is no law that will protect me in my privileged lane if the vehicle I am casually riding beside has a blowout. There is no law that will save my life if I decide to rush out in to a crosswalk the moment it's green if an oncoming driver is having a stroke/heart attack. I behave according to the full knowledge and understanding that I am choosing to be in a dangerous space that I can mitigate the danger of through my actions. Knowing that the driver has cameras watching them and may face some extra future liability would change nothing. The threat posed by a camera of them going to jail or paying a fine will only marginally improve their behavior and will do literally nothing for my broken bones or dead body.
>I'll take the bait. Why is the freedom of the cyclist more valuable than the freedom of the driver?
It isn’t.
>Where is the camera requirement for the cyclist?
They should have one too, especially since a lot of bicycles are now electric motorcycles.
>Knowing that the driver has cameras watching them and may face some extra future liability would change nothing. The threat posed by a camera of them going to jail or paying a fine will only marginally improve their behavior
Disagree. Seeing a few people go to prison long term for using their phone while driving would cause many to not use their phones while driving.
How'd the life in jail thing pan out for the war on drugs?
People are already risking their actual life with distracted driving. Many and perhaps all of us know someone who died, killed someone, was injured, or injured someone else because of distracted driving. There is already a threat associated with the event. They could literally die. There is no greater threat. Adding fines or jail does not increase the threat and so provides no further disincentive against the behavior. I've already agreed that there may be some reduction in the behavior, but at what cost?
I do not want companies and governments to watch every moment of every driver either passively or actively using either machines or humans in the name of potentially protecting me from a distracted driver due to the increased likelihood that they go to jail. I do not want companies recording personal conversations of all drivers always just in case they happen to not check their blind spot. It would make me as a cyclist feel bad knowing that I've subjected millions to continual surveillance for my safety. The camera would have to be on at all times in order to detect the distracted driving in order to alert the driver. It could, I suppose, take pictures instead of recording video but then the detection would not function as well. It could all be done locally to the vehicle and never uploaded. If uploaded, there could be a deletion policy with strict access controls, but there is so much money to be made with recording and saving the data to sell to insurers and ad companies and machine learning companies and...
In the US alone you're asking that consumers be forced to spend millions of dollars between the added cost of the R&D, cameras, and storage (and more if you want it local to the vehicle) in order to be subjected to hundreds of billions of hours of surveillance annually (assuming all cars have cameras on all the time). I do not want to live in a world in which we speed-run having our every thought and action recorded in the off-chance we do something wrong. I do not believe that common citizens should exist under constant scrutiny. If there is life after death and I die by the hands of another I will not ever once think "gee, I wish there'd been a camera to save me"
While we're adding continual video monitoring, why don't we add a few other just-in-case protections? Why shouldn't every vehicle have breath alcohol ignition interlock devices? Who could object other than precisely those we wish to prevent from driving? And we've already got cameras on the outside, why shouldn't we make drivers perform a safety inspection to make sure their lights, blinkers, and hazards are working? Surely it's no burden to ensure the safety of your fellow drivers? And of course there's no legitimate reason for a civilian vehicle to travel over the speed limit, and we've already got on-board GPS, so why shouldn't all vehicles have GPS speed governors? Sure, we all like speeding, but that's not fair to all victims so we'll just go ahead and eliminate that as a possibility.
While we're doing the cameras, why stop at the inside of a vehicle? Why stop on the outside of your door? We could have a nice gentle dinging noise to remind people that the domestic violence they are committing is currently being recorded. Millions of crimes are committed inside homes, and many murders happen in homes. People are wrongly convicted of crimes that didn't happen (where the 'victim' really did just fall down the stairs), after all. A single camera could save those wrongfully accused from wrongful imprisonment! What a deal!
We have the ability to drastically reduce all sorts of crimes. All it costs is treating everyone like a criminal at all times et voilà!
>Adding fines or jail does not increase the threat and so provides no further disincentive against the behavior.
Yes, it would. It’s common knowledge that the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to run them over. The vehicle occupants’ risk is so much lower, which is why drivers drive recklessly. They buy big vehicles on purpose, to be safer than others around them regardless how reckless they drive.
A multi ton machine being driven at high speeds with no accountability.
Sadly, yes they kinda are. Government agencies regularly buy feeds of this data for traffic/safety analysis. In the eyes of a lot of people working on these systems, it's often very much life or death because not doing analysis on it means more vehicle deaths (in their eyes at least). When I've talked to the folk who've worked on these systems, they entirely believe that the data is anonymous, so they don't see it as a privacy infringement.
I wonder if automakers could get behind this. There's pressure to monetize driving habits to stay competitive (cheaper upfront car prices) now that it's possible, but do they really want to put in that effort, or would they prefer everyone agree not to?
Mm, I don’t really care about that, at least assuming it can partially-counterintuitively lower the manufacturing cost of a car by a penny or two.
Computer chips [used to?] end up getting nerfed and it saves resources/saves us all money. I can get over it, even though normally “the principle of the thing“ is a really big deal for me.
OK it does stink for the used car market actually.
Part of the problem is it just gets shoved into a model without enough data support. So I hit the gas hard merging onto the freeway? Of course; your brakes are much more powerful than your throttle if you need to take evasive action, and merging onto the freeway at 50mph is dangerous. The model just sees that you like keeping your foot on the gas from time to time. To keep your rates low you have to drive more dangerously, and that's not the sort of incentive structure I like to participate in.
You generally don't need to hit the gas hard to merge onto a freeway, you need to accelerate evenly on the ramp and be at 65-70 by the time you get to the merge point, being aware of traffic and where the gap is that you're going to merge into, and hitting it.
And occasionally having to hit the gas or brake hard is not going to raise your rate. They look for more of a pattern than that. If you're always braking hard and then accellerating hard, surging and changing lanes, consistently speeding, etc. that's going to be the trigger and what do you know, that's also the kind of driving that causes crashes.
Do you think car manufacturers hire people who can program or even care to program this stuff into the tracking? Knowing some of the people who those tasks get outsourced to, the answer is no.
User drives through grass which the sensors detect as hard collision. Gettem, NexusLexus!
Do you think insurers care to differentiate between those things? Looking at the equivalent behavior from UnitedHealth and their auto claim rejection behavior, my guess is also no.
Any data collected about you can be and will be used against you.
South Bay Area onramps are notoriously short. Sometimes you also get stuck behind someone who decides to stop on the onramp. My amount of "aggressive" acceleration decreased a lot simply from moving somewhere with a different freeway onramp on my way to work.
The general issue with these ML models is they will more accurately predict outcomes than not using them, but not in a fair way.
South Bay Area freeway onramps are notoriously short. My amount of "aggressive" acceleration decreased a lot just from moving. I used to also have to maintain huge gaps in case the driver in front stops on the onramp, which happened every other day.
The thing about these models is they do increase accuracy, just not in a fair way.
Also not even sure if insurance companies want this. Car insurance is a pretty competitive market. If surveillance is allowed (which is the case in some but not all states), all of them have to do it to be competitive. Would expect this to be same profit for them either way, but cheaper or more expensive insurance depending on the customer.
I feel like people are talking about this as a hypothetical. Driving monitoring for insurance is already legal and practiced in every(?) US state besides California. Glad to be the hold-out.
people put a 24h mass surveillance device into their pockets, put it next to them while they sleep, and put all their most personal correspondence online anyway.
When I buy an EV, one of the first things I intend to do is disable or block the chips using Wi-Fi and/or cellular from broadcasting further. If that means a faraday shield around the computers in question, so be it.
Everything I need can be handled via CarPlay or physical dials/buttons in the vehicle. All this surveillance - on post-COVID priced vehicles no less, averaging ~$50k - is absurd, and I refuse to engage with it.
The second thing they do is punch all of your information into their computers anyways to be slurped up by Carfax[1] and company, so everyone knows you got an oil change and tire rotation anyways, as a bonus.
(Third thing is filling out an online form to re-activate your dead SiriusXM system in your vehicle as a "3 month free trial" as a "gift" for coming in today...[2])
Hope to see a new market for disabling telemetry and phonehome features from cars. It should be legal to do so, if you own the car I suppose. I'm thinking that rigth now few pople even know how much spying their new car does to them but this will change and as awareness grows more and more people will want to do it.
if an owner decides they are uncomfortable with the data sharing described within them, they are faced with (arguably) unfair choices:
- 01 accept the agreements regardless of their concerns
- 02 stop using their car's connected-vehicle features - which includes remote start, the app, and other very useful features
- 03 stop using the vehicle entirely
Easy, I take #2. Is that it? I thought it'd phone home anyway.
Not to mention, to get access to many of these apps, you have to pay for them. So basically you're paying an exorbitant yearly amount and your data is still going to be exfiltrated.
I was gifted a 90's ford pickup from a family member and plan to get caught up on maintenance and keep it forever. It runs fine and has been a good project. No telemetry and easy to work on.
Try replacing the power steering pump or the thermostat...
Probably easier than any new car, but dang they made some odd design choices when they laid out that engine. Or try pulling the oil filter from a 302 with 4WD.
There are some other fun ones, too. I had an F150 in 2014 with the ecoboost 3.5, and the oil filter was directly above the control arm. So they put in a deflector over that to keep it from just running onto the arm itself. Still really messy and inconvenient.
Traded that truck for a Lightning, now I haven't really thought about the inconvenient design decisions around oil filters in a while.
So except for Tesla, which sends lots of telemetry regardless, other manufacturers send little if you don't use their companion apps. The companion apps already seemed excessive to me; even more reason to kick them to the curb.
May be relevant: noticed a new car dealer today, entered to inquire. Full "gadgety" monsters, pointless bothersome tech just for any-tech thirsty customers.
Salesman told me that it does not work without a smartphone.
And that it requires the dealer - the vehicle is a still statue without a whole infrastructure behind it to let it work (must be network connected and exchanging with some servers in China, he said - I do not know to which extent; the company greenlights the links to your other gear, and without that the car will not work... Things like that).
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[ 0.29 ms ] story [ 38.3 ms ] threadAs expected. I think consumers also need to push back on these practices, but the problem is, majority of consumers are tech savy but not privacy savy.
It's been a while since I read up on them and things might have changed, but I have a lot respect for what they're doing. Full embracing right to repair and customer privacy when the entire industry is moving at lightning speed in the opposite direction.
Which is incredibly stupid.
Would it have killed them to include a standard DIN-sized hole in the dash, with +12V behind it and prewired speakers in the doors? You know, like how every car used to be so I can buy my own radio that fits into said standard-size hole and install it myself?
That would fit into the spirit of "Slate", but no, their idea was a clip-on bluetooth speaker or something equally dumb. The whole point is to not make your car dependent on your phone.
If you buy a completely option-free $24,950 truck, there is no telematics/surveillance in their vehicle.
Which also means there's no remote app features that people enjoy.
The spirit of the vehicle is you can option out just about anything and DIY-it; very, very few "from the factory" options, but dozens upon dozens of DIY accessories from the factory.
Including a $275 telematics module - https://www.slate.auto/en/store/ACCIT010 - Which enables remote app features.
The current description for the module on their website:
> A plug-and-play solution that acts as a cellular bridge between your smartphone and your Slate vehicle, enabling features like remote access and battery pre-conditioning.
It's not clear to anyone exactly what features the module has to enable the above, or if it does more than all that.
Once the thing actually ships, there'll be manuals, and there'll be people hacking it to find out exactly what it both does and doesn't do.
And since it's a DIY addition, if you later become uncomfortable with what you added to your vehicle, you can remove it!
I do enjoy watching my friend remote start his Colorado through the app, it only takes 30 seconds for the app to load and sign in, and then he presses a button that used to be on the key itself.
There's no actual wireless on the vehicle out of the box. There's a "secure gateway" module that has a USB Ethernet adapter hanging off it, then that hangs off a USB-C port just inside the dash panels. Job listings basically detail that it's going to be DTLS over USB to the truck to do all the CANbus magic and stuff.
The telematics module also just hooks to a second USB port on the secure gateway that also has access to that same DTLS link.
So far in the truck's development they don't even really have an app yet before launch but the truck's driving along very happy without it.
https://www.cybercogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/cyberco...
So you can buy repair manual access for 1-3 days or on a subscription. You don’t get car software updates. You don’t get the diagnostic interface documentation. It’s a joke.
I would expect this legislative approach will be rolled everywhere.
I hate it, fwiw.
https://government.london/services/ulez/
> Drive a non-compliant vehicle anywhere in London and you pay £12.50 for the day. Check your vehicle first — most newer cars pay nothing — then pay for the day or set up Auto Pay with TfL.
For me, this is another example of how corporations + governments work together to artificially create new markets with the consumer picking up the tab. In this case, car maker sales are boosted by legislation that punishes ownership of perfectly viable cars.
The market is kind of free, but some parts have more freedom than others.
The victim blaming when it comes to enshittification is now so deeply ingrained into culture of Americans that it's pretty much impossible to expect any kind of coordinated pushback for more consumer rights.
No, not at all. Most consumers wouldn't know or care if it's present let alone how it all works...or why they should be aware of it. Not a slight to the non-IT literate either.
I know what my next car will be.
> Amplitude received from HondaLink: VIN, Location. Cross-context tracking: Amplitude received the VIN plus Location from HondaLink — an unresettable identifier tied directly to other personal data.
They are so close they should say "fuck it, we're going to be different, we'll disable all the crap" and then market the heck out of it.
A “disable spying in just a few taps” approach (“your data, your choice” it’s just opt-out) would catch my attention and they could still sell 90% of everyone’s data since people don’t touch defaults.
Anti-theft location reporting is a feature I pay for, as well as the ability to remote start out of range of the key fob. (Setting temperature before leaving the office is preferable to getting into a 130F car.)
I did briefly see what it does with the data sharing off, and it's basically the same message, but iirc there's an additional button to visit the settings.
I'd look at the Consumer Reports page if you don't want to read the paper linked in a sibling comment: https://www.consumerreports.org/electronics/personal-informa...
I wonder if this is going to create a market for older tech/vehicles that were made prior to ease-of-malware integration? I imagine some sort of cyberpunk future where people are scouring landfills for old 16-bit video game console chips that haven't been backdoored.
Terrorist Israel’s pager attack.
The classic car (after)market is as big as ever.
oh that is endless.. if you are aware enough to do something about telemetry IMHO do that and don't obsess about loose ends.
It’s foolish to be afraid of nonexistent threats.
As it was essentially a commercial vehicle meant for upfitters, it would probably be easiest to disable telemetry.
Of course, Ford discontinued this model in North America because their margins are better on trucks and SUVs.
As for the aesthetics, we really like it. It's certainly a darn sight better looking than a truck or SUV, which are all aggressive-looking pedestrian killers.
It's reminiscent of a time when vans were vans — but it shares most of its parts with the Focus so should be relatively easy to maintain and repair.
Hopefully not the transmission.
It does not.
Europeans could even get it in a manual!
My point was there are many Focus enthusiasts worldwide; parts and expertise are plentiful even at independent mechanics.
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/disabling-fordpass...
Likely because Ford was a latecomer to this always-online telematics crap, so the design was an add-on to an already completed and functioning car.
Consumer protections are strong enough to prevent that from happening.
My vehicle of choice for the last 16 years has been the Volvo XC70 which, since it was last manufactured in 2016, only ever had 3G modems, which no longer work. It's luxurious, a great form-factor, safe and reliable, and can be had for less than $10K. The one I'm driving now was the proverbial old lady vehicle. It had only 30,000 miles on it when I bought it three years ago. It could be the last vehicle I ever owned since they're good for 200k miles.
Funny story on my previous XC70. I sell my cars through a classic car restorer that also does consignment sales. The manager there wanted another vehicle, so he made me an offer directly which I accepted. I let them have the vehicle for a few days before the transaction. He called me and asked when the last time I changed the oil was. I said that I have no idea. He said it appears that there's no oil in the engine. That's how robust those old Volvo engines are. He went through with the transaction and is still driving it.
Apologies for the long sales pitch on old vehicles and specifically Volvos, LOL.
Next step...tools to reenable telemetry and poison with synthetic but plausible data crafted to reduce your rates
Thanks, I hate it.
If you do not agree to this monitoring, they will not insure you.
also, full self driving (or autosteer) both require the cabin camera to be enabled and to monitor you.
Responses are typical: "That's so unsafe!" Imagine the response if they ever learned I routinely ride a motorcycle that doesn't even have ABS!
Then we get to the security aspect. I'm supposed to trust cameras, connected to the internet, on closed-source hardware, run by a vendor that has a history of misusing the data? No thanks.
I'll repeat that. Depending on the model+year of your car you lose out on a lot of safety features, possibly even automatic emergency braking because they had no radar for a while. If you were ever in an accident the fact that the safety features were deliberately disabled may be used against you.
It makes more sense just removing the SIM so they can't get anything. They even have instructions on how to do that in the manual.
The Burrow, Franz Kafka
They will do it and some sneering POS in the comments will defend the practice.
My car has a fuse for the antenna module. You can remove this fuse to block all data transfer. Have a look at the fuse box diagrams for the minivans you are interested in.
I posted this originally in the other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49956395
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
sadly, politicians are very happy about the centralization of power... they are the same team with the corporations.
In-vehicle monitoring allows car manufacturers to remind the user to buckle up, keep their eyes on the road, stay off their phones, remind them to take breaks, turn the radio down in tense traffic, remind the driver to take a breath based on increased heart rate to minimize road rage, etc.
Heck, we could really reduce lack of seatbelt related injuries and deaths if we could eliminate the 'drive' function while seatbelts are not properly worn (which we can now check with our AI cameras )
What are you some kind of anti-safe-driving nut?
What are you some kind of anti-kids-being-able-to-roam nut?
Huge and tall vehicles and distracted and drunk drivers have made prisoners of anyone not in a car in much of the USA. Loss of freedom for people in cars is an acceptable price to regain freedom for people outside of cars.
I am an active cyclist who rides at least five times a week.
I'll take the bait. Why is the freedom of the cyclist more valuable than the freedom of the driver?
Restricting the freedom of the cyclist such that they cannot expose themselves to the danger of the driver would have the same result, in terms of incident safety, as restricting the freedom of the driver such that they cannot pose a threat to the cyclist.
In fact, given that there are so many more drivers than cyclists, restricting freedoms of cyclists is the correct move given that you are then creating less loss of freedom.
Where is the camera requirement for the cyclist? Why shouldn't the cyclist be required to have always on cameras to prove that they checked before swerving out of the bike lane to avoid a door rather than braking? Does the cyclist who decided to enter an underused right-on-red cross walk at speed not bare some of the responsibility? Shouldn't they have looked over to see if anyone was in the turning lane and brake accordingly? A law that says they have the right of way will do them no good in their grave.
I, as a cyclist, do not need the government to keep me safe. I understand that I am sharing a space with multiple objects that could kill me at any moment for almost any reason. There is no law that will protect me in my privileged lane if the vehicle I am casually riding beside has a blowout. There is no law that will save my life if I decide to rush out in to a crosswalk the moment it's green if an oncoming driver is having a stroke/heart attack. I behave according to the full knowledge and understanding that I am choosing to be in a dangerous space that I can mitigate the danger of through my actions. Knowing that the driver has cameras watching them and may face some extra future liability would change nothing. The threat posed by a camera of them going to jail or paying a fine will only marginally improve their behavior and will do literally nothing for my broken bones or dead body.
It isn’t.
>Where is the camera requirement for the cyclist?
They should have one too, especially since a lot of bicycles are now electric motorcycles.
>Knowing that the driver has cameras watching them and may face some extra future liability would change nothing. The threat posed by a camera of them going to jail or paying a fine will only marginally improve their behavior
Disagree. Seeing a few people go to prison long term for using their phone while driving would cause many to not use their phones while driving.
People are already risking their actual life with distracted driving. Many and perhaps all of us know someone who died, killed someone, was injured, or injured someone else because of distracted driving. There is already a threat associated with the event. They could literally die. There is no greater threat. Adding fines or jail does not increase the threat and so provides no further disincentive against the behavior. I've already agreed that there may be some reduction in the behavior, but at what cost?
I do not want companies and governments to watch every moment of every driver either passively or actively using either machines or humans in the name of potentially protecting me from a distracted driver due to the increased likelihood that they go to jail. I do not want companies recording personal conversations of all drivers always just in case they happen to not check their blind spot. It would make me as a cyclist feel bad knowing that I've subjected millions to continual surveillance for my safety. The camera would have to be on at all times in order to detect the distracted driving in order to alert the driver. It could, I suppose, take pictures instead of recording video but then the detection would not function as well. It could all be done locally to the vehicle and never uploaded. If uploaded, there could be a deletion policy with strict access controls, but there is so much money to be made with recording and saving the data to sell to insurers and ad companies and machine learning companies and...
In the US alone you're asking that consumers be forced to spend millions of dollars between the added cost of the R&D, cameras, and storage (and more if you want it local to the vehicle) in order to be subjected to hundreds of billions of hours of surveillance annually (assuming all cars have cameras on all the time). I do not want to live in a world in which we speed-run having our every thought and action recorded in the off-chance we do something wrong. I do not believe that common citizens should exist under constant scrutiny. If there is life after death and I die by the hands of another I will not ever once think "gee, I wish there'd been a camera to save me"
While we're adding continual video monitoring, why don't we add a few other just-in-case protections? Why shouldn't every vehicle have breath alcohol ignition interlock devices? Who could object other than precisely those we wish to prevent from driving? And we've already got cameras on the outside, why shouldn't we make drivers perform a safety inspection to make sure their lights, blinkers, and hazards are working? Surely it's no burden to ensure the safety of your fellow drivers? And of course there's no legitimate reason for a civilian vehicle to travel over the speed limit, and we've already got on-board GPS, so why shouldn't all vehicles have GPS speed governors? Sure, we all like speeding, but that's not fair to all victims so we'll just go ahead and eliminate that as a possibility.
While we're doing the cameras, why stop at the inside of a vehicle? Why stop on the outside of your door? We could have a nice gentle dinging noise to remind people that the domestic violence they are committing is currently being recorded. Millions of crimes are committed inside homes, and many murders happen in homes. People are wrongly convicted of crimes that didn't happen (where the 'victim' really did just fall down the stairs), after all. A single camera could save those wrongfully accused from wrongful imprisonment! What a deal!
We have the ability to drastically reduce all sorts of crimes. All it costs is treating everyone like a criminal at all times et voilà!
Yes, it would. It’s common knowledge that the best way to kill someone and get away with it is to run them over. The vehicle occupants’ risk is so much lower, which is why drivers drive recklessly. They buy big vehicles on purpose, to be safer than others around them regardless how reckless they drive.
A multi ton machine being driven at high speeds with no accountability.
Like, mate, who's side are you on?
Our (US) legislation might be dysfunctional, but they aren't that stupid and gullible.
Wait...
and then there’s “he’s driving in a way we don’t like, let’s make him pay more for his insurance” data.
Computer chips [used to?] end up getting nerfed and it saves resources/saves us all money. I can get over it, even though normally “the principle of the thing“ is a really big deal for me.
OK it does stink for the used car market actually.
And occasionally having to hit the gas or brake hard is not going to raise your rate. They look for more of a pattern than that. If you're always braking hard and then accellerating hard, surging and changing lanes, consistently speeding, etc. that's going to be the trigger and what do you know, that's also the kind of driving that causes crashes.
Edit Add: Or an on-ramp that goes uphill?
User drives through grass which the sensors detect as hard collision. Gettem, NexusLexus!
Do you think insurers care to differentiate between those things? Looking at the equivalent behavior from UnitedHealth and their auto claim rejection behavior, my guess is also no.
Any data collected about you can be and will be used against you.
The general issue with these ML models is they will more accurately predict outcomes than not using them, but not in a fair way.
The thing about these models is they do increase accuracy, just not in a fair way.
Insurance company profits are not a valid reason to implement pervasive surveillance, especially given all the potential for abuse of this data.
Everything I need can be handled via CarPlay or physical dials/buttons in the vehicle. All this surveillance - on post-COVID priced vehicles no less, averaging ~$50k - is absurd, and I refuse to engage with it.
Take your car to a dealership for service and one of the first things their software does is download all of the data and phone it home
(Third thing is filling out an online form to re-activate your dead SiriusXM system in your vehicle as a "3 month free trial" as a "gift" for coming in today...[2])
[1] https://www.carfaxserviceshops.com/ [2] https://siriusxmdealer.com/service-lane/
Probably easier than any new car, but dang they made some odd design choices when they laid out that engine. Or try pulling the oil filter from a 302 with 4WD.
Traded that truck for a Lightning, now I haven't really thought about the inconvenient design decisions around oil filters in a while.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-e&channel=ent...
Salesman told me that it does not work without a smartphone.
And that it requires the dealer - the vehicle is a still statue without a whole infrastructure behind it to let it work (must be network connected and exchanging with some servers in China, he said - I do not know to which extent; the company greenlights the links to your other gear, and without that the car will not work... Things like that).
The article focuses on Chinese vehicles, but caution should be exercised with all vehicles.