Apart from privacy concerns of your data being used or sold by the car vendor, government outreach is also a concern. There was a bill announced in the US for all new cars to be equipped with "driver impairment" tech which was called a "kill switch". Media rushed to say it's not really a kill switch, just "sensors or cameras to monitor the driver’s behaviors, head or eye movements" and "block the driver from operating the vehicle". So... a kill switch. https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-402773429497
Anyway, I'm staying with my old gas Honda until it dies which is probably never with proper maintenance and eventually restoration. I'll never go electric. Modern cars are just smartphones on wheels at this point, and smartphones are just spying devices at this point.
Privacy Nightmare on Wheels: Every Car Brand Reviewed by Mozilla https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37443644
(edit I see I'm not the first to link this in this thread)
https://www.subaru.com/support/consumer-privacy.html
If you don't live in one of the states mentioned in the first paragraph, expect this to take a very long time. For me it took 6 months.
The reason is with most of this stuff it’s impossible to verify. Even if you wanted to know what data is collected and how’s it’s used - you literally can’t.
Even opting out is based on trust. I mean, it’s all done in software. Nothing is physically removed and most of the time the data is still transmitted. You’re just hoping they don’t use it.
Judging by the responses I’ve been getting this is apparently a controversial stance and we should all just give this stuff away to Nissan then wait to find out what happens.
Have I told you about my neighbor who uses a leaf blower nonstop from 7am until 8pm? Well, he doesn’t actually, be he has a right to, and it’s splitting hairs whether he actually does or not.
But in the absence of solid proof, I think the history of the last several decades of surveillance shows that it's completely reasonable to assume the absolute worst. Snowden showed that the scope of government data collection was far beyond even the wildest assume-the-worst theories floated in tech media prior to the revelations, and Doubleclick (wearing its Google façade) makes the NSA look lazy.
The reason these assumptions are reasonable, is that there's incentive for them to be true. Someone's willing to pay for that data. Maybe not very much, but if it costs almost nothing to collect, then it works out.
The way some manager sees it, Nissan would be "leaving money on the table" if they didn't spy on their customers to the absolute maximum permitted by their EULA. This gets brought up in every internal meeting about telemetry features, I can assure you. (I've been in those meetings for a number of automakers, though not Nissan specifically, the whole industry is on board. It turns the stomach. My voice was not heard.)
While I think it’s reasonable to split hairs about whether or not they were actually collecting the data, I think this is a really problematic analogy for a number of reasons.
I think a better comparison would go something like this: “My neighbor told me he might record everything that happens in my back yard”.
Your neighbor having the right to run his leaf blower constantly isn’t analogous to your neighbor directly claiming they might do something that impacts your privacy. Even if they never actually record anything, coming out and saying they might is more newsworthy than an unstated “right to be annoying” that never occurs.
It’s still worth distinguishing between “my neighbor said he might” and “my neighbor is actually doing this”, but just the claim on its own is still worth paying attention to if you care about your privacy.
I’m not a fan of the “they did something bad, so we might as well pretend they did something worse” line of argument. It strikes me as dishonest.
These companies do not get the benefit of the doubt. I do not need proof to assume they are selling us to the highest bidder when they explicitly outline it in their terms and services and have done it time and time again. Experience has shown us that more often than not they will.
I also didn’t say Nissan stole or broke into anything. My example is appropriate.
Or are you again presenting an assumption as fact.
I think assuming a company is selling your data is a completely fair one. But it’s also completely fair to ask that people don’t use language that implies factual knowledge to represent those assumptions.
If only to make your argument better you might evaluate your comments and see how your language is weakening it.
With the cars, they went out of their way to get the right to do so, implying they want to do it, otherwise it would be a waste of money. Nobody can really verify whether they are or are not doing so, as that's confidential company information and it's not illegal (since they have to right to do so) so nobody can subpoena them to find out. So maybe they are doing it and just lying about not doing it.
The charitable read is that they are notifying you of the possibility that the car’s data collection may unintentionally include sexual activity. E.g. your car was recorded as having a rocking motion while parked.
The other read is that they are intentionally collecting sexual activity data for nefarious purposes.
The first is the lawyer drafting the release being overcautious. The second is a corporation being evil.
I’m not in love with either, but the claim was that Nissan was actively collecting data about sexual activity, when there is no proof of that. The only thing there is proof of is that they put a notice in their terms of service.
How was the hypothetical overcautious lawyer able to independently come up with such a specific scenario, which would require intimate technical knowledge?
I believe your are missing a third option, which is a synthesis of both. This is that the engineers reported that their sensor data could be used to collect sexual activity. However, in response to that, the corporation preferred to cover themselves legally rather than making any technical effort to address the risk on their customers' privacy.
The lawyer is not being overcautious, but simply displaying the corporation's priorities. The corporation is not being evil, it is just being psychopathic.
The language is usually in response to specific precedents or jurisdictions where surprises happened to someone else.
Over the past couple decades I’ve been giving companies and our government the benefit of the doubt. And I’ve been burned every time.
Not only am I wrong, always, I’m extremely wrong. In fact the conspiracy theorists are often wrong too - they’re too lenient.
After Snowden, we should all understand that whatever the worst case scenario is, it’s probably worse than that. If you can think it, it’s probably happening. If they allude to it happening, it’s definitely happening.
I don't trust a single one of them. It's not even just they haven't earned it, it's that we have every reason not to. The public trust in these companies should be completely and irreparably shattered at this point.
there's plenty of REAL privacy matters to address than to invent demons and then undermine genuine issues with 'boy who cried wolf'!!!
We can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time, and frankly I’m not going to wait to find out I got screwed. When it comes to privacy you have to be proactive, you can’t claw it back.
Is the bubble gum bought with the unlimited resources known as "other people's money"?
Political will is zero sum or close to it. It is wasteful to rile people up over hypotheticals when there is no shortage of non-hypotheticals that are just as odious which simply have not been publicized.
This is a very strange hill to die on - in defense of car manufacturers against our privacy rights. Once I buy a car what I do with it is none of their damn business and they sure as hell shouldn’t be _selling_ that info.
We’re well beyond the point of productivity. Have a good one.
Reveals much about your ability to handle discourse
I'm very glad I've put in the time to learn how to work on cars because I have zero interest in the tech direction of modern vehicles.
Now my knees hurt when it's cold outside, so crawling around on the ground to fix the fucking u-joint AGAIN isn't that fun, and I also like knowing that my children might survive if we get in a crash; something that's genuinely up for question in old vehicles.
I would pay a premium for a new car without an "infotainment" system, cameras (except backup camera), gps, or any form of touchscreen.
I want to be able to diagnose my car if it has issues, but I don't want a system complex enough that it requires over the air updates.
Unless some serious privacy examples get reported and it scares the politicians in California and California puts in place special laws to force “non tracking” to be a legal option.
One final weird option would be. I wonder if you could put children in your car and sue the car company in California because the car company is collecting data on minors without your consent? Do the car terms and condition handle data associated with minors correctly?
I want an electric car. I also wish it was feasible to work on it.
Mercedes also had that stuff early- I had a 1987 Mercedes diesel that had front air bags, ABS, and was basically modern car reliable.
It's not my daily driver, but I would absolutely love to one day get another one as a project car - one that's not in such good condition that I'd feel bad removing the engine - and drop an electric motor in it. That likely _would_ become my daily driver. The car's incredibly well made, and a joy to drive.
One conversion I want to attempt, but am unfortunately unlikely to, is an electric rear wheel drive.
Front wheel can remain gas with transmission. Add more generating current capacity, and have that dumped into the rear drive system batteries.
With my current car, the V6 gets very good economy at speed, and poor economy in town or in traffic.
An assist from the rear can tackle the poor economy cases nicely, leaving the rest to the gas engine.
Depending on battery capacity, I suppose it could do most in town driving at say 40 and below.
It can be done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2agCqW6ntc
I'm with you. Our daily drivers are 2011 Mitsu, 96 Toyota, 92 Buick and a 63 Dart. Also a 61 Sunliner for when it's not-summer.
The Mitsu is unfortunately drive-by-wire; I mostly avoid it.
It's cables for me but I'll settle for linkage.
That falls in with a lot of stuff that felt like it might have made sense on race cars that I don't understand why people keep asking for on street vehicles (drive by wire throttle, CVTs, huge wheels with rubber band tires, certain kinds of traction and stability control, viscous coupled or electronic "all wheel drive" (not 4WD), along with the Subaru boxer 4 people get Stockholm syndrome over); all I can figure is that people are just OK driving stuff that drives and behaves like total shit.
I live with my 5 adult sons.
We also buy cars when deals show up. The Toyota had 41k for $500 and the Buick had 31k for $1300.
We're working on a cheap 88 Dodge P/U; my son converted it to points and carburetor.
We also have a 69 XL that seriously needs to go away. It does 130 at what feels like high idle.
Still green, unlike gas, but restricts the surface area of issues related to modern cars
Assuming you want to make your own bio you'd have to set up a transesterification process where you convert the trans fats out of the oil, that process uses lye so it needs a decent container and is best automated. If you're trying to recover the solvent, which is probably methanol, you'd need a still as well, and decent ventilation. Fully automated with raspi or arduino components is a couple grand or more, prefab units run something like 10k.
If rather than bio you're talking straight grease, it is cheaper to clean but more expensive to set up the car. You'd need a second fuel tank, preferably heated depending on climate, some solenoid valves, and a heated fuel filter. And a pile of hoses and wires to connect it all. Maybe a grand or so to set it up depending on driving conditions, kits run 1-2, some are better designed than others.
Either way you'd also want some big drums for holding tanks at home where you can let the fluid layers separate and a pump to move them around. Most car washes give away polyethylene 50gal barrels.
Most expensive thing in my opinion, is your time and the cost of the oil. You can get something like 5-50gal per week per restaurant, tho most overuse the oil. Best places don't cook meats in there at all. Chain and large restaurants want a schedule. Cost of the oil varies, used to be paid to take it, somewhere around 2010 that inverted and now you pay for the oil.
I would have stuck with my 2003 Honda Accord too, except that some woman, probably talking or texting on her cell, slammed into me while I was stopped at a light, totaling my car and damaging 3 others. I got $8K for my car after arguing with the insurance company, and paid $28K for a 3 y/o replacement.
The fine for texting while driving in Kentucky is $25.
GPS is for obvious reasons tracking. But these don’t look like patrol cars so it’s out of my wheel house.
All. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall:
“eCall (an abbreviation of "emergency call") is an initiative by the European Union, intended to bring rapid assistance to motorists involved in a collision anywhere within the European Union. The aim is for all new cars to incorporate a system that automatically contacts the emergency services in the event of a serious accident, sending location and sensor information. eCall was made mandatory in all new cars approved for manufacture within the European Union as of April 2018.”
Safety features and fuel economy are night and day when comparing a 5 year old car and a 30 year old one, but between the privacy issues and inability to diagnose or fix a new car I just can't do it.
I bought an 80s model truck that sat in a garage for over a decade and has 50k original miles on it. I'm still chasing down a couple gremlins in the system, but its nice to be able to work on it myself. Bonus that it may not be driving perfectly right now but its happy keep on chugging, even if a sensor is bad or I get an occasional code for running lean.
I don't know when they first introduced side airbags, but in general I'd be very happy with a late 80s or 90s Volvo sedan or wagon, especially a diesel (mainly for reliability and ease of working on).
Our truck probably gets around 16 or 18 around town, up to 20 if the conditions are right. Not great compared to a modern truck with a 4 cylinder turbo, but I really don't think I go through more than a tank of gas in a month (albeit a larger 20 gallon tank)
If you want an old car without all this crap, you can get one. But it pretty much has to be an ICE.
EVs really are not a great deal heavier than the ICE versions of the same or similar vehicles.
The Jaguar I-Pace EV is lighter than some variants of the F-Pace ICE.
Regarding the I-pace vs the F-pace I was unable to find more than a single version with a greater weight than the I-pace, though I admit I haven't analyzed the specs of all 108 editions. That single example weighing more was, of course, a hybrid.
EV versions are, primarily due to the weight of their battery packs, significantly heavier than their ICE counterparts and that's fine.
There are all kinds of design choices that can be made to fit completely within the original specs of the chassis.
It’s really not a practical thing for at least 99% of the population. Probably more like 4 or 5 nines.
It's odd how anti-hack Hacker News has become.
If you can do it all yourself, it's only moderately expensive.
This surely isn’t a large group.
Meanwhile, third party motor controllers for Tesla motors exist, and the batteries aren't exactly magic.
There's really nothing about electric drivetrains that makes anything vastly more locked down.
A lot of diesels can run off of any vaguely fuel-like liquid you decide to put in them, so I'm sure sufficiently knowledgable people would keep those running, machining parts for them etc.
But electric vehicles are by far simpler than both of those, and generating electricity is easier than producing fuel you can shove in a diesel engine.
Electric engines might be, but battery tech for sure isn't. Building a combustion engine + fuel vs. building an EV battery is a whole different game.
The Internet really overstates this. Fuel injected systems are sealed. Carbureted systems are open to outside air, so the fuel is constantly evaporating, leaving residue behind, and absorbing moisture from the atmosphere.
Gasoline in a sealed container remains usable for far longer than people on the Internet say it will.
Anyway, the final state of an apocalypse car would be running on wood gas. North Korea runs some or all of their military trucks on it (this may have changed as they've increased relations with Russia). An episode of Car Talk explained how it was used by German civilians during WWII:
Cryptography is probably the real game changer here, secure boot, attestation, message authentication. Can’t exactly blame automakers for wanting those features, given the stakes, but that would make reverse engineering fairly impossible.
And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.
Not really no.
There’s a gulf of difference between a car and a golf buggy.
And we can prove that by turning your argument the other way and saying: if that were true then ICE vehicles would just be petrol-powered golf carts.
Clearly that isn’t even a remotely accurate way of describing your average car
They aren't. Many have gasoline engines.
But "glorified golf cart" was a common dismissal of early (generally pre-Tesla) EV efforts.
If people just wanted to drive around in vehicles that were equivalent to golf carts then everyone would own a quad bike instead of a car.
Cars have been around for more than a hundreds years so it’s astonishing to me that some people cannot imagine what a car would look like without the “smart” features
And, if anything, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they were anti-being fucked over by capitalists. The problem they rose up against wasn't the automatic looms, it was the way they were deployed - to replace skilled workers instead of augmenting them, depressing salaries and eliminating jobs across the industry. The Luddites weren't fighting progress, they were fighting to keep themselves and their descendants from destitution.
Alas, since technology was involved and technology is magic, the misconception about the Luddites has spread wide and persists to date, conveniently distracting everyone from what the actual problem was. Compare with everyone today whining about "tech bros" and the supposed folly of "solving social problems with technology", which is both wrong and entirely missing the real problem, which is the same as the ones Luddites fought and lost to.
So it doesn't matter what the historic Luddites were or were not, because it's not a statement about them at all.
You know this perfectly well, and are merely pretending to misunderstand what's meant.
That's effectively the scenario that Luddites found themselves in. Looms came in and decimated previously well paying jobs and the owners of the looms basically told the skilled workers to pound sand.
I listen to the dev guys at work gush about how they are like 40% productive with LLMs, and look at their budget asks. Hmm.
But the car is largely a black box when it comes to its electronics, and if I need to drive the car somewhere, I can't leave the black boxes at home; they come with me wherever I go.
> And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.
Sounds fine to me.
Long term, cars will be leased based on driving behavior, and more critically, will be taxed based in driving distance and style.
A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for me), but I/we pay for it all the time by allocating quite a lot of space and money to them. The tires, the insurance, taxes, fuel, charging stations, driveways, parking garages, natural resources, air quality, ambient noise, senseless deaths, it's crazy. Granted, some aren't a result of idle existence, but c'mon.
Renting an arbitrary car periodically ends up being the most tolerable option. A small temporary expense when it's really needed or desired, and it's enough to remind me of the good and bad bits.
I lost my driving license for medical reasons and have spent two years without driving. I am really conscious of what a car means in terms of having a social life, working, etc. If I was younger, I would have had to relocate
Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.
> Tell that to the Amish.
The Amish have large populations in the northeast US, not rural southern England.
> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.
What does this have to do with the fact someone was unable to drive due to medical reasons and learned first-hand how much society was set up to need a car?
Yes, it is not the natural state of things but for many people it is the actual state of things. I absolutely hate the fact that I live in a car focussed society but that is where I do actually live. And because of my investment in my house and garden I don't want to move
> Tell that to the Amish.
I had to count to 10 before responding here.
Perhaps you didn't notice the bit where I said I have spent two years without a car. It is something I have thought about a LOT. And have been impacted by. I don't have a convenient Amish community nearby to help me put up barns in my backyard, or even to lend me a horse to ride to the local B&Q when I need to buy a new tool of some sort. I deeply wish there was better public transport - I am not a petrolhead - but there isn't and won't be for the foreseeable future.
I'd rather not go back to the days of horses as the primary means of transportation though.
So, try to go about your existence without Internet of any sort and please report back at any difficulties it may cause for you.
If you want to make a comparison with utilities: The fact that people in Flint are getting bottled water delivered from distant cities (and the fact that some people prefer to drink bottled water anyway) does not mean that this is not a serious crisis.
I am not saying "other people can live without cars, so just suck it up". I am saying "if you are living in a place where you can not function without a car, this is a serious issue and you should be getting the pitchforks to hunt down the responsible authorities that brought this to you."
But I'm getting old. I've decided I want to use my remaining years of any strength to do more hiking, kayaking and camping, and for that I need a car every weekend. Rentals would be slightly more expensive than owning a second hand one. But I do wish car ownership were cheaper and more painless.
I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board.
If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different.
Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?
All of the newer safety doo-dads are less reliable. Where I live, the road salt effectively caps effective lifespan of a car to 180-220k miles. The exhaust and suspension maintenance started to approach or exceed the cars value.
I feel for people living where they do that. I like long term car ownership and that seems like a curse right out the gate!
Can the car be treated, washed? Hmmm, our move to negative ground makes the salt worse. Positive ground cars would help a lot with corrosion, but we don't make those anymore. I never learned why that is.
I liked the overall performance of the Honda. Little things like slightly more aggressive gear ratios, steering and such were superior on the Honda. Economy was almost a push, but the edge goes to Toyota.
The Honda got my attention for service and repair more than the Toyota cars have. And Honda had the advantage overall. My Toyota was older than the Honda, both similar mileage, but the Honda failed earlier. Transmission. :(
I came back to Toyota, but wanting some of the creature comforts offered by Honda, I chose Camry this time. Excellent car. It's a serious, understated, very unassuming vehicle. It performs, feels better than a Corolla did, and still lacks the subtle things like gear ratios that are a bit more fun.
I live where one can put a half mil on a car, if it's up for it. Damn near did that on a Ford Expedition 2000's era vehicle. Guzzled gas, but man! I loved that one for a ton of reasons. Being an active family at the time, the Expy made sense.
For me having the thing just go when I do the maintenance properly matters more than the other aspects do. So, Toyota it is!
*I buy used, 10 to 20 years back, moderate to low mile cars, under $5k. No new vehicles for me. They simply do not make sense.
Now, current Toyota might be a turn-off for me too. The quality issues playing out right now seem worrisome. I hope they get past that.
I'm driving 2000 era vehicles because that was the sweet spot for people like me who will do their own work a majority of the time. I enjoy that, and I know it's done right. It's gone south a few times with shops and I really hate having to navigate that BS.
2000 to 2010, Toyota has me, but Honda is damn close.
So tell me about the Attitude please. Super curious about that. What's the big turn-off? And are you sensing a newer thing, or is this long term, basic?
No judgement or battle here. Just genuine curiosity.
- Difficult basic activities. Like you can’t talk to anyone without an appointment. When you need to talk about something they aren’t interested in talking about, they get busy.
- Aggressive & deceptive upsell on service, as in service advisor demanding an unnecessary $750 repair as a condition to honor a battery warranty.
- Trying to steal deposits for unfilled car orders. “Sorry, we can’t get the car you put a $1000 deposit on, and we don’t do refunds.”
- Ridiculous up charges, scammy deal accessories, ripoff financing and market adjustments. My sister was trying to buy a Grand Highlander, which was a hot car. I think Toyota punishes dealers by putting on allocation for hot cars, so they try to pump every nickel possible.
In my sisters case, it was so insane I was able to find her a better deal for an equivalent Lexus. Whatever contract the Toyota dealers have, they don’t allow the manufacturer to effectively manage the brand.
My experience with Honda is you get the usual car dealer fluff, but they aren’t aggressive. There’s also more dealers, at least in places that I live in, so there’s more competitive juices at work on the sales side.
Oh yeah. Some of those ring true for me too. Now, I basically quit buying new, and the shitty dealer experience is a significant part of why. The other part is a lot of cars are being made that I just don't want to buy!
The dealer here presented some of those items. So did a Ford dealer, for what that is worth.
Thanks for sharing. Appreciated
I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation.
It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).
Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
My most recent buy was a golden era Toyota and the difference is notable when I look at current models.
If you live somewhere with decent public transportation and good car sharing infrastructure (eg. walk to a nearby car share and unlock the doors with an app or a card vs Uber to Hertz and wait for an hour to sign paperwork), then yes that's a viable option. For many places in the US and Canada, that's not viable unfortunately.
It's not always suitable mind you. Extremely short random day trips are the trickiest, which might tip me at some point if I'm making decent money again, but it's so hard to get to a point where I could rationalize that as an occasional leisure luxury instead of a burden.
I wouldn't move to another city though for any reason that would require me to own a car just for getting around. If they ain't investing in viable transit, they won't get my income tax.
It's quite amusing as people try to come up with more efficient use of cars and typically end up reinventing public transport (e.g. buses, trains etc).
And fwiw, if Tesla gets their robotaxi stuff working, their 22-passenger "robovan" is basically a bus anyway, just without a driver.
The big thing they do is to make a huge number of parking spots obsolete!
There will also be far fewer cars doing the same transportation work.
This is a weird thing to call out. I'd suggest a car is powered as much as a phone. I'm trying to decide for people that have a car and a phone which is more infuriating to not have power.
Rav 4 EV
Nissan Leaf
Fiat 500e
Smart Fortwo electric drive
...
There's probably a dozen or so first-generation (well for this century) electric vehicles that are just regular cars that happen to have an electric power plant.
The upside is that you can buy them used, for a couple grand. The downside is that they were manufactured with a 100 mile range, and your lucky if you can find one that still retains half that.
If aftermarket batteries become common, they'd be perfect around-town vehicles.
If you lookup the repair procedure for the cellular unit you will have found the way to disable it.
So basically everyone with a smartphone? I'm not sure if it's really worse if the car has its own GPS and cell connectivity. How many people turn off their phone or leave it at home? And you can buy other people's location data, so...
Tbh considering the accuracy of modern triangulation technology... anyone with a cellphone, period.
Why would I need to disable it? If you're not using the built-in navigation (which probably costs money anyways) and are using carplay/android auto instead, you should be able to leave it in airplane mode indefinitely. What critical functionality would I be missing out on?
The point is that you are already tracked via your phone (which is likely kit in airplane mode), so there’s not a massive gain to preventing car tracking.
That's like arguing "you're already plastering your face on social media, why are you hand wringing about corporations/governments building a facial recognition database?". The difference is that the former is consensual/optional, whereas the latter isn't. Moreover, just because most people aren't exercising their privacy rights, doesn't mean it's okay for those rights to be trampled on for everyone. Most people aren't activists or journalists who need free speech protections, but that doesn't mean we can trample on the first amendment. Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.
It sounds like you use a dumb phone. Anyone who takes this stuff seriously enough to use a dumb phone will be buying a dumb car.
I try, and often succeed and generally see risks all around.
Too close, and often with few or no escape paths means maintaining best case attention and response times for the whole drive. That is tiring and usually just not enough.
Too far back means people dropping into the gap non-stop! This too is tiring.
I really hate how this aspect of driving.
in reality not many jump into the gap.
I do hate it less these days. Perhaps I am headed your way on this.
Some have a fuse you can pull for the modem, without disabling anything else. Others you can pull the antenna, and add a resistor instead.
e.g. http://sandsprite.com/blogs/index.php?uid=7&pid=462&year=201.... I think this head unit is shared amongst Chrysler vehicles, so Chrysler is an option (but then you'll have two problems).
The interesting part is that even though the antennas were disconnected, there was enough RF making it's way through the plastic sides of the module to give him 2-bars of signal strength. Wrapping it in grounded aluminum foil still allowed enough signal strength for transmission when they were very close to a cell tower. GPS signals were also being routed to the communications module over the car's network from the entertainment module (not sure why the entertainment module needs a GPS antenna or location data).
Ultimately they opted-out from data collection using the Lexus app and will rely on legal protections - in addition to disconnecting the antennas.
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/gx-2nd-gen-2010-2023/983214...
Then it relies on enforcement to catch you operating an illegal vehicle on a public road
Unlike e-bikes, your vehicle has a plate, so needless to say, if you get caught speeding on a public road by a camera and your vehicle was registered as having had the thing turned off at the time in the database (i.e. it shouldn't be on a public road), you could imagine getting an additional charge similar to operating a vehicle without a license plate or operating something that's not road-legal.
It makes total sense to me
let's say somebody else said "There SHOULD be an expectation of privacy from the authorities when operating a motor vehicles on public roads on which you need a license to drive"
Is there some reason I should side with you over them, or just your opinion? If the courts decided that there was an expectation of privacy on public roads, would you agitate to change the law so there wasn't?
Sure! It would make infringing on road safety much more difficult thus reduce your chances of getting run over by people who are speeding, running red lights etc. And if you're driving, I think everyone would enjoy less maniacs on the road.
Motor vehicles killed 3566 people every month in 2022, that's the death toll of the 9/11 attacks every 25 days.
Do you not consider reasonable to have an expectation of innocence when going about your business?
So, any car with OnStar apparently already has a remote kill switch. Perhaps they needed the owner’s permission first?
Do you think preserving your privacy in this one aspect of your life will have a greater net benefit to your life than driving a safer car (under the assumption that newer cars are safer)? Especially given that presumably there's still data being collected on you even in an old car (cameras on the road, other people's cars, your phone, etc).
By analogy, what's the marginal benefit of not eating any food in packaged in plastic if your water supply is full of (unavoidable, for the sake of argument) microplastics? Is doing so worth the cost (no food for you, buddy!)?
I guess this is just another round of being principled duking it out with pragmatism.
I believe the name of that module is DCM
You can disable some models, but I have my doubts.
In rentals you can forget about it.
Unplugging my phone and the location snapped back to he correct place. Seems that in CarPlay an iPhone will believe what the car says about position, and when it’s wrong, tough.
I take it that you need a car (which is true for many) and also need a computer (also true for many).
What precautions do you take in computing given that you use a computer that is connected to the Internet ?
The former (i.e. computer) has an unknowable supply chain with blobs of code that you don't vet yourself, and the latter (the Internet) has overtly become a surveillance system.
I plan on driving it a very long time. Same reasons.
It also predates the big infotainment systems. I really dislike the big screen and many functions turned into touch controls dangerous to use in motion.
Finally, it is easy to service. I will do that myself as long as I am able.
Fuel tanks are not "in the back" for good (see: ford pinto) reasons.
A big battery in the place of the motor will turn you into a BBQ in case of collision because fire will fall directly towards the driver. Lithium batteries start burning when hit with some force, and can't be stopped once they start burning.
Given that there are hundreds of deaths each year due to inattention, it'd be almost irresponsible not to look into it.
But a lot of people won't like where that leads.
You're selectively quoting in a way that misrepresents the article.
The post the article quotes:
> “Joe Biden signed a bill that would give law enforcement access to a ‘kill switch’ that will be attached to ALL new cars in 2026,” read several posts shared widely on Twitter and Facebook.
The actual functionality:
> In either case, if a driver is found to be impaired [by automated monitoring within the car], the car might employ a warning message, block the driver from operating the vehicle, or if the vehicle is already in motion, direct it to a safe stop or automated ride home.
> None of the technologies currently in development would notify law enforcement of the data collected inside vehicles or give government agencies remote control of vehicles, according to Jeffrey Michael, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Injury Research and Policy.
The car has an automatic system which can prevent the driver from operating it, but no one outside the car can trigger that system, which is clearly what the "kill switch" posts were claiming.
That assumes that the feature is implemented securely, which is hardly guaranteed. Would you bet a large sum that it wasn't exploitable? I wouldn't.
The fact that there are real concerns about something doesn't justify ignoring the truth value of inflammatory claims about that thing.
Just not the sort of kill switch that someone (who?) sometime (when?) described, and such description is one that you've neither quoted or given.
I didn't say anything at all about that term in my comment, and while the article says it's hyperbolic, arguing about that term is clearly not the focus of the article.
Just going to quote the whole opener here - it's about the claim that the law enables cops to monitor you and shut down your car, which is clearly false.
---------------
[Headline] Posts distort infrastructure law’s rule on impaired driving technology
CLAIM: President Joe Biden signed a bill that will give law enforcement access to a “kill switch” that will be attached to ALL new cars in 2026.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed last year requires advanced drunk and impaired driving technology to become standard equipment in new cars, experts say that technology doesn’t amount to a “kill switch,” and nothing in the bill gives law enforcement access to those systems.
THE FACTS: In November 2021, Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, ushering into law a $1 trillion bipartisan deal to maintain and upgrade the country’s roads, bridges, ports and more.
One provision in the legislation aims to prevent drunk driving deaths by requiring all new vehicles to soon include “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology” as “standard equipment.”
However, in the months since the law passed, some social media users have misrepresented the provision online, falsely claiming it will give police access to data collected by the technology or allow the government to shut down cars remotely.
“Joe Biden signed a bill that would give law enforcement access to a ‘kill switch’ that will be attached to ALL new cars in 2026,” read several posts shared widely on Twitter and Facebook.
That's just the straw man the article is using to claim that it isn't a kill switch. They want the claim to be false so they adopt a version of the claim with a flaw in order to knock it down.
The obvious problem being that the actual implementation is at least as bad. Now you have the law mandating that the car activate the kill switch by itself, with no human in the loop you can even try to reason with.
What happens when you're driving erratically because you're on some dangerous ice road and trigger a false positive that strands you in the wilderness? What happens when you're actually impaired and then turn around to discover a wildfire approaching your location, in which case "don't die in a fire" should override "don't drive impaired" and you should immediately evacuate, but your car won't let you?
It's an ill-conceived and dangerous law and its critics are in the right. The operator should always be able to override the computer.
If one person is criticizing Big Pharma because they use shoddy trial methodology when they can get away with it and heavily market minor variations on existing drugs, and another person is criticizing Big Pharma because they're poisoning our blood with fluoride in service to the Illuminati, it's not appropriate to lump them together and say "Big Pharma's critics are in the right."
(Also, I think the idea that they deliberately adopted a weak version of the criticism to argue against is rather conspiratorial - dumb unfounded nonsense gets very popular on the internet all the time! Valuable criticism that requires nuance is memetically disfavored by comparison!)
But it's also not appropriate to lump them together and say "Big Pharma's critics are in the wrong."
> Also, I think the idea that they deliberately adopted a weak version of the criticism to argue against is rather conspiratorial - dumb unfounded nonsense gets very popular on the internet all the time!
It's hardly a conspiracy to suppose that media outlets choose which claims to fact check based on how they want to influence readers.
And accordingly, I didn't ever say that this was a good bill or all its critics were in the wrong. A lot of people in this thread seem to be reading that into my comments, but all I did was take issue with a misrepresentation of an article that argued against a specific negative claim about the bill.
Which I think is representative - it's very hard to make a narrow point about specific arguments without people assuming that you're taking a firm stance on one side or the other of a general issue.
You were responding to a criticism of the article. The technology is a kill switch, which critics rightly oppose, whether or not it's a law enforcement kill switch. Here's the specific false claim from the article being criticized:
> experts say that technology doesn’t amount to a “kill switch,”
The authors are laundering the false claim through the mouths of "experts" (by which they apparently mean "proponents of the bill"), but 'that technology doesn't amount to a "kill switch"' is false. The authors then go on to knock down the narrower claim that it's a law enforcement kill switch, which is the straw man.
The article you're defending is doing the thing you're criticizing, i.e. using the narrow point (not a "law enforcement" kill switch) to malign the general point (it's a kill switch). If they were actually trying to be nuanced they'd be admitting that it's a kill switch and only distinguishing what kind of kill switch it is.
It's a vehicle that can easily kill other people. It often does. It's reasonable to require drivers to be in good enough shape before trusting them with lives of random innocent people.
If so, this is a good fit for a class action.
Complete with non-replaceable batteries.
It's not a kill switch, the link you provided explains that it's not a kill switch, yet you still call it a kill switch.
If you were paying any attention, then you know that idiots online were portraying this as the cops being able to remotely disable your car at their will.
In fact, the requirement is for the vehicle to pull safely to the side of the road when it detects an impaired driver (DUI or medical emergency). There is no external initiation, it's entirely self-contained.
It's not a kill switch. It's not remotely like a kill switch.
Having personally been within minutes of crashes involving a drunk driver who blew a stop sign and smashed into a fire hydrant, and another driver experiencing a health emergency who crashed through an intersection at 80mph in a 25mph zone, I say bring it on. Ignore the Rogan-sphere FUD peddlers.
In addition to de-banking, they can also de-car you.
Exactly. I saw a clip of an elon musk interview where he was asked if tesla would ever build a smartphone. I had to chuckle and think to myself, they already do. It just doesn't fit in your pocket, has wheels and actually tries to kill you physically.
The funny thing is that's what cars do to other people because we don't have enough monitoring.
My e-bike is limited to 20 because "safety". Your car should be to.
I get up to multiples of that on a push bike every day. The kids that rip past me do too.
Despite what the other poster is saying, there's no law of physics that says speed can only be unlocked by licensing.
Everything else is simply a pedal assisted ride.
And a vehicle needs to offer pedal power to qualify for unlicensed use as an e-bike. Otherwise, it becomes a motorcycle and requires registration,
Let's take some two hopefully-simple examples: speed limiters on cars, and guns.
I agree with you when it comes to speed limiters on cars. We shouldn't have them, and government should not be allowed to mandate them. Sure, some people drive too fast for conditions, and that's dangerous, and sometimes they hurt or kill other people by doing so. But we can combat this to some extent with education, licensing requirements, and the threat of penalties for when something bad happens. And I can think of several situations (emergency or otherwise) where someone might be justified in driving faster than a speed limiter might allow, and if the limiter was in place, that could also have bad consequences.
But then let's look at guns. They are designed to injure and kill; that is their main intended purpose. Most gun deaths, IIRC, are attributed to suicides and accidental discharges (the latter of which often involve children; I am definitely not a "think of the children!" type person, but I think in this case it might actually apply). Other gun deaths involve mass shootings, gang violence, and other criminal activity. The threat of home invasions is highly overblown, and the vast majority of the people who buy them to keep at home for protection will never need them (and will sometimes be involved in accidents or other unintended bad uses). People (in the US, primarily) who think that they need guns to protect them from a tyrannical government are delusional (if the government/military really did try to violently oppress them, the idea that they'd be able to successfully fight back is laughable). There are lots of different types of guns, from small-caliber, small-capacity weapons that don't do quite as much damage; up to semi-auto and auto "military style" weapons that can be used to kill large numbers of people in a fairly short amount of time.
I don't think I'll ever be convinced that we shouldn't have any restrictions on gun ownership, and I would probably not even be bothered by the idea of a complete ban on private gun ownership (obviously not constitutionally possible here in the US). But as a middle ground, I at least support strict licensing and background-check requirements for firearm ownership, and I think that certain classes of weapons should be restricted from private ownership.
I don't intend this to turn into a political discussion about gun control, but I just think it's weird to consider every possible kind of restriction on freedom in the same way, without critically examining what is being restricted, what it is designed to, what kind of harm a lack of restrictions will cause, and what are the negative/unintended consequences of putting those restrictions in place.
A few specific comments:
> I've realized with time that while drivers can be dangerous, they are relatively limited in how much harm they can create.
This just doesn't ring true to me. Car-related fatality statistics paint a very different picture to me.
> I honestly rather want everyone including me to have freedom to do stupid things instead of limiting freedom.
Maybe this is where the disconnect is, and where we might not be able to agree on anything. The problem with this kind of statement is that it doesn't acknowledge that personal freedoms can come at a cost to other people. If I screw something up in the exercise of my freedoms, it usually doesn't just hurt me: others get caught up in it too. My "freedoms" should include being able to live my life in peace, without other people destroying that peace, as long as I am not hurting anyone else. Unfortunately that can't be done without putting restrictions on what I and others can do in many situations.
But cars kill tens of thousands every year. Speed limits and red lights being on the honor system isn't working. Luckily technology, like the little GPS tracker in the article, can fix it.
I am happy with our current government.
But reading history I have realized that the scariest thing that is is powerful governments.
Honor and trust work extremely well: anyone of us can create enormous caos if we want to but most of us don't so it doesn't happen.
Now what are your specific fears about speed limiters on cars?
The best solution to living in a place with bad people in it, if you can't get them to leave, is to move. There are plenty of places to live where people do obey traffic laws and cops do enforce the law.
What I don't like is people trying to punish me, a law-abiding responsible adult, for the misdeeds of others who are not.
So the outrage and over-reactive legislation put on electric bicycles or electric scooters is quite insane in comparison. Max 15 mph on an electric bike, no limits on a car in the city..
You're not supposed to run red lights or exceed the speed limit. This should be enforced electronically. The machines are unbiased and more accurate than cops. Cheaper too.
By all means fine me for going through the red light, then allow me to explain to the judge the mitigating reasons (carrying a heart attack patient etc)
Even if it's an empty intersection and I can clearly see that there is no traffic coming, and the stupid light is staying red for way too long simply because the local government can't be bothered to put in a smarter one?
> or exceed the speed limit.
Even if it's an empty limited access highway and the speed limit is set too low because whatever government runs the road can't be bothered to update it to reflect the current circumstances?
Sure, if a cop catches me (or a monitoring camera does) doing these things, I get a ticket and have to pay a fine. But that just reinforces the point that traffic laws are way more about revenue for municipalities than they are about actual safety. If they were about actual safety, then I wouldn't get a ticket for violating the letter of a traffic law when there was negligible risk of actual harm.
You seem to believe that just because some people put a law in place, it must be the best possible tradeoff among various competing factors. All human history shows that such a belief is false.
Speak for yourself. I don't need a nanny monitor in my car to drive safely. Nor do the vast majority of drivers. There are about 150 billion cars in the world. Only a very tiny fraction of them kill people. And punishing all the people who do drive responsibly because of the mistakes of the tiny fraction of drivers who don't is getting things backwards. The consequences should be on the people who do kill others with their cars, not on the people who don't.
This is wrong by ~100x.
"There are about 1.475 billion vehicles on Earth in 2024.": https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2021/06/how-many-cars-are-the...
Absolutely. It's the first thing we fix on our 2-wheel transpos.
Complain about power wheels, because you’re comparing two things that have nothing to do with each other.
They're good people at heart. Don't misunderstand them.
That seems like the next-most-interesting question now that you've determined what the device is. Possibly followed closely by "can I use that free-to-me data in a fun way that might teach the people who installed the SIM to deactivate their devices when they sell them?"
i.e. Could you send and receive enough on the connection using that SIM to cost them enough money that they'd notice it?
Now it could be that the people who built this tracking device are too small scale to negotiate a deal, or just don't know this, but my guess is that (a) the SIM is not in a physical format which can be removed and fitted in a different device; and (b) it is connected to a private APN which is not connected to the Internet.
BTW, if you look up the Wikipedia article, bear in mind that it is a bit inaccurate - for instance it refers to an APN as being a gateway to the Internet, which is not always true. I'll correct it some time.
Here’s an example from a few years ago: https://scootertalk.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1370
I'd personally be equal parts creeped out and curious about the hardware if that showed up on a car I bought. If it's a former fleet vehicle, its probably deactivated.
The particular sound described makes me think of older pre-lte stuff, which in my part of the world was abandoned and became useless a couple years ago.
But you're right, I don't think I've heard my phone cause that sound since I switched to an LTE phone.
So you're probably using the connection in violation of the wishes of the responsible party, but it was not clear to me exactly how illegal that would be? Like I'm sure they could charge you with a crime but I have no idea what it would be.
Doubt it. You'd be using a device you bought and now own, that didn't come with any kind of agreement/contract/etc to limit your usage. :)
I bought an aparment 3.5 years ago and it had an alarm installed.
I called the security company to transfer ownership but that couldn’t be done without authorisation from the previous owner, which probably makes sense. The problem is, they were unreachable, and I was living on a house that I now owned, and which had cameras the previous owner could take pics from at any time.
My patience was running out so I threatened the security company with removing the cameras installed in the house I owned, but I was told that they owned them even if they were inside my house.
The last time I checked, US property rights made it clear that you cannot just store stuff on other people’s land without permission, and then complain when they throw it away.
They could try to argue that whatever contract the previous owner signed still applies, but for that to be the case, they would have had to amend the deed to the property, and that should have been noticed by your title agency.
Why waste your own time with this? If it's your house, you own everything inside. I would put all the cameras in the trash and forget about it.
25 years passed. My mother started variously selling and disposing of their slowly rotting crap that they evidently were never going to collect, as she wanted to fix the structural issues with the barn, and their stuff was in the way, as it literally filled the entire ground floor.
And then, one day, 30 years later, their children showed up, wanting to collect their inheritance.
They sued. They won. She had to fork over about €100k.
So no, just because you own the house, you don’t own everything in it.
In Europe, it’s also common for you to buy a place, and then when you move in, you find the vendor has taken all of the wiring and plumbing with them. Sometimes they’ll even take things like doors, staircases, floors, you name it.
This is the first time I hwar of this.
At least in Norway the rule is that everything that is built in stays.
So table, chairs, TV, washing machine, dryer etc goes, but built in appliances and built in place furniture stays.
You can't just lump 27 countries with wildly differing laws together like this.
You have to ensure the contract of sale specifically includes things like wiring, the boiler, the radiators, flooring, light fittings and switches, because if they aren’t explicitly included, they aren’t included. There are some very odd definitions of chattels vs fixtures out there - in France, it has to be nailed to the structure to count as a fixture. If it’s screwed, glued, or otherwise not nailed down, it’s a chattel.
Abandoned property is just that.
She was actually lucky to avoid criminal charges.
Abandonment should be measured at the takeover of property in lieu of agreement, and a reasonable time frame for pickup agreement is on the order of days, not years.
At that point just lie and say that it never happened.
Or that the preperty was just some dishes or something.
Does England count as Europe?
LOL!
No. This is not common at all.
I've seen it from disgruntled former renters, but that's it.
It's also illegal.
The owner died in the early 90s - the folks who rocked up were the grandchildren of her ex-husband.
As for people who have said “oh she should have charged for the storage” - that would have been nice, but that wasn’t the agreement, and French law treats a verbal agreement as a contract, and also places the onus in this type of situation on the person holding the goods to make extensive efforts to contact the owner and/or their heirs.
There was recently a case in the press where person sold “old junk” to an antique dealer. Antique dealer sells it at auction for fortune. Antique dealer is then forced to hand over full sum to person who sold old junk/priceless antique.
Squatters rights are incredible. A friend had their house occupied one winter while they were away, 16 years ago. The squatters had a baby. They are only legally allowed to remove them this year, when the child turns 18.
The napoleonic code. This is why France is full of abandoned properties, stuck in probate for all eternity, as finding and getting hundreds of heirs to unanimously agree on a sale or whatever is… hard.
True, but the thing with verbal agreements is that it's very difficult to prove what was agreed upon.
Your mother should have just lied.
And before I get called naive, courts do look very favorably upon defendants that are nice.
I simply covered them. The threat was just me running out of patience.
No, that's how ownership of internet accounts works. Ownership of real estate is based on completely different principles; there is no earthly reason you'd need the previous owner to be involved. Who owns what real estate is a matter of public record.
Doesn't mean they need to be kept in their current location though. You're entirely within your rights to remove them and leave them in a safe place for them to retrieve at their leisure.
What the actual fuck?! Why would you have cameras inside your house to begin with, let alone ones that upload to “the cloud” and let alone ones that upload to users you don’t control?
I’m totally shocked by this.
The company on the contract voluntarily gave the SIM to OP.
I may even consider filing against the previous tenants for not removing them and so my being filmed destroying them was without my consent, it’s a clear crime to me to record someone on their private property without their permission ..
This is absolutely not normal anywhere.
- Headline "My new car has a mysterious and undocumented switch".
No, this is not a new car. This is a used car. Finding undocumented switches in a vehicle someone else owned is very common. People modify their cars all the time. Finding an undocumented switch in a new car would be wild.
- "And that’s how the search comes to an end. After a bit of perseverance I figured out what it is."
You literally took your car to a dealership, and the mechanic told you what it was. This ENTIRE ARTICLE boils down to this statement. You did the bare minimum to investigate what it was: took the panel off and confirmed that the wires went __somewhere__.
How does this get upvoted so heavily on Hacker News?
Just that it's YOUR new car.
I mostly drive old 90s enthusiast cars, and I have had my fair share of undocumented switches.
The most surprising to date was in a Nissan Silvia, from 1989. Sometimes it wouldn't crank off the key, given the solution chosen it must have been a wiring issue. Instead of fixing that wiring, the previous owner had directly wired power to the starter via a "missle switch" style switch, and instead of mounting it anywhere remotely useful, it was just spliced into the loom and sat on top of the rocker cover in the engine bay.
So if it wouldn't start, I had to leave the key at "on", hop out of the car, bump that switch and then it would start. Obviously standing in front of a manual car while starting it is the dumbest thing next to wiring your starter to a switch in the engine bay. Fortunately I never ran myself over.
Another one, I will keep short, a 97 Skyline would only light up ready to start 1/4 times. Seemingly randomly, on key bump. Turns out the flash memory for the fuel map had corrupted, and depending on the temperature and a bit of randomness from the sensors, it would only hit a corrupted cell occasionally. It got worse and worse as more of the table corrupted, until it would only start say 1/60 key bumps.
It was a dodgy power wire causing the corruption, and fixing that plus reflashing the tune fixed the issue.
I’m pretty sure (not 100%) that new cars with contactless keys have this feature by default. You can get out (with the key) and leave it running, but the shifter won’t work until you return with the key.
Easier is just to key all the fleet vehicles with the same standard non chipped key. Then any key operates any vehicle which removes a ton of operational friction. When I drove cab we also just used fleet keys, but only because we bought old police interceptors, which also meant, our cab keys could open and drive police cars. Which is why police fleet cars sometimes have an extra interlock button or switch in them which disables the shifter so it can't be taken out of park. Similar to the switches in this post.
Vehicles assigned to a single officer may be different and will likely use the fob but the shift vehicles in a lot of jurisdictions just use fleet keys even today.
I guess maybe not solved yet because:
- The trivial solution also means multiple cars respond to e.g. "unlock" if they are parked adjacent.
- Anything more complicated means custom electronics for a niche market.
By contrast every small town in the world has a fundi who can duplicate your physical key.
So no need to worry about that feature on Fusions... they don't sell them anymore. Nor Chevies, Buicks, Oldsmobile is long gone, no more Dodges or Chryslers... nothing.
It has been a very long time for Ford now. I was heartbroken when they discontinued the Fiesta/Focus ST/RS trims in the US, those were peak car models for me.
Story: when I was buying my Fiesta ST I did all the usual dealership prep tactics to avoid getting overcharged. I researched the dealership cost and all that jazz, and told the salesperson I have that much + a few hundred bucks which seemed a fair offer. They immediately accepted it and got me out the door with that car within the hour; I got the sense they were not selling well even back then.
Check Chevy and Dodge too. Chevy has one sedan and Dodge is still selling 2023 model years to avoid CAFE.
A fun read related to this: "Privacy Nightmare on Wheels: Every Car Brand Reviewed by Mozilla - Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota - Flunks Privacy Test"
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-on-...
Small excerpt:
>The very worst offender is Nissan. The Japanese car manufacturer admits in their privacy policy to collecting a wide range of information, including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data — but doesn’t specify how. They say they can share and sell consumers’ “preferences, characteristics, psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities, and aptitudes” to data brokers, law enforcement, and other third parties.
The phenomena you're describing isn't about caring.
You're describing a "trade" in the same way mobsters and conmen do.
The costs of talking to friends endlessly about this boring privacy is having no friends. You're telling an addict what they are doing is not good for them, but they are not ready to hear it.
I often put my phone into Airplane Mode when I'm not actively using it, and I prefer to avoid the distraction of a phone call while I'm driving because I'm a terrible multitasker. If it's too easy for me to receive an incoming phone call when I'm driving then I'm too likely to do it when I really shouldn't.
In general I want as little data collection and reporting capability built into my car as is reasonably possible. I wish more auto manufacturers would make it as easy as Toyota did with the GRC -- and a few other of models, as I've heard -- to disable telemetry.
Some older temperature dials actually mixed the cold A/C air with the hot air from the heater core to make those in-between temperatures.
All AC compressors are either on or off. The compressed gas is gradually released by the TXV. The drop in pressure as the gas exits the TXV is what makes it cold.
Some older temperature dials actually mixed the cold A/C air with the hot air from the heater
What vehicles don't do this?
https://www.atrack.com.tw/en/product/1-wire-ibutton-tag-read...
If you have a flipper zero, maybe you could poke at it.
I have seen them on Home Depot forklifts. Lift operators have the iButton key fob to allow the machine to stay operating. Years ago I was with a guy who though the could load our truck himself, started the lift, alarm goes off and it shuts down.
Used cars can have all sorts of crap in them from mods or whatever. And who knows what abuse a used car has seen but this car was fleet maintained and GPS monitored so likely a good used car.
Most people don't care about their privacy. Even if they do, the majority of that group don't care enough to give up the conveniences they get in exchange for it. This leaves a small group of people to fight for protecting their privacy, as well as of those who don't care about it. This is an uphill battle against trillion-dollar corporations and the governments they're in symbiosis with.
Some governments do make an effort, but it's too little, and too ineffective to matter in the grand scheme of things. I wouldn't expect this to improve, and can easily see it getting worse. I hope I'm just being pessimistic.
I share and empathize with the feeling of powerlessness, but most people will choose convenience, user experience, etc. over privacy, even when there are reasonable alternatives. Hell, I will sacrifice my own privacy if a service is indispensable and there's no alternative. We can't expect people who value it less to do otherwise.
The things companies can, will and promise to do with your data are sometimes so far fetched that people assume they're impossible. At least this was the case 5 years ago, haven't tried persuading anyone in recent years.
Made me wonder how many other shops were doing the same thing...even 20 years ago.
One dealer tried to sell one to me to the tune of 600$/year. That told me that they were butchering the wiring on every brand new car that hit their lot. I walked out without a deal.
In most cases, Dealers don't own the cars on their lot; they are financed either by a manufacturer's financing arm e.x. FMCC, Ally (sorta), NMAC, or an independent e.x. Santander.
Oftentimes, the Tracking device is part of the finance company's agreement, if not part of keeping insurance costs down.
Of course, dealers are more than happy to try to charge you for -not- removing it...
There's no need for butchering. All that's needed is constant 12V. Maybe an aux 12V if you need to know when the car is on. At most, they may have installed a relay to cut the fuel pump or ignition, which is no more invasive than a standard alarm installation.
Usually when you stop paying for that subscription, the line gets deactivated.
So probably nobody is getting that GPS trace.
I've been dabbling in this space and I'm having a hard time finding any data service under about $2 - $4 per month.
https://1nce.com/en-us/1nce-connect/10-dollars-for-10-years
I remember seeing stupidly cheap prices for cellular chips, and when I looked into it, it looked like they had bought up a bunch of bulk bandwidth on some really old tech, like 2G. The offering wasn't a lot of data per period but certainly enough to wake up and upload a small amount of data regularly. Seemed like an obvious product, I know that if I'm doing a design, I don't want to have to rely on ongoing costs. I'm surprised I can't find more hits like this one. It's possible that peak IoT led to some crazy business models that had no chance of sustaining. I think they may have banking on the network dying before having to figure out how to purchase more bandwidth.
Digikey was no help. Googling "Lifetime Data Cellular Communication plan" did lead to some other potential interesting hits. chatgpt almost gave me interesting things to look for, but it mostly pointed me at consumer good. Good luck.
It is funny because that Opel IS a Peugeot.
Same group (Stellantis), and same mechanicals as the contemporary Peugeot 208 with only minor aesthetics and branding modifications.
Thankfully Toyota did most of the engineering, which I think is the main reason ours is still running after minimal maintenance with > 100,000 miles on it.
Around here, such a button in this place would be for the 20 000 lumen extralights. Typically for cars with xenon headlights, like this Opel, the extralights are powered via a relay that takes control signal from a can-bus adapter that extracts the high beam signal, via a manual switch like this.
Car makers: For some people your new cars can't compete with your 20+ year old used cars! Right, 20 years of changes resulted in big steps backwards.
In general avoid obscurity and complexity. And instead emphasize the KISS principle -- keep it simple silly!
Suggestion: For SUV models with a door in the back, some have just one door and a hinge at the top. Instead have the long common two doors, one with the hinge high and the other, low. That way, can actually have a "tailgate picnic party" and reduce the number of times a head hits the door.
And there is a problem: Please return to the old round headlights, two for low beam and two more for high beam. They gave better light, didn't have a plastic covering that got cloudy, didn't have the current obscure way to replace a light that failed, and were easy to understand and aim and cheap to replace.
I know, the old lights were cheap. But also remember, they were better!!!
The switch basically does nothing, but tha state of it is logged in the tracking system along with the routes the car takes. In many EU countries you tax differently for personal use, so the switch is sort of important for tax reasons.
I have one of those buttons and readers from a project kit from a long time ago, and it's not magnetic.
The purpose of the switch is also unconfirmed by the article, but this exact combination of cheap chinese button + ibutton reader were an extremly common retrofit into Opels in Hungary.
But it was mine and my wife’s first car and we have a lot of happy memories of places that car has taken us to. Aside from the odd flat tyre and a new clutch and timing belt over the last 8 years, it’s never let us down (it was largely engineered by Toyota which certainly helps there). We got a new car at the start of this year so it doesn’t see much use now, but we’ve kept it as a second car because it’s so damn cheap to run and maintain.
That must be new https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...
"Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so."
I am reticent to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt.
But don't click yes if you spend time nude in your garage like the people in the original claim.
https://www.teslaownersonline.com/threads/data-sharing-scree...
I have an almost identical looking switch in my Mustang (which I imported from America) and it does exactly that - turns the fog lights on and off :)
Probably. Obviously this assumes competence, attention to detail, and responsibility with corporate funds.
I kept accidentally toggling it off with my knee, so I replaced it with a nice flush push button. I haven't tracked the car yet though.
I never touched an undocumented button again, nor understood why someone would add a button that exploded the car when clicked.
When one showed up at a good local dealership, I bought it. I barely looked at it first.
Unusual? Probably. But those were unusual times.
Anyway, it had a small metal toggle switch mounted under the dash. The old-school kind, with the metal tag painted with red and black On/Off silkscreen.
I never did figure out what it was for.
I had a peek more than once (of course) to see what it connected to, but it was just a Siamese pair of wires that drifted off to unseeable areas.
The only other modification I could find was a very neatly-installed remote starter.
And that remote start box did have a switch input (for valet mode, whatever that means), but it was not connected.
(It all got ruined in a crash a couple of months ago and the purpose of the switch shall thus remain a mystery.)
I didn't ever find any evidence of aftermarket anything except for some suspension parts (new shocks/struts, tie rods, woot) and the remote starter. And...the switch.
Given the fact that the vehicle is probably headed to China by now to make new cars out of, the switch will just have to remain strange and unknown.
Unless the whole thing is disabled in absence of a registered fleet tracker key on the magnet on the right.
The only thing I find odd is that the dealer didn't notice this and remove or plug it.
It was about a mysterious box. Turned out to be some kind of remote disabler.
I found the title a bit misleading in that regard.
After reading post: Oh. That makes me wonder how many second hand cars are driving around with similar features?
At 101hp, I am sure noisy, but not thrilling.
You mean your phone?
I disagree: after failing to figure out what it was, you asked for help and somebody else figured out what it was.
Or maybe just ownership of the car is enough? I kind of suspect it might not be though.
Before that, if the system allowed for any correlation of location data to who was driving at that point, the exact same rights apply too for each involved driver.
Only if the data controller (the entity who made the choice to put a gps tracker on the car) took specific steps to ensure the location data could not be correlated to an individual (and can prove those steps were taken), is the data safe from GDPR.
(When did crazy things like this start becoming a real thing?)
However, because the author lives in a country covered by the GDPR, they have a right to receive, correct, and adjust the personal information collected on them. No need to capture the data transmitted by the system, the company is legally obligated to hand over every bit of personal information they have on the author, including any pseudomised information, in a format that's machine readable.
In theory you'd be liable for racking up a bill if you use their SIM card, but I doubt it still works.