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I have zero desire to own an Internet-connected car wherein I can’t “own” it without abiding by the rules set forth by the auto manufacturer. BMW recently killed their subscription seat heaters but who knows what Egon Smells is cooking up at Tesla.
In my defense, my 13 year old car died earlier this year and I needed a new car fast. I was completely unaware these systems had gotten as bad as they have until after I bought it.
I figured we’re not going to have much choice in the future. We’ll be driving cars under End User License Agreements that already send tons and tons of data about us back to the manufacturers.
As much as I love technology, I hate the way it is being used. Car companies don’t make enough money selling cars so they need to collect and sell driver data? It’s dystopian.
They make plenty of money, they just want more money
Capitalism requires obtaining more capital than ever every quarter or you’ve failed as a company. They’re getting to the point they have to violate the customers privacy in order to chaise ever growing profits
Capitalism only works in a growing company in a growing market. Once you’re reached a plateau it maxes out your client base you can’t go any higher other than artificially.
It seems to still be working for the mega corps now stealing and selling our private info, no one is stopping them and they’re taking in extra millions from it. Their original business may plateau at a certain point but then they branch out to more business models/types by using the money bucket from the original successful business
What’s funny is that that only really applies to publicly owned companies where anyone can own shares of the company.
But thats rhe name of the game, enough is never enough.
In US, maybe. But in EU things are already regulated enough that this can be avoided to a degree. It’s not there yet, but EC doesn’t like shit like this. We already have GDPR and forced separate warranties for hardware and software, ensuring you can fuck around with the latter without voiding warranty on the former. But at some point I fully expect some manufacturer to give you a kill switch from GSM modem and call it a feature, then everyone else will follow.
Don’t you love it when it makes you read a disclaimer and click “accept” literally every time you get into the car if you want to use your infotainment center? Who’s the asshole who came up with that brilliant idea? Whoever he is, fuck him!
My Subaru and every other car I’ve been in the disclaimer goes away if you don’t click it. I have clicked accept in two years.
Our Honda puts up a notice that essentially says “I understand that I need to keep my eyes on the road”. Yeah, no shit, Honda. But what’s dumb is that it won’t go away until you tap accept, so it ends up causing you to have to take your eyes off the road and pay attention to this stupid disclaimer screen if you forget to close it before you start driving.
Hey friend, you are not the one who needs a defense, IMO-- You’re just the end user caught up in the nonsense. Enjoy your new car as best you can, and just make decisions that make the most sense for you.
There are electric cars built by corporate oligarchs that are not Nazis. More disconcerting you missed that memo.
Unfortunately, in the US at least, there’s very little choice. If we’re only counting new electric cars(not SUVs) in the low end, there’s basically only Tesla, Chevrolet, Nissan, and Hyundai. Some of the least reliable manufacturers with frequent recalls. And Tesla 3 has the most range and tech out of those for a similar price.
When you get to the $50k+ range, then you have a lot more options with all the high end luxury brands like Audi, BMW, Mercedes, etc., offering EVs.
Polestar? Though their next model (3) is going to be an SUV.
I went to their website, it says a new polestar 2 starts at $50k and polestar 3 at $85k. Those are the only models listed on their website. That doesn’t count as low end for me.
Egon Smells
I dislike the guy as much as everyone else but i really wish this stupidist name bullshit would die.
Shit like that annoys me as much as “tRump”.
I despise him, hope to never see him near DC again, and will be happy to see him found guilty. But when you say things like that it just makes you look stupid.
“tRump” is just lazy.
It’s not lazy… It’s extra effort to intentionally show one’s disrespect for these despicable motherfuckers.
I respect your opinion and can see where you are coming from.
However, fuck him.
stupidist name
Oh yeah? Felon musk!
elon smuck!
Noel Kums!
You sound like fun.
Thanks LameDickoholic!
Bam gotcha, hahahhaha.
who knows what Egon Smells is cooking up
Subscription for brakes is on the table
I once had a car salesman try to talk me out of ABS because the one on the lot didn’t have it. He literally told me “ABS? You only need that in an emergency!”
I replied with “I only need headlights at night and seatbelts in an accident but I want those, too.”
I can totally see them charging extra monthly charges or even a charge every time you activate the ABS.
It’s all A BS ;)
Clippy says, “It appears as if you are trying to stop! Do you want help?”
Why would anyone buy a Tesla? Fuck that
I have a Tesla. It’s great. I’ve received dozens of new features OTA. There are no subscriptions (except a very reasonable $10 for additional cellular connectivity, that I do not pay for). It’s the best car I’ve ever owned.
Also Fuck Elon 👍
I own a Tesla, I can’t imagine buying any other make now. The full experience is incredible. Every time I hear what’s going on with the new cars, especially EV, my answer to all the issues is always the same: get a Tesla instead.
Also: Musk is a shitshow on legs
Yeah, I mean there are totally legitimate reasons to not like them and not buy one but they’re very hard to beat on fun, reliability, practicality and cost-effectiveness.
I can’t imagine it’s a Tesla or it wouldn’t say anything about keeping the engine running.
Either way, fuck all this bullshit. Every day I grow less and less likely to part with my old beast BUT the near doubled and still rising price of fuel will probably force my hand eventually.
I just went on a touring holiday and fuel was easily the largest component of my budget.
Come to Norway, and you’ll see that overy other car is a Tesla. It’s like a status symbol.
It being a status symbol becomes kind of irelevant if every other person has it
I suppose it could be like antique cars in my home state where just about everyone has a antique car and is still a status symbol but at least with a car that you have to constantly work on it yourself it’s kinda a hey look at what I’ve made sort of status symbol maybe Norwegians are hot rodding Teslas?
I feel like hot rodding a tesla would be more of a Finnish thing. Also I feel like if theres any car that I wouldnt hot rod itd be a tesla, npt cause its nice mind you, (I think every “feature” it has is shit) but because I feel like itd throw a hissy fit unless you legitimized it and hotwired all its systems.
Because they’re phenomenal vehicles? And if you live in the US they have the only charging network you can actually rely on.
I’m driving 600 miles today in mine. No problem.
Unfortunately most modern cars are built this way.
After extensive 6-months search of new car, I concluded that you have to compromise.
I went with Nissan pathfinder and the software isn’t mature yet. Engine runs rough with misfires when idle. The car assembled with misaligned parts.
Nissan knows and wouldn’t fix the issue.
He is possible today to buy an electric car that is not connected to internet?
I will have am to buy a new car soon and unfortunately I don’t see too many options.
Yeah I hope Infiniti never updates their tech. They added it right before internet connectivity was easy, so it’s still mostly unconnected but it still has the luxuries like phone connectivity.
I’m going to cry if they get the new Nissan stack
While I like driving. I hate all the shit modern car manufacturers put in modern cars. Sure they’re more efficient on fuel than older ones. But we should be able to have that without needing the car to be tracked and data collected, we have in the past.
I feel like all these driver aids are also making people worse at driving. They need to do less, so they pay attention less.
On top of that, can we ban touchscreens in cars? Physical buttons give physical feed back, you can feel for the button you want and press it without taking your eyes off the road. A touchscreen gives you none of that, and means you have to look away. It’s somewhat mitigated when they put buttons on the steering wheel, but not all buttons can fit in that spot.
Sure some cars have google assistant, Siri or Alexa. But I actually get so frustrated when trying to tell my phone to navigate somewhere or just simply change the song. And that’s just the phone! The amount of times I have to pull over because it glitches out, or just fails to interpret some or all of what I’ve just said (sure it’s better than voice assistants used to be, but it still breaks regularly) is still too high. The amount of times I regularly tell it to do something, only to find it was still processing the activation voice command, and therefore was initialising the VA screen, and not listening to a word I said after the initial activation is infuriating.
I love technology, but the technology has no place in cars if it detracts or distracts from the act and safety of actually driving the car.
/Rant.
On top of that, can we ban touchscreens in cars? Physical buttons give physical feed back, you can feel for the button you want and press it without taking your eyes off the road. A touchscreen gives you none of that, and means you have to look away. It’s somewhat mitigated when they put buttons on the steering wheel, but not all buttons can fit in that spot.
That’s, a damn good point.
Android Auto has a good interface for integrating its functions into a car touchscreen, but it’s not controlling anything “important”.
I agree that all the traditional car controls should be actual knobs and buttons. I rented a car once and they gave me a Tesla, and I couldn’t stand how all the controls were behind its touchscreen. I never felt the need to buy a Tesla, but that one experience turned me off from them entirely.
The more I learn about Elon and how Teslas actually work, the more I feel justified in never falling for his hype train.
A touchscreen gives you none of that, and means you have to look away
That’s the reason why I don’t like listening to music on smart phones. Want to skip a track? Fish the phone out of your pocket, turn the screen back on, find the skip button, tap it, wait a second until the garbage app acknowledges that you’ve pressed it, turn off screen, put it back.
While on my 2000’s phone it’s just pressing one of the physical buttons.
Want to skip a track? Fish the phone out of your pocket, turn the screen back on, find the skip button, tap it, wait a second until the garbage app acknowledges that you’ve pressed it, turn off screen, put it back.
I had a HTC Touch Pro smartphone 15 years ago, and it had an optional headphone cable with buttons on it. You could use the buttons for pause/play, next track, and previous track, without having to get the phone out of your pocket.
I never really saw something like that again for wired headphones. I did sometimes see headphones with buttons on the headphones themselves, but often they just have play/pause.
The cable for Android devices are standardized. The car could have that built in
Bluetooth earbuds today have this feature. Havent met any headphones that do this but it might have also been a gesture
Bruh, get a 2019+ Miata MX5. It solves 95% of what you are complaining about and it’s fun to drive.
Nah, I don’t have the budget for that, and here in Australia even an NB MX5 is over 10K- I’m actually currently looking at a 08’ fiesta XR4 (in other parts of the world that’s the 2L fiesta ST)
I know what you’re saying. My '23 Audi a3 has all the things you would want to buttons instead of touch screen only.
I have huge gripes with bad infotainment systems, only reason I bought this new car was because I have no issues with it. I’m coming from old American cars. All the benefits of physical buttons with tactile feedback while being way more fun to drive.
I agree. Let’s cut the middle man and force 100% automated driving. People can fuck in the back then with less likely to die than with humans with stupid cars without assistance driver aids. Driving is extremely dangerous and honestly I trust ai over other people (in USA).
Nah, I don’t know if AI will ever be 100% perfect, and I don’t want to trust it fully. Ai is human built, and it’s my personal belief that humans aren’t perfect, so AI will therefore never be perfect.
Also, you will always want a qualified driver to be able to take over should some part of the car sensor systems fail.
Sensors, unlike humans have a tendency to fail quickly, sometimes instantly, and even AI and autopilot can behave erratically if it gets bad or false inputs from bad sensors.
It’s like in a airliner, autopilot even though at this point is pretty much practically capable of flying a plane completely from takeoff to landing, there will always be at least pilots on duty in the cockpit in order to account for unforseen circumstances and failures, even if they never actually fly the plane normally.
AI doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be better than your average human driver. Which, you know isn’t a very high bar…
Comparing to an airplane pilot isn’t the same, a pilot goes through years of training to be able to fly passengers (Well beyond a dinky Cessna or whatever anyways) and you need years of experience on top before you are even considered by the big airlines
A human driver can get a license in as little as a few days
Or hear me out… What if we had really long cars, sometimes chained together, put them on rails, and have just 1 human drive hundreds of them.
Oh seems I wasn’t clear. Sentient AI should drive us. Give it 30 years and I bet it will be close to the outcome if not on the cusp.
Even if we somehow manage to create a sentient AI, it will still have to rely on the information it receives from various sensors in the car. If those sensors fail, and it doesn’t have the information it needs to do the job, it could still make a mistake due to a lack of, or completely incorrect data, or if it manages to realise the data is erroneous it still could flatly refuse to work. I’d rather keep people in the loop as a final failsafe just in case that should ever happen.
I see your point on this but when should an sentient AI be able to decide for itself? What makes it different from a human by this point? Human, us rely on sensors too to react to the world. We make mistakes also, even dangerous one. I guess we just want to make sure this sentient AI is not working against us?
That’s why it’s layers of security. Humans have a natural instinct - usually we can tell if our eyesight is getting worse. And any mistake we make is most likely due to us not noticing something or reacting in time, something that the AI should be able to compensate for.
The only time where this is not true when we have a medical episode, like a grand Mal or something. But everyone knows safety is always relative. And we mitigate that by redundancies. Sensors will have redundancies, and we ourselves are also an additional redundancy. Heck we could also put in sensors for the occupants to monitor their vitals. There is once again a question of privacy, but really that’s all we should need to protect against that.
A sentient AI, not counting any potential issues with its own sentience, would have issues with sudden failed or poorly maintained sensors. Usually when a sensor fails, it either zeros out, maxes out, or starts outputting completely erratic results.
If any of these results look the same as normal results, they can be hard for the AI to tell. We can reconcile those sensors with our own human senses and tell if they failed. A car only has its sensors to know what it needs to know, so if it fails, will it be able to know? Sure sensor redundancy helps, but there is still that minor chance that all the redundant sensors fail in a way that the AI cannot tell, and in that case the driver should be there to take over.
Again I will refer to the system of an aircraft, as even if it’s a 1 in a billion chance there have been a few instances where this has happened and the autpilot nearly pitched the plane into the ground or ocean, and the plane was only saved due to the pilots takeover - in one of those cases it was due to a faulty sensor reporting that the angle of attack was too steeply pitched up, so the stick pusher mechanism tried to pitch the nose down, to save the plane, when infact it already was down. An autopilot, even an AI one will have no choice to trust its sensors as that’s the only mechanism it has.
When it come to a faulty redundant sensor, the AI also has to work out which sensor to trust, and if it picks the wrong one, well you’re fucked. It might not be able to work out which sensor is more trustworthy…
We keep ourselves safe with layered safety mechanisms and redundancy, including ourselves. So if anyone fails, the other can hopefully catch the failure.
Wow, I appreciate the response must have taken awhile to write.
Sometimes the updates aren’t even worth it.
Toyota said my prius needed an update so I installed the app for it. All the update did was remove fucking features that were usable in the car. Used to have the option to use Pandora from the console but it got removed randomly by an update.
Then they installed an Alexa search page that glitches my console if I every select it.
Basically I’m saying FUCK TOYOTA
For bonus anger.
Amazon pays Toyota about $1 per vehicle that Alexa is installed on.
So you made Toyota an extra dollar for your pain.
My 2015 Subaru Impreza has a shitty entertainment system. At least it still connects via BT, but they removed the screen mirroring really early on and the app had ~1 star on Google Play for a long time (probably still does). Thankfully it’s not integrated with the features of the car in any meaningful way. I could swap it for any other head unit. No sure how that will work with modern cars where the AC, lane departure, and everything else goes to the stereo.
The real issue, as you point out, is there is nothing to force them to continue supporting it or maintain its features once us poor suckers have bought it.
If it’s anything like my MIL’s 17’ Forester, you flat can’t replace the headunit without disabling a lot of car features. I believe the land departure/EyeSight still works, though.
Thinking for a second it wasn’t a typo, a land departure feature would be excellent, either flying or amphibious mode.
I’m trying to manifest flying cars into being, apparently.
Sounds like getting the 2016 model of Prius was a good call on my part. Of course, it was 2019 when I did it and that model wasn’t substantially different, but that sounds awful.
Yeah 2017 model here :/
Entune is the worst Toyota dashboard ever. It’ll randomly crash and reload the dashboard while driving sometimes. (once or twice every 3 months)
I haven’t had that problem, but it does do this weird thing where it sometimes messes up pairing with the bluetooth on my phone and plays everything super fast.
Factory reset help?
Granted not a software update but my dad’s Cadillac got recalled once and all they did was make the ceiling buttons harder to read that was the one time he ever obayed a recall
ceiling buttons harder to read
How?! And also, why?! I don’t get it. What was the point of doing this?
How they made the buttons so recessed that you need to move your head directly under them to see what button is what. Why it’s a Cadillac ATS this car is the physical incarnation of mildly infuriating and I have no idea why my dad loves it so much when both me and my mom find everything about that car mildly infuriating I guess they just found another way to make the car mildly infuriating
I really REALLY hope someone at some point starts a gasoline to electric car conversion company at some point.
I love my car because it has just the right amount of technology: Bluetooth connectivity for calls and music. That’s it. That’s all I need.
Yup. Unfortunately, since most people seem to prefer the dystopian futuretech, all auto manufacturers are going to employ it. Just like with cell phones. The last phone I know of with 16:9 aspect ratio and no blighted hole punch or notch was in 2018. There’s a market full of us luddites who prefer the old ways, but we’re invisible to manufacturers because it’s more profitable to make something that more people want to buy, and we’re forced to buy that garbage as well anyway.
Don’t worry. You know those car nuts who put 20 spoilers on their cars and mod the engine etc… There will be a point where most of them do it with the futuretech cars and it will be in their way, which means they will circumvent it and ordinary people will be able to hire them to do it to their cars too. It was the same wis “chip tuning”.
I hope so
It’s already started rich rebuild v8 swap a module s and is currently diseal swapping a module 3
You forgot about the programmed obsolescence.
Yeah, it goes further than just designing the hardware to only last a few years, all of these electronics ensure that the car is fucked as soon as the necessary online services go down. Meanwhile a well-maintained '93 Geo Metro, driven in the south where they don’t salt the roads every year, can last decades.
I’ve had my 2010 Mazda 3 for 13 years now and I’m taking every precaution to keep it as long as I can.
hi, I’m looking to buy my first car and have my eyes on the 2015 Mazda 3 but it is a little bit over my budget. Would you recommend getting the 2010-2013 Mazda 3 in 2023? Or just downgrade to a 2015 Mazda 2?
There are some positives and negatives to the desire for old form factors. Secondhand phones from 2018 cost much less than new ones but lack some of the new features like… I can’t think of any.
New features, like the absolute gutting of Tasker’s capabilities
5g and nfc was rarer then.
I believe you on 5g, but hasn’t nfc become rarer rather than more common over time? Has there been a resurgence of nfc in recent years??
All contactless payments use it. All your cards have it. All phones that you. Can pay from (which I don’t know any new brand that doesn’t offer this feature) uses it.
I guess that covid was the resurgence, with all the banks and businesses setting up nfc cards and payment machines for zero touch payments.
forced to buy
the real mildlyinfuriating is always in the comments
There was some discussion on a post about gas to electric cars https://lemmy.world/post/5901284
There are likely a lot of complexities here.
Battery tech will need to improve greatly and be minimalized. EV batteries are currently massive, heavy, and generally engineered as long, wide, flat modules to be installed beneath the floor so they keep the center of gravity low and the vehicle balanced. That’s not really possible in an ICE vehicle with all the frame molding around existing exhaust and drivetrain components, and you most likely can’t just have some sort of modular battery and motor unit that you just drop into the engine bay, as that would put a ton (literally) of additional weight on one end and mess with the balance.
The draintrain components may need to be replaced or the motor outputs modulated to prevent the torque from ripping it apart.
Power steering and brakes will need to converted to electric assist. AC and heat would need to converted to electric.
Older cars (early 00’s and older) with cable throttles will need to be retrofitted with drive-by-wire, or use some sort of adapter module that connects the cable and converts it to digital inputs. Same with brakes.
All of the electronics (lights, wipers, windows, locks, radio, etc.) will need to be rewired since there’s no longer an alternator.
Probably will need upgraded suspension and brakes to handle the extra weight.
There’s probably a lot more I’m not thinking about or not even aware of. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to happen outside of rich enthusiast circles, which is terribly sad, because I completely agree with you. Basically everything made after around 2010 is total dogshit.
Aaawwww Man. I hate to admit it but you’re absolutely right. It’s so much work it might not even be worth it.
Spaßbremse!
/s
Reality is often disappointing
It is, depending on the expectation
the only tech i need in my car is an aux port. i will forever buy used cars from before 2010 but after around 2004ish?
At some point, I’m sure they will, at some point.
Nah. It’s less profitable.
I don’t even use BT in mine and don’t use the music system either. I stick to my phone. I just hope by the time I need to switch cars, I’ll be able to jailbreak it without bricking.
Depends on what kind of car you have. I know for a fact there is a company doing this with classic mini coopers.
I dont know the details, but Ive heard of companies that do this, or kits that can be used for it, existing, though I can only imagine that changing a car that one’s business has not manufactured and was never designed for such a conversion must take a lot of manual work, which would be expensive before even considering things like the cost of batteries.
Power train conversion is reasonably simple. Just throw combustion engine and transmission box away, make brackets for electric motors and attach them directly to the wheels (with axles if necessary). Conversion of controls is (I assume) is also somewhat simple since existing brake system and power steering is quite straightforward to run with electric motors since you just need something which can run a belt drive and gas pedal is most likely already electric. For all the electronics you have plenty of space in where the engine used to be.
But. And there’s a pretty big but. Batteries are pretty big and pretty heavy. On any given combustion engine car there’s just no room for them (at least if you’re after a conversion with similar range/power than a readily built electric car). And even if you cut the floor panel off and modify it to accomodate battery pack (or whatever the route you choose might be) it’ll heavily affect weight distribution, frame stability and many other things, suspension included. Model S battery is apparently 540kg, so if you’ll do a conversion to your corolla you might save around 150kg of weight by removing old engine+transmission but you’d still have additional 300kg of mass to deal with.
For a van which is designed to haul heavy loads from the start it might be pretty simple to just raise floor of the cargo space a bit but for a common sedan that’s a whole another thing.
I looked into this for my car. The conversion has a 50 mile range, essentially replaces the engine with an electric motor, locks the car in 3rd gear, and replaces the fuel tank with batteries.
It cost about £3500, which was a bit much for me considering the car only cost £3k, and I could just sell my car to buy a 100mile+ leaf for the same outlay.
BEVs built from the ground up are much better at being BEVs.
In our local craigslist for cars website someone has been selling a -84(or so) Nissan Sunny for ages with electric conversion. The seller did just that, took combustion engine out, attached a electric motor into transmission and the result is that you have 80’s car, with manual transmission and batteries so small that once you’re out of the driveway you’ve depleted 10% of the batteries (give or take, but that’s pretty much what you’ll get). And it had something like 15kW minus losses of the drive train.
But the parts are so expensive (at least for now) that listed price is almost 10k€. I can understand that seller wants their money back and it isn’t the most serious conversion out there, but the reality is that you’ll get a shitty 80’s car with a even shittier EV conversion (since the frame has it’s limits and high quality components are expensive) while you can sell a similar car with a combustion engine for 350€ on a good day and a tank full.
Swapping an engine is relatively easy if you know what you’re doing… If these kits can connect the electric motor to the existing drive train it wouldn’t be too bad. Messing around with batteries big enough for an electric vehicle can be really dangerous though.
You can’t download a car, but you sure can brick it.
That was a very scary and dystopian read, but thank you!
Honestly, I figured that they collected data. But I didn’t think the extent of it would be stuff like my sex life and genetic data. How the hell do those work?
They track you and then different kind of tools are trying to profile you based on your data. Similarly how ads work on the internet. Saying your car collect data of your sex life more like means they collect absolutely everything about you and then they run it through different software to profile you then sell all this data for extra profit. If you daily drive to a school they will assume you have a family and kids. If you go to a random apartment complex once a week after your kids went sleep they will assume you have a mistress. Its all based on location data and the stuff you enetered during registration.
They can also track who your devices are near. If your phone sits next to someone else’s in an office building for nearly 8 hours a day and they know that persons job they can infer yours, especially since departments tend to sit together. Ad companies often assume recurring groups of people share overlapping interests (hence why their together multiple times) and will push out ads based on what other people around you are interested in to see if you are too.
Interesting. Makes a lot of sense, though it sucks that it’s all based on assumptions because it sounds like it can easily be mistaken for a lot of things.
That’s how most of them work. I got baby toys for a friend’s baby and the Internet started trying to sell me all kinds of baby things. You listen to a lot of podcasts about craft beer? They assume you’re a 40 year old white dude who needs beard oil.
I’m betting the sex tracking is more about the pressure sensors in the seats for the seatbelt warning system.
I’m guessing if you talk about that stuff in your car, it send that data home.
Oh that makes more sense.
My mind went to a completely different approach, collecting your data when you fuck someone in the car. Length of sex, moaning volume and pumps per minutes is what I was thinking of.
deleted by creator
Hahaha I like that idea better.
deleted by creator
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Holy cow.
And nobody can jailbreak and disable these “features”?
deleted by creator
“Please do not turn off the engine during installation”
Tell that to my empty gas tank.
That’s the most ridiculous part to me. Why isn’t this able to continue off the car battery? It should be do not disconnect car battery if anything. I hope there’s some sort of fail safe to prevent it from bricking that doesn’t involve a factory reset or dealer visit.
It’s because they don’t want the car battery running flat during installation. Kind of like how your phone requires a minimum battery charge to update
Yeah but shouldn’t the power usage for the infotainment system be similar to a cell phone at this point with similar hardware where it really shouldn’t be possible to run a car battery dead during an update?
Ideally. Depends on the update time too. I know flashing ECU tunes requires a battery topper. I’ve also killed a car battery modding my infotainments firmware so it’s totally possible. But most likely Subaru is doing it out of an abundance of caution… Don’t want an angry customer coming saying the update killed their battery
My car pulls about 130W on the 12V line while in “stand-by”. That would flatten a 12V, 40Ah battery in less than four hours, and that’s only if it’s in perfect health.
I’m extremely curious what would happen if I just shut it down and left it as usual while it is updating but I’m not ready to test it out yet. Lol
If the programmers have any competence, the update will just fail and you’ll have to restart the process.
They would need something like an A/B partition once it starts writing otherwise it’s gonna be soft bricked. Car manufacturer programming are usually terrible so I doubt they have any solutions implemented lol
So that sort of happened to me on the previous gen of this infotainment unit.
I used the app to turn on the car and it keeps the car on for a short time, I started the update but it took way longer than I expected and the car shut off halfway through.
It seems to me that the unit is kept in some low power standby mode, when I turned the car back on, it just continued from where it stopped.
Good to know.
Haha now reinstall FordOS
Well, if it’s a new car, it might not use any battery from idling anyway. Still a stupid requirement though.
I LOVE HAVING CAR DEPENDENCY. I LOVE PAYING FOR LESS EFFICIENT TRANSPORT AND ALL OF MY OWN MAINTENANCE AND FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF HAVING MY DATA SOLD. I SPEND EVERY MOMENT NOT DRIVING WISHING I COULD BE BEHIND THE WHEEL AND DOING NOTHING ELSE BUT FOCUSING ON DRIVING WHILE ON MY WAY TO [CONSUME] AND MAKE DATA FOR [BRAND]. PLEASE, NO PUBLIC TRANSIT, I LIKE MY FREEDOM THANKS.
Imagine being so braindead that “going for a drive” is a legitimate form of entertainment that you get excited about.
I get the sentiment but have you ever driven a fun car on a beautiful night? Driving a topless Jeep through the twisty highway in the redwoods of Northern California or a Camaro through the wide open Nevada desert? High schoolers driving their bro dozer around town in circles, yeah, I get that.
This but motorcycles for me. Cars with the windows down are a limp substitute for hitting the bottom of a hill in a fall or spring morning on a motorbike.
Other people don’t enjoy the same things I do! Harrumph!
Obviously you’ve never went for a good ole drive before
Or driven a fun car.
Not every car is a 1.5 liter Chevy Equinox.
I (maybe naively) believe a healthy society could find a way to build a robust public transport network and still accommodate the minority of enthusiasts who drive and work on cars for fun.
Engineers aren’t just dry husks of people, robotically creating solutions to meet needs. The drive to create cars, planes, and motorbikes, which have significant technical overlap with trains, buses, and mobility aids, is at least partially borne from the thrill of piloting machines that extend human capabilities.
I’m kind of surprised that car technology is so awful. How the fuck am I paying $35k for a car and they’re still like “lets run the UI off a potato via the least responsive touch screen possible”? At some point I’d rather they just gave up on providing a UX themselves and just ran everything through Android Auto.
I’m waiting for the day we have linux cars
It’s not Linux, but there’s an open source project available where you can build your own engine ECU with an Arduino https://hackaday.io/project/4413-speeduino
I get it, but I don’t feel comfortable putting my car in the hands of an Arduino.
Nothing against the open source software at all. It’s the fact that the Arduino is a consumer experimentation board, not an automotive rated component. I’m concerned for the reliability of the Arduino under the operating conditions of an automobile.
Usually aftermarket ECU means no longer road legal.
Well, Polestars run Android
Android Automotive, not to be confused with the entirely separate and unrelated Android Auto.
Not entirely unrelated, Android Auto is basically a projection app for Android Automotive.
Android auto is your phone projecting to your cars infotainment system. This can work independent of what the cars operating system is. Android automotive is Android “optimized” as an operating system for a cars infotainment system.
Android auto runs on your phone. Android automotive runs in your car.
Android auto runs on your phone. Android automotive runs in your car.
Yes, but Android Auto does need some work on the car OS side to operate, i.e. within Android Automotive in this example (although Blackberry QNX is probably more common these days, automakers are moving away from it)
but Android Auto does need some work on the car OS side to operate
Yes, I was just arguing against Android auto and Android automotive being the same or similar thing.
Pretty much every car is running Linux at this point.
That doesn’t mean it’s open and non shitty.
Tesla cars run on Linux, and have been doing for years https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/what-os-does-tesla-use
Elon can go fuck himself tho
I’d love to be able to swap the engine. Or better - build it myself 👀
Or better - build it myself
That’s called a kit car.
They gotta get better collection systems of that sweet sweet sex you’re having in your car
I absolutely cannot stand Subaru’s infotainment system. It’s actually the primary reason I’ll never get another one.
Which car manufacturer ? So that I can avoid it.
This looks like a Subaru. That being said, from what I’ve parsed, their privacy policy looks better than most. My 2021 hasn’t had any obnoxious OTA updates. The worst it does is push easily dismissed service notifications. No secret codes on how to reset a light.
How does this update even happen? Are owners connecting their car to internet?
The car has some form of AT&T GSM connectivity. I recently discovered a WiFi hot spot setting and it’s a paid service provided by AT&T. I am able to schedule service appointments via the car, and it has an SOS button and an “Info” button that primarily is for roadside assistance. I’d prefer to be able to disable it. I was gonna say I thought Subaru was a bit better. Buttttt it looks like I’m wrong.
I’d like to know this as well…
If not, are they using some always on GSM data connection or something?
Doesn’t sound like something I’d want unless there’s somehow an actual significant Value Add proposition that I’m just not seeing.
Yeah, pretty much all new cars have some amount of cellular connectivity. Usually you can’t actually use it without paying some subscription, but the manufacturers use it to push updates.
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I mean, I don’t like my car updating but I’d rather things get fixed than not. Software recalls are a huge headache in the auto industry, and being able to just download an update that fixes something is way easier than going to a dealership and having them use very specific tools and software to update the car/modules.
It’s also used for anti-theft features for a lot of newer cars, if your car is stolen it can be remotely disabled entirely. That’s really what’s more scary in my opinion.
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Which is interesting to say the least given that most cars from the past few years use LTE radios which will eventually work about as well as cars from the early 2000s with OnStar.
See what happened to all the Hyundais and Kias with 3g.
It is a Subaru. I know it has a radio in it but I don’t pay for the service. I actually don’t know if it’s using its own radio or the connection on my phone. I’ve had the car for most of the year and this is the first update I’ve seen. It took about 10-12 minutes. As I have no patience, sitting in my driveway waiting for it to finish drove me nuts, but for the most part it was painless. It’s definitely something I don’t want to have to get used to.
Do you need to buy a service for the radio?
Sorry. I mean cellular radio.
Oh, now makes sense
We’ve had the ascent since 2019 and I have never seen it update. I figured it was doing it in the background swapping boot banks or something.
Why a car have to be connected to internet?
Sometimes you can just tell something sucks without even using it… All you need to know comes from looking at the fonts and button designs. What car is this?
