Of all the horrible things go on with privacy these days, this is the one I hate the most. I’m a “car guy”, but not the sort that obsesses over old cars (although I do love 60s and 80s cars). I like new tech, I like the advances in engineering we’ve made in new vehicles, I like EVs even.
Nonetheless I’ve been in the market for a new car for months and haven’t bought because it’s hard to find any cars that meet my requirements (after all most companies primarily make trucks and shitty crossovers, not even cars). The two things that consistently hold me back are either things like this (crazy telemetry / touchscreens everywhere / half-ass safety tech) or insane dealer markups. I’ve pretty much figured out the new Toyota GR Corolla is the perfect car for my needs, but you can’t find them anywhere without a $25K+ dealer markup and many dealers won’t sell them to out of state residents.
It’s truly a crazy time in the new car markets and the used market isn’t really any better.
I hate them so much. Otherwise great cars are completely ruined by touchscreens. What was wrong with tactile knobs you could operate one handed without looking? You’re driving for fuck’s sake.
It’s why things like the GR Corolla are nearly miraculous in 2023, it even comes stick shift only.
As an European, where we drive mostly stick, it's funny to observe the newfound US love for stick shifts. It's funny because it happened almost exactly when automatics became good!
Good dual clutch gearboxes are amazing, but even "classic" ones like BMW's ZF6 or ZF8 are really close. ZF8 is so good BMW uses it in the M3, instead of a dual clutch.
With these options, I'd never go back to stick shift. This after having half a million km driven on manual transmissions.
> it's funny to observe the newfound US love for stick shifts
Nobody in the US loves or drives stick shifts. There's been a steady drop in manual transmissions here from about 12% of the market in 2000 to 2% of the market today. The noise around them is just a very small vocal minority of enthusiasts who pine for the "old days". I'm definitely one of those enthusiasts, but I have to face reality that they're effectively gone. I haven't had a stick for a daily driver since about 2010. I do still have older manual sports cars that I can drive and enjoy when I wish.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't knock those who love driving manual. Part of why I like riding my motorcycle is that it's a manual.
But in LA traffic, I'd rather drive an automatic so I can put my brain into "autopilot" while playing an audiobook rather than have to constantly be shifting by hand. It irks me how so many manual-lovers have this superiority complex over people who just want a car that will get them from A to B. Have fun with your manuals, but don't speak as if I'm an imbecile because I don't think driving manual is fun in heavy traffic.
I’ve driven manual my whole car life and in heavy US traffic. When you get accustomed, your brain goes into “auto-pilot” and does the shifting too anyway.
I had been riding in SoCal for a few years and I'd say doing the autopilot thing when split laning is not very safe. Too many folks trying to suddenly merge into HOV lane solid lines be damned
This is the exact reason I bought an automatic. I had a 1994 BMW 318is that I loved, but I spent probably a couple thousand hours on the 91 freeway in southern California pushing the clutch in and out. The BMW "sporty" clutch was a leg workout and a half. The return spring was super stiff. Sometimes I would play a game to see if I could stay in first and just let my lead distance increase enough to not have to stop at all, but it pissed people off so bad.
This is actually how you're supposed to drive in traffic.
Give more space to the car in front of you and try to stay at a constant speed. You will see truckers do this a lot.
It also is much better for your car and mental health. You don't need to accelerate to a complete stop over and over.
I do this every time I'm in very bad traffic (Think inching along and coming to a complete stop multiple times).
However about 10% of the time I get some idiot behind me that thinks that I'm going to slow so they speed around me just to come to a complete stop 2 seconds later.
I tried it once or twice. It was great for the first minute or so, until the lady in the car behind me started honking, screaming, revving her engine, and pretending like she was going to ram my bumper. People HATE when I try to reach average traffic speeds instead of just cramming my car as close to the one in front of me as I dare.
this was always a key point from people who drove automatics but claimed to like manuals. i daily drove a manual in some of the worst traffic the US has to offer. but so what, guess what else sucks in traffic? Automatics!! when you're stuck in traffic, everything sucks, so you might as well drive something thats enjoyable the rest of the time.
I've never really seen the issue with "manual in traffic" -- there's almost always a gear or two that allow you to go a the speed of traffic without tons of shifting. Stop and go? 2nd probably goes from "creep" to "moderate speed"
Anyhow, electric cars are better all around -- at least those with "one pedal driving" where the speed pedal goes all the way to zero or nearly zero.
My dislike of automatics is the indeterminate lag between request for a particular speed and when the car decides to shift to the appropriate gear to get to that speed as quickly as I've indicated I want to get there. Plus with ICE cars there's all sorts of other tedious inertia to contend with around engine RPM and turbo spool state and such. At least a manual provides better determinism around throttle behavior.
Ahh sweet summer child. Traffic that has a speed isn't really traffic in my book. It isn't really traffic until you spend more time stopped than moving.
Joking aside, the worst traffic is when you stop every 4 seconds and then creep forward ten feet before stopping again. If I wasn't planning to go car-less I think I would buy an electric car for that nonsense.
Oh, I live in metro boston and before that lived in the slurm of southern california, and have not at any time owned a car with an automatic transmission... The workload from gear shifting is more than zero, but not (for me) oppressively so.
Even "stop and go" traffic eventually has some average speed and sometimes it is low enough that you've got to clutch in to come to a full stop and clutch out to go faster; modern engine management's pretty good at keeping the motor from stalling. Probably I annoy people by letting the lead in front of me get to be a couple car lengths before I decide to go, but that's on them... we'll all get there eventually.
Electric cars are the best in that you're basically always in first gear, the redline is basically infinite, and the car doesn't stall when the engine's not moving, so you don't need a clutch.
I completely agree with you regarding the power lag on automatics. Currently I'm driving a Jeep Renegade with a 9 speed automatic transmission, and I live in a really hilly area. The transmission needs to downshift CONSTANTLY because it's tuned to try to cruise the highway at 1500 RPM to maximize fuel efficiency.
If I'm running the air conditioner, it steals enough power that it has to downshift an extra time. It's bad enough that the constant shifting makes my son carsick. Luckily, it has a manual mode I can use to just drop it into 5th gear and it has the torque to smoothly climb the hills on cruise control that way, eliminating my son's carsickness.
"Semi-automatic" cars (aka an automatic transmission with a manual gear override available) are a nice compromise for those of us who want the simple convenience most of the time, with the ability to take control when we want to. Plus once the order comes in, those servo motors can shift the gear way faster than I can depress a clutch.
I'm only 30, but at this point a 15 year old car still feels kinda "new" to me. Up until a few months ago, I drove a 2008 Lexus, felt perfectly modern.
But in regards to driving a manual in traffic, does a diesel not make it easier? An engine suited to lower RPMs, but with more torque, seems perfectly suited to clutching in/out to shuffle along.
When I still drove I hated the way I had to keep my foot on the clutch in traffic jams. Or constantly switch to neutral. The clutch on my car was heavy. That's why I got an automatic.
But now I live in a city where I can take the metro to work and I don't own a car anymore. I hope I'll never need to drive again, I hate driving so much.
Enjoy it while it lasts. As of a couple years ago, more than half of all new cars sold in Europe are automatics. That doesn't seem too surprising, I imagine the same logic that made manuals appealing in the past is why automatics are appealing today.
Automatics are more fuel efficient, and govenment keeps raising the efficiency requirements. Automatics do this by having a lot of gears and changing up very aggressively. It would suck to drive a 7 or 9 speed manual (maybe truck drivers feel differently; I think 5 is optimal for a car) but automatics can manage it and squeeeze out another tenth of an MPG.
I love manual transmissions and will never buy an automatic unless forced to. I'd rather buy a used car with a manual than anything new.
I assume the efficiency requirements are why my car doesn't provide a way to permanently turn off the auto idle start/stop. The button's to temporarily disable it is convenient enough to make it something of a reflex. But it's a feature I really don't like when I'm making an unprotected left hand turn for example.
My wife's car has that; I find that if I stop and keep my foot very lightly on the brake, just enough to stop the car rolling, it doesn't shut the engine off. If I step more firmly on the brake while I'm stopped, it shuts the engine off.
Also some of the diagnostic scanners will have a way to disable the auto stop/start, or so I've heard. I have a scanner but haven't tried it on her car.
Noooo. Manuals are on average much more efficient. I drive a 1st generation Honda Insight, and the manual version gets ~10 mpg more than the automatic.
Modern pickups have 8-10 speed transmissions. They do a better job of keeping you in the power band.
In addtion, no heavy duty pickup comes with a manual anymore, but the ones that did years ago, de-tuned the engines in the manuals, so people didn't burn up the clutch. Modern Diesel Heavy Duty pickups only put their full 1000 ft/lbs to the wheels in 3rd gear or higher, something they can't enforce in a manual. Also, in most manuals (granted, its been a few years since I drove one) with turbos, pushing the clutch stats unspooling the turbo, where in most automatics, it does not. (since its knows your shifting, and not just coasting)
Yes, these are all related to driver skill, and a skilled driver will not cause problems. But I wouldn't want to warranty the systems on an 'average' driver..
> Modern pickups have 8-10 speed transmissions. They do a better job of keeping you in the power band.
This is so true. As someone who owns a fairly modern truck (2019 F250) that missed the good transmission by a single year. My truck would dearly love to have at least one more gear between 2nd and 3rd when I'm going up the mountain. I end up having to choose between trying to keep my inertia high (tough with corners) or give up and let it drop down to 35-40 so that 2nd gear isn't trying to tear the engine off the mounts.
I may end up putting in shorter differential gears to work around that. Don't really want to fork out for a new truck.
Automatics have been more efficient (given their additional mass) than manuals, for all but the most skilled drivers (top 1% of manual drivers) for several decades already.
I'm on the side fostering that change. Ever since I got a Mini Countryman with a ZF6. I was forced into an automatic because the car was a hybrid, and now I wouldn't go back to manual.
The car was a little janky from a dead stop, when running solely on gas. I probably would miss the precision for maneuvering you get with a clutch. I didn't, actually, because of the electric motor doing these operations perfectly.
I assume a lot of it is a retro thing like film and vinyl.
I donated my 20 year old Honda Del Sol two-seater stick shortly before the pandemic. It had a lot of miles on it and, with no commute, I just wasn't getting the use out of it to make it worth keeping. It was fun but there's no way I'd buy a stick today even if I were to have a "fun" car.
A few years ago I got a 53 Chevrolet pickup with a 3 speed (and a nice BW overdrive attachment). Learned how to drive a manual in that truck and will never buy an automatic again as long as I can choose. Actually operating the vehicle is extremely satisfying and fun. I’m swapping out the C-4 in my 65 mustang for a T-5 as soon as I can spare the cash/time. For me it’s definitely not a matter of practicality but a “vinyl” type of thing. My DD has a CVT but at least emulates shifting with paddles
The difference between being forced to use one vs choosing to use one.
I’ve driven some real nice autos, but when it comes to a car I enjoy driving, give me a nice sloppy GM T-56 or the crisp shifts of a BMW ZF stick. They’re just more fun. It’s the reason why I don’t have a C8 corvette.
But when it comes to day to day puttering around, auto all the way, and give me as many convenience features as you have. Radar cruise control? Yes please. Nothing worse than riding your clutch for an hour straight every day.
That is something that exists entirely in the minds of auto journalists. The number of manually-shifted cars has been in steady decline for decades. These last several years, it went from something like 3.7 % of new cars to 2.4% to 0.7% to 1.9%. You can see how a deceptive headline could be manufactured around the last two years of data.
drivers that enjoy manuals have always been around. We’re just louder now because they almost don't make cars with manuals anymore, so when one does come along we rejoice.
Genuine question: What exactly do you enjoy? Twenty years go, you could do a mountain road engine braking with downshifts, getting then the perfect gear for the turn apex and coming out perfectly balanced. But cars have changed. Engine braking is a lot less effective today (different compression ratios, better mechanics). Automatics now have more gears and allow you to manually select the gear, so you can control available torque in the turn.
It seems the advantages of manual transmissions no longer exist.
I dislike indeterminate lag between input and action.
With an automatic, there's a threshold where the car decides to downshift when asking for a particular increase in forward velocity; that set point will wander depending on current RPM state and velocity and drive gear ratio.
Modern cars are bad enough with turbos and fancy valve timing and throttle by wire stuff where the behavior of the thing is a big stack of jitter, but adding a transmission to the mix makes the response times even more random.
At least with a manual transmission, the behavior of the throttle pedal is far more predictable and direct -- down the engine will go faster (modulo the current drive gear) and up the engine will slow down and slow the car down. Often you're in the incorrect gear for a particular desired acceleration but there's a feedback loop that you participate in to recognize / avoid the issue (mash pedal, not much happens because you're in the wrong gear, you get feedback and decide to change gears). With an automatic, you're just yelling down to the engine room asking the hamster to get on a different wheel.
Predictable, usually. Lag free? Not in my experience. Most of the time there’s a good quarter to half second between requesting the shift and the transmission acting.
For me at least, that lag is very effective at disconnecting me from the experience of driving.
Oh, I don't dispute that maybe very modern cars have addressed this. I don't swap cars too often and have been pretty happy with my "one transmission, a planetary reduction gearbox" car (maybe there are 2 transmissions, one on the front motor and another on the rear motor? Regardless, there's a static gear ratio that's always engaged).
The lag is only part of the issue -- it's the determinism of the lag -- the 125ms lag between "more power please" and getting more power is actually more lag than the instant ka-chugachug of asking for more power and getting feedback of "you're in the wrong gear, bubba" if you're in a manual transmission car.
As far as "I won't change gears for you unless you ask" transmissions -- I've never driven such a car, I'm sure they're quite nice. I somewhat dislike the gear changers with no affordance to indicate what gear you're in (this applies to wingding manumatic cars, motorcycles, and modern bicycles with thumb / finger triggers) -- I don't use them often enough to have the muscle memory of "up for lower gear ratio" or whatever, I have to think about it and look at an indicator and fiddle with it to get the right ratio for what I want.
I'm sure with practice it would eventually be fine; but in actuality I've found that the electric car is actually exactly what I want.
DSG are wonderful but an added complexity for the sake of what? Shaving 0.5sec 0-60mph? Saving the hassle of slow traffic driving? Both can be fixed by learning to drive.
It's probably true that once you (more or less) need a screen for a decent backup camera and most people like a screen for at least GPS, it must be pretty tempting to at least think about what physical buttons can reasonably be eliminated given that the touchscreen is a given. And I do think a lot of designs go too far.
personal anecdotes, but the vast majority of me being a passenger to someone else's driving, they all used their mobile device for GPS. even the couple of cars i owned that had a nav system, the GPS came from the mobile device. it required their app to be installed to input the destination, making the internal unit just a second screen for your mobile.
From my experience with two cars with factory nav, it's nice because it will show the next instructions in the the dash area, so when you're looking down to check speed you also get that. And, one of my cars has an option to show the next several instructions (Ford Sync2, which everybody hates because the UI is really slow, and kind of ugly). On the other hand, pay to play for data updates sucks. And most importantly, safety requirements mean you either have to yell at the car and deal with dated voice recognition or stop to adjust things; even if you have a responsible passenger who could use the touch screen.
Mostly, I just use my phone. It's simpler and faster. My cars are too old for carplay/android auto, and my experience with android auto was that it was worse than the phone in a clip or a cupholder, but carplay seems nice. For longer drives to unfamiliar places, I'll put the address in the car too, sometimes the phone gets tired of listening to GPS.
I was recently driving to visit a friend near Mt Baker, WA. and about 10 miles out, in a not particularly wooded area, the phone said 'lost GPS signal' and just assumed I had stopped moving, and wasn't able to pick up GPS again for the rest of the drive. Not a huge deal, because I was just following the road and only had one last turn to make, and I had directions from the car's nav anyway.
GPS seemed to work ok on the return trip. And I was getting an LTE signal for most of the drive too (gets pretty spotty at my friend's house, but I was streaming music when the GPS stopped, and that kept working)
Sorry, I don't have a debugging tale here; almost all of my excursions into figuring out why an Android device is doing something wrong leave me wondering if the device is doing anything right, and usually without any more insight into the original problem. Not going to try to do it, unless it's important, and probably not on a vacation.
so you're one of those that likes to make cute and endearing backstories to give sympathy to an inanimate object rather than getting irate at a mechanical something that you pay a monthly service not working correctly because the thing to get mad at is out of your realm of control and that anger serve no purpose.
I use CarPlay if I'm actually navigating, not the built-in Garmin. But it's an improvement over looking at the phone awkwardly clamped to an air vent.
I suspect most people don't use most of the native manufacturer apps even if they sort of need to provide them. Aside from rarely changing some settings, my touchscreen is mostly just a screen.
That's because in car GPS tech has historically been absolutely atrocious. An example: 2008-2012ish Toyota Camrys had a GPS system that used a DVD for map data. Not only was it out of date immediately (and cost $150 per new DVD from the dealer), it was insanely slow.
Nowadays, there's a few companies that actually seem to do a decent job of GPS in the car itself: Mercedes has a good tech in their new EVs that seems smooth. Android automotive (not auto) cars have built in Google maps such as Polestar, the new Cadillac EVs, and some other Chevy products do well. Although it's not much different than just having an android phone with android auto. And, of course, Teslas own system which is all inhouse.
There's little reason to use a phone in the traditional phone holders if you own one of those cars.
My dad, who's a fairly recently retired techy, is the only exception I know. I'm assuming it's based on perceived safety and less need to take his eyes off the road.
Granted, he took a long time getting a smart phone because they weren't allowed in his secured office, while dumb phones with no camera where allowed longer. On the other hand, he's also automated his home (a few times with updates), so it's really the one weird outlier.
The backup camera screen compliance was solved early on by just putting a 2-3 inch screen in the regular rear view mirror. There's no legal requirement to make it a big screen in the dash, that is 100% a design choice by the manufacturers unrelated to the backup camera.
I learned that very thing setting up my home automation. I was originally planning on designing and printing some sort of button arrangement. But I ended up buying a bunch of cheap Walmart tablets.
Easy to set up and keep updated. But... I'm not driving 70mph when I'm trying to dim the living room lights.
Volvo, the vehicle company that started out making bearings, used to make a big selling point in the 80's about their knobs, switches and buttons were good enough for people wearing gloves in the middle of the Scandinavian winters and intuitively placed for drivers to use without taking their eyes off the road. Saab were the same, but fast forward to today and the lunatics are calling the shots.
Even the flappy paddle gearboxes still have a weakness, namely they dont have a clutch peddle to dip when the traction control/esp decides to have a nightmare and ends up trying to cause accidents, where oil, ice or snow removes the grip and temporarily freewheeling is the fastest way to get the vehicle back under control before reengaging the drive system.
And these tablets like displays ruin the night vision, I actually liked the old Saab displays where you could press a button and it switched the lights off to loads of buttons and gauges for night driving.
Cars have got noticeably worse with these tablet displays.
I took advantage of the used car market to upgrade my 2021 Subaru to a 2024 (same car, better trim), there's actually MORE physical controls in the 2024 - hope isn't entirely lost!
In my experience in the USA, most fast food restaurants in the suburbs give away sauces for free, but the ones in cities charge for everything. Seems to also be correlated with whether or not the fast food restaurant has self serve soda fountains versus soda poured behind the counter.
In Poland I've experienced both ones that charge you per packet, and ones where asking for a packet will have the cashier grab a bunch of them without even counting, give them to you for free, and move on to handle another customer.
That applies only to ketchup packs, though - they always charge for sauces. The only place I ever got sauce containers by handful for free was in a KFC in Shenzhen, China.
Dealership margins, as I recall, are 10-20%, also not great.
Mfg margins have come up during the pandemic, interestingly, but historically have been very low[1]:
> While estimated aggregate industry operating profit margins are 6 to 7 percent (Exhibit 1), large variations in profitability exists across companies. For instance, some European niche, luxury companies make double-digit margins more akin to those of high-tech players, while mass-market (or value-focused) OEMs make 4 to 5 percent.
Their margins being thin is a matter of perspective. Most farms are running 1% profit margins on average and have massive variations in yield that auto production lacks.
Automotive grade controls are pretty expensive (it's not unreasonable to expect them to be operative from -40 to 140f, UV resistant, dust and vibration resistant, etc.), and as with all hardware, BOM cost is king. Even if the button can be stolen from an existing design, it still costs real money, and adds manufacturing labor costs.
The button then has to be tested, and kept in stock for service purposes. What if the button has silkscreen printing on it? It might be the same hardware button for the traction control and the trunk open button, but now they are different SKUs because the label is different.
So let's say I can eliminate 10 $1 buttons (that is an extraordinarily cheap button) by moving functionality to a touchscreen that is going to be in the car no matter what. I reduce the BOM cost by $10 per unit. That's a bunch of buttons that also aren't going to have warranty issues either. The wiring can all go straight to the head unit in a single bundle as well, and there are ten less connections for the assembly line to make. If I do that on a popular platform like the Corolla selling 750k units per year, I have just reduced expenses directly by 7.5 million, plus the cost of install, and simplified the supply chain.
I don't have the source but I read that in the process of designing a car there are different teams that design outer look, inner look, the actual functionality and at the time of designing interiors it isn't known where or how many buttons you need.
By having a huge touch-screen instead of knobs there is much less need to synchronize between the teams because the inheritor design team just needs to place the screen somewhere. And it's easy to imagine that it can significantly shorten the time to delivery and the costs.
Buttons are not just design, it’s more parts and assembly. On the high end it’s also a “less clean” look, unless you’re high enough for truly luxurious buttons and knobs’ designs and materials to be justifiable.
In every single car I've been in, the touchscreens are optional and you have some sort of knob you can use. This requires memorizing where things are in the software, however.
Touch-screens can be updated later, meaning you can release the broken version first, then get it working after the money starts rolling in. Knobs would require they get it right the first time. The horror!
I will never buy a car that forces me to navigate a menu to turn on my windshield wipers...
Problem is, they don’t actually upgrade the touchscreens. At least not after the first couple years. And most consumers don’t/won’t know how to upgrade them.
I think a lot of people miss the obvious reason: it's cheaper. People seem to think it's some misguided attempt to make things better but really it's just that they've identified a way to cut costs.
The brands don’t often listen to their customers, all of whom clamored for this car ever since it was shown. It only appeared in the “Entourage” movie and it’s a beaut. Nary a single bad review on the entire Internet, but tons of people begging Chrysler to release it and sites devoted to pretending it came out.
Car guys — what is the closest car one can get to this today, in all of human history? Go to Cuba and get some gas-guzzling illegal convertible with tailfins?
And please — no recordings of our conversations and sex in the car so they can send it off to others!
>Car guys — what is the closest car one can get to this today, in all of human history? Go to Cuba and get some gas-guzzling illegal convertible with tailfins?
Maybe not Cuba, but there's a new car restoration series on whichever streaming platform, I can't keep up, that's located in El Paso, TX. They go across the border and buy older cars, then import into the US.
Fwiw, teslas support pretty much everything via voice. You just press the right button on the wheel and say what you want it to do. I’m not disagreeing with your dislike for touch screens, but Tesla can do literally almost everything hands free using voice if that’s an option.
I'm mostly fine with the Tesla approach. The few tactile controls are basically enough for me, especially with the last few updates effectively adding more.
However, the voice controls have been basically useless for me. I wouldn't want to depend on them.
We just bought a 2023 Mazda CX-5 Select for $29k. No touchscreens in the whole car! And no dealer markup - we paid slightly under MSRP.
But... it is certainly satellite connected (you can manage locks, windows, etc. from your phone, as well as remote start). Wish it was included in this privacy investigation. I'd love to know more about what they do with what they know about our car and how we use it.
There’s a few threads linked in the top discussion (you may need to expand the massively downvoted responses, and some are deleted), but Mazda is known to use tracking data to deny warranty claims and share that data with insurers.
I was also stunned to learn salespeople’s commission is denied if they don’t get you on the app! Absolutely wild.
Meh - with a Miata you just zip out of their way.
Miata owner since 1998 and I even survived commuting for 22 years in Northern VA. Life is too short - get and enjoy a Miata!
I was also a Miata owner: An NB Madzaspeed. A lot of fun to drive, and it's nimbleness saved me from a couple of crazy accidents. Unfortunately the car has one major weakness: It doesn't matter if the car is very agile if you are surrounded by vehicles with far worse characteristics. The car was rammed 3 times in 12 years, either on the side or the back, by people in brodozers that either couldn't see it on the side, or had crappy braking performance. The person in front of me does an emergency-level stop, and with the Miata I stop too, 3 feet before I hit them. 3 seconds later The brodozer behind me, however, has failed to brake, and launches the Miata forward. I walk out fine, the car in front of me gets very minor damage, as I was stopped and with my foot on the brake pedal, but the Miata's frame is bent, and the repair estimate is over 5k.
Exactly this. And worse - I'm worried the lifted brodozer would come up onto the Miata and crush me. It's too bad, they are wonderful cars. At least we can still track 'em.
It's the times where I can't zip out of the way that I'm worried about. The these mall-crawler truck-bros really are obnoxious and intentionally aggressive towards small cars. I'll stick to my track only race car with full cage and fire suppression system.
I had a close in-law that had a total braking failure with their ~2017 Mazda Cx-9, which was one thing, but then the dealer was pretty horrible about acknowledging or even diagnosing it. In the end, they sold it off early instead of continuing to own it with the unknowns on the brakes. So it's an anecdote, but one that makes me look pretty seriously against Mazda - though maybe it was more the dealer than the company.
It's hard to say. Of course the OEM should care what their dealers do and how they treat customers, but ultimately the dealers decide how they are going to handle things.
I haven't had any failures on any of our Mazdas so far (2013 CX-5, though only had it for 2 years. I change cars like clothes, 2014 CX-5 - spouse had for ~70k / 6 years, 2015 Mazda 3 - had for 27k / 6 years). Only issue I had was a battery that died during the pandemic, and it didn't really die - I was able to nurse it back to health and then it kept working through when I sold the car 3 years later. All that to say, I haven't been able to test our dealership with a major failure. But the buying experience did exceed what we experienced at the other dealerships we visited (Hyundai, Chevrolet - lots of unwanted sales contact and in person pressure.)
Honestly it could have been something as simple as a a missed bleed of an air bubble in the brake lines. But this was on a less than 3 yr old car, and its been a while since we last discussed it, & I don't recall if they had any sort of brake service where that would be a possibility - either way after a scare like that, one expects your car maintainer (in this case the dealer) to be open to a bit of diagnostic work - even if only to maintain good relations for future purchases.
Just unplug the cellular modem.
I have three "dumb" cars and I'm going to continue to baby the crap out of them. I have zero interest in anything new. Maybe a Mazda if push came to shove.
There's a good chance the modem is on its own fuse. There's also a good chance the modem is 4g only, so whenever that gets shutdown, the car will be trackerless, as happened to cars with 2g or 3g modems. :D
Is this a US thing? I recently bought a reasonably high end Skoda (which I think would be made in the same factory as VW, SEAT etc). It has a big touch screen in the centre console, but that's really only used for the radio / media / phone calls etc. This is all non essential stuff and so I can deal with it being on a screen. Everything relating to driving is an old skool analogue control.
A couple of things I don't like is the pull switch for parking brake, it's the first car I've had without an old skool handbreak, it feels unnecessary, but ergonomically it's fine. Also it's a key less ignition with a button to start. Again I don't see why this benefits me, but I can deal with it. I do worry about having a smart key though as I'm often on the water kayaking/surfing but it's been ok in a waterproof case so far.
No, it's the same. You can control hidden things from the touch screen (like light length when opening the door for example) but most cars still have tactile nobs for everything outside of radio/bluetooth/media.
There are some cars that have touchscreen for essential things like climate control, but those are absolutely in the minority.
Thing is, those cars with touch screen climate controls will let you set a temperature target much like your home thermostat. Once you figure out the right temperature, you don't really ever have to change it. I haven't changed the temperature in my car for months. I'll probably adjust it as summer turns to fall but it will be a one or two degree change one time and then I won't touch it again unless my kid drove the car and messed with it.
Putting things like windshield wipers or headlights on a touch screen would be a nightmare though.
My current car (like all of the cars I've had since 2008) allows you to set a temperature target with physical controls. I don't change it as often as I changed the older direct controls, but I do change it often enough that I would hate to use a touchscreen for it.
For me controlling the radio using a touch screen is an issue - i cant take my eyes off the road, and using driving wheel buttons that require fiddling is not great either. I need buttons and dials that leverage muscle memory.
Volume should absolutely be a knob or, less ideally, a pair of buttons. But does anyone have a physical radio dial any longer? (Even my 1998 Toyota with no touchscreen I sold last year didn't.) I think at least one manufacturer was considering eliminating FM radio all together.
Every car I've driven that was made in the past decade has volume control as two buttons on the steering wheel. There may or may not be a knob but the knob is less convenient than using the buttons right next to your hands. My current cars will also let you cycle through the radio presets using the >> and << buttons.
interesting. maybe i blocked the FM part out, but i was distinctly remember AM. removing radio entirely makes sense, as i didn't really think that an FM only radio would be any cheaper than AM/FM would be.
>but I'm sure very few people use it.
The conservative side of the spectrum loves the AM band
I guess Ford at least is going to keep AM radio after all https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177847361/ford-changes-direc... with the justification being it's an emergency alert system. I assume AM and FM antenna requirements are different and that's probably where the cost is.
I remember as a kid being fascinated with the first car that I saw that had the radio antenna embedded into the windscreen glass. All antennas I had seen were on top of houses, rabbit ears, or the long annoying things attached to cars/trucks. This tiny thin line that wasn't even exposed to air was the antenna? That opened up a rabbit hole.
I exclusively use streaming, and I still find that I want to control the volume, or skip to the next song, etc. Thankfully my car has a scroll wheel on the steering wheel to do that, or I'd be pretty irritated.
Handbrakes were mostly necessary for stickshifts starting on a hill but were kept around on a fair number of automatics even after they were unnecessary. (Though my emergency/parking brake has been a left foot pedal on my automatics for decades.)
It’s the same in the US, you just correctly identified that it’s not an issue for the vast majority of people outside of the data collection concerns (which most people also don’t care about)
I recently rented a cheap sedan and was shocked: there was a small screen for carplay that didn't interfere with the dashboard and all the other controls (volume, climate, etc) had hard buttons. After a couple of days of driving I could do everything without looking away from the road.
Meanwhile the expensive cars are frightening to drive as you need to look away from the road to do anything.
My understanding is that expensive cars have relatively good voice recognition that allows the driver to easily access functions that might be otherwise buried deep in a menu. This doesn't solve the discoverability issue, but it's good from an eyes-on-the-road perspective. I think it's also used as an excuse for why you need to pay a monthly fee for internet access.
I have cars with these services and in my experience they don't work. Even siri to carplay doesn't work very well. The cars are too noisy to even use the car's mic and speakers to make a call, much less talk to a robot.
My experience: Mercedes, Acura and various random rental cars. With a rental I always try to make a call to see if it's gotten any better.
I think they put in the touchscreens because it makes internationalization easier. No physical labels and OTA updates. Personally, I don’t think digital internationalization is good for the driver since it appeals to the lowest common denominator of interface while adding another expensive component to replace in case of damage.
I wouldn't even go that far: It's less wires to run.
Yea; my cars interface has had 3 radical redesigns since I got it (which I mostly appreciate), but think of how much easier to build a Model 3 is when it foregoes 95% of a cars normal physical buttons for a single screen.
It shouldn't be expensive to make an I2C smart-switch that allows you to place as many buttons as you want on a single set of 3 wires (or 4 if you want a simpler circuit).
Hum, it's terminated with resistors on both sides, so the boxes need power. That makes it 4 wires.
I imagine there's very little difference on cost between 3 or 4 wires. But the number of nodes described is not really compatible with making each button its own node.
I drive a Prius and while the actual implementation of the touchscreen leaves a lot to be desired (dodgy software and usual issues with obsolescence), I do like the way it splits between touchscreen and buttons.
Buttons: all car controls, audio volume and selection, temperature.
Touchscreen: GPS, setting radio presets, changing climate mode.
Now, it's not perfect -- there are some climate options I'd like on buttons. But in general that's pretty good.
The big flaw is the lack of upgradeability. It felt a decade old, stylistically, when it was new, and it will never get newer. You can't even pop in a new car stereo to replace the whole thing anymore - and it's a massive chunk of the dash. And has no support for Android Auto.
No, where I live it is illegal to use a phone for most of those (without hands-free methods). When occasionally I need a map with directions, I load it up and set the phone in place before leaving, so I never need to touch it. Sometimes I ask my phone ("Hey Google") to read my texts if I am on a long drive. But other than that, I never use it. This is the ideal (and again, the law in many places).
I take your point in that the built-in touchscreen is no worse for people who already text and drive, but we absolutely should be aiming for better. I certainly don't want to be forced to use a touchscreen for changing the AC settings, defogging the windshield, etc...
In the UK it’s illegal to touch your phone while driving (with some exceptions around hands free kits and payments). Even for things that are legal, the Highway Code is clear that you do not touch your radio while driving. I’d presume it would take a dim view of playing with other non-critical functions.
So no, just because it’s on your wheel, that doesn’t make it “safe.”
No. Using a phone while you're driving is peak stupid. I keep both hands on the wheel unless I'm operating the shifter or touching a knob, then both hands go back. This is how you are supposed to drive. If you need to take a call or change where you are navigating, you pull off in a gas station or parking lot for the couple of minutes needed before going back on the road.
The world will not end if you are not accessible via internet-based communications for an hour or less. You can wait to answer that text message.
> It reminds me of the complaining in the early iPhone days about lack of a physical keyboard.
I totally get that. People will always complain about some new design fad, whether it's actually good or not.
However... we're talking about heavy vehicles traveling at high speed with humans inside. You simply don't have to takes your eyes off the road as long with tactile controls as you do with touch screens.
My only experience with touchscreen cars is with the Model 3. You don't need the screen for operational stuff needed for driving. Off the top of my head, these are all on the steering wheel/stalks:
- Blinkers
- High beams
- Gearbox
- Climate control temperature up/down
- Cruise control enable/disable, speed change
- Media volume, media next/previous
- Phone call answer/hangup/volume
- Windshield wipers
On the next Model 3 version, they are moving the gearbox controls over to the screen. I have my doubts about that, but I'll complain once I have driven one.
That's great that Tesla puts those (physical) controls on the steering wheel.
But, think about this comment in context.
As a reminder: I was replying to someone who was arguing that the anti-touch-screen crowd is not justified in their hatred of touch screens in cars. My position is to agree with that crowd that touch screens in cars are bad UX.
With that in mind, your comment actually vindicates my position. Touch screens are dangerously stupid UX in a car. So much so that Tesla--which has an image of being futuristic, sleek, and minimal (aesthetically)--not only has the necessary-for-driving controls on the steering wheel, but also non-essentials like media controls. If touch screens weren't objectively worse than physical controls, is it too far of a stretch to think that Mr. Musk would've wanted them in the touch screen for even more sleekness and minimalism?
In any case, I think we're all agreeing in this thread that touch controls for these things would be unsafe and worse than physical controls.
The case now needs to be argued that touch screens are at least equally good as physical controls for those other operations in cars. But, I don't see how that line of argumentation can possibly go well after we've established that the important controls don't belong as touch buttons.
Physical knobs and buttons are great for muscle memory. How much of a muscle memory do you have for the controls setting mirror position? For setting fade/balance on the stereo? Enabling valet mode?
The UI question is only valid for controls used frequently. For everything else, I think it is already settled that they are better in the screen. At the very least, for the sake of UI simplicity. I can't imagine a physical interface for enabling or disabling every driving assistance option in a Tesla. It'd become an airliner button panel.
Fair point. We don't need dedicated, physical, buttons for infrequent or unimportant things.
But, to be fair, I don't think that most people who vocally hate touch screens in cars are upset that the car manufacturers are making them set their clock via touch buttons. I assume (and I could be wrong) that they're talking about things like A/C settings, radio tuning, etc. If they aren't, then at least I am. Being able to reach over with my muscle memory to change the radio to one of my presets (yeah, I'm some old-school weirdo who still listens to FM radio when I drive) is something I appreciate.
The primary issue with the touch screen in the Model 3 in my opinion, is actually the climate controls. You could argue that these aren't necessary to adjust while driving because the car is supposed to do it automatically, and/or you can use the admittedly terrible voice command system, but things like the recirculate button (I know I'm not the only one that uses it, my friend keeps tapping the physical button in his Honda and doesn't have to look at it to do this) are particularly annoying.The climate controls are in a drawer that is opened by a swipe up, and until the latest update, the recirculate button would highlight but not activate/toggle if pressed slightly off centre.
The other situations involving wipers are also annoying when the auto windshield wiper sensor becomes invisibly dirty. The wipers will activate nonstop during Autopilot or just on auto while driving in daylight sun, particularly at sunrise and sunset. It is an extreme frustration to have to look at the screen to click the slider to turn them off.
As of the current software version, the way the buttons on the stalk or the wheel work is they either activate something one off e.g. high beams for a moment, or wipe once, and/or they pop up a little menu on the bottom left corner of the screen where the media controls are, and you have to use the touchscreen to activate them. Recently a mechanism to press and hold the steering wheel scrollwheel to activate a menu was added, but it's just impossible to use without looking. I am not sure if I am special and/or are using it wrong or something, but the menu pops up in a location that is obscured normally by my arm/the wheel when holding the steering wheel at a normal and designed position with both hands. Annoyingly, this is also where the "Apply slight turning force to steering wheel" nag prompt appears, which is a terrible and unnoticeable place to put a safety related alert that is actually designed to have you keep your eyes on the road. This really should have the option to be an audible and friendly chime.
The lack of a turn signal sound when the computer crashes, is, by the way, another omission in my opinion, because the turn signal stalk is only a momentary button. The turn signals work but you'll have no clue while driving if they're actually on, without the screen and the sound.
I mean, maybe these are all normal and maybe I'm just really picky about things. I really do like the overall experience of using the large screen, as the GPS is much more glanceable with this setup and passengers can route plan or discuss the route. The apps are all terrible though, like Spotify/Apple Music, and they're unnecessarily slow and buggy with small touch targets as if they want to trick you into keeping your eyes off the road for more than a fraction of a second.
The UI design is kind of mixed, tbh. I'm sure some of these issues can be resolved by software, but at least there are the "S3XY Buttons", a third party accessories with a set of BLE buttons that you can stick anywhere you like that activate things using CAN bus injection.
Of course, that might (not sure, dont have this accessory) create synchronization bugs like (annoyingly, sometimes the car saying it is in reverse when it is in drive), but these happen anyway by itself.
> It is an extreme frustration to have to look at the screen to click the slider to turn them [wipers] off.
No need. Push the button on the left stalk, press the left scroll wheel to the left for a couple of seconds.
> Recently a mechanism to press and hold the steering wheel scrollwheel to activate a menu was added, but it's just impossible to use without looking
I have mine configured for climate control temperature. I don't look at the screen. Long press, two clicks up or two clicks down.
> The lack of a turn signal sound when the computer crashes
If you mean that the turn signal has no sound, you are mistaken. The turn signal has a sound. I have no idea, though, if it sounds when the computer crashes; mine never did.
Having driven a Tesla for three years now, I basically don’t use the screen while driving. The controls I actually use are on the steering wheel or column (cruise control settings, music control, turn signals) and I have never had a significant issue with leaving wipers, lights and climate on auto
I mostly agree, but it's that time of year again when I question my life choices. The rain has started, and suddenly I'm reminded how stupid the wipers can be. Elon keeps promising over and over that they're just about to fix them, but it never happens. It absolutely will be a factor in whether I buy another Tesla.
I was riding in a friend’s Tesla where the screen crashed while we were on the road. Just a black screen for some amount of time and had zero insight into the state of the car.
> That just does not happen with physical controls.
I was driving a car once where the handle to the stick shift literally popped off in my hand. So... no, that's just silly. Stuff breaks. Important stuff breaks. You deal with that with careful design and redundancy[1], not whining on the internet about touchscreens.
[1] Like how in the Tesla all the driving controls are, in fact, NOT connected to the touchscreen controlled by the MCU but to the AP computer.
Sure it does. Gauges are almost all driven electrically these days and not directly connected to a speed readout mechanically. If you have a problem with the gauge cluster, it's very common to have gauges malfunction. Sometimes they read incorrectly. Sometimes they read 0. If it's one of those multifunction displays, you could just have that display "crash" too.
Reminds me of when my then-new '98 (or was it '99?) Audi A4 cluster partially crapped out on the highway. The needles dropped to zero and several warning lights came on, but the car still drove normally.
I pulled over and called the dealer service department for advice, and we decided it was safe (for the car) to continue my journey. But with the partial instrumentation failure, the air-conditioning also refused to operate, so I had a sweaty summertime trip.
There is still going to be significantly better isolation than if it is all behind one pane of glass. If the radio is on the fritz, the hard-wired speedometer and windshield wipers should still be able to operate and accept commands.
A modern digital cluster is pretty much all operated off one little computer. Nobody's used hard wired speedometers in probably 20 years or more. And I can tell you that even back when we did have such things, it wasn't unheard of for the cluster to freak out. Had a ground wire crack on my '95 car and the gauges all started making very random readings. Some even looked plausible at first glance, which meant it took two trips to the dealer before they realized it was an electrical problem and not an actual malfunctioning cooling system.
In the case of the Tesla, BTW, the infotainment is 100% separate from the computer that controls the car. E.g. you loose the turn signal sounds, but the signals themselves work, etc. AP will continue to function, but you can't turn it on without the infotainment screen running. You can reboot the infotainment as you're driving down the street without it affecting your control of the car.
Physical controls are just inputs to some computer in the car. The risk of a reboot is still there and I'm guessing on many newer cars, the computer the physical controls is wired to is actually the same one that controls the touch screen. This would be needed so you can control the same item via voice/remote app, even if you never use this.
There's a gigantic difference. You stare at a handheld device when typing. When you're driving you need to feel what you're touching, otherwise you have to take your eyes off the road.
It really is imo. Good touchscreen UI is superior in many ways (though not all) to fixed control buttons. It’s why it dominates phones and why it’s winning in the market for cars as well (Model Y was top selling car on earth for Q1 2023).
Bad touchscreen UIs suck, but that’s also true of phones. Good tactile controls have some advantages, but ultimately they’re minor and worse on net than a good touchscreen interface.
People on HN will disagree (like people here disagree about everything), but the market will settle it.
A touchscreen UI is a visual medium. That is not what you want/need while operating a vehicle. You should be able to change the AC by feeling for the button and not taking your eyes off the road.
This isn't just HN being HN again. Driving enthusiasts are pushing back on touchscreens.
I'd bet most people look at the tactile buttons when adjusting them, to see the temperature, fanspeed, etc. and that the difference between this and swiping on the tesla display isn't an important difference.
I bet they don't. Muscle memory is a thing. Do you look down at your blinker lever to change it? How about your wipers? If you have controls on your steering wheel, do you look at those to press them?
I'd take that bet. The only controls I use muscle memory for are some of the steering wheel buttons (not all, e.g. I still have to look for the cruise control on/off for my F250) and the stalks. And even then, when I switch between cars I sometimes have to glance to remind myself which functionality the right stalk has. For climate controls and such, I pretty much always glance. The only knob I can reliably hit without a glance is the volume.
Maybe I've just been driving so long that the variety of cars has impeded my ability to develop muscle memory. But I doubt it.
The stuff on the steering wheel no, but the stuff on the dash (radio, aircon, fan, etc.) I did look at when I had tactile controls (this is primarily the stuff that's moved to the touchscreen, the wheel controls/levers let you do tactile actions without looking for more common stuff).
The iPhone works because it's a device you'll look at all the time while operating its touchscreen.
The car touchscreen doesn't work since you need to operate buttons without directly looking at them, purely by tactile feel.
This is not a problem touchscreens we're able to fix so far, and I don't think this will change any time soon since there's just not enough ways for a touchscreen to provide this level of tactile feedback.
The entire reason for touchscreens weren't because touch is better than tactile, it's because different apps will have different UI needs that cannot be predicted by the phones manufacturer. Steve Jobs says as much in the original keynote.
Cars don't really have this problem because they only have one primary job, and all other functions (eg climate control) are easily predicted by the manufacturer.
There's probably some truth in that. Admittedly, it's a self-selected group to some extent, but the couple people I know who own Teslas basically tell me the controls are fine.
The reality is also that, in my Honda, a bunch of the buttons that aren't on the steering wheel/column are things I touch once in a blue moon and there are probably buttons I haven't touched since I initially set up the car.
And I don't actually want to navigate using my phone which is precariously hanging off an air vent using some some accessory clamp. Or by all means go old school and navigate using a map open in your lap.
(That said, I do think a lot of car manufacturers should be more thoughtful about preserving certain tactile controls however.)
Even if the controls are "fine" that doesn't mean they're not worse than physical controls. Just because they haven't caused a problem yet doesn't mean they won't under less than ideal conditions.
I guess it depends? If it's something I fiddle with all the time while moving (volume, wipers, lights, etc.) then sure. (Though does anyone put those controls on the touchscreen?) Probably environmental. But lots of settings are basically set and forget. My car has physical buttons for various modes that I rarely touch and would likely never touch while driving at speed.
I don't know about their markups, but Mazda has been pulling out touchscreens and putting back buttons for audio and climate control purposes. Not sure how far it's made it through their models.
A 2022 Honda Passport has physical buttons for pretty much everything. The only thing I use the touchscreen for is as a display for maps from CarPlay (and the backup camera). So reliance on the touchscreen for things like environmental controls isn't universal even in new cars.
I love Honda interiors. The base models are almost always the best with big unique knobs and buttons. However, I'm really disappointed on their electrification. I would speculate that their misguided attempt to push Hydrogen is going to kill the Japanese companies if they don't invest in BEVs soon.
I would seriously consider a 300 mile range, electrified Honda Fit using Chevy's Ultium platform. But it seems car companies are too focused on SUVs and Crossovers to pad their nests. Make number go up strikes again!
I had a very efficient, fun, and great at squeezing into city parking spots stickshift Honda del Sol as a second car for about 20 years. Alas, as it got old and I stopped commuting, it was silly to pay for keeping a second car around for the <2,000 miles per year I was putting on it. But Fits are cute little cars. An EV version of something like that would make me as least think of using something like that for most of my local driving.
The bolt doesn't have the big knobs and buttons. Also it has those stupid displays that cost as much as the car is worth instead of a dashboard. Compare it to the controls for the Honda Fit here:
Sadly Mazda doesn’t make any AWD cars, only a crossover. AWD is a requirement for me. I loved a Mazda 2 I previously had and loved the Miata track car I sold when I moved last year. Mazda makes great cars but unfortunately none that meet my base requirements.
Edit: and seeing as you’re looking at a performance Corolla. You’d probably be interested in the Turbo AWD (250 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque). Car and Driver has an instrumented test. It’s not too far behind the GR and slightly cheaper
Instead they have somehow rationalized that a control wheel and featureless buttons down in the center console are safer for people to use while the vehicle is active.
Mazda still has a ton of physical buttons in addition to the screen though. The following are all _dedicated_ buttons / switches / knobs:
- Volume up/down (knob), press to mute
- Hazard lights (button)
- Windshield wipers (stalk) including front/rear, speed, intermittent, etc
- Headlights/highbeams (stalk)
- Turn signals
- AC on/off, fan speed, fresh air/recirc, seat warmers
- Temperature up/down is a dedicated, physical knob
- Driver/passenger windows
- Side mirror adjust
- Trunk open/close
- Cycle through backup camera views
- Parking sensor enable/disable
- Cruise control on/off/speed/distance
- Media controls (ff/rw/mute)
- There are even dedicated physical buttons for the touchscreen,eg. a button that always takes you to whatever map you're using (google/apple), a button that takes you to whatever is playing music (spotify/apple/podcast/etc)
Sorry if this sounds like I'm a mazda shill but every time this topic comes up on HN I am incredibly glad that I prioritized physical controls and IMHO they're really doing it correctly.
I really like most of the hardware buttons. But when I need to make adjustments to the map with CarPlay, the wheel control just takes too much attention with driving. "How many rotations, ohh to far too, okay zoom out, ohh okay reset the view". I wish in these cases it also allowed touch.
I've found that the wheel is much easier to use while driving than a touchscreen, since you don't have to look down or stretch your body away from the steering wheel.
And don't forget thwarting timing attacks from the bazillion cameras aimed at roadways.
Plus satellites.
If the car cannot defend against such basic attacks then you're best walking alone under cover of the trees, whispering your messages to distant dandelions.
I was planning to get a Nissan Leaf (worst privacy among all manufacturers in the round up) but luckily stumbled on a BMW i3 instead. They have the best telemetry story by far, and it has a well-implemented jog wheel instead of a touch screen. Also, it has a carbon-fiber frame. It looks like a tall econobox, but handles extremely well.
The i3 has been discontinued and the new models have a touch screen in addition to the jog wheel, so it's possible the jog wheel on those is poorly implemented, and not enough to actually use the car.
I haven't test driven one of the newer models, but I'd carefully check the computer UI before purchasing one.
Anyway, I'm hoping BMW succeeds with their contrarian approach of having physical controls, and not treating their customers terribly, and that the other manufacturers follow their lead.
Theres something to be said for old bangers. I had a 31 year old mx5 and now a 13 year old E class. They don't have the touch screen sillyness and tend to be much cheaper to run if you include depreciation. You have to get stuff fixed about once a year with those.
These markups are insane, and I wonder if anyone actually gets anywhere near paying them. I don’t really see the point since for those markups you can just get a nicer car. Unless car collectors really are that out of touch and flush with cash.
Unfortunately lots of people are happy to pay the markups. Some subreddits, including /r/rav4prime , will ban you for speaking negatively about dealer markups or those who pay them. Here's their hilariously condescendingly worded rule 4:
> No demonstrations of economic illiteracy. No negativity regarding markups. You are encouraged to post about current prices and markups and your dealership experiences, but please DO NOT express moral value judgments about markups or their absence (except those involving bait-and-switch).
I’m pretty sure most of the car subreddits are managed by dealership employees who benefit from markups via increased commissions. The fact that they make reference to complaining about price markups as economic illiteracy increases my confidence in this hypothesis.
I’m tempted to go make a post about rent seeking, deadweight loss and price collusion in oligopolistic conditions but somehow I feel my economic literacy will be found wanting.
> complaining about price markups as economic illiteracy
I mean, I hate dealer markups as much as the next person, but it is true. It's just supply and demand. Dealers wouldn't charge crazy markups if enough car buyers weren't out there paying them; and like another commenter said, in these supply-limited conditions, if price wasn't able to rise to a market-clearing level, you'd have shortages instead, and people would complain about that.
> rent seeking, deadweight loss and price collusion in oligopolistic conditions
Can the car market, both at the manufacturer level and the dealer level, really be described as an oligopolistic one, outside of isolated examples (e.g. you live in Elko, NV and there's only one Ford dealer within 100 miles)?
I don’t know if it’s a complaint, more being awe struck by others irrational behavior and how far they’ll go by overpaying. Censoring that observation is a little weird and does seem to favor the dealers grip on a subreddit.
I posted a very bad dealership experience I had to both /r/Kia and /r/askcarsales. The Kia thread had more than a hundred comments, 99% supporting me and my decision to shop elsewhere. The /r/askcarsales commenters immediately started making up scenarios in favor of the dealerships, assuming I was mean, condescending, arrogant; basically all of the characteristics the salesman actually demonstrated, they tried to pin on me.
The markups are a function of demand and are totally normal and expected market behavior. People who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't understand how markets work. It's tiring listening to uneducated people constantly coming through and complaining.
If dealers weren't marking up the price, there would be no car at all available for sale. People mistakenly think that if there was no markup, they could buy the car at MSRP. No. There would be no supply at all. They would be sold out and you'd be on a waiting list at best.
This is the same dynamic as GPUs of 2021 and perpetually with concert tickets (venues will always have fewer seats than the number of fans in the area).
> The markups are a function of demand and are totally normal and expected market behavior. People who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't understand how markets work. It's tiring listening to uneducated people constantly coming through and complaining.
1. I'm not uneducated or economically illiterate.
2. A 50% markup on an economy car, even in an upgraded trim, is absurd. This is not even remotely representative of "market conditions".
3. Inflation + supply chain issues provided a pathway for greedy businesses to justify price-gouging customers. There's a difference between supply/demand driving pricing and price-gouging, and it's pretty obvious the direction this went in the car market. There's a /huge/ difference (not just in dollars, but in percentage of MSRP) between a $5k or even $10k markup and a $25k markup on a car with a $50k MSRP. This is especially absurd when you consider MSRP went up across the board due to inflation at the same time. This is dealer's just trying to get an extra slice of pie.
Maybe don't boot-lick price-gougers and learn how supply/demand /actually/ works, and consider not calling people who understand economics "uneducated".
But the rub is that people are actually paying these marked up prices...
Complain all you want about how obscene, unethical, malevolent, greedy, gouged, or deranged these sellers are, but the fact of that matter is that they are making sales at those prices. The market is indeed supporting them.
I'm sorry, but if cannot grasp that something is worth what someone will pay, you do not in fact have a good economic grasp. If nothing else, at least be pissed at the buyers who are willing to pay those prices.
I have to agree, at least to a point. Nine times out of ten a person buying a car doesn't need it right away. Therefore if they don't like the mark-up they can just come back later when the market changes. If everybody did that then demand would go down and then so would the mark-up.
If you think my numbers are made up, take the effort to refute them.
Are you saying 9/10 people who buy a car are buying it because they got in an accident? There were 13.7 million new cars sold in 2022. I doubt you'll find 13.7 totaled cars in 2022.
And it still stands to reason that if somebody got in an accident, why would they turn around and buy a new car with a big mark up and massive waiting period when they can just walk onto a lot and get a good used car for much less?
> If you think my numbers are made up, take the effort to refute them.
So I'm required to make effort to refute numbers, but you're not required to make effort to substantiate them? Huh...
> Are you saying 9/10 people who buy a car are buying it because they got in an accident?
I never said any such thing. I just think the number is higher than 1/10.
> There were 13.7 million new cars sold in 2022. I doubt you'll find 13.7 totaled cars in 2022.
I wouldn't expect to. But I'd definitely expect the number to be over 1.37 million.
Hurricane Ian alone resulted in 400,000 vehicles damaged[1], and that was just one environmental event, before we look at collisions.
Washington State (with 2.3% of the US population) reported 104,000 collisions [2]. So we might extrapolate to somewhere in the order of 5 million collisions a year. Indeed, that number is probably closer to 6 million [3].
So we're already approaching 7 million vehicle 'incidents' a year including collisions and one 'act of god'. I think it's reasonable to set a number of 8 million when you factor in all the other tornados, hurricanes, hail storms and others.
It's hard to determine what fraction of those are total losses. However...
US insurers paid out $173B in losses. [4]
$173B across 8 million incidents is around $21,000. Now in a good number of those losses there are 2, or more vehicles involved, which increases the number some. But even if we assume that say 50% of collisions involved another vehicle, then we have an an average auto loss of $10K per vehicle per collision.
Most insurers work on a 70/75 rule for total loss, that is, if the cost to repair the vehicle exceeds 70 or 75% of its value, it is written off.
So if your collision results in "only" a $2-3K repair bill (which can be cheap these days), then you can see that there's a notable amount of payouts on total losses. (It's also hard to get a value of the average vehicle on the road in a given year - insurers are the only ones who'd likely be able to supply that information, and it would be buried somewhere in actuarial tables more than anything).
It's not 9/10. Nor did I ever say it was.
But if I had to make an estimate, I'd say it was closer to 2 or 3/10.
As dealer inventory starts to pile up, car prices are finally coming down. Anyone paying a markup in today's market just isn't doing their homework.
I've yet to pay MSRP or beyond for a car and I don't intend to start now!
Isn't it illegal in many/most states for a manufacturer to sell direct, not through a dealership? I read something like that when Tesla was starting to sell cars. It didn't sound like a "true" free market.
Very few things are in a "true" free market. But considering cars are (or should be, at any rate) substitutable goods, for most people, it should be pretty close to a free market.
I live in a small city (population under 200k), and there's five Ford dealerships, five Chevy, four Toyota, etc. So it's certainly not a free market by any definition if you want a very specific car, but if you want a certain category of car, the forces of competition will work for you.
I'm by no means an expert on cars, but my impression is that they're one of the worst cases of a class of product that should be substitutable, but isn't, because there probably is only one or two makes & models that are close to fulfilling one's list of requirements, and if those are not available, it becomes a painful exercise of letting go.
Unless we consider begrudgingly buying an option because you need something to be buying a substitutable good. Which I guess is fair in some sense, but makes it feel like buying things is a loser's game.
Dealers being able to insist on those huge markups ended a few months back. Overall, US auto dealerships now have more cars in stock than usual. Don't take those markups seriously.
I currently own a 2012 VW GTI that I bought new 11 years ago. It has 123k miles and lots of modifications. I recently compiled a short list of both EVs and ICE vehicles to compare against it; the Toyota GR Corolla was on my list:
I think the GR Corolla is great, but even after 11 years it's sadly not really a convincing upgrade for me. The GR Corolla is less powerful (in both torque and horsepower), it has one less cylinder and less displacement, it weighs more, it gets essentially the same mileage and has the same range, and it costs much more. The Corolla does have AWD though.
Again, the Golf R is also great, but it's also less powerful and weighs more. It gets slightly better mileage than my current car, but costs even more than the GR Corolla.
Finding something new that is "better" out of the box than my 11 year old GTI would cost me at least 56k (Toyota GR Supra RWD) or if I want AWD then it's more like 66k (Audi RS3 AWD). If I want something electric and "better" then it's at least 89k (Tesla Model S). These prices are really high to begin with; when you add in dealer markups they become insane propositions. For your money you'll also have to contend with with touch screens, capacitive buttons, and a bunch of other tech that you don't want or need. The market seems to be in a pretty sad state for car guys. Unless something changes I'll be rebuilding my engine with forged internals and continuing to drive my GTI.
FWIW, you’ve arrived at some of the same conclusions that I have. The only cars really in the running for me now are the GR Corolla, Golf R, RS3, and at least temporarily I’m probably going to start with a Mazda3 Turbo since it’s AWD now.
The touchscreen is great for some things of course, but most regular people that comment seem to agree that tactile controls for radio and HVAC are their preference. The only explanation for why manufacturers are dropping the tactile controls is for cost savings/higher profits. Because it sure doesn't seem like most people want those items on the screen.
Kia driver here. There is a screen in my car, but also actual knobs and steering wheel controls for everything I might need (audio controls, climate controls) and when I use the screen to project my phone, almost all functions there can be activated through voice control.
This is me. I bought two new cars every 2 years like clockwork. We replaced one car because we NEEDED a larger family car and have gone without the 2nd for over a year.
It feels impossibly hard to buy a great car today.
And how does that result in a more reasonable cost profile than paying an insane dealer markup that’s half the MSRP of the car? A Corolla shouldn’t cost $70k.
Yeah, that's interesting and it seems the report contradicts itself. They are indeed last on the list referenced, but when diving into their details for Tesla it says "So, how is Tesla at privacy? Well, they aren't the worst car company we reviewed"
As much as they charge for it, I would want to use it if I had a Tesla. But since I have severe trust issues with Tesla, I would never* buy an electric car from them anyway. * at least for the next 5 years, probably longer. I'm just glad I live far away from the places self-driving cars are common, for now.
A lot of people are making comments about defeating the telemetry, but it's not just about selling ads this time. This is about actual surveillance and (eventually) control, and the governments of the world will make this a requirement, and make circumvention of it as illegal as copyright infringement. In the US, the government will throw up it's hands and say it's not us; it's the "free" market, and this must be what people want, while all the automakers collude to do it, collect the data, and either let the NSA have it, or don't resist when they tap into it. And some people will think this is a good thing, because then we could throw literally everyone who was at J6 in prison, but then a conservative government gets thrust into power, and now they can go after everyone who was present at a BLM protest that turned violent (but I repeat myself). Whatever power "we" let "them" have will eventually be used against "us."
They already do the opposite. Usage-based insurance gives you per-day/per-trip insurance in exchange for tracking (Milewise) or to drive discounts off your existing rates. (RightTrack)
Why would they triple your rates? Insurance regulators do not let insurers increase premiums unless they have evidence showing the new data indicates a higher risk factor.
So if you are getting your rates tripled, then you were being subsidized by safer drivers before, which seems like something that should be fixed.
Dash cams have already probably given insurers a better idea on who is a riskier driver and who is not since collisions can now be more accurately attributed to the at fault party.
They'll probably increase my rates because if I refuse the telemetry, they have to assume I'm a terrible driver.
The fact that I am the most tight-assed speed-limit-obeyer I've ever known, with a dashcam, means nothing to them since it's my hardware and not theirs.
I had to go this route already. As a new driver, my rates were quite high - and the best option for lowering that was letting them track my driving through an app on my phone.
I don't particularly like it, but it's something I'll just have to live with.
I think the insurance company would get very suspicious if you never used your car. Also with no data, you'd get no benefit for showing you're a safe driver.
In theory, you could maybe reduce your rate by only taking this second phone with you only sometimes on a regular, but lesser schedule than you actually drive.
(So they see regular, consistent usage, but not nothing, and not as much as you actually drive)
And avoid taking that second phone when you're doing more risky driving, like night driving.
But that's honestly a major pain for likely very little monetary gain. And if you screw up, they could just straight up blacklist you, or skyrocket your rates. It's just not worth it.
They look at how you drive. How far you drive, how often you drive, when you drive, how quickly you brake/accelerate, how often you're on your phone, etc. Based on all those factors - they give you a discount relative to what they'd charge normally.
I can say that's true because their rate was already less than competitors, so it's not like they were charging a higher rate and then 'discounting' back to normal.
It... would have no driving data on it in that case.
The actual solution is to tape it to an Amazon truck. I hear they've got some pretty serious monitoring tech in there to keep their drivers on the up-and-up.
>It... would have no driving data on it in that case
Well, yes. But whether that matters depends on how the program works. Do they discount you as long as they have a location history that doesn't seem to show unsafe driving patterns or only if you have one that sends to show same driving? Do they attempt to tie it to your car at all (it'd suck if being a passenger in a poorly driven car could increase your own rates)? Do they jack up your rates and/or drop you if your tracking is suspicious?
>The actual solution is to tape it to an Amazon truck.
Or root it and simulate taping it to an especially well-behaved Amazon truck.
Don't repair shops like to record mileage? I'd imagine there'd be questions if something happened and that was wildly off from what your ~~ankle monitor~~ phone app says it should be.
I don't think they bother to do this comparison, because after all you can drive other people's cars too. That counts towards your driving record with the insurance company, but wouldn't reflect in your cars odometer.
I haven't dug too much into the methodology, but it seems like it's done based on privacy policies rather than actually looking into the car telemetry traffic. It's also written in a very caaual and sensationalist "omagad" tone that doesn't serve well the seriousness of the topic or findings
I own a VW ID.4. For reasons I wanted to reverse engineer some of the API. After authenticating to the account tied to my car, the landing page (https://www.vw.com/en/owners.html) makes calls to a lot of analytics trackers. I'll just list what pi-hole defaults block:
analytics.tiktok.com
sp.analytics.yahoo.com
googletagmanger.com
universal.iperceptions.com
cdn4.userzoom.com
snap.licdn.com
secure-ds.serving-sys.com
bat.bing.com
ct.pinterest.com
adherent.com
And a few others. I would guess the phone app (which has access to the car location) has a similar list of trackers. I hope to get some time to MITM the app to be able to know for sure.
Just to be clear, these are trackers from the web page, not trackers called by your car, correct?
I'm never surprised by the web trackers (which my ad blocker generally filters too), but 3rd-party trackers called from devices/vehicles seems more insidious.
Although the car / IoT companies can just as easily outsource the data once they have it anyway.
They however still have access to the JS context and thus the authenticated session when you are on the website. They can most likely exfiltrate all the data visible on the page and maybe even the auth token for further server-side misuse after you've closed the page.
If you're being extra paranoid, you'd need to spoof a cell tower. Spoofing a Wifi AP and monitoring traffic with Wireshark gets you network traffic, but you can't know if the vehicle sends certain information exclusively over the cell network, short of on-vehicle firmware and software analysis. Also, if you wanted to go with the Wifi approach, you need to force Wifi connectivity, which would probably mean going outside of cell tower coverage or unplugging the vehicle's cellular antenna, both of which may affect what the car transmits.
I read the original article and conspicuously absent is the actual mechanism of the data collection that is occurring here. Some of the claims seem barely believable.
Is data exfiltrated from the phone, via some kind of data access loophole in Android Auto / Car Play? Are the microphones in vehicles actively listening to conversations and shipping them off for analysis? Or is this all purely hypothetical (i.e., they say they have the right to use it, so clearly they must be trying to acquire it...)?
The only techniques I can imagine that might lead to collection of data such as sexual activity are truly egregious indeed, and although I have incredibly low trust in auto makers such techniques seem like a bridge too far, even for them.
> Are the microphones in vehicles actively listening to conversations and shipping them off for analysis? Or is this all purely hypothetical (i.e., they say they have the right to use it, so clearly they must be trying to acquire it...)?
All data that they can acquire will be acquired because data can be sold, leading to higher quarterly profits. There are almost no other considerations.
This is reductionist and absurd. You bought an iPhone or an Android phone with a microphone. Will you automatically assume that Apple and Google will turn on your microphone remotely, acquire data, and sell them?
I've got a 2018 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I've been searching for where the sim card is for the built in cellular modem so I can rip it out.
It astounds me that there aren't more people interested in cutting off the constant telemetry and to be honest it wouldn't surprise me if the car refuses to operate correctly when I do figure out where it's at and pull it.
> it wouldn't surprise me if the car refuses to operate correctly
I know of a car (Renault in EU) whose SIM access is broken somehow that still works fine, just can't call home. No guarantee that every car will handle it gracefully, but at least some regions don't seem to mandate any enforcement if that module happens to "break".
I wonder if one could build a metal cap, shape and color matched to the sharkfin, that goes over the antenna and couples to the roof of the car. Would that be enough to make a small Faraday cage over the antenna? Would leakage though the mounting hole still be enough to let a signal through?
I don't think you really need to get that sophisticated. If you unplug the antenna and send too much current down that antenna line, whatever's on the other side is not going to like it.
In 2018? I doubt car manufacturers can move that fast. Apple didn't implement eSIM until 2018 for the iPhone XS. No way an auto maker has it before consumer electronics maker.
The European Commission selected the eUICC format for its in-vehicle emergency call service, known as eCall, in 2012.[23] All new car models in the EU must have one by 2018 to instantly connect the car to emergency services in case of an accident.[24]
For a very long time now you have never needed a SIM to call emergency services. Maybe it's different in the EU but US car models that include telematics (ie Onstar) have been able to call emergency services without a subscription.
I feel like if this were happening 20 years ago, common wisdom would develop to buy from a list of model of cars where people had already blazed the path, directions of what the cell modem looks like and how to unplug it, prominent links to a community working on a libre replacement, and majority opinion of this is just what you should do to cope in the modern world. Now with the web community being so diffuse the majority opinion basically seems to be "whatevs". Perhaps if you dug into the right threads on the right manufacturer-specific forum you could find a thread or two with some investigation, but that's about it. It's also essentially impossible to navigate/compare the amenability of different makes to this.
FWIW I've got no actual experience, but given the general slowness with which the car industry moves I would guess the cell modem is just a module hanging off one of the CAN buses, receiving telemetry broadcast by other modules and injecting/interrogating commands when requested (like modern OBD2 ports). I suppose it could also be part of something like the gauge cluster that links different buses as well (at least on Hondas) but with the modular way cars seem to work I'd guess it's not likely.
I'd try to track down a copy of the factory service manual for your model. Those have seem to have gotten pretty thin these days too in favor of computer-based documentation, but it should at least help you work out how things are generally connected. (No point to the readily-available Haynes manual though. Those are apparently garbage)
That’s quite a big assumption to think that it would be clearly labeled, and also that it would have a dedicated fuse. It’s not like that would be such a huge power draw that it needs its own fuse. Pulling the fuse would likely cause the whole infotainment system to go down.
Reading back at my reply, I didn't mean it to sound so authoritative. Just an idea.
I helped a friend do this a couple years ago in a fairly modern car. It most certainly was not clearly labeled, but there were clues that led us to try it out. It indeed disabled more than just the cellular modem but the goal was to disable all "smart" features altogether, along with anything that collects telemetry or phones home. After monitoring how it affected the car, the mild trade-offs were deemed worth it.
My 2021 Wrangler has a very obvious antenna on top of the roll bar, very easy to unplug. (There's actually two - one for SIM stuff, and one for the XM Sat radio)
Google. I’ve searched and searched. I have a 2018 Truck from a different manufacturer and I completely went down the rabbit hole of attempting to remove it. It’s not possible. It’s an assumption that most manufacturers are following the same logic due to economy of scale.
overwhelm the brain with input. to hold onto threads like this one, you have to be fairly healthy or fairly mad.
not strapping on tin foil hat, this likely isn’t some massive coordinated effort. it could be done “better.”
this is just making the most of the situation. at scale.
if you simplify the question, “Who wants to let their car manufacturer surveil them?” - the answer is also simple. very few hands are going to be raised.
most people don’t get the tl;dr - they drown in the firehose.
what isn’t out there is a friendly, accessible version of what you’re looking for - multi-manufacturer information on snipping the sensors, why and how, and what you lose in the exchange. if it is out there, it isn’t friendly enough to be readily found.
people are tired, stretched thin, even in the most powerful nations. information access has become so ubiquitous that it has become more challenging to filter than to find.
for many people, there are far more pressing concerns to address than if nissan knows how the back seat was used last night. they would need the time and space to slow down and consider the information, and likely have means to do something, for it to elicit a response. some people would love to have the issue, that would imply having means to get a new car. no, they wouldn’t love the issue, but it is out of reach, so it isn’t deemed worth the effort spent.
right now it’s like saying your cell phone spies on you. most people won’t be getting rid of their phones. some might get foil bags.
faraday cage around your car, on the other hand, isn’t happening.
None of that matters when the info is either routinely sold to others with more time and motivation on their hands, or simply leaked to the public whether on purpose or not.
The manufacturer may have to legally include the functionality in cars they sell but in pretty sure the owner isn’t obligated to use or keep the functionality untouched.
By comparison if your seat belts are all frayed and you don’t wear them anyway that’s on you, manufacturer sold you a car with seat belts in good condition and that as far as the “compliance” requirement goes.
Might depend on the wording of the law and how that system is tied into the rest of the car. For example in the states, it is illegal to tamper with any part of the emissions control system on your car. This is mostly about making sure emissions testing via OBD II can’t be gamed, but it also would target modifications like “rolling coal” or turbos and superchargers that allow user controlled fuel mapping. But in the crossfire it catches completely reasonable reasons to modify your emissions system like a flex fuel upgrade, or replacing the computer of your old car with an aftermarket one because the engine immobilizer unit died and they’re paired together and OEM computers and immobilizer kits are either too expensive or not obtainable anymore.
Laws against tampering with vehicle safety devices would easily have a similar effect on your built in phone home systems.
it is illegal to tamper with any part of the emissions control system on your car.
Can you cite the law? I know the EPA has civilly pursues companies that make products that bypass emission controls. But haven’t seen or heard anything that goes as fat as you suggest.
Title 2 of the Clean Air Act "authorizes the EPA to set standards applicable to emissions... the CAA prohibits tampering with emissions controls, as well as manufacturing, selling, and installing aftermarket devices intended to defeat those controls."
They just got a $10M civil judgement against a couple "diesel tuners" here in Michigan:
The site you linked mentions the carve out that the EPA has, but note that it requires both retaining or beating original behavior and requires extensive prod of that fact. A similar law affecting phone home circuits would almost certainly not find disabling the ability to phone home as in compliance.
The part of your post that made me curious was whether fuel mapping, or ECU swapping was illegal. It looks like it is in a grey area under Clean Air Act, but generally interpreted as legal as long as you aren't doing things to make your emissions worse.
At least as far as ECUs go, almost every after market ECU I’ve seen doesn’t control OBD II or the CEL (or does so very minimally) and is therefore immediately in violation of not conforming to the requirements to retain OEM level behavior. Fuel mapping is more grey, largely due to the ability of some OEM ECUs to be reflashed and thus retain OBD behavior.
"It is a crime to knowingly falsify, tamper with, render inaccurate, or fail to install any "monitoring device or method" required under the Clean Air Act, including a vehicle’s on-board diagnostic system. Clean Air Act section 113(c)(2)(C)." https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2020-12/documents/ta...
Tampering. You may not remove or render inoperative any device or element of design installed on or in engines/equipment in compliance with the regulations prior to its sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser.
It seems primarily about bypassing or disabling emission controls, not user controlled fuel mapping, or mods like putting in a performance air filter or exhaust. But EPA does consider a flex fuel conversion tampering.
Yup. Here's a fun hack - you can drive car in EU on US plates, due to international agreements. In that case, you don't have to follow local car inspection standards, but inspection standards of your home country.
Get a plate from US state that has no inspections? You need no inspections at all!
There's usually a time limit on that. Last I checked in my country it's six months before you have to register the car, get local plates, and pay VRT (vehicle registration tax) + VAT. Including the cost of VRT in the VAT calculation, resulting in double taxation.
You can't put foreign plates on an irish registered car without first bringing it out of the country and registering it abroad either. I don't think there's any tax due on re-importing a car that's already been registered however. (you even get the same plate numbers since they're consistently mapped 1-to-1 VIN-to-plate forever)
There is a legal limit, yes, but nobody checks it, so you can do it indefinitely. Around here, there's even a lot of people driving on fake "foreign" plates.
It is EURO5 or EURO6 emmision norm. It also handles firmware updates, reaction to Volkswagen cheating. Car needs to be online, check for latest firmware and all sort of nasty DRM.
There is also a black box, that records position and speed. It may call emergency if it detects crash. If DRM is violated, car may refuse to start, or only drive like 50 kms.
I don't have a source, but anyone should be able to find relevant articles.
EU "directives" require matching laws to be passed within member states, EU "regulations" apply directly to member states as written. In both cases, enforcement is up to the country you're in.
This is very much in line with the industry trying desperately to get into the tech recurring revenue model.
> the manufacturer collects information including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data, though there’s no details about how exactly that data is gathered
How is that even possible? Without more details about what this means and how it's done, this sounds a bit fishy to me.
> Mozilla said it was unable to determine whether the brands encrypt any of the data they collect
Given the auto industry's track record at security, I'm gonna go ahead and assume they _all_ store all that in a 2005-era non updated mysql database protected by root/password exported nightly as a clear-text csv file to an open network folder. And since they all do it they can call it an industry standard.
> Berg said the MercedesMe Connect app gives users privacy settings and the ability to opt-out of certain services.
Given that these folks try to sell you everything in the car you already bought as a service, that's a nice way of saying "if you're concerned about us collecting stool sample while using rated seats, you can use your car as a decorative piece in your garage if you want,l".
Yesterday, you visited a dating site a bunch. Today, you drove to a house that wasn’t yours and the passenger side door opened. Then you drove to a restaurant and the passenger side door opened again. Then you drove back to the house you don’t live at and the car was there overnight.
> Without more details about what this means and how it's done
The article seems to be based on a review of the privacy policies rather than sniffing actual collected data. We can conclude the policy leaves openings for them to do it, but it may not in fact be done at this time.
> collects information including sexual activity, health diagnosis data, and genetic data
> Sources for collection: Direct contact with users and Nissan employees.
Also:
> by occupying a vehicle that is utilizing such services you agree to Nissan collecting and using the information
> You promise to educate and inform all users and occupants of your Vehicle
Interesting Note: I think this implies if you are a Uber / Lyft / ect... customer you consent to Nissan collecting your sex activity and genetic information and all related secondary analyses by occupying the vehicle.
> How is that even possible? Without more details about what this means and how it's done, this sounds a bit fishy to me.
Did you visit some explicit site without VPN (or at least a private tab)? Bingo. The data brokers will correlate you. Once your data can be correlated, whatever they gather is thrown into the pool. I'll bet that there's some back-scratching going on somewhere. Hey we know all about where John is at when he's driving, and we'll sell/give you that data and in exchange we'd like to buy/trade some ads on those other sites-of-interest he/she goes to.
When it comes to privacy data handling, the term "collecting" is a very specific term that means they are directly collecting it from you, so, unless they use the term in a non standard way, that means they supposedly collect your genetic material and sexual preferences _from you_. Which, erk, but also, how?
Sexual preference and genetic material are very different from sexual activity and genetic data. These privacy polices are always very broad (not saying this is a good thing). The multitude of microphones in cars can easily accidentally (or purposefully) record sex acts. A camera to detect driver awareness (for auto cruise or sleep alarms) can detect your eye color, which could be construed as genetic data. Idk if airbags deploy based on weight on seats (i.e. less powerful for smaller people), but weight data is health data.
I'm not so pessimistic that I think the Toyota techs are swabbing your car and sending it over to 23andMe.
Plus we know that the likes of Tesla and Ring/Amazon have no qualms about having a good laugh watching your camera footage until they get caught with their pants down (perhaps literally in some cases).
In modern era everything mechanical, or analog is being replaced with digital, or with something "as a software". Product is replaced with "service".
When everything becomes in the end connected with the Internet, everything is dependent... A system crash of AWS, Google, or any other monolithic provider will have drastic results. A system crash could halt many cars in a country. In the future Hackers could stall entire country transportation.
With oligopoly,monopoly the power player can decide with very granular precision what you can, and cannot do, where you can go. You have no power to object. Even government bodies could be against you, or could be too small to fight big corporations.
More
- cameras in cars. What they will detect? If I am drunk, or something more? Will there be glitches to record more stuff? Will the cars have back doors for governments?
- what kind of data will cars collect? Audio? Video? Biometrics? Facial data? Hate speech?
- they can analyze where you go, why you do something, maybe for analytics, for governments, or for ad business
- they can define terms of conditions, which of course can allow the producers to sell your data to third parties for cheaper models of cars
At first you will be able to mitigate. You will be able to buy older cards. Eventually we will not be able to choose a different life. There is no really opt out if everybody implements techno-feudalistic software patterns.
Certain cars let you physically disable this. For example, the Tacoma has a "Data Communication Module" (DCM) that performs all of this and has a cell radio to phone home. There's a fuse in the fusebox you can pull to prevent the DCM from getting any power. Only side effect is the in-cabin microphone stops working and you can reconnect the fuse at any time.
It's as if the engineering team didn't want to develop a spying product and made a convenient way to disable it...
lol - if they were only that altruistic. Toyota doesn't make the tech, they buy modules from suppliers and integrate the tech. Better hope someone doesn't come out with a fancy super module that has everything integrated because there will be no disabling it as soon as that happens :/
Don't forget Toyota was the manufacturer that was going to charge a monthly subscription just for the key fob (!) to work until they got a massive backlash over it. A freaking key fob that doesn't use cellular or the cloud at all - it's 100% local between the fob and the car. And don't think for one minute that they won't try to sneak it back in.
> Better hope someone doesn't come out with a fancy super module that has everything integrated because there will be no disabling it as soon as that happens
I was just thinking about how to find and disable all the microphones in a car and realized that, with software, any speaker can be used as a microphone, so the logical conclusion is that you'd have to disable all the speakers as well.
> Better hope someone doesn't come out with a fancy super module that has everything integrated because there will be no disabling it as soon as that happens :/
FWIW, getting to that fuse is a massive, massive pain in the ass on some of their newer cars like the 2023 corolla. It's basically not possible. The alternative requires taking off the dash and manually pulling out some wires.
In the process you may lose some functionality like some speakers, the radio, wireless android auto, microphone, etc.
Except when you live in a city where they start to limit and ban transit of older cars, to force people transitioning into lower emission models, or public transit.
Like in Spain (through rules ultimately coming from Europe) there is a class of vehicles which are gradually being kicked out (banned from crossing certain very ample boundaries around the city): gasoline cars made before 2001, and diesel powered cars made before 2006.
For example, your 23 year old Toyota 4Runner would be deemed too polluting (or noisy, or both) to drive near the city center and auxiliary accesses of Madrid, and starting from 2025 it will be outright banned from driving on any part of the city, with a circle area of ~23 Km (14 miles) diameter from the center.
No: If you're rich enough to restore a car that you bought from someone that was poor enough to still be driving it with stock components, then the US won't punish you.
American carbrains can’t imagine a society that doesn’t depend on huge ass vehicles for daily transportation.
A reminder that driving isn’t a right, it’s a privilege that you have to get a license to do, and many other places that aren’t America don’t design their cities and even their small towns [1] around the idea that you must own a vehicle.
Congestion taxes and pollution rules tend to affect city centers where personal vehicle ownership is unnecessary and even something that could be considered detrimental to society as a whole.
I didn’t agree to die early due to elevated pollution levels in my city just so you can drive your truck around downtown.
Approximately half of all global oil use is associated with roadways. Maybe draining the world’s oil is a solid plan for the oil states and geopolitically massive superpowers of the world, but many countries have to import all of their oil, so owning a 19mpg Toyota 4Runner in a country like Spain is arguably a national security issue.
"A reminder that driving isn’t a right"
It is in America. Our constitution constrains the government, it doesn't grant us rights - we already have them as human beings. I can't imagine living under a cynical government that has that equation flipped but obviously you've been conditioned to accept it.
That’s just plain factually incorrect. You aren’t allowed to drive unless you pass a written and driving test in all 50 states, with only a few exceptions like agricultural use.
The default state of your rights in the USA is that you are not allowed to drive. It is effectively an additive privilege that you have to go out of your way to obtain.
The constitution doesn’t restrict the government’s ability to regulate the operation of a motor vehicle, and all 50 states have enacted laws that effectively make driving a privilege. You’re even required to buy insurance from a private company in order to maintain that privilege.
The fact that driving was legal by constitutional default before the passage of traffic laws isn’t relevant to the present day legal status quo.
I would also like to request that right wing libertarian weirdos stop equating every mundane, benign, and sensible societal rule to draconian conditioning by the big bad evil government. Please.
We destroyed our world’s best rail infrastructure on purpose to serve industrialist automotive companies. You could get anywhere by train in 1925, with so much frequency it is a daunting task to even count up the schedules.
Despite now having 3x the population of that time period, our rail service is basically non-existent in comparison. This isn’t the case in less wealthy and less dense countries.
What is the cost of the interstate highway system? How much of it could have reduced lanes or not exist if there were trains? How much productivity and GDP is wasted on people operating vehicles on the highway when trains can travel over 3x faster and facilitate continued work?
I've never bought a new car and don't have any plans to soon
My 2001 Tundra is a spy-free, comfortable and versatile life/work vehicle that works as well in the city as it does hauling logs and steel on my property. I have three school age kids and prefer my truck to a Van (I've owned one in the past too) any-day.
I totally agree I just feel like there's a sweet spot in the early 2000s where crash safety was better (not the best, but way closer to modern) and traction controls were standard but you didn't have all the spyware. My 2000 4Runner was unfortunately designed in the 1990s which means the doors are super thin as are the roof pillars. Not a deal breaker mind you, it's just the sort of thing that I won't want it until it's too late.
Depending on your climate, you should probably have the right front frame member inspected for rust. My father had an '09 4Runner & got into a front-end crash. In the process that member was exposed, and while it looked fine on the outside, it was full of rust from the inside and quite thin.
Don't get me wrong, I drive an '01 Ranger that is more rust than steel at this point, but it is still good to know what you have.
>I drive an '01 Ranger that is more rust than steel at this point
You poor man. I had a 3.slow 6 cyl. 0-60 in 16s was almost an accomplishment. I guess that's what you get when you have a 155hp motor trying to pull a 3800 lb vehicle.
I drove a '93 Ranger with the 98 horsepower 2.3L 4-cylinder and the 5-speed manual in the late 2000s from 130,000 miles to 280,000 miles; it carried the supplies to paint dozens of houses and got me through college without any debt on car payments or tuition. My wife still mocks me for the purple pinstripes and the fact it was shorter than her, but I was driving it when she was just an acquaintance and I was still driving it home from our wedding, so clearly she actually liked it and just won't admit it.
It could eventually achieve 70 mph on the downhills with a slight tailwind, but it's not a vehicle for people who are in a hurry. I never entered it into any kind of drag race, so I didn't worry about the 0-60 time. Sadly, it died when a neophyte mechanic tried to lift it by the body instead of the ladder frame; the body mounts were able to keep the sheet metal from sliding around but the rust gave way when they tried to put them in tension. No, it would not have been safe in a rollover...
I like to imagine there's one still dry and rust-free in a barn somewhere in the Southwest that just needs some hoses, fluids, and a clean paint job (with purple pinstripes, that's important!) I would pick that over a new Maverick any day, never worry for a moment about it selling my data, and I'd have a stupid grin on my face every time I saw it. The only thing that could make it better would be if I could bolt an EV motor to the flywheel, elevate the bed by 6", and sandwich a battery pack under it.
the 4cyl was about as fast as the 3.0 6cyl but got much better fuel economy. I didn't hate that it was slow. I hated that it was slow and only got 20mpg lol
Not a bad plan. There might still be some options out there. The previous generation of Silverado (14-18?)you could get a work truck without OnStar or anything. Didn't even have a key fob or Bluetooth. Costs a hell of a lot less too.
Same here, I bought mine just as pandemic car prices plunged. It's not my primary right now but it might just become it. It's sad because I'm a car guy and I like some of the newer tech and all, I just can't stand all the markups and spyware and most of the time I just don't want to bother debugging my ride.
> Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school..
The above quote was 100% true just a few years ago but it appears to be vanishing in speed light as the tech advances and the race to collect private data reaches its peak.
I’m afraid we will have to check the “I Agree to Terms and Conditions” in our new cars and before even leaving the dealership parking or getting the usual message: “Hey there, we’re updating our terms and conditions, accept to unlock your car”
I’m afraid that once we reach fully-autonomous driving, Ads will start showing up in the car’s digital cockpit and/or head-up display.. probably, based on your current location, mood, the radio station you’re currently listening to.. you name it..
True, although I have some hope -- people have been disabling the onstar hardware in cars for decades and I assume this kind of thing will expand as these systems become even more invasive.
The solutions will probably have to advance. I assume the first stage will be just unplugging the telematics ECU (Electronic Control Unit). Then the automakers will get wise, and punish the driver if that ECU is offline (reduce/remove some unrelated features). Then we'll have to make hardware that plugs into the telematics and gps antenna connectors that acts like a man in middle to ensure only the minimum (and possibly fake) data is received by the ECU. Then they'll probably add something that calls home every so often and requires a valid response to know everything is ok... etc.
(It has gradually occurred to me that without the safeguards of privacy ingrained in western societies, the state of ad tech in China has already surpassed the U.S. and Europe in its sophistication.)
It almost feels silly to ask, but is this legal even in the United States with its comparatively weak privacy laws? In many states, a vehicle is legally an extension of the home. So legal rights and protections that apply in one's home also apply in one's vehicle. Is the idea that, buried somewhere in the legalese, is a statement that the buyer is granting the automaker the right to spy?
Yes, the US is pretty nearly lawless when it comes to privacy issues. Half the protections we have today are "it's legally required in the EU but low cost enough to just do globally".
The real "cheat code" is that much of the de facto government is the private sector. Imagining some hard dividing line between "government" and "private sector" is a fallacious red herring.
The supreme court recently decided there's no right to privacy in the US (they used this as justification for rolling back Roe v. Wade). It's pretty clear they'll be taking away more rights over the next few years.
I connect my phone to my 2015 Nissan's bluetooth, but just for music. GrapheneOS lets me prevent its access to my contacts, call history, active calls, text messages - anything but music audio. To me (but not the less tech literate, I know), if you're connecting your car to your phone, it's obvious that it is able to gather things about you.
That said, because I don't know much about cars, I don't know if the car is even capable of phoning home or by what means. Is it a 4G signal? Just a radio transponder? How do I even investigate without tearing my dash apart?
All new EU cars since 5 years ago are obligated to have 'eCall' which contacts emergency services in case of a crash. Most manufacturers solve that problem by including a 4G module.
Older cars also collect information. Most dealers read out the nav computer drive at service intervals so they also know where you've been, who you called etc, only a bit later.
The car companies won't let that information out to independent repair shops (except where mandated by laws). The "right to repair" movement is one attempt to make it possible.
The worst offender is John Deere and their newer farm tractors. Only authorized repair centers can get the software needed to troubleshoot the vehicles. Part of why Deere does not want details out there is that some tractor models have the exact same engine, but different power outputs based on how much the customer paid. One could "unlock" a more powerful engine without paying corporate. The really big "implements of husbandry" (as my state calls them) can cost $500k. At peak planting/harvesting time, you can wait weeks for a technician to come to your farm. Or spend a few thousand dollars having it driven to the dealership by truck.
IMHO, the decent indies are all sat on copies of either the original dealer software (by whatever means…) or copies built by companies to emulate original dealer software (VCDS for VAG for example)
One more reason I'm glad I connect my phone with a headphone jack. Just an analog connection carrying audio. The car doesn't even know what it's playing, as far as I know. Though some cars do seem to extract track names and artist names over the aux jack, so I think there's a little more than just an analog signal?
An analog jack should just be an analog signal, the beauty of it for applications like this being that it just works and for a variety of devices including the very first Sony Walkman to name just something which did not include any extra information. While in theory it is possible to encode extra and inaudible information in there, it seems more likely that if a car then knows what is playing it is just using Shazam or similar.
Possibly a side channel digital encoding of the track information, similar to how radio stations can display things like track name on your car radio. But I'm not really sure.
Do you mean the thing for reading a magnetic stripe? It's no surprise that can be trivially sent over an audio interface. That's how recording audio onto tape works in the first place.
Don't Android and iOS by default prevent bluetooth from accessing your contacts and calls. I know on Android you have to click a permission popup when connecting to bluetooth to allow contact and call access
But then you have Android Auto getting full access to the cars OBD. One more reason to use Bluetoth, but Googpe, and I assume Apple as well, aren't any better.
I dug into the article, specifically the Nissan section. It reads like the car itself _could_ be gathering information on its own. IMO, the Nissan phone app is the more likely culprit here.
Unless there's something wild going on with XM, or there's a WiFi backdoor, the only other way the car is getting data out is over OBD2. And that's all engine, tires, and performance stuff: https://www.amazon.com/Turbo3-Leaf-Spy-Pro/dp/B00PMLTPN0/?ta...
> The wireless features in your vehicle, including Over the Air Updates require use of your in-vehicle modem (if equipped). While Over the Air Updates are being made, some other wireless features may be unavailable or may require a wired connection. Please see FAQs for additional information.
Interesting. I've never connected my car to my wireless network and I've never used the Nissan app. I think I used a burner email when setting things up, but that was years ago so I don't remember the details. I'll see what happens if I try an OTA update later today and report back.
The hell! You got a 2015 Nissan with Android Auto?
I got a 2017 Infiniti that some trims did even come with Bluetooth, needless to say none had carplay or Android Auto. Damn you Nissan.
But I bought that car because its something for me to tinker with and I plan to replace that proprietary head until with an after one. And also use an Arduino 4 inch LCD to tap into the Can bus to show Hvac settings.
doesn't say android auto, just the nissan bluetooth. it has voice commands and can access your contacts if you let it, so you hit the talk button on the steering wheel and say "Call Bob D" and it will call, etc. It's kind of jank. same thing with reading out received text messages while driving.
When you connect a phone to most cars via Bluetooth, the call and general audio permissions are separate from text message and contact info. So for example, in my mom's new car, I connect my phone so that when I drive it, I can take phone calls and listen to music. But for example it can't even display the contact name of contacts who call me, because it doesn't have access to that, so it just displays the phone number.
Yeah, it's usually a cell module (older ones were 3G). Many times it's on its own daughter board and you can disconnect the bridge to the main board, or otherwise unplug it so it can't communicate with the car or towers. I did that to my car that has OnStar and the Bluetooth etc worked fine, but it couldn't transmit/connect to any network.
I always wonder to what extent those opt outs actually do something. I remember reading about the “unsubscribe” button for emails that never really did anything.
Yes, and that is why I will never buy new unless in the contract I have;
1. No data harvesting
2. If I or anyone discovers any kind of data harvesting, at any time, I get a full refund of the original purchase price plus interest plus 2000 USD from the manufacture. If not received in 6 months, it double ever 6 months.
But from what I understand, I heard due to Massachusetts "Right to Repair", all of that is turned off.
But time for the Federal Gov to step in. I expect they will since some Congress Critter will complain about the Auto Industry tracking them or their children. Or, more then likely, due to how the US Gov have been operating for the last 30 years or so, Congress people will get to purchase "special" vehicles.
I've heard of a few very-low-tech models, which are manufactured for NGO's to use in extremely remote places. Dunno if any of 'em would be street legal in a "normal" country. Those might qualify, and their sales process might be so customized that he could get such a contract. Maybe.
Otherwise, I'd guess it'll be "whatever it costs" vehicles aimed at the uber-rich, and their personal security details.
It is basically impossible to get those road legal in Europe. I know, because those cars tend to be older MY Land Cruisers and such, with those big, old diesel engines. And there is a sub-culture that loves those. Still, the only way to get one of those is if the car is old enough to qualify as a classic. Similar to Land Rover Defenders and the US.
In some places, this is not an option. I have a mechanical Euro-5 car without sim card nor infotainment system that I would not be able to use where I live by end 2024.
Welcome to the EU and its low-emissions zones that span over many of its big cities.
Haven't looked into it a great deal yet because there's still plenty of time where I live, but I believe it's possible to get old cars to an emission standard that's compliant. It's not cheap, since it involves replacing the entire engine, but I'd still rather spend money on that than a new car.
Mid 90s, and you can qualify for a historical car registration in Germany (min. age 30 years). Problem is, with all those diesel limitqtions regarding city acces, and classical cars being excempt, there is a discussion going to either get rid of those classic car excemptions or to increase the minimum age to 40 years.
I'd imagine there will be a real problem with this in Germany - at least with Mercedes Benz, cars of the 80s and 90s will dramatically outlast those from the 2000s onwards!
Many already come with that. (I am not aware of which models though. Toyota should have it in many.)
As a rule of thumb you could consider "cars which are planned as vehicles that could be lent for longer periods of time": it is foreseen that if the client stops paying for the subscription, the car is remotely disabled.
I think it will be a good differentiation factor in a few years, that a brand comes up with an offline car, i.e. a car that you just refuel/charge and drive - no telemetry/connected features involved.
It may be a niche thing in future, but certainly something that would be appealing to me as a consumer.
I think the insurance co will be the main lever in this story. If you have cameras & telemetry: standard insurance, open source offline car: pay premium.
It is already the case today (at least in the UK). If you accept having a "black box", then you have a discount. I already pay the premium to not have that installed.
PS: I understand we're talking about the future here, just wanted to clarify that paying a premium for less telemetry is already here and not a hypothetical case.
I actually wanted to go with an insurer that installs a black box. My dealer, however, doesn't do those (and their standard package is pretty good, so with a new car it was stupid to go with someone else).
My insurance company has a phone app that collects the same info - speed, deaccelation (gyroscopes), etc. the app is optional but qualifies you for a discount after 3 months of app history, if your driving pattern meets their standards. They told me they do not impose rate increases based on the app’s reporting, only discounts. I did not install it
but the point is: You don’t need a car device anymore.
My insurance company's app sometimes detects commuter train rides as car trips. As far as I can tell, there's no way to tell it "No, I'm not actually driving now".
Dashcams have worked just fine for a while, and they don't have to be connected to the internet to pull the data later SELECTIVELY, WHEN NEEDED. Yes, there is a chance it's completely destroyed, but it's fairly minor.
I'm with you 100%, but reality is strongly not in our favor.
In order to bring a new car brand to the market, it literally takes the resources of a narcissistic billionaire, and even those are much more like upper-middle class status symbols than affordable conveyance for everyone. The regulatory hill is a steep climb on its own and the incumbents have a literal 100-year head start on how to sell cars to normal people.
Even if we just look at the tech sector... where are the privacy-preserving cell phones? There are none, unless you are willing to do not much else on it other than phone calls, text messages, and very light web browsing.
And unfortunately, the history of narcissistic rich people making cars is none too good. Such cars will either be overly expensive and require parts to be shipped from Italy, or they'll be totally shoddy "look at me" cars like Tesla or DeLorean.
> Even if we just look at the tech sector... where are the privacy-preserving cell phones?
The major brands won't do it, there's no money in it for them to do so, and there's so much regulation, regulatory capture that it's virtually impossible to start a new auto manufacturer without having billions of dollars of private equity to flush down the toilet on it, to target a very small fraction of the market that would want such vehicles, and such a company would just be quickly regulated out of existence if it was ever actually created.
I don't see this happening. I see a lot of collusion between insurance, dealers, makers, and even the federal government to impose spyware for all future models.
That a good idea in theory, but that has a very high bar for non-advanced users.
What I meant is kind of just a regular brand that offers you a regular car with convenience features, but no telemetry/services involved. All local and offline - that's the catch for them, because what brands want is to monetize services...
I want to know how these license agreements work, legally speaking?
We bought a new car and signed the purchase agreement. Nowhere was there anything resembling a software license. Some months later, the display has a pop-up "our terms and conditions have changed". Um...which terms would those be, and when did we ever agree to them? Anyway, how can they make a one-sided change to a contract?
Here's the relevant legalese from Toyota:
"By purchasing or leasing a vehicle equipped with an active Connected Services system, you specifically consent to our electronic collection and use of your account information and vehicle data and our storage of such data wherever we designate."
Does the new owner of a used vehicle have to sign this too? And if this was skipped during the selling process, is the data now collected in the name of the previous owner?
I have a new EV (a modest MG ZS long range 2022) and I'm not much concerned about privacy BUT much, much, much more about remote controls ability from the factory AND potentially someone else due to some crapware vulnerabilities who happen to be vast https://samcurry.net/web-hackers-vs-the-auto-industry/
My take is simple:
- all cars can be connected BUT the connection must be user controllable, meaning the car must run on FLOSS easily installable by the formal owner;
- all cars can offer remote controls BUT in a classic ssh-alike fashion, meaning it's ok to have a web(cr)app for end users, but not proxyed by the OEM only. OEM might act as a proxy to circumvent NAT, but the user is free to choose a DynDNS and other P2P/distributed solution hosted alone.
In mere privacy IMVHO my car can snoop videos of me/anything surrounding / capture audio no more and no less than an Android or iOS macrospy also know as smartphones. So I'm equally concerned BUT so far such smart devices can't potentially lock me outside in the middle of anything, making me crash on some people and than state I'm a terrorist crushing on purpose and so on. Witch limit much the risk surface.
Just wait until insurance companies demand access to your cars telemetry for either a "discount" or even to insure you at all.
I'm seriously thinking of stockpiling a few extra used "dumb" cars. This is beyond nuts.
I would love it if it was economical/possible for repair shops to do "dumb swaps" where they cut out all the "smart" bullshit and give you physical buttons and knobs on your dash.
In my moments of programmer hubris I often think, "It can't be _that_ hard to make an open-source controller for a Hybrid Synergy Drive. It's only two motors and a small engine. Come on!"
>In California, insurers are only allowed to collect the mileage.
Hmm, I am in California and have stalker auto insurance. The app they provide me shows a complete GPS map of every trip I take. So they definitely collect that information, but maybe you’re saying they can’t price discriminate based on it? Where did you learn about that rule?
California Code Regulations, title 10, Section 2632.5 - Rating Factors
It carves out an exception for "using a technological device to collect information about the location of the insured vehicle as part of an emergency road service, theft service, map service or travel service."
I don't understand. This seems clearly illegal to have policies like this that claim consent by sitting in the car but the "user" has never been presented the policy in a way to consent to!
Is this just a good lawsuit away from being thrown out but no one has done it? Is there some particularly fucked up legal precedent that makes this tenuously legally stable?
> You promise to educate and inform all users and occupants of your Vehicle about the Services and System features and limitations, the terms of the Agreement, including terms concerning data collection and use and privacy, and the Nissan Privacy Policy
Similarly, how is this kosher? Do we think anyone, even a single person, has ever followed through on this promise they’ve apparently agreed to in using a Nissan?
The article is not very clear about whether this kind of abusive data collection is actually happening and they can prove it, or whether they found the text of the privacy policies to be overly broad. I have no idea how a car would infer my sexual orientation.
Bingo. Lawyers write extremely broad TOS and EULAs but it’s really a mystery whether any of this data is actually being collected. Mozilla can’t see any of the code so they can’t really say what’s going on.
Yes, it’s bad that it’s a mystery and it’s bad that consumers have little control over it. We need more comprehensive national privacy laws.
this is ironic; my wife bought a brand new 2020 model year Nissan 370Z 50th anniversary edition in 2021, and it feels like it is from the late 90s.
no touch screen (actually no screen at all!), no GPS/navigation, no tracking, no Bluetooth audio streaming(!!) it does have mobile phone Bluetooth connectivity and a terrible backup camera but those are the only bits of modern in-car tech it has.
it feels like a very analog modern sports car without any of the crap that most modern sports cars have.
more of this please!
sadly, seems like the new Z coupe went all-in on the in-car tech, much like Nissan's other offerings.
Backup cameras weren't required in vehicles until (i think) 2018. My guess is that (similar to banning popup headlights), it was only required for new vehicle models released. The 370z had a ridiculously long production run starting in 2008, so they weren't required to put one in
the backup camera shows up on the rear-view mirror, taking up about ~40% of the width. it's really the jankiest thing and is shockingly bad for a 2020/2021 car!
Ahh interesting! Ive never seen or heard of a car manufacturer putting the backup camera screen in the rearview mirror (probably bc, for the reasons you mentioned it's a terrible idea!)
This article doesn't go into any benefits to the driver/user, if available. With all the cameras and microphones in cars these days they can at least send the insurance companies all the data when an accident occurred. Were you on the phone? Driving the speed limit? Have your seat belt on? Braking hard to avoid (or cause) an accident? Heck, give me a monthly riding report with information such as how fast I accelerate, how hard I brake, how often I speed, and stuff like that. Then provide tips on how to improve my driving. At least that would be useful.
that sounds like a nightmare to me and should have to be opted into, I would never purchase a car with that. I'll just get a motorcycle and risk my life.
Nightmare? It's a black box. It can save your bacon if you're falsely accused. Cars have a lot of sensors these days and if those two cars get into an accident you can re-create the entire accident.
I have a 2019 Subaru Outback. I also use GrapheneOS on a Pixel 3A. I have noticed that, when my phone is plugged in and I have location services enabled (for navigation), when I'm NOT using navigation, the icon in the top bar indicating location services being used pings once every 30 seconds.
I'm sure onboard cell modems can be used to triangulate well enough, but just knowing that my car likes to hitch a ride on my phone's sensors has creeped me out forever. I'll definitely be looking for an old beater car as my second when the time comes.
>The kind of information collected varies from personal information like medical data to how drivers are using the vehicle itself — such as how fast they drive, where they drive, and even the music they listen to. Both Nissan and Kia are noted to allow the collection of information regarding a user’s sex life.
>Eighty-four percent of the reviewed car brands share personal user data with service providers, data brokers, and potentially sketchy businesses, according to the report, with 76 percent claiming the right to sell that personal data.
>Tesla was the worst-ranked brand in the study, getting flagged in every privacy category — only the second time this happened.
>Alongside the report, Mozilla also published a breakdown explaining how car companies collect and share user data. This can include anything from the user’s name, address, phone number, and email address to more intimate data like photos, calendar information, and even details on the driver’s race, genetic information, and immigration status.
Mozilla says it also couldn’t confirm that any of the automakers could meet the organization’s minimum security standards regarding data encryption and protection against theft. In fact, it claims dating apps and even sex toys typically provide more detailed security information about their products than cars.
The best way around this for those wanting an EV car is to get a classic car that's been well-maintained and do an electric conversion. The only 'infotainment system' anyone needs is a tablet or phone; a charging system for electronic devices shouldn't be too hard to set up either.
The funny thing is normally privacy hawks hate google but the unified privacy policy of Android Automotive is way tighter than any of these. The automakers with their own stacks want to collect, use, and sell any and all data.
That's one reason I'm saving up for an EV conversion lol. I just need a car to go from A -> B. I don't need self driving, constant updates, a blackbox, cameras everywhere, etc. Just an EV, with a good drive train, decent range, etc. It's the only reason I'm still using a dino car. Legislation for privacy will needs a huge overhaul in preference to the rights of individuals rather than corporations.
Also, as a PSA: Your local state government sells car registration data to data brokers and car manufacturers. It is often used for behavioral targeting.
Federal law requires the manufacturers get your up to date mail address for recall purposes.
Legislators make sure that the agencies sell that data (this is the source of those "we've been trying to reach you about your vehicle's warranty" letters/calls). Sometimes they interfere to ensure that their buddies/lobbyists don't pay for it.
I doubt these datasets have anything to do with the "we've been trying to reach you about your vehicle's warranty" calls, as I know people who got a lot of those calls but never owned a vehicle (some were even minors!). Every time I listened to one of their messages it never had any actual targeted car information.
Every time I've bought a car recently (which for Reasons has been a few times), I've ended up with utter scum sending mail designed to look "official" while skirting the actual reserved terms trying to scam me into extended warranties and so forth.
If I had more time I would use their free return address to ship boxes of broken bricks.
Possibly the high-end ones more so. My new, relatively low-end Honda Civic EX-B appears not to have cellular connectivity (no HondaLink) and no Wifi connectivity. The only cameras are the ones looking out the front and back. Of course it does have an interior microphone for the Bluetooth. But all in all the car seems "old school" and not spying on me. Am I wrong?
around here it's literally just the amount of time until you get hit by a car, everyone I've known who bikes (n=5) or motorcycles (n=4) on the regular has been hit. Only the severity varies.
The biggest problem I have is tracking that the government has access to. We're in a situation where the government knows everywhere your phone has been, and everywhere your car has been. I doubt we're far from the gov't being able to de-activate your car at will also.
I would like to have privacy from corporations, but I really wish we'd keep the focus on privacy from our governments, since they have such ultimate power over us.
Pretty much the definition of corrupt/biased "fact checkers" right here. It's a mechanism where the car can decide to turn itself off and prevent you from driving. It's literally a kill switch, where the car refuses your commands. They're arguing semantics about how it currently isn't a remote kill switch, only a local kill switch. Reminds me of other similarly ridiculous "fact checks" where someone claims something like "X is raising taxes by 9%!" and they fact check it as "completely false" because technically it's not 9%, it's 9.1%, or whatever.
Of course in the future the kill switch will also be mandated to be remotely triggerable, we all know it, but by that time the overton window will have shifted far enough, by things like mandating local kill switches, that making it remote as well will slip through easily in however many years.
I will never in my life own a vehicle that can decide, locally or remotely, to refuse to function, or that can decide to slam on the brakes by itself, or that can phone home data about me. Not sure how much longer I can get away with that before older, non-smart cars are declared evil and banned, in the name of climate change or walkable cities or whatever, but we'll see.
"It's not a kill switch, it slows the vehicle to a stop instead of being instant." I fail to see the practical difference. I don't want my car incorrectly deciding I am impaired and "coasting to a gentle stop" on the way to a hospital during a medical emergency or something.
Maybe kill-switch is not the best definition of the feature. The required technology monitors the driver to prevent starting the car or forcing it to pull over. In the context of the parent article which explains how the overall monitoring systems fail on privacy and security, we can see how these combined with the car stopping feature can be used against us. We are ultimately trusting the companies and government to do what is in our interests rather than theirs. Some people trust Apple not to use or share their data with government to be used against them. Trusting the largest corporation in the world and the most powerful government in the world is a major leap for me, but everybody theoretically makes their own choices.
The problem is that the private companies tracking you can be compelled (if they don't voluntarily) give up your tracking data to the government.
Stopping government tracking starts with stopping private industry tracking, as the latter is happy to give it away/sell the data or can be forced to by law.
In the US, the government has access to 100% of the information the corporations have.
Also, corporations have all sorts of power over us that should be reserved for the government. For instance, they control electronic currency, freedom of association (online), and your ability to distributed and purchase most media.
The government has been able to use onstar to deactivate GMC vehicles at will for over a decade. Of course, GM can do this too.
I just don't see this issue getting much traction until something really bad happens to a large group of powerful people. But even then it may not come to light as said people will cut a deal with car companies to exclude them from telemetry sighting "national security". They of course won't publicize this and when it inevitably becomes public they will just shrug.
It won't get traction for the average person because the immediate effects are positive (lower insurance) and the dangers are very theoretical (a bad actor knowing where my car is). People are much more concerned about the near and present danger of bad actors hacking their financial accounts and stealing they hard-earned money.
This type of authoritarian tracking is extremely egregious but the good news is that we are hackers and can detect the RF and other signals with detectors and disable them if we really want to. At any rate, it's a sad state of affairs.
This is the first "Mozilla" thread I've seen in awhile where HN isn't getting all up in arms about them. So I take it we're cool with this type of stuff? Beyond FF? Because honestly I really appreciate this work.
I also have an '54 Chevy, a '62 CJ, a '69 wagon, a '68 Suburban, and a '84 Ford. I have a pretty good track record of keeping old things running well. Eventually my new cars (01 and two 03s) will cease to be repairable, but I have invested time and money in a very well maintained fleet of older vehicles, it's one of my only practical hobbies.
That's your choice. You can buy new, convienent, modern cars that spy on you and will be dead in ten years. Or you can buy old, reliable cars that lack most modern amenities but can be repaired forever with a metal lathe and a welder.
It's my choice not to learn how to use a metal lathe and a welder, or find someone with those skills to do it for me? How is that supposed to scale to millions of people who want the same privacy?
Never once suggested it would. All I said was that this is why I personally avoid new cars. I dislike things I cannot fix and I dislike things that actively harm me. If you or anyone else feels this way, the onus is upon you to solve it.
Most people want their data taken, or are ambivalent at best. Most people would hate driving old cars. They take work, most people want less work, not more.
Not to mention the fact that most such cars are already gone - so if more people adopt the GPs position, the prices will go through the roof for him too.
That's true, but this isn't a solution, it's my hobby. No one has suggested that people should buy only antique vehicles.
But to clear up this, it's a relatively inexpensive hobby if you are discerning and can wait. Only my wife's 03 Suburban cost more than $3000. Most of my antiques I have bought for far less. I bought the CJ5 this summer and it cost me $500 plus a new starter ($40). I also bought the '54 Chevy 2-ton this year, that cost $1000 and a new pair of contacts ($7) to get running and passing inspection.
My coworkers all play video games. They spend more on computer parts than I spend on most entire vehicles.
To be clear, I agree with you (and drive a car from the 80s when I need to drive) - but am also in favour of legislation absolutely banning this kind of collection for when I ever do need a new vehicle. If you want your hobby to remain affordable it's probably a good idea to push for new cars to be at least as good as old ones!
Most of the parts for a pre-computerised car can be made in a decent machine shop. The computers and software for newer cars are a huge contrast from that.
Really depends, you can find some 80s and I think even till 93, trucks without any computers. I have a 1954 Chevy 2-ton and the early 90s Chevy 3500HDs and the early 90s GM box trucks are great donors because a lot of stuff is sized (axles is a big one) right and the box truck's engine is a drop in replacement if you want to convert to diesel.
“Always” is a long time. Cars from the 1920s are on the road today, but do you want that to be your daily driver? Do you care about safety or the safety of your passengers?
This kind of backwards thinking does not scale to everyone who wants privacy in their car. And it does not scale into the long-term future of driving.
> Do you care about safety or the safety of your passengers?
One could make an argument that modern vehicles have gone way too far in the "protect occupants at all costs" direction at the expense of safety for literally everyone else.
E.g. Very thick A-pillars are a major cause of pedestrians and cyclist getting hit. "I literally didn't see them :(" So many cases. All of this nonsense so that the passengers can have 40+ airbags cushion their special asses - and only if they screw up. All of that lack of visibility and tons of extra mass just in case. Pedestrians and cyclists almost universally suffer more for every extra safety measure added for the occupants of vehicles.
I was in a newish car (~2019 as opposed to my 51-year-old one) recently and those THICC pillars really stood out as being detrimental to visibility, not to mention the claustrophobic overall feeling of the interior.
I'm fine with seatbelts, and even a few airbags, as long as they're safety devices that stay out of the way when they're not in operation.
The windshield on my old Chevy truck is greater than 180°, it's fantastic, especially since it's such a large vehicle, you really want to see as much as possible
In case you were curious about one of the faces behind the tech stacks that specialize in data exfiltration w.r.t your care. They pitch as being the source of info for the actuaries of auto insurers. Interviewed for them once, and even though the offer didn't materialize, I crossed them off my list of people I'd work with after putting in some time reading up on their offerings and thinking on what you could make out of them.
Modern cars use a variety of data harvesting tools including microphones, cameras, and the phones drivers connect to their cars. Manufacturers also collect data through their apps and websites, and can then sell or share that data with third parties.
Do I understand this correctly? So all my conversations in a modern car potentially ARE actually being recorded and sent to be indexed and used against me later? Or to sell me stuff based on what I said in the car?
I've been shopping for a new car recently, and got it down to the Chevy Bolt and the Hyundai Kona [because I want long-range electric and have a narrow garage]. On the Bolt it looks like you can just yank a fuse to kill the cellular radio, and on the Kona, there's a modem you can remove. I've even gotten the dealer to agree to have their shop do the removal, so as not to void any warranty =*).
I spent a lot of time researching all this a few years ago when looking for a new car. Despite the ability to afford any car, I am still riding a bike and taking public transit because of what I discovered. I know this is a difficult option for people in many places, but I am happy. Car makers should take notice that a growing number of people like me want a FOSS OS rather than an Iphone on wheels.
> Some of the cars tested collected data you wouldn’t expect your car to know about, including details about sexual activity, race, and immigration status, according to Mozilla.
It's not just that I would not expect my car to know about these things, it's that I cannot imagine how my car could possibly know these things. Immigration status? Sexual activity? WTF? How?
These cars are simply indicators of what smart homes would look like if marketers got their way: mechanisms to capture the hormonal state of inhabitants to better advertise to them.
That isn’t a joke btw. For example women are far more susceptible to advertising based on their menstrual cycle. Gad Saad, of all people, wrote a very serious book about basically that.
I’m assuming that this is not an issue if the phone is not connected to the car via Bluetooth, yes? The worst they’ll track is my locations and some other telemetry.
I know this is not ideal, but personally I’ve never connected my phone to the car and I’ve managed. So maybe that’s what I’ll need to keep doing.
I have a RAM 1500 that updates itself with new software over the air. Much to my surprise it works pretty well and happens quite often. Seeing as this is an FCA/Stellantis product I fully expected the first update to completely brick my system. Thank you Java for being older and more reliable than dirt.
I honestly don't get the hate for modern cars that some people have.
I recently got a 2023 Corolla, and it's fantastic:
* Android Auto gives me a great GPS to navigate anywhere, anytime. It watches out for traffic, accidents, speed traps, etc. and keeps me informed and on the fastest route
* I can have my phone's whole music library to listen to instead of fiddling with another copy on a USB stick that I'd have to keep in sync
* Automatic headlights and brights
* Automatic climate control (no more adjusting!)
* Amazing MPG (I can get 48 on the highway)
* Tire pressure sensors
* Automatic parking brake so I don't accidentally ruin the transmission
* Automatic lane centering and adaptive cruise makes hour long drives effortless. It's even great in the city.
* All the safety features like brake assist, pedestrian detection, etc. It hasn't saved me from an accident yet, and hopefully won't need to - but it's great to know that it's there
I basically never need to touch the screen except when initially setting up my route. Everything else is on the wheel or sticks.
Seriously. Cars have never been better.
Yes, if you're an enthusiast who wants a fun, sporty and unique car you're eating expensive scraps at the moment. But for MOST people, it's never been better.
I'm not sure if you're being deliberately obtuse or not, but this is an article about how cars collect telemetry. This is what everybody is talking about in the comments.
I'm sure everybody here enjoys most modern car features you've listed. They just don't like being spied on.
Free market can’t decide on things it doesn’t really understand consequences of. Ideally, that’s why we would have specialists from different fields in the government to make unbiased recommendations.
IANAL but this is clearly not even close to being legal under GDPR. Especially those collecting article 9 stuff (biometrics, genetics, sexual orientation, race, etc).
I think its just a matter of time before someone buys a new car that does this and takes the manufacturer to the EU courts. The argument that concent is given when you buy/use the car will not hold up for one second.
Car manufactors will have to allow you to use the car without collecting anything.
I think you are correct about the article. But I still think a lot of cars on the EU market collects (top much) information. But thats just a guess for sure
Car dealerships are notoriously horrible about privacy as well. The last time I bought a car at a dealership they wanted me to sign a release that allowed them to use photos and videos of me as part of their television and online advertisement. They were stunned when I refused and threatened to nix the whole deal and I challenged them to do exactly that before (of course) a manager was summoned and eventually I was taken to an office to complete the purchase where I could not be accidentally caught on video or photos which would result in them getting sued for using my image and likeness.
I bought a used vehicle at a dealership back in 2018. A couple of years later my daughter was looking for her first car and so we went to the same place. We were just browsing, and were met by a different sales rep. He had to excuse himself to tend to a different customer and during that time we left to go check out other places.
While we were at a different dealership I get an unexpected phone call. It was the sales rep at the first dealership, who I had never met before, and had certainly not given my phone number. I asked him how in the fucking hell he even knew my name, let alone my phone number, and he explained that the rep that sold us our vehicle in 2018 recognized me. I told him that was a very creepy and off-putting experience, that I do not consent to unsolicited phone calls from them, especially in such a creepy situation, and that I won't ever be purchasing another vehicle from them.
They have no respect for privacy. I use a Ford.com@domain.com to request a quote from Ford's official website. Apparently Ford shared my information with a dealer. That makes sense, but the dealer continued to email me and advertise cars from other manufacturers.
security in 95% of places is an afterthought. Your data is not really secure at all in the vast majority of places that keep it. Best you can do is be careful who gets it, and even then they often sell it.
Okay so you wanna hear something absolutely horrifying?
My new CPAP machine has a 4G modem and it shares all my sleep data with the company. There’s some people at the local office who can tell precisely when I’m asleep and how asleep I am.
Could you possibly want any better data for when to rob someone?
I’ve put the thing in airplane mode and they called saying they can’t get the data needed for the first month, required for insurance purposes. Nope. My last machine had an SD card. How about you do that instead?
I had to look it up: CPAP = continuous positive airway pressure; to treat sleep apnea disorder
I do have sleep apnea disorder but probably a mild one as I don't feel exhausted at all. Reading your comment sparked the idea that it might be a good idea to verify the severity. If there will be any CPAP machine involved I will for sure think of its privacy impact.
Thanks for linking to a 4 year old story. Now link to the follow-up stories to where Apple no longer does this and they were sued for breaking their privacy policy. Google still does it, as in their TOS they basically say "yeah, we're going to be looking over your shoulder at everything you do, as that's how we make our money".
Once you normalize this state of affairs in one digital sector (social media, search, whatever), you've normalized it, period.
You can't say: X and Y can milk this, but Z and W cannot. Everybody will want to get a piece of action from such a lucrative scheme.
In turn once the managing elites of all these formerly non-tech sectors that get increasingly digitized (mobility, finance, insurance, health etc) get satisfied that their legal / reputation risk is manageable they will invest further in this direction and lobby hard to preserve their investment value against "intrusive and innovation limiting regulation".
It all follows logically and it is a dystopic downward spiral that has no bottom.
The problem when you don't have competitive markets is that companies collude to use their oligopoly power and start exploiting people instead of making products for them. It's socially destructive because without privacy and moral context, all that is left is nihilism. Without privacy for the human exceptions to ideals, who gives a fuck if you lie, cheat, drive recklessly, cultivate morbid sexuality, or worse, as you're being monitored the whole time and nobody is doing anything about it, so there are no consequences, and even when there are, they are random. It's the social equivalent to being in a jail. Surveillance has become the most socially destructive force in our society today.
I'm looking at getting a new truck after driving an old wrangler without infotainment or even power windows, and part of that is looking for aftermarket services to disable most of this distracting and dangerous crap. Maybe that's going to be my next product play.
Yeah, we ban Huawei 4/5G infrastructure, and ban them fr using western / US tech, but are totally fine with whatever data BYD and EV OEMs do. But then TikTok and Xaomi are totally fine still, so what do I know...
The entire area of connected devices is a security and privacy dumpster fire. However bad you think it is, it’s worse. Everything is full of both intentional telemetry and security vulnerabilities.
Nonetheless I’ve been in the market for a new car for months and haven’t bought because it’s hard to find any cars that meet my requirements (after all most companies primarily make trucks and shitty crossovers, not even cars). The two things that consistently hold me back are either things like this (crazy telemetry / touchscreens everywhere / half-ass safety tech) or insane dealer markups. I’ve pretty much figured out the new Toyota GR Corolla is the perfect car for my needs, but you can’t find them anywhere without a $25K+ dealer markup and many dealers won’t sell them to out of state residents.
It’s truly a crazy time in the new car markets and the used market isn’t really any better.