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...
It may be a niche thing in future, but certainly something that would be appealing to me as a consumer.