You buy a new one so the c level can buy another yacht
In a sane world, there would be a law that forces certain types of features to always work.
Cloud connectivity can have benefits but honestly, 95+% of a car’s feature does not need the internet
We need a Stop Killing Cars movement
I counter: !fuckcars@lemmy.world
In response to some customer concerns of a dead battery resulting from the DCM continually trying to access the 3G cellular network, which is no longer available
https://www.theautopian.com/why-subaru-batteries-are-dying-all-across-the-country/
Yep. My toddler hit the starlink button recently. Absolutely killed my outback.
Crazy the bull shit I had to do to start it again.
I’ll never buy a vehicle that requires cloud connectivity for anything. Not a problem!
Well, most cars don’t REQUIRE it, but most cars lose features if it doesn’t have network connectivity.
Good luck finding a car made after 2020 that doesn’t have at least one or two features that require the Internet to function.
I’ve never seen a car like this. Mine was made in 2021 though so I must have caught the last
shipcar out lol. What kind of things do cars even use the internet for? I’m struggling to imagine itRemote start, lock/unlock doors, HVAC, windows, and alarm for basics.
All things that have worked just fine on cars for like at least a decade before the internet was ever invented. You are describing the exact functions of a key fob. They can even open the truck without the Internet!
They make it go through an app and a cloud service on purpose these days so they have an excuse to upsell you on a subscription.
Not all brands sell these features as a subscription.
I chased this up with Ford over my car. They said we get them for free for the life of the vehicle, and as long as the 4g it needs to work exists. That’s got atleast 10 to 20 years left in it.
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Why would you buy anything that requires and app, let alone a car? I haven’t bought a new car in a while, but if it requires and app, I’m not buying it. I bought a pergola, and originally they said I could use an app to turn the lights on. But I made them install a switch instead. Maybe consider unlinking your life for important/expensive purchases?
Because if literally every new car on the market is doing it, you don’t have much of a choice.
(Okay, sure, you could resolve to drive old cars forever – and that’s what I do – but let’s not pretend that’s possible for everyone. Even if people were willing and able to accept the maintenance/reliability/safety tradeoffs, which many are not, there simply aren’t enough old cars for everybody to drive one.)
I’ve never seen a fob be able to set climate controls. Either way, I’d rather control my own cloud for the car through home assistant
That’s exactly what I use remote start for. Just leave your car set to 68 or whatever and then when you remote start it will come up or down to temp. Even on my cheapass Chevy that’s 10 years old I can remote start it (including the HVAC) and also hold the “unlock” to start the defroster. Now I can’t actually change the temp the system is set at without getting in the car, thats true, but that’s a real edge case for me when I can just leave it set at room temp pretty much year round. Even the seats and steering wheel will heat up if I left that on beforehand. But maybe you do have a real need to tweak the temp and A/C values on the daily where you live, rather than just have the car resume where you left it at, I wouldn’t know.
The closest I know of is some VWs and Hondas allow certain click patterns to do things like roll down all the windows or open sunroofs maybe.
Accords and Passats I think maybe Jettas have done it for decades.
Same for remote start. Which my 10 y/o Subaru does with a fob and as long as I set the heat to the right settings before getting out, works a treat on subzero mornings.
Some high end models of years and decades past had a fob with a little lcd display that acted as a remote for the heating and cooling.
Off topic, but I noticed your username…China Mieville fan by chance?
Beetle fan hahaha. Maybe I had just watched The Mummy or something before picking that one years and years ago
The 1999 cinematic masterpiece starring Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser?
Good flick.
Oh wow I haven’t seen that movie in a while.
That doesn’t need the internet though right? Like a button on your key fob would achieve the same effect?
I have two cars made after 2020. Both have a phone app where you can set the internal climate settings in the car. You wouldn’t practically be able to do that from a keyfob.
Both also allow remote starting from the phone, with a setting for how long to let the car run before it turns off again. From a keyfob it’s normally set to 5 minutes with no option to change it.
Both are quality of life features that aren’t really required, but I do use them pretty regularly. If the internet stopped working on either car, they’d act just like any older car that didn’t have those features.
Wow a whole app just for your car? That’s pretty fancy. I don’t see the appeal personally, but going by the vote ratio I must be in the minority. I like my stuff to be simple
My car has a timer to set the cabin at a given temperature by a given time, do you know if your car has a function like that?
That’s not the same, though. I don’t necessarily know what time I’m going to be done eating dinner when I’m dining out. I can start the car from my phone while I’m waiting for the check, though, even if it’s a block away.
nah, pretty simple. set the preferred settings in the menu in the vehicle, then have a fob button to activate it. flash the lights to signal acknowledgement, just like locking and unlocking.
although maybe don’t actually flash the lights, since everything is stupidly over bright LED now and it’s rude af to be using those unnecessarily
It’s done with your phone without line of sight or proximity of your car. The cars with built in security cameras, you can also remote view as well. I don’t know of any fob with a TV screen on it.
None of that shit needs the Internet.
To add, my vehicle (2011) has its date display (as in the date & time) no longer accurate because it’s somehow integrated with the GPS, which has since stopped updating the date, and cannot be set manually. I now keep a little clock in my car that has the date on it to make up for the loss. It’s not that big of a deal compared to what others have mentioned, but it was still a shock to me when I found it.
Not to rub salt in the wound, but the GPS signals are hitting the car’s GPS antenna unless you’ve disconnected that wire, pulled the fuse to the receiver, or only drive inside hardened RF shielded bunkers. When I was futzing with a little GPS breadboard module the time is what I looked for first, because if you’ve got that time signal from GPS then you know the thing is working. (PEDANTIC EDIT: The signals will hit the antenna if you’re outside unless you’ve shielded them somehow, even if you disconnect the wire.)
You could use GPS signals to synchronize clocks across the entire planet to within a microsecond while your car could be used to prop a stick up to make a sundial.
I’m going to wager there’s something else going on there. If you have a working GPS receiver, a working display (you said you did), a working “clock” that counts seconds and can give something time-like to the display to show (seems like you do), then a switch might be flipped in software and you have a data point about why GNU does what they do.
Thank you for your input. That might be a bit beyond me at this point, but I’ll keep it in mind.
I was told it has something to do with Microsoft SYNC / GPS. There were some forum posts, too, about it but nothing that lead to a fix. I may try to update the system again in the future (it’s been several years since the last), but my understanding is that it’s not a fix on my end or one that can be done at all.
The date actually reset back to probably the earliest date it had and is continuing on from there. Fun… Lol. Again, thanks for your concern!
Thank you for your input.
No problem. Hope I helped.
I do have a followup question. Will the car’s navigation/display work? As in does it know your position? If you’re able to have it give your directions then that’s enough for a “yes.” The reason why I ask is if that’s the case, then the GPS system is working, handing data off to the infotainment system saying “here’s your position and the time of day,” and your infotainment system is saying “thanks for that position but the time is for suckers.”
Yep. Nav works just fine (though the maps are a little out of date in some areas). It’s just the date that won’t set itself anymore. The date and time display are separate from the nav screen, for what that’s worth.
Wow that sucks… in my car the time is off by an hour half the year because I never bother to update it for daylight savings. I assume it keeps a timer running somewhere to keep it on track
I’d be out of my mind, too, if the time was off. Luckily, I can set the time. It’s just the date that’s fully auto / out of my hands.
Honestly I barely look at the car time. I usually use Apple drive or Android Auto
GPS, telematics(the driving data your car collects and sends back to the automotive company who built it), over the air updates, some SOS style features like OnStar, maybe satellite radio.
Edit: Maybe apps, and stuff like updates to the onboard owners manual (because some cars don’t come with a paper one anymore). Oh. And using your phone as a key.
Sounds like I’m not missing much lol. I just use my phone for that stuff
I was mentioning this issue with my weird little car in another thread.
My car is old enough that it uses a 3g radio to connect to the internet so that things like the NissanConnect app will work. I don’t know how many 3g towers there are, but the app functionality definitely doesn’t work. The rest of the car works fine, all the accessories work, but the app doesn’t.
The car is a 2018, which i think is before the push for subscription heated seats.
As a side note, heated seats suck, I don’t get the appeal. It makes me feel like I’m wetting myself.
I’ve no clue if I will like them or not. This car I have now is the first I’ve had with heated seats and steering wheel, I’ve only turned them on to see if they work, because every day since I bought the car has been over 90°F/32°C.
Ooh a heated wheel sounds so good in a cold climate
I have a motorcycle with heated grips, im hoping the car’s wheel is just as nice.
Do you not have harsh winters? I don’t miss them that much in the American pacific northwest (mild 4 seasons climate) outside of a few weeks a year, but when I lived in the American Midwest where the climate is harsher in both directions I really missed having seat warmers when it was below -5C regularly and sometimes going below -20C
It gets down to 4°C sometimes where I live, so not that harsh comparatively. I’ve experienced -5°C when traveling and it’s a whole different thing, my Australian ass was not equipped for that environment lol. Let alone -20, I’d probably just die. But above 0 it feels like good pants are probably good enough.
Honestly the bigger problem here is the opposite; on a 40°C day the seats and steering wheel become lava. I keep gloves in the car just to not burn myself in summer. I wouldn’t mind “cooled” seats and steering wheel instead of heated, but that sounds harder to pull off somehow.
It’s not the first tone deaf car feature sold in Australia, though. The worst are the holes in the ceiling to let the sun in. Free skin cancer for everyone!
Yeah, 40C sounds just absolutely awful, I’d much rather put up with -20C… and only a little bit because several cars have had air conditioners die on me. But yeah if it’s above 0 seat warmers can be a bit luxurious, but aren’t worth adding.
I think people who haven’t lived in north central/east North America can really underestimate how brutal the winters get there. Not like I can judge, I only know how bad y’all’s summers are because of the natural disasters relating to it.
Seat coolers are a thing these days! They use peltier coolers, which are solid state but worse than the refrigeration cycle. It’s still luxury, but it’s now “luxury trim on a prius” luxury as opposed to only in luxury cars.
But yeah, the major car brands being based in the US (largely in the aforementioned midwest), Germany, Japan, and South Korea really doesn’t do favors to folks from warmer climates, and it’s easy for the world to forget about your UV issues.
What car is it?
I don’t want to dox myself, sorry
Like the person I responded to who thought needing an app to find a charging station was an improvement over just having them all over like gas stations.
I got a used 22 reg hybrid last year. It’s never had to connect to the internet.
I’m curious what you would pick today if you had to.
Something from 20 years ago
I guess I assumed we were talking new or newer cars.
Oh, we definitely were. If you don’t want something connected to the cloud, your options are:
- buy from a very small company
- build yourself something, kitcar style
- buy something from 20 years ago
Everything else is a rolling data vacuum
I feel the same way about the new cars which is why I’m still driving a 2012. I genuinely have no idea what I would get if I wanted something newer.
I’m rocking a 2006 VW Polo. Thing’s a beast. Almost no power, endless tiny things wrong, but I got pushed off the road by a cement pump truck…and I mean…yeah it was “written off” but only because popping the dents and repainting it would be more than it’s value. Most of what’s gone wrong I’ve been able to fix myself for less than £100, and going to my friend’s place to use his garage and big jack.
I’ve had to pick a new car in the last year. I chose a 2012. fuck new cars. fuck their headlights. fuck their spying. fuck their complexity. fuck their non-ownership. fuck their cost. fuck their bloated sizes. fuck their blind spots. fuck their driver assistance that interferes with my control of the vehicle. fuck their touchscreens that are absolutely useless in sunlight.
Yep… that’s what I was talking about
The 2029 Slate Wagon, Vaporware Edition
I have yet to own a vehicle made in the 21st century.
I’m terrified of having to get a vehicle that requires software updates that eventually will stop receiving support. I’m also terrified of getting a vehicle with just generally shitty software. My gf’s car has awful software and there’s nothing she can do about it.
Just give me 90s era cars again. They last forever and they’re easy to repair on your own.
There’s lot to be said for physical safety features like side and curtain airbags, or better crumple zones that don’t crush your feet, but those were pretty much standard by 2012 so you can have those without all the computer nightmares.
You can get cars as late as 2016 for this
I wonder how much cheaper a car without any crap in it could be today if they still manufactured them at scale
I know I may get flamed for this since it has funding from Bezos but take a look at the Slate Truck (https://www.slate.auto/). Not cellular modem so no tracking (other than app based things. They say like charging and whatnot but you never know). No carplay or android auto, not entertainment dash at all. Hell the windows are old school cranks for rolling up and down.
This, but as a compact and without Bezos.
The cloud? I’ve owned many a vehicle who’s company doesn’t exist anymore XD No car should be tied to any cloud or connectivity crap for use
Saturn enters the chat.
Pontiac says “hello” and Oldsmobile is hitting on Saab.
Holy shit how did this comment make me feel so old. Saturn was the only one that came to mind but I recognize all of those.
Daewoo is the one I wish was still here.
Fun part about Pontiac, they were where most of the Saturn people came from. So those people got to watch gm kill two of their dreams.
We must create some legalisation on this else a buch of smart cars are going to turn into dumb bricks.
In contrary to what many are saying I don’t think going back to plain cars is the solution. I think an open standard would be the solution here to provide an option to self-host or connect to provider.
Doesn’t even need a technical solution. Could just be some law that in order to sell a vehicle:
-
A company has to maintain any cloud support for at least 20 years.
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They have to put up a bond that will allow such services to continue even if they go belly up before those 20 years are through.
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All vehicle features where cloud connections are not essential to their function must be operable without any cloud connection. So it’s fine if after 20 years you can’t pull the contacts from your google account to display on the car’s screen, or if GPS map updates no longer work. But the door locks or seat heaters better not be cloud connected.
Enforcing 20 years of support would be difficult since they’d presumably be going bankrupt/closing anyway so they don’t really have anything to lose.
Bond.
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It’s crazy that “local first” has to apply to cars now.
My new vehicle has remote start, but only via the app. It’s a useful feature but frustrating that my trim level doesn’t also have it available via the keyfob. Once the manufacturer ends support for my vehicle I will lose the feature out-right.
Sounds like you own the vehicle and can make whatever modifications you want to it in order for it’s features you purchased to work.
My father’s Avalon will never show turn by turn navigation on the infotainment screen ever again because the mobile app it requires is dead. Car is 9 years old.
This is why screen projection should be required by law.
No worries, your cloud vehicle will not survive the cloud. Its electronics are so noumerous and irrepairable that cloud cars will never reach the age of cars build in the past.
We’ll need new regulation to stop this. And, we won’t get it with the capitalists in charge.
You buy something from before ~2015 and call it day!
Get a ninth gen Corolla and you’ll have no problems
Can’t find any near me, I’d have to fly to another country to get one that’s not full of rust holes and decommissioned due to failing safety inspection which doesn’t allow for perforation.
Although less integrated with the vehicle’s systems, aftermarket telematics and diagnostic-port (OBD) solutions offer limited cloud connectivity to fill the gap left by OE services when they’re phased out. Unfortunately, most are engineered for fleet services
No mention of Open Vehicle Monitoring System (OVMS) here? Its mostly focused on older EVs where the manufacturer has abandoned the cloud portal for remote management of the car. However, that’s nearly the exact problem the article is calling out for other non-EV cars.
My next vehicle will be an early 90s Mercedes.
