- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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Scary to think that the answer will be no.
Depends on the manufacturer. A lot of American and European “smart” cars work fine without an internet connection. You need to use a key fob, and apps cloud maps or streaming apps obviously won’t work, but the basic driving, climate, and media stuff should work.
A lot of American and European cars actually kill your cloud service access if you don’t keep paying a subscription fee.
I have zero use for a cloud connected car lol.
Cloud connected cars are essentially what happens when companies refuse to admit smart phones are superior for 99% of the stuff they want their car to do, and the other 1% is subscription bullshit.
Nah they’re using that cloud connection to spy on you and make money on the backend by selling your data.
Also to be able to disable certain functionalities of your car if you don’t pay a
monthly ransomsubscription.Not in the EU they’re not.
Legally they can’t and if they do it and get caught the fines are proportional to their Worldwide Revenues.
Bless the EU
I have zero desire for a cloud connected car.
I think they keep an IOT connection alive to get the data they need from the car, they just kill your enjoyment of it. What happens if it would truly drop, your guess is as good as mine.
And that is with vested manufacturers. With startups it could be much worse.
keep an IOT connection alive to get the data they need from the car
The data they want, not need.
Potato/potato…
Makes you wonder about ice cars too.
Absolutely, in that the more software in a vehicle, the more likely it is to brick once a company folds. ICE cars are less likely since they don’t have most of the software, but there are some that are computers on wheels still (and I’m sure the amount will continue to increase).
ICE vehicles have more software because they have more components. They have a transmission control module and an engine control module both of which have a lot of sensors to read and outputs to control. Much more than a simple EV would have.
In my experience (mostly as a hobbyist and not in cars), embedded systems software (i.e. running in microcontrollers) is way smaller than the kind of stuff running in entertainment systems which require the power of microprocessors.
It’s pretty much an entirelly different class of software and even the libraries used are done with entirelly different primary objectives (generally small size is more important than just about everything else in the embedded system world).
ICE cars will have more microcontrollers (all communicating with each other via CAN), but the sofware within most of them is something that fits a few tens of KB of memory, whilst the software managing the used interface even if the screen is only 1024x768 (which looks like crap even compared to the cheapest of smartphones), will be tens of hundreds of megas worth of code + data.
Right but both EVs and ICE vehicles have infotainment systems. ICE vehicles have more components that require software in addition to that.
My point is that vehicle control software that ends up in centralized systems tends to be bigger because the philosophy of making software for embedded systems (not just the core program but also libraries) is very different than that for systems with microprocessors: embedded systems with microcontrollers tend to have a few tends of KB of program memory per computing node and hence don’t even have an OS most of the time and the programs have to be coded to fit there as do the libraries, whilst the same functionality implemented in a centralized system alongside with that for things like UI touch controls, route navigation, audio system control, interfacing with smartphones and so on (doesn’t even need to include infotainment), tends to have more lines of code to do the same thing and use big libraries simply because there is no real memory size pressure on coders to make the programs ultra small and use tiny libraries.
So the paradox is that if you add more processing nodes to a system (such as in a car) in the form of microcontrollers and move some functionality to run there rather instead of in the central more powerful computing node, you will probably end up with fewer lines of code purelly because the software design philosophy for microcontrollers emphasises smaller size and less overhead (hence why they don’t usually have an OS), whilst that for systems with actual microprocessors does not hence the software tends to be a lot more bloated.
(The complaint from older software programmers that software nowadays is much more bloated is true. However microcontrollers are like the microprocessors of 30 years ago - say 4KB RAM, 64KB storage flash memory and a 40MHz clock - so the code for those is till forced to be done lean and mean, otherwise it wont fit or perform)
So if you measure “amount of software” by “code size”, then ICEs will have less software because they tend to use a distributed system design with lots of small computing nodes, for historical reasons (they existed back in the days when electronics was moving to using software running in microcontrollers instead of discrete logic in hardware or PLAs) and possible also because some of the things they have to do which are not required for EVs (such as injection control) have very tight time constraints and the best way to make sure your software reliably works with ms or sub-ms margins is to not even have an OS and coding that software to be small with very tightly controlled code execution in something like C and even with ASM for more critical stuff.
However if you measure “amount of software” by “number of individual functionalities it covers” (so, roughly, the number of programs in the whole system), then your are correct that all else being the same ICEs have more software because more functions have to be covered to control an ICE system.
Right, the centralized control systems that get bloated with software are not unique to EVs. Like I said. And those centralized control systems have more inputs and outputs to interact with on an ICE than on an EV because an ICE has more components.
I’m not a hobbyist. I was a master automotive mechanic for over 20 years and I am now a software developer. I feel the need to say this because you are restating the same points I already address in a more verbose way as if you are hoping to make it sound too complicated for the average person to refute.
Maybe just in terms of their electronics, such as updates and extended services.
I do wonder if things like heated seat subscription in EV’s and ICE car’s will keep functioning after the company disappears.
Seems like that is ripe for a class action. If a piece of hardware ceases to function if you don’t pay a fee but then the ability to pay is denied or removed the hardware should default to functioning. Come on EU, this is right up your alley, let’s get some laws made over there so us lowly Americans can benefit!
It’s not even a difficult law to pass, “if a cloud service goes out of business, its software becomes public domain. If the company is acquired, the sale must include a promise to keep the services operational for the full lifetime of the product unless the software is public domained”
The difficulty is in explaining what any of that means to the people who make the laws.
The difficulty would be enforcing this when the entity legally no longer exists
Go after the owners of the company, stop letting people hide behind these companies they can start with $100 and 20 minutes online when they commit crimes
I think it’s kind of the opposite direction. Picture a company that exists and is profitable, say a gas station. Eventually they realize how much groundwater they’ve contaminated and that they can’t pay it, so go out of business. They no longer exist. Certainly any bond posted for cleanup will be seized but that’s never enough. Then there’s nothing of value left to seize, nor are their affairs held long enough to determine the scope of the problem. Then by the basic rules of corporations, there’s no one left to sue, to recover from
Sure, if it were a sham company you may be able to legally go around that, but the point is that many legit companies will go out of business, leaving a mess for taxpayers
Probably not. But that’s what happens when you buy Things as a Service.
Yeah they’ll likely end up melting once global temperatures rise high enough.
I think that that can be generalized to:
“When <cloud-connected device company> shuts down, will their <product> still work?”
Cars are a particularly problematic example, because they have a long life and are expensive, but generally-speaking, I think that when someone buys a cloud-connected device, it’s a good idea to think “what exactly is going to happen if this company goes under and stops providing online services, or just discontinues service at some point” at the outset.
Might be cars or smartwatches or live service video games. They all run into similar issues.
Yup, that’s why I don’t buy that crap. I would love an EV, but they all seem to spy on their drivers and I’m concerned that all that spyware isn’t properly protected anyway.
An EV really shouldn’t be all that complicated, and there’s zero reason for it to connect to the outside world. All it needs to do is:
- charge the battery
- regulate the battery’s temperature
- discharge the battery to make it go
None of that requires power, and that whole process is much simpler than my ICE car, which doesn’t have any external communication either. Give me an EV without all the smart crap and I’ll probably buy it.
That’s not an EV issue that’s a modern car issue.
One of the worst privacy risks was Buick who didn’t even make EVs.
I feel like it largely started with EVs though, since they came with all of the smart crap out of the gate.
That’s just when you noticed. High end models of cars had that since OnStar.
Sure, but OnStar is largely limited to GM vehicles and, as you said, certain high-end models as an option. Also, remote start was an option on a number of vehicles going years back.
The change with EVs is that the smart crap is in the base models, so you can’t get a model that doesn’t phone home. With OnStar, it’s usually as simple as removing the infotainment screen and disconnecting a cable to disable it, whereas newer cars are a lot more complicated to disable the phone home features, and may not work without them.
I blame EVs for normalizing it, as well as making it more difficult to disable that crap.
Maybe it’s both of our bias but I stopped seeing new cars without an integrated head unit in 2010, the Tesla model s came out in 2012. Yes the base models didn’t have the informant system but I will die on the hill that it’s not the EV that brought it to the masses. Longer loan options so people could get a higher end car and pay on it for 7years. Along with people wanting gps in their cars, play music, and hands free laws, it was easier to just get a car that you could tap a button to answer your phone.
The integrated head unit isn’t the problem, my 2007 Prius has one and it doesn’t have any way to phone home (no navigation built-in, for example).
I don’t know about the rest of the industry, but at least with Toyota Prius, navigation/internet access became standard around 2020. All of that is standard on most EVs, except maybe the base Leaf (it’s standard on Chevy Bolt though). EVs certainly didn’t create the option, but it became standard soon after EVs shipped with those features as standard.
I got bad news about ICE cars made in the past decade.
Yeah, we’re looking to upgrade our car, and unfortunately one of my requirement now needs to be “has a YouTube video detailing how to disable internet features.” I just want a simple, easy to maintain car that doesn’t spy on me, why is that so big of an ask?
Yeah, this is why I’m not new car shopping. Like, ever. I’m done. I’ll drive my Crosstrek until the engine falls out, and then I’ll replace said engine with an EV powertrain and drive it some more.
Because of capitalism. Good luck.
Sounds like a copout. I blame consumers who bought this trash when it launched, and continue buying this trash today. Car companies build what consumers claim to want, and then they monetize it as much as they can. People responded favorably to SW unlocks early on, so now car manufacturers are seeing what they can get away with. They’re getting pushback, which is great, but the proper time to push back was 10 years ago.
10 years ago we didn’t even know they were doing it. And now it’s way too late to push back unless you feel like starting a car company.
That depends on your definition of “we.” As soon as there’s anything that phones home, that’s when alarm bells should be going off. I wasn’t in the market when this started being a thing, but I do recall talking about it with those who were, and I wasn’t happy about cars phoning home. I’d be very surprised if I’m alone in this.
Yep, and precisely why I refuse to buy anything that requires an internet connection to work. I’m even wary of services that lock me in for longer than maybe 6 months. The only annual subscription I have is for my VPN.
An actual device/machine that I plan to use for years? Hell no. Offline only is a must have.
A car is also difficult to ignore, compared to something smaller.
A small expensive device that stopped working because the company shut it down is annoying, but you can at least put it to the side and ignore it.
You can’t really do that to a car that has functionally become a paperweight because the parent company has gone under.
This was really thrown into sharp focus for me a couple of years back, when I read an article about how people with ocular implants are being left to go blind again because the company who made their implant has been bought by another company who doesn’t want to continue support.
I just can’t think about how callous that is, and if a company doesn’t give a shit about that, why would they give a shit about a car?
Sounds like this
Yep, that’s the one. Utter shithouses.
Never heard about it but it sounds crazy.
I really hope some massive EV startup goes under and bricks thousands of cars. It might be the last straw that forces lawmakers to regulate services shutting down (keep providing the service or open source all your code so that some else can keep providing that service)
One thing is the risk that your device might become a paperweight with $300 smartwatches or home automation systems, another is to have them with $30,000 cars.
The problem is not that there is a risk, the problem is how the magnitude of the potential loss from that kind of risk when the risk applies to cars.
Rationally there should be a lot more consumer protection rules on things were people have to work many months or even years to earn enough to buy them than in things that cost the income of a few days or weeks of work, at the very least the kind of information forcing the full disclosure upfront to customers of such risks and their consequences (if a brand’s electric car will literaly become a paper-weight once support from the manufacturer ends, that should be shown in every advert for that product using a very large font).
The current combination having such risks associated with massive potential losses whilst the manufacturers actually hide that from customers and do little or nothing to reduce the impact of such risks, is unnacceptable.
because they have a long life
Not as long as it could be and that’s intentional. My '97 piece of crap will outlive most EVs anv even most new ICEs.
Evs will outlast ice cars as there are less moving parts. All we need now is 3rd party car battery replacement as a standard.
The VW Beetle, among many others, would like a word.
EV batteries aren’t as easy to make as most ICE parts.
The first telas batteries were 18650s, the same ones that the diy vapes used. As more EVs are bought the more of a market there will be to support them. People are already refurbishing EV battery packs.
I’m looking forward to the “how to hack your Tesla to 100% operational functionality using a raspberry pi 9 and this dongle, run your car with your phone!” youtube videos (or whatever streaming service steps over its flaming corpse to replace) it in the next few decades
People have already been jailbreaking Teslas to unlock full self-driving, which is a $10k software patch.
Wait, a Tesla in its default configuration doesn’t allow self driving?
No it has always been an additional purchase. The only “self driving” mode that’s included by default is their “auto pilot”, which is just TACC with better lane assist so it can take sharper bends in the road without “bouncing” between the lines like most other cars do with lane assist.
Most people seem to incorrectly think that autopilot and FSD are the same thing, but they are not.
additional purchase
😂 people pay to be guinea pigs? Wow…
Welcome to the tech early adopter world.
I for one are very happy that there are so many
suckersbrave bleeding edge tech adopters willing to spend the money and endure the amateur-hour technology put together with spit-and-chewing-gum so that the rest of us get to enjoy the handful of trully useful stuff that survives to become mature products.Somebody has to be the cannon-fodder in battling all the fraud and bullshit of present day “Tech” “innovations”, and I for one am glad there are so many volunteers.
You shouldn’t be happy about that, if for no reason other than other drivers (and pedestrians, cyclists, etc) are put at risk of these systems’ limitations, and folks relying on them more than they ought to.
That’s up to regulators: even brand new “innovative” electronics devices that plug to mains power still have to obbey regulations to protect people from electrocution, so similarly self-driving vehicles should have to obbey regulations to protect people from being killed by them.
If they don’t have to obbey such regulations or the regulations are insufficient, the blame is on the Regulators, which generally means the blame is on Politicians.
It’s not up to buyers, early adopters or otherwise, to have the technical expertise to determine if something they’re buying is dangerous (often not even experts can tell without actual disassembly and lab testing).
I mean, that’s not really unique to Tesla customers in any way. Lots of people like to be early adopters of new things, tech more than other things I believe. More often than it’s not very good when they buy in to it.
When those things are on wheels, though…
No, autopilot is now also an additional feature
That seems to be region specific then, because I just checked and autopilot is still included by default where i live (northern Europe). Only enhanced autopilot and FSD are additional purchases here.
Apparently I’m lying twice over then. You’re probably right about autopilot vs “enhanced autopilot” but I just looked at the order page and only fed is extra cost. It’s also much cheaper than it would have been when I got my Tesla.
No it has always been an additional purchase. The only “self driving” mode that’s included by default is their “auto pilot”, which is just TACC with better lane assist so it can take sharper bends in the road without “bouncing” between the lines like most other cars do with lane assist.
Most people seem to incorrectly think that autopilot and FSD are the same thing, but they are not.
Most people tend to incorrectly think
I mean, Musk and Tesla oversold and mismarketed the feature. Don’t blame the consumer here.
They distinctly labeled them with names that are not even remotely close in wording, one even with a very clear and precise name of the intended feature set (FSD). I can’t really see how people can think they’re the same TBH, especially considering the clear distinction between the two on their website.
I 100% agree the feature set of FSD is false marketing and wildy misleading as it’s currently not even close to delivering anything beyond level 2 autonomy, and hasn’t for the past decade since they announced it was “ready end of year”, albeit still more capable than the auto pilot feature (at least in the closed beta).
Yes, I can’t see why people would hear ‘Autopilot’ and think it had anything at all to do with full self driving.
Why would they when the website specifically and quite clearly distinguishes the two…only a person that makes no effort to understand what they’re talking about would get confused and continue to spread false information.
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Aside from cosmetic upgrades, all Teslas are essentially the same, just with certain features disabled/pay walled. So your base model 3 has the exact same battery as the top of the line version because it is cheaper to manufacturer them all that way.
That’s just not true. Go to https://ev-database.org/ and compare the dry weight of the different models. You don’t add 66kg going from standard to long range in software.
Idk, have you seen software bloat these days??
That’s correct, there are some respected engineering channels that specifically mention this is why different models of the same EV require different charging behavior per the manufacturer’s manual. The battery compositions are different and have different densities and characteristics.
Edit: although it’s possible some models could share the exact same battery model and have some software restriction in place.
You’re both right, some teslas were sold with their battery software limited. And able to be unlocked via DLC.
And somehow the RPi9 will still need some $90 5V20A USB power supply
You can connect it to the Tesla’s battery and it will drain them more in 5 minutes of operation that driving the car for 200 miles does, but at least it will be able to run a full LLM and render billions of triangles with full raytracing at 200 fps on a 4K display.
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https://ingenext.ca/products/boost-50
50 hp for $1k
I can’t find them right now, but there are similar things you can buy to unlock factory features at a discount.
I’ve been waiting years for Tesla hacks to add power or remove Autopilot or remove software-locked batteries or unlock paid features.
It’s unlikely to happen while Musk can still afford to throw lawyers at them and sue them into oblivion.
Should be happening now but I understand these things take time.
That should be a thing - some place where all the connectors from various parts are marked and you can just remove the Tesla brain and put an RPi in place.
But I don’t think it is =\
Well, someone did it at least partly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdPRhkbeQJk
Altough in this case it’s to improve acceleration, not anything related to privacy.
Opencore Legacy Patcher, but for cars. Nice.
Ever drive in a car with a big screen from like 10+ years ago that has the most outdated, useless UI?
Now imagine that’s your whole car.
I miss the days when the radio was its own separate thing in a car. Hate the outdated UI? Just replace the radio head unit with a modern one.
Nowadays it’s a lot more difficult. There is a module called iDatalink Maestro that allows you to still maintain most factory features after replacing your head unit, but a lot of cars tend to be incompatible—especially EVs—as more and more features become integrated into the stereo. The days of modular components in cars is nearing an end.
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This is why I think the people modding cars to be evs are so much better.
Especially EVs, or especially Teslas?
You can get that experience with new cars too. Especially anything made by BMW who presumably don’t extend their craftsmanship ideals to their software.
I reckon it all comes from the stupid ass tesla hype, both Hyundai Group then later VW Group came out and said they will be putting back physical buttons.
Other than that, they should also fuck off with their software, make it be able to control the functions of the car, everyone uses carplay/android auto anyway, so what’s the point of all the other stuff.
Will a new anything work if the manufacturer kills off the entirely unnecessarily forced network features?
This is not an EV problem, this is an MBA grifting problem.
Still, as from a mechanical engineer perspective I would trust slightly more a combustion motor system to work offline rather than an electrical, where I could never know how the motor really works and relays on.
Personally I enjoy driving a 1987 bensine Ford.
I also do have a degree in mech eng and electrics as well. Electrics are much, much simpler, the reason EVs have a reputation for being hard to service is that they are new and chock full of online bullshit, which is true of new ICE cars as well. If it was just the battery and the motors, it’s incredibly simple.
They’re simpler in concept but then you slept 27 on a network and then the owner gets to find out that when one of the components dies you can’t just pull one out of something else and put it in because it’s not licensed correctly.
The same is true of any modern ICE, you’re not exactly gonna get source code or schematics for drivetrain management
What would be more complex an electric fan, or a fan with an internal combustion engine? It’s all the add ins that make cars complex. The motors are always simple.
Finally people are starting to ask the questions that actually matter.
Yeah well I raised this question six years ago and muskrat fanbois got me banned from like four EV ‘the other site’ communities.
Can you name one of these that exist in an EV that doesn’t exist in an ICE vehicle? The issue is the same across the board. Notice a child can build a remote control car. Nothing complicated about a battery (gas tank) and a motor. It’s the controllers to the windows, locks, on screen entertainment, wipers, sun roof, trunk/hood latches, antilock breaks, that become the worry of software/firmware being tied into.
The ice motor ends up being more complicated, as you regulate timing for spark plugs, fuel injectors, and how lean the fuel is as it enters at different speeds. Electric motors don’t need that part.
Oh look a bot asking me to do knowledge work for free.
Get blocked, get reported, and begone from my internet forever.
Da fuck? Get fucked
Tech folks love to put questions the way “what if someone can own you via this thing”, and normies intuitively defend against that - they feel the implication that they can be owned and not know it is an insult, while it’s just truth. They also irrationally think that a system allowing to own people is a two-edged sword while it isn’t, they kinda feel empowered by complexity they don’t know. A bit like people not having a B52 plane feel awe before it and the ordnance it can drop.
However, if you put the question like this, what happens with all those pyramids of crap when they are not maintained anymore, it may work.
“im not owned! im not owned!!”, i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob
Companies should be required to maintain a stash of plans and source code which is automatically released upon the company stopping operations, unless the IP is bought.
unless the IP is bought
It’s always bought on liquidation. The creditors require it to be sold to legally satisfy them. What’s worse is that the IP may only be licensed in the first place.
Novell was re-awarded OS code which it sold – a term I use based on talking to people in the room on both the seller and buyer side of the negotiation table at the time, but merely second-hand knowledge. Novell was awarded ownership as the fact of the sale became a poker chip in a US$5bn lawsuit that could be refuted to give an advantage to one adversary in that lawsuit.
Novell hasn’t done a thing with it in 20 years. The code is essentially dead because it would cost too much to restart and update.
This was how the original Unix died, and doesn’t violate your plan. Counterexampled?
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I mostly agree, but five years often won’t score your ROI. I especially think entertainment IPs should fall into the public domain faster. 70-years after the author’s death is a fucking joke.
If, god forbid, Steven King croaks tomorrow, his work should go public after a few years (to resolve estate issues).
I think the bigger issue is that IP rights can be held by corporations at all. Yes, it should be shorter, but it should also only be able to be owned by individuals.
Copyright and patents, at least. I guess trademarks make sense to be owned by companies.
As long as they’re a smartphone on wheels the answer is no.
We want real cars again, even if electric.
My smartphone still works without service. Just as a tablet/computer device. Cars should be the same.
If Google or Apple went out of business (depending on which phone you have) you’d stop getting updates and it’d stop working.
My NES hasn’t received an “update” in the 37 years since it was manufactured, and it still runs fine. So does my Tandy 1000 PC. Didn’t even have to replace any capacitors. This is what we want. Some time 15-20 years ago we started taking the wrong path with our tech.
I am old enough to remember appliances coming with full schematics printed inside their cases.
Electronics age out over time. The old stuff, made with more materials, take longer to age out. However, the old stuff does not have even a smidgen of the performance or power efficiency the modern stuff does.
Capacitors age because they are filled with liquid electrolyte, which dries out over time. Batteries age for mostly the same reason, and the chemical reaction slowly becomes irreversible. Those are easily replaceable. However, an integrated circuit is just a wafer of silicon. A piece of sand. It’s going to take a long, long time for that to degrade. If it weren’t for needing constant software updates and cloud connections to be useful, an iPhone could theoretically last a hundred years. “Tin whiskers” may also be a problem, but we are talking decades before you have to worry about that.
I don’t think your theory about old things lasting longer because there is more mass to them is correct though. It really sounds like you are making that up because it sounds good in your head.
The larger components have more space between them… it takes longer for the “tin whiskers” to grow and become a problem. That and these old devices ran at higher voltages, so they have more tolerance to minor voltage fluctuations. Also, plastic does degrade eventually, copper traces can corrode, etc. Build quality matters, too.
Why do you need performance or power efficiency in a car’s computer? It just needs to go when I press the pedal, and stop when I hit the brakes. That’s not complicated, and something like battery wear leveling and temperature regulation can be a completely closed system and not require any updates whatsoever.
I really don’t understand why cars need so much complex stuff, I just want it to get me from A to B, ideally in comfort. My current car that’s >15 years old does that just fine with no internet connection, why do I need all the complex software?
Why performance…
Do you like your car’s head unit to spend 1-5 seconds not doing anything before responding to your touchscreen or button press? No? Then yes, performance matters.
Power efficiency? Anything to extend battery life.
I don’t even want my car to have a touch screen!
Yeah, I don’t need a touch screen. All I want is feature parity with my 15+ yo cars.
Would it? In what way? Sure the App Store would be done. But apps I current have and safari would be fine.
Think of all the Apple shit your phone depends on. iCloud, iMessage, any time you have to authenticate with your apple password. Probably a bunch of other iBullshit that I’m not familiar with because I don’t have an iPhone. At the very least, your OS would stop getting security updates, and like you said, you wouldn’t have an app store to push app updates. Some stuff would break immediately and other stuff would degrade over time.
Now imagine it’s your car
If we look at Android instead, I can just use one of the other app stores. Most of my apps come from F-Droid, and my updates come from GrapheneOS, not Google (though they basically package up Google’s updates). If Google completely disappeared, I’d probably just donate to GrapheneOS so they can afford to take over SW maintenance. But even if I don’t get any more updates, my phone is already quite secure and I’d still get updates for the vast majority of my apps.
I want something like GrapheneOS for my car. Or better yet, I want my car to be simple enough that it doesn’t need security updates to keep going. My car should go when I step on the accelerator pedal, and stop when I hit the brakes. It doesn’t need internet access or security updates to do that.
Not at all. It would maintain functionality at the current status quo, and browsers would still receive updates and keep current with server based technology. If anything required additional components to use new technologies or display novel applications, that would be a hardware based change that won’t be fixed through a system update regardless.
You can still browse the web just fine on a phone from 2010 running Android 2.3 - many applications are now unsupported, but if Google (or Apple, for that matter) were to stop updating the OS, then application developers would stay at the current technology level that make hardware upgrades unnecessary.
Some apps that require google services (I’m sure there’s an equivalent for iOS) might no longer work, but most run just fine regardless.
If security is what you’re getting at, at least for Android, there are excellent third party solutions that keep attackers out even on an end of life device (shoutout to Hypatia).
As a member of /c/FuckCars I say we don’t want cars at all. We want robust public transportation, and bicycle paths. Entire cities designed around going green. People want to get angry at the Starbucks CEO for using a private jet, and reasonably so, but NOBODY wants to take responsibility for the toll each car puts on the environment. Yes, even the electric cars. That electric energy still has to come from somewhere.
Public transportation does not operate in the middle of nowhere where the closest store is more than half an hour away.
It will when we fund it. If 100% of the people require public transportation, then 100% of the people will want that transportation to be funded as well as it can. Kind of like how even out in the sticks you have plumbing, and drinking water. Imagine if only 10% of the state needed plumbing. It wouldn’t get funded well enough to cover you guys out there.
Look, I’m with you most of the way in theory, but a lot of rural areas don’t have plumbing and drinking water from public utilities, they have their own septic and water wells. I know it’s pedantic but a lot of parts of the world are so rural that it probably doesn’t make sense to have fully public transport, like it doesn’t make sense to have centralized water. The scope needs to be great systems within towns and cities and lots of park and ride hubs around the perimeter
We need to start smaller. Have you been to many remote, rural areas?
Name checks out. I’m all for public transportation, but to think that it will eliminate cars is nonsense.
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That doesn’t work for people like me who might drive 10 miles to work and then at the drop of a hat have to travel to another location 60 miles away, then have to travel back to the original location before the end of the day.
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Or if anyone’s job or hobby requires transporting more than can be carried on a bike trailer. Anyone living rurally. Anyone famous. People with mental conditions exacerbated by being enclosed with strangers. All that being said, I’d love to see a shift towards it being more popular.
I would also love to see huge improvements in public transportation, especially around me where the last bus route leaves at 6:30 pm. The only time I would actually consider riding the bus again, it’s already shut down.
The reality, though, is that public transportation cannot replace cars for people that need them. And if you live in the United States, it’s just too damn big, and at least 20% of the population will probably never see public transportation as a viable option.
Not advocating for the previous comment but commerce would adapt no matter the change. Your job would either change your job duties and or hire someone at the other locations or they would find a way for you to work remotely. Who knows maybe banning cars could be the push our society needs to build avatars that we can control from remote locations.
Uh I’m gonna go watch some avatar now. I’m stoned enough that it might be good.
What if they’re an electrician/plumber/repair man that needs a full kit of equipment and drives all over town. A contractor building a house transporting materials. A school/church/daycare transporting kids that doesn’t want to have them loose on public transport. Garbage man. Emergency services. Food delivery. Etc
That would work if we invested as much into public transit as into cars. This goes back to designing cities for public transit instead of cars. If we did that with the money we currently are putting into cars we could have high frequency metro lines where inner city interstate / highway routes and high speed rail for inter city interstate/highway routes along with frequent bus service in the cities/towns on the lines. We think public transit is inherently slow and unreliable but that’s because we never invest enough money to make it fast and reliable.
I’m guessing you’ve never lived in rural America? I don’t think you’re grasping how big the world is for some people. I have to drive three hours to get from my urban home to my favorite mountain bike trail in the mountains.
No I haven’t lived in rural America but most Americans haven’t either. Most live in the suburbs, cities or towns. It’s like saying people need to eat less sugar and we should stop using it for every food and people saying “what about the diabetics who need sugar” yeah they do but that’s not the majority of people. We can make exceptions for them while also overhauling our food industry to remove this thing that’s causing health problems for most people.
As for the mountain bike scenario ideally you would take a train to a town near the trail and then the town can have a shuttle up to the mountain. If we did fully invest in public transit this wouldn’t add too much to your trip and has some other benefits.
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This would be good for the park and wildlife in general as less traffic would make it easier for animals to migrate. Less roadkill
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This would lower the amount of development needed in the park as parking lots wouldn’t be necessary.
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It would make mountain biking more accessible for people who don’t have a car or can’t drive.
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It would make it more social, you could meet people on the shuttle on the way up, if there are regulars then a community could form.
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It would reduce the amount of air and noise pollution.
- The towns are too small to operate or afford shuttles to the nearly 2000 mountains in my state.
- Nearly 2000 mountains, the amount of traffic in any given area is negligible.
- There is almost no development and definitely no parking lots. You find an empty spot in the dirt near the trailhead. Usually no more than five or six cars around. Did I mention the part about nearly 2000 mountains to choose from?
- Fair point. But we don’t need the mountains to be more accessible. We don’t need more people out destroying nature. Stay in your cities.
- Nobody around here wants to socialize. We’re getting the fuck out of society into the serenity and quiet of being miles away from everyone.
- Your last point is complete bullshit. Increased accessibility means more people, more people means more pollution of every kind. The tallest mountain here does have a shuttle to the top and the locals don’t like going there because it’s always packed.
Yeah maybe there are are 2000 mountains, but how many have mountain bike trails? If there are trails then there is probably some organization maintaining them like the state or national park service who can also run the shuttles. Shuttles are also pretty cheap and can stop at multiple trail heads based off requests. You can also rotate where the shuttles go each day / week so if there’s a more obscure trail/mountain then you can just wait until it comes up in the schedule. The towns would also probably want to run the shuttles as well since it will bring business to the area.
Ok, let’s assume we want less people on the mountain, what gives you the right to go to the mountain then? Because you can afford a car? That doesn’t seem fair. Also most people have a car so it’s not restricting that many people. If we say only 30 people should go to the mountain a day that’s way easier to enforce if we say only 2 shuttles of 15 are allowed. It’s also fairer as who gets to go is just determined by whoever signs up first, as opposed to whether someone owns something.
I think many people would like to socialize. There’s a loneliness epidemic and many people are looking for friends but don’t know where to meet them. If I was looking for friends with common interests like mountain biking the shuttle up would be a great place to meet them. Just because I want to get away from civilization doesn’t mean I want to get away from socializing, I hike regularly with groups of people and they mostly enhance the experience. If you aren’t into that that’s fine too, just put on your headphones ignore everyone and set off on the trail solo, nothing stopping you from doing that.
For the last point like I said usage can be controlled, even better then cars, but assuming the same usage a shuttle is less pollution then multiple cars. If like you said there are 5-6 cars at a particular trail head then one shuttle carrying all those people will cause less air and noise pollution and make it safer for animals.
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You people proselytize more than Linux evangelists and perhaps even Mormons do, and not even as entertainingly. Even if I agree with you, I don’t want to hear about fuckcars in every damn thread.
Dense cities and the consumerist lifestyles that exist inside them can not be “green” no matter how much green lipstick you put on it. Their very existence is destructive to the environment and disruptive of nature, switching out cars for bicycles or buses isn’t even scratching the surface of the issue.
This is exactly backwards. People in cities consume fewer resources per capital than people in rural areas, who can’t take advantage of the same economies of scale when it comes to transportation infrastructure, energy infrastructure, public utilities, physical supply chains, and all sorts of services in modern life, from seeing a doctor to repairing a broken window to borrowing a library book to getting a babysitter.
It’s rural areas that destroy more land, consume more water, generate more pollution, and emit more greenhouse gases, on a per capita basis, than dense areas.
I’m with you on everything here except the very last sentence.
EV impact is more about toxic particles from tire and brake wear, and greater road wear when most EVs are heavier than similar ICE vehicles. The cleanliness of an EV’s power source has been debunked over and over again, showing it’s still a net positive environmental impact to run an EV off dirty energy, compared to an ICE car burning gas or diesel.
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/are-electric-vehicles-definitely-better-climate-gas-powered-cars
Yep. This exactly.
This is not just something that can impact EVs. NFC door locks, smart infotainment, displays for gauges. None of that is EV specific these days.
These cars were clearly not designed to work without cloud connectivity and or an authenticated account. That seems bonkers. China is huge and has lots of remote areas. How were these cars going to work when they couldn’t phone home?
IMHO, a lot of cars have gone way overboard with “smart” features, but this manufacturer’s problems are the result of cutting corners and not designing for some common use cases.
NFC door locks, smart infotainment, displays for gauges
And I don’t need any of that.
Give me a simple car and I’ll buy it.
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The ages of cars on the road has been increasing. As reliability and prices continue to go up, more and more people hold on to their cars.
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Maybe. I don’t know of any other car brands that totally shit the bed when the cloud services get cut off.
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To be fair, Fiskers are likely to brick themselves and the company is still alive. They have some of the worst software in the auto industry.
That said, my point is that a lot of “smart” cars are designed work just fine offline. Being offline is common in rural areas and or when the driver decided to stop paying for mobile connectivity.
I’ve done the latter with a couple cars. You lose the ability to download new maps, see traffic, install updated streaming apps, and or remotely control climate / windows / locks with your phone. But I use my phone for music maps, and I don’t really care about unlocking the car with my phone.
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Or when the network that the car relies on no longer exists. My old e-reader’s mobile connectivity no longer works because the phone company providing the service turned the 3G network off in the upgrade to 4G.
It’s just 17 years old. People tend to keep cars for about that long. What happens then? Does it just become limited to basics only, or become a big metal brick?
People stop paying for smart car’s online services all the time.
You typically lose access maps or only get basic offline maps without traffic and charging stations listed. You also lose the ability to use streaming apps, the ability to remotely control locks, windows, cameras and climate from your phone, stolen vehicle tracking, alarm notifications, etc.
But if you have CarPlay / Android auto, the good maps and streaming apps can be pumped in from your phone.
I’ve never seen Android Auto work worth a shit. I use a charge-only USB cable to prevent my phone from trying to connect. The only use I have for the infotainment system is as a smooth flat surface on which to attach an adhesive phone mount.
I only use android auto in my ev6, I have had multiple pixel phones. Google map, a better route planner, teams, YouTube music. No issues, well one issue but it was not android auto, the cable connection in the car was loss so I put some conductive grease on it and reconnected it. Had no dropout’s since.
NFC door locks have a sliding panel with a key override. Usually a shit lock that can be opened by any amateur… One of the many reasons I don’t have one.
At least the cars can be updated (at least until the manufacturer says fuck it). A ton of those ‘smart’ devices have no such capability so when a vulnerability is found it won’t ever be fixed.
This is why I won’t touch a car that doesn’t have Android Auto, CarPlay, etc. I want to be able to update my audio apps and maps, even when the manufacturer decides to stop updating my head unit.
that only shifts the problem to Apple and Google, neither of which can be trusted to keep supporting older versions of CarPlay or Android Auto as the years go by and they change shit around.
Possibly, but these technology are a decade old, their product roadmaps still look very robust, and a lot of drivers actually base new purchase decisions on that feature’s availability.
IMHO, it’s low risk, and if it does get killed, oh well. Voice control and a dash mounted phone isn’t the total end of the world.
Probably just should said “phone key” instead of assuming NFC. It looks like a lot of these cars use other technologies to unlock without a fob.
It’s not your car if someone else controls it.
Cars are the tip of the iceberg. What about smart home appliances, like garage door openers, or door locks? They all come with their stupid apps, and once the company is dead, suddenly your home stops working.
We really need mandatory standards: post APIs for client-server connectivity and make the connection URL configurable.
1000%, we need to demand minimum functionality or stop perpetuating these fucking things by purchasing flawed products from flawed companies.
Or, you know, regulate them
There are a lot of manufacturer-agnostic smart home devices out there, and with just a tiny bit of research online it’s not difficult to avoid anything that is overly tied to a cloud service. Z-wave, ZigBee, Thread/Matter devices are all locally controlled and don’t require a specific companies app or environment — it’s only really the cheapest, bottom-of-the-barrel WiFi based devices that rely on cloud services that you have to be careful of. As with anything, you get what you pay for.
Even if the Internet were destroyed tomorrow, my smart door locks would continue to function — not only are they Z-wave based (so local control using a documented protocol which has Open Source drivers available), but they work even if not “connected”. I can even add new door codes via the touchscreen interface if I wanted to.
The garage door scenario can be a bit more tricky, as there aren’t a lot of good “open” options out there. However, AFAIK all of them continue to work as a traditional garage door opener if the online service becomes unavailable. I have a smart Liftmaster garage door opener (which came with the house when we bought it), and while it’s manufacturer has done some shenanigans in regards to their API to force everyone to use their app (which doesn’t integrate with anything), it still works as a traditional non-smart garage door opener. The button in the garage still works, as does the remote on the outside of the garage, the remotes it came with, and the Homelink integration in both of our vehicles.
With my IONIQ 5, the online features while nice are mostly just a bonus. The car still drives without them, the climate control still works without being online — most of what I lose are “nice-to-have” features like remote door lock/unlock, live weather forecasts, calendar integration, and remote climate control. But it isn’t as if the car stops being drivable if the online service goes down. And besides which, so long as CarPlay and Android Auto are supported, I can always rely on them instead for many of the same functions.
Some cars have much more integration than mine — and the loss of those services may be more annoying.
Agreed! The most promising standard is called matter. Vote with your wallet!
Looking at Aging Wheels YouTube channel with his fleet of non working Wheegos, the answer is no, they won’t.
A lot of his problems are also from the lack of available parts.
Which is why he has multiples of some of the orphaned cars in his fleet.
That’s why I bought an electric car from a car company. Mostly the same parts besides the drivetrain.
Yeah, I got a Bolt EUV last year. No regrets so far.
I got a Kia EV6, the only negative is they used an older infotainment system so i don’t get wireless android auto. When the new ones come out for the same car I went to see if I can get it changed out.
Yeah, but hes got 4 and none of them work. Or at least the one working one is also breaking down a lot.
cars? what about all those charging stations that don’t have payment by card and require you to setup an account through a mobile app like what kind of cuntery is that.
A lot of car parks are becoming like this. It’s especially frustrating when you try to download the app but you have no signal and there’s no other way to pay.
I checked it and remembered correctly that in the EU at least they made it mandatory to have it on chargers
The new EU regulation AFIR (Alternative Fuel Infrastructure Regulation) stipulates that fast-charging stations with an output of 50 kw or more must be equipped or retrofitted with the option of card payment with immediate effect. The AFIR came into force on 13 April 2024 and takes precedence over national laws.
My favorite thing about that is when you fill in the required info and need an email but because you gotta enter it each time using a temporary email doesn’t work. Then you get spammed to death by them…
Its an asset, it will be sold off, spun off or recovered.
That’s cool and scary but it also (mostly) applies to most new ICE cars as well.
Can you explain how? I’m at a bit of a loss how.
Most cars nowadays, EV or not, are cloud-connected and designed with build-in obsolescence.
So why couldn’t a Haltech and an aftermarket infotainment system work?
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No such aftermarket infotainment systems exist. Modern cars are way too locked down and way too tightly integrated for an aftermarket to feasibly exist.
Which SUCKS, I miss the DIN system in older cars where you could just put nearly any head unit in nearly any car. Sadly those days are gone.
I don’t think a Haltech ECU would pass inspection in most US states. I’ve had trouble getting my golf inspected with just a cat and a flash tune. There are emissions readiness monitors in most stock ECUs that need to show up for it to pass. The exhaust and tune i have aren’t even sold anymore because of the increasing number of legal restrictions. I get why it has to be that way but it does suck for people who want to work on their car.
Everything is locked down behind propriety firmware and protocols.
As long as the car isn’t dependent on an Internet connection or the manufacturer’s server and the ports aren’t proprietary, I think you’re good. I expect a car to have these.
Woah woah woah. You can’t “disrupt” the car industry without a subscription based model that can brick your hardware at a moments notice.
