Comment on When EV startups shut down, will their cars still work?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks agoSure, 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.
femtech@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
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.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
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).
femtech@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
Ahh I gotcha. Yeah, I like my EV but with the reports coming out that they are selling data to insurance providers I would love to disconnect my connection to the Internet but I believe it has a esim from Verizon.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Yeah, and digging that out could be a huge pain, as it’s usually buried beneath the dashboard, so it would probably take an hour or two to get to, even if it is user-removable.
I’m not going to buy any vehicle that I cannot block from accessing the internet, so my search for a car is a bit complicated. Instead of just looking at price and specs, now I also have to look for what kind of spyware it has and if it can be easily disabled.
noxy@yiffit.net 3 weeks ago
correlation doesn’t prove causation - this was going to happen even if EVs never took off.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Maybe, but it requires someone to move first, so I think EVs accelerated it.