this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
461 points (98.3% liked)
Technology
61130 readers
2948 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Yep. I'm stuck driving cars from the mid-2000s at the latest because it's a deal-breaker for me.
I'd love to have an electric car, but because they're all newer than that (except for some really rare compliance/fleet-only cars from the '90s with NiMH batteries, like the Ford Ranger and first-gen RAV4), I'd have to convert an ICE car to electric myself.
Commercial vehicles are still fine if you can tolerate it. Might be the best option in 15 years if nothing else. I have a '19 transit van and it has no way of phoning home, the only infotainment is the one I installed. I haven't researched too deeply but I assume the transit connect line is similar and if it is I'm considering making one my next personal vehicle.
The commercial version of practically everything is better than the consumer version (or at least bullshit-free).
The reason being that a large company has negotiating power far beyond that of an individual consumer.
There are still a bunch, but ultimately, that supply is going to dwindle as wear and tear and such takes effect.
On some cars, you can disconnect the power to the cell radio module. I've read some posts about people doing that on newer Toyota Corollas.
kagis
Not the post I'm thinking of, but an example:
https://old.reddit.com/r/GRCorolla/comments/1f1vl94/for_those_of_you_looking_to_disable_the_dcm_and/
I remember they said that you used to be able to just pull out a single fuse in the fuse box to kill power to the telematics module, but with newer models there's some second fuse-box that's not very user-accessible in the guts of the car that controls it, and getting power away from the module on those is a more-elaborate task.
Also, I've read that on multiple Corollas -- someone else in this thread mentions this also applying to Subarus -- one of the speakers and the microphone is routed through that module to provide it access to the microphone and the sound system, so if you disconnect them without additional work, you're going to lose one of your speakers and the car's built-in microphone.
EDIT: I also have no idea how firmware updates get pushed to your car. It might be that updating firmware is part of the regular service, or it might be that they rely on over-the-air access to your car's cell modem. But either way, I could imagine pulling the thing meaning that they can't update your car's firmware, which could be a cost.
On one hand, yeah, I know you can often disable the spying if you try hard enough (at least for now, until it's integrated into the infotainment system so tightly that you can't disable it without making half the car not work). However, as a matter of principle, I refuse to buy tyrant devices whose manufacturers think they're somehow entitled to make me jump through hoops to control my own damn property in the first place.