Automakers love connected vehicles, but support isn't open-ended.
  • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
    43·
    5 days ago

    This is what the GPL was meant to fight against. Having boxes running software that is still under the control of the manufacturer.

    Instead people complained that it was hard to use the code at work. YES. THAT’S THE POINT.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        You know it might make sense for automotive. The car is the product after all. The quality of the engine is ultimately what drives sales and most of the entertainment is traditionally third party. Making the on board stuff open helps them make a platform for third parties that are safe from manufacturer trying to push them out or collect fees. That environment also helps the manufacturer in its own sales as their cars are where the cultural impact is.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nlEnglish
          4·
          5 days ago

          Sharing code makes sense for everybody. It lets them spend a lot less resources on fixing shit if everyone else is also doing that somewhere upstream. With FOSS you can have your cake and eat it too. At some point Google calculated that committing one developer upstream for the Linux kernel can save a company the equivalent of a couple dozen specialist developers downstream in bug prevention and feature alignment across vendors alone.

          Unfortunately many companies continue to think about code as if it were potatoes. It doesn’t fucking matter who owns the code, it’s a functional spec. But hey, look at all the trouble we have explaining why standards are good – nevermind opening code.

          • stormeuh@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            4 days ago

            It makes sense for everybody, except for those with a financial interest in selling and/or haggling over software licenses. That’s not only the companies producing the actual software, but also legal firms and similar “specialists” who siphon off money from this system of complex IP law.

            IMO the only way to transition to more software being open sourced, is to deconstruct these vested intrests with regulation. We need to fundamentally restructure the way software development is funded, and transition away from a model where ownership is the only thing that’s profitable.

            Doing that is delicate though, because as backlash from those vested interests, a lot of workers will likely lose their jobs. You need to make sure those people easily find new jobs working on open source, and communicate that effectively, so workers’ job insecurity is as low as possible during the transition.

          • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            Ohh for sure. That is also my position. I was just pointing out that people do not pick a car for the entertainment, but it can sway a purchase. An auto maker that keeps an open platform might have a stronger third party market that helps sway people into their cars, so even in their “we are trying to maximize our profits” still have a reasoning for it. Of course good luck telling senior management.

  • DarkFuture@lemmy.worldEnglish
    261·
    5 days ago

    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.

  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    74·
    6 days ago

    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

    • EliteCloneMike@lemmy.zipEnglish
      25·
      6 days ago

      Most cars throughout history have had zero need for the internet. I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later. Though there are benefits to that model, but recalls exist for a reason.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        6 days ago

        I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later

        Tesla has been selling a “full self driving” subscription for years.

      • Denixen@feddit.nuEnglish
        15·
        5 days ago

        I just hope it does not end up like video games, where they can sell an unfinished product and patch it later.

        Too late. This is already the case, I don’t know of a single EV that wasn’t buggy on release and still buggy a year or two afterwards as the manufacturer hunts bugs in a leisurely pace. It already is like in the gaming industry. Don’t buy an EV that isn’t at least one year old on the market or you will become their free of charge beta tester…

        • quadrant5835@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          Anacdotaly I suspect most car software bugs aren’t hunted or patched at all, unless an exec at the company happens to run into the bug in their personal vehicle and flags it for the development team to fix.

          I’ve heard too many stories of car software issues where the dealer gives it back with a note “reset the battery and tested good” but the bug is still easily reproduced.

    • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      581·
      6 days ago

      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.

      • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
        125·
        6 days ago

        I’ve never seen a car like this. Mine was made in 2021 though so I must have caught the last ship car out lol. What kind of things do cars even use the internet for? I’m struggling to imagine it

          • khepri@lemmy.worldEnglish
            23·
            6 days ago

            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!

              • PowerCrazy@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                5 days ago

                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?

                • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  5 days ago

                  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.)

              • 50MYT@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                6 days ago

                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.

                • JordanZ@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  4·
                  5 days ago

                  Some don’t sell them as a feature immediately. I think Toyota has an 3-10 year ‘free trial’ for some of their services. So one day your decade old car will just behave differently unless you start paying for the subscription.

                  Crap like this makes me want nothing to do with service connected vehicles at all. I don’t want to have to dig into all the software policies and durations for every brand I might be interested in a model of. You absolutely can’t trust what a salesman says at the dealer. I’ve shown them in writing that what they just told me was a flat out lie on multiple occasions.

                  The vehicles in my garage are currently 10-57 years old. People replace vehicles far too frequently.

              • khepri@lemmy.worldEnglish
                5·
                6 days ago

                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.

              • anomnom@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                3·
                5 days ago

                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.

            • LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyzEnglish
              11·
              6 days ago

              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.

              • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                3·
                5 days ago

                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

              • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
                3·
                6 days ago

                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

                • kn33@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  6 days ago

                  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.

            • sorghum@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              41·
              6 days ago

              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.

        • zerofk@lemmy.zipEnglish
          8·
          5 days ago

          You’re getting downvoted, but I’m in the exact same position. Car made in 2021, no connectivity at all. I cannot start it remotely - why would you do that? Is it really more convenient than turning a key or pressing a button once seated? I guess people really do like it, I just find it hard to imagine.

          Starting the climate control from a distance sounds comfortable, the first few moments of driving can be too hot or cold.

          I don’t have a built-in GPS, but if there was one I don’t see a benefit of using my phone to control it.

          Windows? What?

          • boonhet@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            3·
            5 days ago

            You start it remotely if you don’t have a preheater. Not that idling is great for a car engine, but at least you’ll have clear windows by the time you get in the car.

            In the summer you can use it to have a cold car to sit into.

            Remote climate control doesn’t work on ICE vehicles without Remote start or auxiliary preheater.

          • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            Yeah it seems strange to me, but it must be popular for some people.

            People here often assume I’m being disingenuous or acting in bad faith, I’m not sure what causes that to happen though. Maybe it’s the way I type?

              • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                4·
                5 days ago

                I remove my own default upvote from my comments because I’m a weirdo. Maybe that contributes? People see it’s already at 0 votes and join in?

                Edit: in my client I can see both up and down votes separately. So in this case it’s a controversial post with currently equal up and down votes

                • youmaynotknow@lemmy.zipEnglish
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  I am so going to follow your weird moving forward. Didn’t even know I could do that. I’ll downvote this one manually now and go search for that setting.

                  Edit: that will teach me not to get on Lemmy before having coffee. My brain thought that was a setting in Voyager. Thanks for this anyway, I’m going to (try to) remember that until it becomes muscle memory.

        • Bone@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          6 days ago

          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.

          • historicaldocuments@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            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.

            • Bone@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              5 days ago

              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!

              • historicaldocuments@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2·
                4 days ago

                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.”

                • Bone@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  4 days ago

                  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.

          • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
            2·
            5 days ago

            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

        • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
          6·
          6 days ago

          keeping the navigation database up to date is one. no way to update maps in my Taycan without paying $27 a month for Porsche Connect, which I have never paid.

          and I dislike relying on Android Auto given the surveillance inherent in enabling it. it’d be nice to not have fucking subscription navigation maintenance

          • khepri@lemmy.worldEnglish
            152·
            6 days ago

            Not sure why you think Google would exploit your navigation data but Porsche wouldn’t. I guarantee both are finding ways to make a profit by bundling and selling the enormous amounts of data users are feeding back to them by using their systems.

            • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
              4·
              6 days ago

              I’m not saying I trust Porsche at ALL with my data. Far from it. In fact I at least trust Google to have better software engineering standards, even if their software is inherently surveillance evil bullshit.

              But I haven’t been able to confirm that Porsche actually DOES log and exfiltrate location or navigation data. Certainly not in my Lexis Nexus report, and there’s been nothing I’ve seen reported about them when a bunch of other automakers have been called out for selling surveillance access.

              What I do know is that Google is confirmed to be doing so. Unless I’ve missed some reporting or leak, I can’t confirm that Porsche is collecting, exfiltrating from my car without an active data plan, and selling GPS and nav routing data from it.

              • khepri@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                6 days ago

                Oh for sure, I just meant for those people that do subscribe to Porsche Connect, Porsche is very probably finding some way to monetize all that sweet sweet location and navigation data. I feel like any car that generates telemetry data and has a data connection to the manufacturer, those companies are packaging up and selling off that data to someone. But that’s really just speculation on my part.

                • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
                  2·
                  6 days ago

                  Problem is, even tho I don’t subscribe, the data connection is still there, and it’s still used to deliver some OTA updates, and a recall on the battery involves some remote monitoring that, so even tho I don’t subscribe I still don’t feel entirely safe from being surveilled.

                  I’ve thought a bunch about seeing if I can just pull a fuse and kill connectivity without killing anything else, but the battery recall thing is reason enough to avoid that for the time being. Besides, Flock (and other) surveillance cameras popping up everywhere are such a bigger problem anyways that it kinda kills my motivation to bother

        • atrielienz@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          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.

        • CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          6 days ago

          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.

            • CADmonkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              5 days ago

              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.

            • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              5 days ago

              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

              • Zarobi@aussie.zoneEnglish
                1·
                5 days ago

                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!

                • captainlezbian@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  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.

          • Sturgist@lemmy.caEnglish
            21·
            6 days ago

            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

              • Sturgist@lemmy.caEnglish
                1·
                6 days ago

                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.

          • mrgoosmoos@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            6 days ago

            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.

    • Bryan065@kbin.earth
      30·
      6 days ago

      WOW… we were trying to hunt down why my buddy’s forestor’s battery kept dying…

      We even disconnected the wire that tells the alternator to stop charging the battery…

    • nyan@lemmy.cafeEnglish
      18·
      6 days ago

      Yup, lost a battery to that (2019 Impreza). Pulled the fuse for the modem, and it’s been fine ever since. I never used (or wanted) any of those features anyway.

      • BigPotato@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        6 days ago

        Just picture it - You drive your Subaru, the off-road adventure car company, to a camp site in a remote area. You wake up after a few days of hiking and camping to return to your car.

        The battery is dead. If you camp too close to the car, the key fob being close to the car will leave it in a “standby” mode which drains the battery on top of the car pinging the server for updates.

  • kn0wmad1c@programming.devEnglish
    48·
    6 days ago

    Is this article presuming that this isn’t part of the plan? Auto manufacturers think our brains work like “oh no, my connected service was end-of-lifed. Guess I gotta buy a new car.”

  • ransomwarelettuce@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    5 days ago

    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.

    • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      20·
      5 days ago

      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.

      • 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.

      • 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.

  • Mio@feddit.nuEnglish
    24·
    6 days ago

    In my opinion it should be illegal to shutdown as long as they have cars. I would not buy any device that requires internet access to work with basic functionality.

    • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      You can’t really write laws that just require people to offer a service indefinitely though. That’s how you end up locking some poor bastard in jail who honestly tried to start a good car company up, did the best they could, and then saw it all go under. No one would ever start a car company, lest they risk imprisonment if the thing went bankrupt despite their best efforts. Starting a car company is already a hugely risky endeavor. Now you’re asking people to risk imprisonment if the company fails. I’m generally in favor of locking up more CEOs. But there are plenty of ones committing real crimes. We don’t need to be inventing new ones to trap otherwise innocent people.

      The way to do this right is to mandate a long but still limited period of cloud coverage, say 20 years. And require companies to put up a bond to cover the cost of third-party hosting these ongoing cloud service in the event they go bankrupt. Then also require all essential functions to work without cloud connectivity.

  • shininghero@pawb.socialEnglish
    281·
    6 days ago

    Slate Auto: “Cloud? Oh, you mean that completely optional telematics thingy that’s intended more for business fleets! Yeah, that’s excluded by default on our vehicle.”