So glad my ‘98 piece o’ junk doesn’t have “infotainment”…
I miss cars that had a standardized compartment slot in the dash that allowed you to swap out stereos. Infotainment consoles are a choppy convoluted mess that distracts way too easily while driving.
Jeep still exists?
I can’t wait for every vehicle to introduce this, thus leading to a perverse incentive whereby drivers go out of their way to avoid stopping as much as possible. How could it go wrong?
That would reduce fuel usage.
I bet that those ad guys haven’t even considered or promoted the fact that they can reduce carbon emissions.
Just sit at the lights with the brake and accelerator pressed at the same time 👍 what could go wrong?
This needs to be put to a stop, seriously.
That can’t be safe.
Jeep hasn’t made a ‘safe’ car in their entire existence, why start now?
I love my Jeep, but I couldn’t imagine why anyone would buy a modern one.
Fucking Jeep/Chrysler. Like who keeps buying this garbage?
If someone gave me one, I’d sell it before it had a chance of showing a CEL.
Jeep/Chrysler history: an amalgamation of numerous car companies since the 1950’s, so all sorts of competing design approaches, conflicting engineering, and dead weight.
And I’d love to own a Studebaker Hawk (which was Kaiser before Studebaker).
In my area they have jeep clubs that support the local police. Every Jeep/ Dodge owner around here tries to be a bigger dick. https://www.phillyburbs.com/story/opinion/columns/2016/07/17/215-jeep-crew-shows-support/18142982007/
I think I’ll just stick with my 2016 Civic and the infotainment system that just occasionally freaks out, but at least it doesn’t show me ads.
Well technically you can block ads as long as your phone or other device that works as hotspot/Wi-Fi tethering has adblocker that runs on root level since car need network to connect it.
On root level adblocker nothing can escape even the sneakiest ads will got blocked (as long as your adblocker has feature like uBlock origin filters & you have matching filters)Pihole at home with a personal VPN (wireguard, tailscale, head scale, etc) that routes all your phone traffic through it.
Works pretty good, and you can always add additional blacklists if something still gets through.
Ad-free but perfect for profiling. This allows devices from the entire network to be assigned to at least 1 person. Wirehuard@home -> pihole (only allow the permitted connections to the device with pihole and no other access in the network) -> wireguard@trustworthyvpn.
Vehicles have their own modems now
This is not that new.
Android auto would allow apps to play ads when the car was in park.
After using the ad support version of Pandora for most of a decade, when the full screen video ad popped up on my 2016 work truck, it was immediately and permanently uninstalled. I used 128gb microSD in my phone instead.
I’ve never used a streaming service for music again.
Yeah, that’s another thing that bugs me about products that can be remotely-updated and especially those which don’t currently represent an ongoing revenue stream. I think that it’s a broader problem, too, not just cars.
I was kind of not enthusiastic when I discovered that TenCent bought the video game Oxygen Not Included and started pushing data-harvesting updates into it via Steam. As things stand, that’s optional. But any company could do the same with other games and not have it be optional. If you figure that all the games out there that have already been sold aren’t actually generating revenue but do represent the option to push and execute code on someone’s computer, they have value to some other company that could purchase them and monetize that.
Then you figure that the same applies to browser extensions.
And apps on phones.
And all those Internet of Things devices that can talk to the network, cameras and microphones and all sorts of stuff.
There’s a lot of room for people to sit down and say “what I have is a hook into someone else’s stuff…now what things might I do to further monetize that? Or who might I sell that hook to who might be interested in doing that?”
Like, if I buy a product, all I can do when I make my purchasing decision is to evaluate the product as it is at purchase time. If the vendor also has the ability and right to change that product whenever they want, then what I’m actually buying is a pretty big question mark. And unless they’ve got some kind of other revenue stream on the line, their only real incentive to avoid doing so is the reputational hit they take…which for failing brands or companies, may not be all that large.
One constraint for efficient markets is that the consumers in it need to be informed as to what they’re buying. If they don’t have that property, you can get market failure. And a consumer can’t be informed about what he’s buying if the person selling them the product can change that product at any point after purchase.
I would rip my screen off the dash
You can’t, they control major parts of the car and cost thousands to replace then they inevitably fail.
It’s over $10k in Australia for a Corolla infotainment system, the cars won’t drive without one, once the infotainment systems die in the future the cars are scrap metal.
I expect someone will start a business to remove that aftermarket
I imagine the manufacturers and their lawyers are why we don’t have greater access to OBDII and CANBUS info.
There’s a number of things I’d love to control via CANBUS, like the remote start system, climate control, etc.
There’s a program called Forscan you can get that allows you to tweak that kind of thing in Ford vehicles. I don’t know if other makes have equivalent software.
It’s a Jeep thing, you wouldn’t understand.
NFT ducks in a gacha system
The corporate overlords have officially weaponized your brake pedal. Every full stop now triggers a mandatory engagement with their propaganda—sorry, extended warranty offers. Because nothing says “customer-centric innovation” like holding your climate controls hostage until you acknowledge their marketing diarrhea.
Legal? Oh, absolutely. Buried in 87 pages of EULA hieroglyphics you clicked while inhaling dealership coffee. Your consent is perpetual, transferable, and now includes a subscription to existential despair.
Safety advocates are oddly silent. Distracted driving? Nah, just monetized mindfulness. That red light isn’t a pause—it’s a revenue event. The dashboard has become a Times Square billboard, and you’re the captive audience.
Solution? Revert to a ’92 Corolla. Analog controls, zero telemetry, and the only pop-up is the hood when you need to check the oil.
Stellantis is fucking up so badly, they only have 1 car in top 20 here now. This is a Peugeot placed 19, but Stellantis used to have a couple in top 10! (Denmark)
It’s really sad, because they now also have Opel, which used to be a brand known for good quality, and I’m still rolling with an 18 year old Opel Vectra that is still going strong and drives almost as new, but this is a car from BEFORE Opel became Stellantis.
We are considering buying an electric soon, and there is NOTHING from Stelantis we are considering, because we have lost trust in them.
There are lots of bad stories with Stellantis cars here, cars breaking down and dealers not honoring warranties!! And extremely expensive repairs.
The only car that is worse is Tesla. With 30% failure rate at the 4 year legally mandated safety check!!
