Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
So they chose to go the John Deere way.
They did but they are actually far worse. John Deere is into some DRM bullshit but Kia / Hyundai dealerships have the worst record for recommending things you don’t actually need and then over charging you.
Fucking Kia Bastards. Took my 23 Forte GT to the dealership because driver side was blowing hot air when ac was on. Thought the blend door broke it barely had 29k miles at the time. Second thought the freon had a leak. Got the warranty. They told me it would only apply if they “found” a leak. After 5 hours. They didnt find a leak had to pay $500 for diagnostics. The mechanic said it was extremely low on freon. Which would resonate with a LEAK. But since they didnt “find” it the warranty didnt apply. Never went back and have been fixing my car myself. Fuck Kia dealerships and mechanics. All they did was recharge the system told me to come back after 500 miles because they added a dye. Told the rep, “Fuck you guys, I’m never coming back.”
I’ve been wondering about the costs of actually having a car custom built. I obviously have neither the know-how nor the place to build my own car, but are there some garages where you can just order the parts and have others assemble it for you? I know it would be expensive as fuck, but having a road-safe, road-legal car with no on-board computer (except maybe a rear view camera… something that doesn’t need connectivity) would be worth it. They might need a vehicle Black Box, but many of those only hold data for the last few seconds only in the event of a collision or accident and do not keep geolocation or personal driving data.
What you want to look into is body kits. It’s taking a car, removing parts, and putting on replacements that have fittings that attach the same, but look completely different on the outside. There are many types of cars that have become the most popular to customize and have the most options, but tons of cars can be changed significantly. There are even some body kits that change everyday cards into looking like completely different cards (“kit cars”, I think they’re called), and lawsuits around some similarities of body kits. There’s also tons of YouTubers that do videos on this, and a whole culture about it. Usually they go for more flashy, and more tech, but you can probably go the other way pretty easily too depending on your taste.
It’s completely possible to do as a hobby if you have time and money, and more possible to GET done if you have lots of money. Honestly I have no idea about it. But my cousin is a car guy and I stayed with him for a few months earlier this year. Damned interesting stuff out there.
I actually am looking this stuff up. So far I just asked an LLM about it (worst way to start I know), but I am interested in an extremely basic car. I am an elder Millennial and if I ever had to talk like an old man, this is the moment. When I was a kid I envisioned the car I want. A simple, basic hunk of metal that gets me from point A to point B. This was the car my parents and grandparents drove. As I grew up the only two major innovations that I found useful were A: RF keys that allowed you to wirelessly open your car (and I can forgo that, but they are most useful in that I don’t need to remember where I parked my car since I could just press the button and have it light up), B: Rear view cameras, which make backing up and parallel parking much easier (and Parallel parking is my ultimate weakness), and C: Blind spot sensors which I found great (but don’t need connectivity), and those can be replaced by additional small round mirrors that I have found, meaning a non-electronic option is available.
Shit like automatic window opening/closing was great, but I CAN live without it (if you haven’t been in a pre-2000 car, back before button press window opening/clothing you had to manually turn a crank to open/close a window, and you could only do it if you were next to it. there was no master crank for the driver). I also don’t care for a radio. If I want to listen to radio a simple battery operated pocket radio will suffice… and I do listen to shit on my phone, but if I do things old school like using paper maps (and thus keep my phone in a Faraday bag. BTW, I have driven in an old-school non-GPS world before and I was able to do just fine), a non-connected MP3 player will be all the music I ever need. Mildly pricey, but it is a buy-once affair.
I need to mention that a car built to those specifications is 100% legal. There is no law requiring telemetry in any country that I know. There are lots of people who drive hotrods and custom cars and older cars made prior to any of this nonsense all don’t have those things. To make a long story short, you don’t have to sacrifice privacy for all the modern conveniences. Music and movies can be done on portable non-connected devices… and if you can afford a car, you can afford those.
haha, I’m 45, so you don’t have to explain the pre-Internet-ubiquity world to me, but I appreciate it. My first car was from 1982, which I got in 1995. I had a big boom box in the back seat that took D cell batteries. (Because it had no radio and I didn’t have money to buy one, but I had the boom box already.) I get the appeal, I just mean to say that there are people who do make their own cars. And while they make incredibly impressive and even outlandish things, I’m pretty certain they could also make you a very basic car, for a price. And probably a lot less than most new cars. They’ll just want the money to front is all. And there’s probably not much in the way of guarantees.
They lock the parking brake behind a paywall on the scanner, so you have to pay a subscription fee. Chrysler has the parking brake service mode on the vehicle for users. VAG, BMW, Nissan, Toyota, GM etc all do it. It just make servicing more expensive for consumers, because the cost all gets passed down.
It is and it isn’t. To use the onboard control to actuate the parking brake, yes, you have to use the paywalled software. But it’s a simple motor. Positive and negative. If you disconnect the connector at the parking brake and use fused jumper leads to a 12v battery, you can cause the actuator to go forward or backwards. Make sure the parking brake isn’t applied before doing anything, disconnect the cars battery, disconnect the p brake connector, jump the terminals once you figure out which polarity causes the retraction. Manually compress the caliper piston, replace the pads (and hopefully the rotors too). Pump the brake pedal as you would normally once everything is replaced, reconnect everything, and you’re good to go. in my experience this doesn’t work on ford but there’s a service procedure that doesn’t use a scanner to force the park brake into service mode. There’s always a way around dumb stuff like this
And that’s when I switched a while ago from a modern Bentley to an “ancient” mechanical car from a past long forgotten. Every electrical gadget is local, and it just has android auto (dedicated isolated phone just for the car) with a fake google account for navigation. Everyone thinks we’re broke lol, but I’m so fed with this shit. Even a silly backlight went from 5 bucks for a replacement-bulb to 1500 bucks for the whole led-package. Parts alone, add the mechanic and the many hours needed.
Heard that all brands do this shit though. Like even disabling things remotely that are there but you didn’t subscribe to. This is bonkers.
even disabling things remotely that are there but you didn’t subscribe to. This is bonkers.
I don’t understand the consumer outrage about that though. It is like paying to unlock satellite TV reception (even though we are receiving the signals the whole time).
The best (worst) example I’ve seen in recent memory has been seat warmers. BMW and other manufacturers tried forcing a subscription on people just to use the seat warmers that are (1) already present in the car, (2) already wired up with buttons in place, and (3) cause no additional outlay of effort on the part of the manufacturer once they’re installed. There’s no valid reason to charge a subscription for something like that beyond straight greed.
It is like having a grandstand at a football stadium which costs extra to use. Do you resent that?
Do you resent the satellite TV example I gave earlier?
It’s absolutely nothing like that, my dude. There’s no extra service being provided. The product has been manufactured and purchased. It’d be like buying a drill only to find out that you have to pay a fee to use the drill bits you already own, or buying a block of wood and being told that you have to pay the seller money to use the tools you already own to make it into whatever you’re building.
That is not a good comparison because people don’t buy the car expecting the seats to have the warming feature. It probably is even offered as an option that the customer rejected upon purchase.
When I download software and pay for the basic tier it has the pro features built in anyhow. I can pay to unlock those pro features but I don’t expect to use those features already just because I already have them.
If I go to the football and the crowd is small enough to fit in the grandstand but only those who explicitly paid for it are allowed into the grandstand I don’t complain about my entitlement.
Whether they’re expecting it or not, the hardware is there and there is no additional technical intervention necessary from the manufacturer necessary for it to function. A monthly fee for a button to turn on my seat warmers is idiotic. Your bizarre infatuation with comparing cars to stadiums is also as frustrating as it is nonsensical.
I would prefer you discussed the point rather than trying to bully me into agreeing.
It is quite possible that the current seat warming arrangements are such that it ends up cheaper for those who want it (since it isn’t custom installed physically) and is of no consequence to those who don’t want it.
If it was enabled for everyone the price of the car could conceivably go up for everyone. Admittedly that may not necessarily be how it works out but it is a possibility.
