>Nissan earned its second-to-last spot for collecting some of the creepiest categories of data we have ever seen. [Their privacy policy] includes your “sexual activity.” Not to be out done, Kia also mentions they can collect information about your “sex life” in their privacy policy. Oh, and six car companies say they can collect your “genetic information” or “genetic characteristics.”
Ignoring the fact that it's absolutely unhinged and bonkers to include that in the first place, I don't even understand how they could possibly ever get any information about that. Are they using LLMs to generate these policies without review? Or are there really lawyers out there who thought this was pertinent and important to include?
Any car that can record audio in the cabin could have information about your sexual activity. Could also argue it based on location data.
Some laws require discussing very specific lists of categories of information they might have. I'm guessing this is a completionist CYA lawyer accounting for this.
They’re just including everything to be clear that you have no privacy in this agreement, so they don’t have to think about it too much when they realize there’s something more they can collect.
Well, there's the old cliche of someone being conceived in the back seat of their grandparent's Chevy... so a little extra DSP analysis with the seat occupancy sensors? :-)
I get your point of view. But many many many years ago meta searches for persons already included categories like "sexual orientation" and got this data points from myspace profiles no one ever thought of. So, in a lawyers mind there might be some logic behind it, when marketing says, they collect data about people, who recently became parents and the conclusion to somehow classify this type of information into a data category of "sexual activity" as collecting such data is by law allowed in some countries, while collecting data about relationship or children is prohibited. For me, this sounds very much like this corporate thinking of how to defend against the slightes legal risk of undisclosed data handling.
I think the GP was talking about the fact it is hard to find an EV that is bundled with a lot of invasive software.
There's another post on this article asking for an EV that doesn't:
"need internet connectivity via wifi/esim at all? I'm looking for something really simple. A chassis, four wheels, an engine, airbags. Basically my current ICE car, just electric."
I'm hoping that they get a lot of good suggestions, but I'm not holding my breath.
I just did a search on the bolt and apparently users are having to modify their antennae to stop onstar telemetry. Kia also collects telemetry. Equinox also with the onstar issue. Ford also collects telemetry.
Once again, are there any that work functionally like my airgapped ICE car? It is only 8 years old. I’m worried there aren’t.
OnStar telemetry has been a thing since well before your 8 year old car.
As I said, nothing to do with being an EV. All new cars have some variety of telemetry. You may choose not to buy a newer car, but it has nothing to do with whether it is an EV or not.
But be careful because an 8 year old ICEV from GM has OnStar
No onstar here. No satellite or cellular antenna either. Again, I know my machine. There is no data going out. Seems now there is no choice I suppose. Older cars are like low background steel now.
It is still collecting data. That is the nonstarter for me. My car does not collect any data on me. There will be no software update in the future changing any privacy policy because my car does not ever receive software updates. Even if the ECU did get an update after some repair, it is airgapped with no ability to send out telemetry. I still get certain telemetrics logging for maintenance, locally, of course, via OBD-II.
EVs and luxury cars tend to have more fancy features that enable these issues than ice or hybrid cars. That’s changing as more advanced tech filters down.
This is the part that's seriously sucks. We need greener alternatives (current state of things especially highlighting that) and car dependency has crushed us, so instead of just giving us the basic EV most of us want, they've taken the capitalistic approach of giving us massive luxury cars with premium features often cloud-tied, that happen to also be EVs.
I wonder if Tesla was a grift from day 1. They seemed to be the halo EV company that everyone accepted, until the charismatic leader moved on.
You need government support to make EVs a preferred option. Poor folk buy cheap cars, and they mostly rent. The whole scenario around EV charging is a shitshow, and the tax incentives were insufficient to fix it. I had a Model Y for awhile and really liked it, and now have a fancy Japanese hybrid SUV. It's much less of a pain in the ass then the EV was.
In retrospect, most of Musk's ventures would indeed appear to be grifts from the very start. Many of them were plainly transparent grifts with only a perfunctory attempt to hide the fact (hyperloop)
It can be true. I've owned two Teslas, which meet that description. I've also owned a Bolt, which was just a basic car. I still own a Lightning, which is also pretty basic (it can get occasional ... very occasional ... OTA updates, but the ICE F150 got OTA update ability before the Lightning existed).
I think a bunch of people have decided that EV means Tesla or Rivian, and maybe Hyundai/Kia, and possibly VW if they think about it. But there are a bunch of EVs driving on the roads that people don't even realize exist, they look like every other car. They tend not to have fancy features.
A real car wouldn't track your sex life or your genome. They effectively stopped making real cars. We will drive the real cars and never buy fakes as long as this remains the case.
A couple days ago there was this article on hn about a startup from Canada making tractors with no electronics and they mentioned that they had 400 orders overnight. I hope we will see something like this also for cars. I suspect the demand is there.
Unfortunately, they’ve been suspiciously quiet since their initial announcement, but fingers crossed. Might actually have a viable new car option if they’re successful.
> limit or disable certain functionality in the vehicle: ... over-the-air updates, which provide new ... safety enhancements ...
I wonder what happens if you disable the e-SIM (in the US) and then a safety recall appears via software update - do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
This is a huge unresolved issue with EVs IMO; ICE cars are required to provide emissions-relevant updates over software which can operate using a J2534 passthrough device, which effectively means powertrain modules have to allow (potentially signed) updates over CAN using software that can be obtained by an end user (a lot of people don't know this; for almost any ICE car in the US, you can buy a 3-day or 1-week subscription to the dealership level diagnostic software for a somewhat reasonable fee and use it with a J2534 device).
But for EVs, there's no such rule and as far as I can tell it's entirely a gray area in the US now; the NHTSA require a "remedy" for recalls but nobody seems to have pushed back to determine whether OTA is truly a remedy. The traditional autos all offer dealerships as a backup option, but Tesla and Rivian have several recalls with only OTA remedies already. This seems sketchy.
> I wonder what happens if you disable the e-SIM (in the US) and then a safety recall appears via software update - do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
I would assume so. Even on older cars, service techs can typically manually push firmware updates over the OBD-II / J2534 port. Rivian's OBD-II port actually hides an Ethernet signal inside of it - so the interface is certainly there.
> Rivian's OBD-II port actually hides an Ethernet signal inside of it - so the interface is certainly there.
Nice. This is really normal now, for what it's worth - all of the European makes have moved this direction as well (DoIP over ENET). There's shockingly little documentation about Rivian online, though, probably because emissions regulation doesn't mandate it.
I don't see anything suspicious, but I browse with scripts and ads blocked, so it's possible that you encountered something that never reached me. Thanks for the warning. Unfortunately, it's too late to edit my comment.
Yep! Depending on the vintage, BMWs have "real" DoIP or a BMW-ized version (sort of like how KWP2000 was the predecessor to UDS). For emissions modules, they still also have to support updates over UDS as well as ENET, though, for the above mentioned J2534 reasons (Ethernet wasn't added to J2534 until 2022).
Actually almost any fuel injected vehicle can accept flash updates through the port to at least the ECU and PCM, frequently the BCU is also write enabled.
If there is a BCM. My previous 1995 GMC C1500 had a PCM and the automatic transmission was controlled by mechanical linkage to a hydraulic computer in the transmission along with shift solenoids from the PCM. It also had "throttle-body injection" with two injectors replacing the carburetor. The OBD 1 system would switch to "open loop control" with preprogrammed injection in the event of a malfunction which would make the thing challenging to drive until you fixed the problem. So very simple compared to the multitude of computers and control systems in use today.
A nice feature on that system was that you could put a paperclip between two pins on the diagnostic port and it would blink out the trouble codes on the SES light.
You can adjust the ECU for these 80s and 90s cars and “flash” them like anything else. There’s just a lot less settings! Not sure about the 70s but I’m sure some resto-mods also allow for this.
Even more tangential: Kia declined to cover an engine failure, under warranty that was extended by recall because I change my own oil.
Kia's engines are known to fail predictably even within first 100K miles. They extended their warranty because of it. But then they weasel out of it unless you hire an attorney and go to war.
This doesn't require research. Just reject by default and concede if a lawyer shows up. It doesn't cost any money to have a default denial policy and saves millions.
Yeah, because you allegedly consented to them being able to update your ECUs via the mobile link in the cars when you bought the car.
As if I needed another reason to keep my 2014 skoda.
If i ever have to get a new car, i will disable telemetry, and i will buy it either without telemetry, or with the agreement that i do not consent to telemetry.
(read the fine print before getting a new car. the shit they can do that can go wrong and you have to pay for.. no wonder old cars cost as much as new ones.)
I assure you that “old cars costing as much as new ones” isn’t the result of the market force of people reading contractual fine print and/or freaking out about telemetry. Concentric circles of echo chambers over here.
The main reason is more tangible to people. It is more reliability and simplicity. For instance the Toyota Tundra used to have a V8 that was pretty bomb proof. But over the years, manufacturers put in more efficient but more prone to problems turbocharged smaller engines. The bearing clearances went down, thinner oil then can be used which is also more efficient. But the margin for error when you are putting what used to be a performance engine in a car is much smaller and there have been issues. As car prices have gone up, people value a time tested drivetrain. There have been a lot of problematic CVT transmissions too.
The Chinese government banned Tesla vehicles from entering (Chinese) military bases. This is due to the prolific number of cameras streaming live video to a hostile (to China) organization/government. One can find blogposts by analysts who show that the upload stream from Tesla vehicles includes cabin audio.
I’m not worried even a lick about what cars cost electronics or otherwise. My primary factor in selecting a vehicle is my physical safety; after that it’s electronic surveillance.
> I have never met anyone in real life that's concerned about telemetry on their car
You mean you've never had a conversation about it. You can't know if you've met somebody that has that concern unless you've broached the subject explicitly.
1. get a _real_, unabridged service manual. that takes some darkweb experience nowadays.
2. identify anything that looks like capable of housing a cell modem. that takes some understanding of contemporary car electronics
3. deny RF interface to units identified. that takes some understanding what RF = radio frequency interface is and also getting rid of fear of disassembling significant portions of your car.
That is the least of your troubles. SOS is the telemetry you wanted to get rid of in the first place.
And chances are you would have to get rid of 2/3 or more of oem electronics.
It'll end up a prototype vehicle or something, with custom ECU and stuff. On the bright side it will belong to you and not to the some mckinsey guys running those insurances and whatnot. It has been done too, although I personally prefer to just use vehicles that do not require this level of effort.
The other day there was a thread on unclouded tractors what I missed and I must tell I love my Universal 445 made in Romania in 1989. For all its quirks, it just gets the job done, no connectivity, no nothing, it's an unbreakable 3-cylinder diesel that just works.
It works depending on the manufacturer. Honda places the TPU in the dash behind the head unit. Use some spudgers and you can disconnect and remove the TPU. Takes 15 minutes at most.
Nice, thanks for the reply; this is surprisingly undocumented online. Presumably if they got cornered and the module under repair was updatable via this mechanism they'd have some ability to use that system, then. I wonder how charitable they will be about using it for non-recall updates for customers who have solely chosen to opt out.
Rivian are probably the only major manufacturer I've never had a chance to look at in any RE capacity and I'm getting more curious by the second. The reaction their vehicles had to the infamous bricked-infotainment update actually represented a pretty good adherence to safety guidelines (the drivetrain as well as the speedometer and warning lights on the cluster still worked in a degraded format even when the infotainment was bricked) IMO, so they do seem to apply a reasonable degree of care.
I wonder what happens if you disable the e-SIM (in the US) and then a safety recall appears via software update - do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
Yes.
You get a letter in the mail asking you to take your car to the dealer so they can install the update.
Interesting, I reviewed every Rivian software update recall letter I could find before I posted this and they all said something like "If you have not already updated to software version 2025.18.30 or later, please do so to remedy this issue at no cost to you," with no mention of the dealership as a remedy - for example, https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2025/RCLRPT-25V585-0759.pdf . This is different from other manufacturers who explicitly mention the dealer, like this Ford EV recall: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2025/RCAK-25V863-3736.pdf
Of course they don't mention it. They don't want you to bring it in and have to pay a tech to do the update for you. It doesn't mean the dealership can't do it.
I'm sure they are, but I live in rural MN and Teslas are fairly common here, including the (barf!) Cybertruck. I'm seeing an increasing number of Rivian SUV's now.
In the US, a vehicle with an outstanding recall technically isn't roadworthy, though consumer level enforcement of this is non-existent in practice. It's mostly enforced on dealers, who can't sell a vehicle with active recalls. The only way I can imagine it mattering to a consumer is if they sold it.
Doesn't being legally non roadworthy only apply to NHTSA safety recalls while there are other types of recalls for non compliance or manufacturer voluntary recalls?
Having worked (on the vehicle registration system) for a state agency that is a combination "department of motor vehicles" plus "highway department", there could be a case made that since your vehicle does not meet NTSB/DOT standards, that it isn't roadworthy and the best you could get would be a SALVAGE title. Which would require expensive inspections if you try to sell it or register it.
In Europe, car manufacturers have to show that their cars meet safety standards. In the US, car manufacturers only have to say/certify that their cars meet safety standards. This is the huge sticking point for Trump's attempt to force EU countries to accept cars that have not been proved to meet safety standards (it is portrayed as "unfair/uneven trade barriers" in the US media).
Not disagreeing with you in general, but as another datapoint, in MN a vehicle only needs a theft inspection (no charge) to clear a Salvage title. DMV explicitly states that it's not a safety inspection. They really only care that you didn't repair it with stolen parts. IME you show them receipts for parts you bought, and the inspection is over in less than 5 minutes.
...do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
Of course they do. It would be absolutely silly not to. And in the case of safety recalls, their duty to inform you would entail a more traditional and substantiated disclosure i.e. a letter.
"a lot of people don't know this; for almost any ICE car in the US, you can buy a 3-day or 1-week subscription to the dealership level diagnostic software for a somewhat reasonable fee and use it with a J2534 device"
Whoa, didn't know that. Well the caveat is finding a decent J2534 device, right? There are a lot of cheapo knockoffs. Then actually knowing how to use the software with it.
No, but I'm not a good person to ask. My two cars are on opposite extremes, one is simple and doesn't need anything beyond OBD2, and the other is too scary to mess with digitally.
My experience is J2534 support is sketchy and if you want to do the things you actually want to do you need a manufacturer approved device with an insane markup. Also the subscriptions are insanely expensive, not even close to reasonable and you need to be a company (at least you used to be with Ford last time I checked, but they accept the UK or Dutch royal residence as a valid company location so there is that...)
I agree that J2534 is sketchy. The standard isn't very good to start with, there's usually no matrix (ie x systems * y devices) conformance testing but instead just a brief QA step done at some compliance stage in a release process, and most manufacturers don't really want to support it (preferring their in-house dongles). So, a lot of dealer tools do non-standard stuff and a "conforming" J2534 cable doesn't actually work.
Many subscriptions are painful, yes - VW brands / ODIS for example are awful to try to get as an individual and annoying as an independent shop; I'm sure the fraction of independent shops who pirate it are quite high. It's funny you mention Ford though, as they are incredibly easy to buy from in my experience, although the login/licensing backend is frequently broken.
However, there's a good cottage industry of companies reverse engineering the compatibility issues back out, and for better or worse these companies are cloned almost immediately too. I recently did key programming on a newer Ford (where Forscan can't) using a $125 VXDiag cable which I could have bought cloned for $30 and a short-term FDRS subscription that cost $50.
What about using ForSCAN? It allows anyone with the software and a dongle to monitor and to update modules in the ECU AFAIK. I paid under $100 (can't remember) for a dongle and downloaded the free software and it is extremely handy working on one of my vehicles. The other two Fords I own are both pre-OBDII so there is less bullshit on them to begin with. Ford forums are full of owners who use ForSCAN to modify their vehicle's operation. Lots of hacks available.
Just do as /u/bigfatkitten suggests and get the service manuals when you purchase the vehicle.
ForSCAN is awesome but it's an orthogonal conversation since it's a reverse engineered diagnostic tool rather than a first-party one. If we expand the conversation to that space there are tons of options with varying capabilities depending on manufacturer, including also pirating the OEM tools directly. Also worth noting that ForSCAN also doesn't _quite_ support all common operations, for example Remote Keyless Entry enrollment on newer BCMs with push-to-start needs FDRS still.
Thanks for this explanation. I knew that ForSCAN was a RE tool (Russian guy?) and that there were others out there for multiple purposes on various product lines. I also knew that ForSCAN did not support customizing all OEM functions. I just wasn't bright enough to make the connection between this being a first party versus anybody's tool type of mods that one might make. I do most of my own auto maintenance so I use the tools that best facilitate the process and since I am only mechanically experienced and not an accredited tech I lean towards using third party tools, custom tools I cobble together, OEM manuals, etc. to guide all the work I do here in my driveway or shop.
What ever happened to take it to a dealer or authorized repair place to have it done? While I may be willing to take certain things apart that, the one thing in life I have resisted is any kind of monkeying with my car. There are certain things where I'm willing to accept that I took it apart and it no longer works because I bricked it, shorted something, or otherwise damaged it beyond my skill set to undo. My car is not one of them. However, I also do not want my car to be under the direct control of someone else that can decide I can no longer operate my car. If there's an update, I'll bring it in to have someone trained/responsible for that update.
My car needed another key. The stealership quoted me >$400 for it. I took it as a personal insult and did the research and ordered an OBD device and also discovered you can order replacement keys on aliexpress, and they'll even cut them for you with a good picture of your existing key. It was actually a fun project and very satisfying when I was able to successfully program and link the RFID chip to the ECU to start the engine.
May not be feasible with more locked-down modern cars which I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, but I was able to fix it for about $150, not including my time of course. But I have the OBD device to use next time now as well.
I bought a kit off of amazon "simple key" that included a programmer and a key with rfid chip. I think about $80.
You plugged the standalone dongle in the OBD2 port, did a procedure and it would take a few minutes and you would get an "original" key.
(The programmer said it was then locked to that VIN)
They key blank provided needed to get cut (did it at home depot).
I could then get additional rfid blanks for $7 and cut and program them.
Once you had two original keys, you could do the "DIY programming" method to make keys 3 and up.
The DIY method was something like "insert key 1, wait 3 seconds, remove, insert key 2 wait 3 seconds remove, insert new key, wait for something, remove" and you would get key 3, 4 ...
There were similar but separate ford procedures for programming the buttons on fobs to lock/unlock doors, etc
My plan for the future is a trailbike, a tent and a shotgun.
But with regard to a car, I don't know. I'll just do the best I can when the time comes. I'm hopeful there'll be options available or where I can cut antennas or whatever.
Which I read this a month ago. Mazda dealer charged me $450 for mine. I figures the entire system is propietiary, so they can charge whatever they want.
Some people like messing with cars. They take the time to understand what's happening and learn the process and pitfalls. Hobbyists wiil never be as good as trained professionally but we can still get the job done. I went through the trouble to diagnose and replace a bad alternator on my civic after the battery started dying too fast. I did it cause it was fun.
The other reason i did it is because the dealership and other shops quoted me over 10 times the cost of parts, and I literally did not have the money to take them up should i have wanted to. Car maintenance is expensive, _especially_ at the dealership.
Some how, we've changed the direction of the conversation to something you lost vs a software update to the brains of the car. I'm guessing just to make the obvious point the dealership is not the cheapest place for repair.??? This isn't change the tire or get an oil change. This is something a consumer has deliberately done to prevent the manufacture from making an OTA software update. These are the kinds of changes that I want someone available right then and there to be responsible if the update borked the car.
Sure, but you have to realize that everyone isn't you. Many people are quite comfortable messing with the deep internals of their vehicle, to the point of changing code in the ECU. Others won't even change an air filter. Takes all kinds.
There's really no reason to be scared working on your car. I have no formal training and I have never paid a shop to fix my car in my 20 years of car ownership.
The mechanical parts of a car haven't changed much in the last 25 years, and are easy to understand just by watching a few YouTube videos.
The electronics have certainly gotten more complex, but if you can understand basic computer networking and low voltage electronics it's still quite simple.
If you are interested in learning how to fix your own car, there is a great guy who runs an auto repair business on YouTube and his tagline is: "Remember folks If I can do it, you can do it."
I'm pretty sure that the only diagnostic codes that an ECU is required to output are emissions-related codes. Since EVs have no emissions, I'm gonna guess they can force all diagnostics through the dealer if they really want to.
WiFi is, err, still OTA, although it does answer the eSIM question. I assume the truly concerned/paranoid wouldn't want to connect to WiFi either, since presumably telemetry / tracking metadata could be uploaded at that time too.
Anyone concerned about preventing telemetry from being uploaded would probably also be concerned about taking it to the dealer for an update, though. Because how do you know the dealer won't just do an update by turning the car's e-SIM back on, then turning it off before giving the car back to you? Which would then allow the car to upload all the stored telemetry you're concerned about. (Note: generic "you" meaning "the person concerned about telemetry", not bri3d in particular). Or, as long as they've connected a device to the car that can upload data, how do you know that that device won't also download stored data, which the dealership can then upload over their own WiFi?
I believe the truly concerned/paranoid will not want to take their car to the dealership for updates at all. Which would, IMHO, be a mistake: having known security holes in your car's software is more likely to lead to a privacy invasion (via getting your car hacked at some point) than letting the dealership get their hands on it for a few hours.
(I should note that all of this is theoretical for me: I drive a car that's old enough it doesn't have any software).
EDIT to add this P.S.: Actually, I can think of one category of people who would be concerned enough to turn off the car's ability to connect to the Internet, but feel fine about taking it to a dealer for updates. That would be people who want to turn off the car's Internet connectivity not because of privacy concerns, but because they don't want anyone to be able to disable the car (either via hacking or via "legitimate" means, i.e. the manufacturer does it) while they're driving. Such a person would care a lot about the car's Internet access being completely off while they are driving, but not care about it being turned on while it is at the dealership.
I read an article recently where there was a satellite outage and all porsche cars in the area would not start. They have some satellite based anti-theft system. (wonder what happens if your garage is shielded)
Personally, I wouldn't want this intrusive system (or telemetry).
This is the exact mindset that has amused me for years with computers. People use an OS with which they have a seriously hostile relationship. Why would you continue to pay a lot of money for a product you consider to be your adversary?
I kinda assume the dealer does this as part of any service they do. Either that, or they update some other way. My software notices went away when I had my service done, even though I’ve opted out of everything (and verified again after).
Internet-connected cars are a national security issue when manufacturers are from one country (A) and consumer is in another country (B). For example, the President of country A might wake up in a bad mood and order to disable all A-manufactured cars in B until they reconsider the trade deal. Or, he might order to collect geolocation, plugged for charging smartphone data, audio and video recordings from cars in B belonging to military personnel.
Smart cars can record street views, location of WiFi access points and GSM towers, and this data is useful for guiding missiles and drones when GPS is being jammed.
And how can we deal with this? Inspections on import? Country-level DPI to block data exfiltration? But DPI is not perfect because there are obfuscation and VPNs. And today we have Starlinks as well, which are difficult to block. Except from banning foreign smart cars altogether, there seems to be no simple solution. Or maybe oblige the manufacturer to use local computer boards and software when importing cars?
> In late 2025, hundreds of Porsche vehicles in Russia became "bricked" (immobilized) because the cars’ satellite-based security systems (VTS) required continuous connectivity to European servers. Following the suspension of Porsche's operations in Russia, the cars could not "phone home" and automatically activated anti-theft immobilizers, preventing engines from starting.
> Tesla has remotely disabled Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities on vehicles in multiple countries—including Europe, South Korea, China, and Turkey—after detecting unauthorized "jailbreak" devices used to enable FSD in regions where it was not authorized.
> Reports from July 2024 indicate that Chinese brands have planned to or have blocked multimedia systems and other features in cars that were imported into Russia through non-authorized channels rather than through official dealers.
> American manufacturer John Deere remotely disabled advanced agricultural equipment looted by Russian forces from Ukraine, rendering the high-tech machinery useless after it was moved to Chechnya.
Do it like china does with iphones. Apple sells them but icloud in china is controlled fully by a chinese company owned and operated by chinese citizens.
While this does not fully prevent backdoors and hacking it does raise the bar quite a lot.
Firefox also has a setting like this, although I think it's even nicer in that it makes everything (current and future) AI default to opt-out, but still lets you opt in to specific use cases if you want.
Firefox took an awfully long time to get that global setting. It was clear that Mozilla Corp hoped they might be able to push AI services as a revenue generator, before the AI pushback.
Yes, indeed it does. I didn't feel this way until I worked for a YC-backed startup tho. I mean, YC is the first to admit that not everything needs to be VC funded and some things just aren't good fit for that funding model. I think a code editor is one of them.
> I mean, YC is the first to admit that not everything needs to be VC funded and some things just aren't good fit for that funding model. I think a code editor is one of them.
Fully agree. I also feel like a lot of companies do not need to be on the stock market, especially if they're reasonably profitable, feels like the stock market is where you go to let go of more of your company just to get rid of the VCs whom you owe a lot of money to.
I remember when I was learning about entrepreneurship in college I was baffled by their insistence of an “exit strategy”. The idea just seemed so foreign to me. See I naively thought the point of starting a business was to do the business, not to not do it and sit next to a pile of money instead. Silly me.
I have not tried it, but there is "GRAM" as well. Which is a fork of Zed without any AI stuff. Not sure what's missing for you from ST but for me, I don't really see myself ever upgrading to ST4 or any future version, unless they come out with something worthwhile for ST5.
The user wants to "disable data collection". The manufacturer offers only a kill switch for all connectivity, with all the unwanted effects (which they helpfully list).
I've seen this pattern before. It's a lame cop-out. "Of course you can do that, but you'll have to accept all these negative consequences. There's nothing we can do about it. You brought this onto yourself."
I remember yanking out the onstar unit in my 2015 silverado to physically disconnect the cell antenna. This was (is?) the only practical way to disable cellular in that vehicle.
Kudos to Rivian for making this a supported user privacy feature.
Similar I got a new 2025 4runner last summer and...
A: never once installed the app or registered an account, which flummoxxed the salesman so much he argued with me for 10 minutes trying to say that I had to set up the app to even take delivery, even though I paid cash in full. He even cried to mama (the manager) to find out what to do about this impossible situation. In the end, of course you do not actually need to install the app, even temporarily just for a one-time setup, or even register an account. But MAN do they want you to.
B: Within a few weeks found that someone makes a kit that lets you completely disconnect the telemetry & internet functionality module while providing some pass-through connections that normally go through that box.
Apparently in this case all the bad stuff is conveniently in one box you can disconnect, and still have normal bluetooth for android auto, apple car play, or plain bluetooth headset & media. So still have gps & media on the console stcreen. I can only assume that this won't stay so convenient. They could have anything require anything else any time they want.
They do offer an official way to disable all internet features (remote start from your phone from any distance, remote vehicle monitor, tracking/shutdown, etc), but all that does is disable the useful functions for you, while not disabling any of the functions they use for themselves. It's still actively logging and uploading data, and they still have the ability to remotely track and even disable the vehicle.
I've been to the dealer (different from purchase) once for a free oil change and they didn't say anything. So idk if they even tried to do any updates, or they have some other way to do it or what.
As someone who got into a rollover accident which ended with my car upside down on a freeway, hearing only the onstar person talking to me while half conscious, this is sad.
I do distinctely remember strongly disliking the user agreement I signed for the "internet connected" features of the car when I bought it. 100% rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn't' find a way to opt out, and I wasn't so motivated to physically remove it from my new car. Thankfully.
There's absolutely no reason an emergency e-call system needs to connect via the car systems such as infotainment. It could be a standalone module that does its own thing regardless of whether the car is permanently disconnected from everywhere. Probably should too, given its nature. And not just could: there are aftermarket e-call systems that do not integrate beyond requiring 12V supply.
This is how cars used to be made. Features were standalone modules: there could be some bus traffic about optional data (wiper module with rain sensor could broadcast that it's raining and body control module could hear that and could be configured to close windows when raining) but they weren't strictly integrated in any meaningful capacity. You could change the radio unit to whatever you liked: if you were lucky you could get one that can actually understand what the other modules in the car were saying and show some non-enterntainment info on its screen as well. Navigation used to be a standalone system that had GPS receiver but nothing else in the car couldn't necessarily tap into the location data.
SUre, it meant some more wires and maybe the features had disconnects because they weren't aware of each other that much but all in all that was a good thing. It kept everything simple, isolated and repairable. Now because of more integration the modules need to know who they're talking to which leads to bizarre things like having to code in new headlights and pair them with other modules or they won't be recognized and just stay off.
> As someone who got into a rollover accident which ended with my car upside down on a freeway, hearing only the onstar person talking to me while half conscious, this is sad.
Maybe in theory, but I trust Apple to detect a crash correctly about as far as I can throw my iPhone without breaking its glass back or front.
This is the company whose flagship voice assistant, in 2026, can’t tell the intended recipient in a sentence like “Text Bob Mary signed the deal.” And if my phone happens to be thrown into the back of the car by the crash, I doubt anyone will be able to hear me.
Not to mention that OnStar has operators who talk to first responders. the cell phone thing will just call 911 and hope for the best.
> This is the company whose flagship voice assistant, in 2026, can’t tell the intended recipient in a sentence like “Text Bob Mary signed the deal.” And if my phone happens to be thrown into the back of the car by the crash, I doubt anyone will be able to hear me.
You can be using CarPlay to navigate at that moment to a destination, and because of the way my fiancee has Siri set up, if she says "Get me directions to the nearest Starbucks", Siri will say, "I'm sorry, I don't know where you are."
Lol, same thing for Android, too. It has full access to my contact list, but if I tell it to "Call Stephan Beier" I see the transcript for "Beyer" and then it fails. That sounds the same in German, now what shall I do. Stupid thing.
Other "it's the future year 2026 how the hell are things still this bad" examples:
1. For years "Navigate Home" has done exactly what you'd expect, then one morning it decides traveling to Home Depot is the only possible interpretation.
2. A bog-standard timed alarm goes off, and half the time "Silence Alarm" leads to it insisting that there are no alarms going off right now.
What stings is that these aren't issues with ambiguous grammar or unusual phrasings, these are extremely predictable commands for features I would expect in the minimum viable product.
When they forced us to use Gemini as the assistant, saying "hey Google call X" stopped working because it came up with a list of phone numbers for them and I couldn't tell it "home" or "mobile" because I had to manually select.
That lasted about 6 hours before I figured out how to switch back to Assistant.
Why? Well, The OnStar product has about a 30-year history of doing its main jobs flawlessly. Also, it's a paid product and their flagship product. We exchange our dollars for the product they provide. Simple. Unlike Apple where these are ancillary offerings way outside their core competency.
And I'm OnStar have great margins, because it's basically an insurance product that most customers rarely if ever use. But it's an interesting insurance product because unlike say, car insurance, instead of a claim costing them $10,000-1,000,000 a "claim" costs them maybe 30 minutes of a call center agent's time. Great business to be in.
But all that works in my favor. It's a good deal for me because it might save the life of me or someone I love and I can easily afford it. And they have every incentive to preserve their reputation, such as by not replacing the operator with a chatbot who wants to offer me directions to the nearest Chevron™ when I've rolled off the road into a canyon.
Only if it hasn't been crushed, damaged, or otherwise flung out of the vehicle that crashed so violently that it's actually upside down, as noted in the original comment.
> As someone who got into a rollover accident which ended with my car upside down on a freeway, hearing only the onstar person talking to me while half conscious, this is sad.
Get an iPhone or an apple watch - they offer this same service with a more sane privacy policy.
They've fixed that in later models, disconnecting the module disables the dash now.
But don't worry, the FTC is out to protect you. Their settlement with GM says that can only sell your name attached to zipcode resolution location data and only sell your precise location trace attached to an opaque ID rather than your name.
I've reliably disconnected Toyotas and VWs by pulling the cell antenna connections from the telematics modules in the dash. The GPS antenna is separate and still aids in carplay navigation.
Makes it less likely to connect presumably, but at least on some cars it will sometimes, rarely manage to get out-- and of course it'll upload its queued data if it can. (In particular I know of someone where a GM car managed to get data onto the Lexis Nexis report with the antenna disconnected-- now with their FTC settlement its harder to tell if its still getting through, unfortunately).
Or if you take it in for service and they plug the antenna in. Better than nothing, but if your privacy and security depends on not being constantly tracked it's not good enough.
I have the service manual and can see there is only one telematics module in the car. It has two redundant LTE antennas and one GPS antenna going into the telematics module. The onstar calling works when the antennas are plugged in and doesn't when they're not. Can I confirm that they don't hide a bug somewhere in my car without stripping it down to the bone? No, but I'm not a schizo, so I won't bother.
That is a very reasonable level of diligence, but I don't think it's right to characterize further skepticism as "schizo" -- lets imagine the car has a separate entertainment system or sirusxm radio (perhaps not the case for yours)-- in that case it might have an entirely separate telematics function reporting back to a different corporate master. Because of how cars are built there are many places where subsystems are effectively duplicated. Sirus performing telematics in addition to the manufactures hardware isn't a hypothetical example.
More fair to say that you satisfied your level of concern. But it's entirely not schizo for someone to be concerned that there was more than one tracking vector, especially given that manufactures already active inhibit efforts to disable tracking and ordinary practices of the automotive industry.
Or, in other words, please don't privacy shame people. If you felt your approach was sufficient-- awesome! Better to be nothing like the people who were others names online for asking about disabling telematics at all, only to be all shocked pikachu when their insurer jacked their rates later based on their driving activity. :P
Saying you need to physically take the car into them, unless you're in a country that requires them to provide the option, and disabling other features out of spite isn't what I would call a supported user privacy feature.
Disabling internet connectivity disables lane keeping assistance. I wonder if this is a dark pattern to punish users who opt out or because they feel they need reports of crashes ahead to do it safely.
I believe the "advanced" LKAS on Rivian only works on highways and relies on an "up to date" geofencing database, so that's the first-order technical reason. And I'm sure they don't exactly prioritize fixing or altering that behavior for the other reason.
This is a safety issue. I don’t think there is a “fix” for offline lane assistance that they are sitting on do avoid people from disabling telemetry
The gen 1 system uses cameras primarily. It’s not awesome lidar or AI. It needs up to date road information.
I’ve been driving down I-5, a major interstate and had it turn off on me, presumably because I hit a dead spot, as conditions were fine and I5 is one of the most popular routes there is.
I’m fine with all of this. I prefer that it hand back control to me rather than make me another statistic like Tesla’s system.
I just can't imagine relying on something like that for my safety. I have worked on GPS and IoT solutions in related spaces and the comms networks aren't reliable, and actual control of a consumer vehicle is about the last thing I would ever want relying on it.
I think if I might be critical, the idea that the car graciously hands over control to you at a moment you are capable of catching might be a bit of a blind spot. The car could lose one of the signals it needs at an inopportune time and you would need a split second and correct emergency reaction to not spear off the road or collide with something. The physics of cars at highway speeds is awe inspiring, problems happen really, really fast.
Sure; I think that's a reasonable take too. I have no idea what their TTL requirements are or how frequently they update the ADAS database; if they're on the order of real-time, this seems like a complete technical constraint, if they're on a longer time horizon they might be able to offer manual offline databases.
I'm very curious at what level the restrictions operate. With every other manufacturer I've looked at, they're extremely coarse-grained; it's more like "is there a known long-time-horizon hazard in this area that is known to impair the system" than a "we mapped every lane and you need a database." I wonder if your I5 issue was a weeks or months-old construction area, for example. I haven't looked at Rivian much, though, and it could be totally different or extremely fine grained, there's no reason to suggest otherwise either.
I think it's a coarse-grained "this highway has been deemed non-anomalous enough to allow the vision systems to engage," not a fine-grained "we mapped every lane marking."
I assume by lane keeping assistance they mean the more basic camera based system to warn and potentially correct drivers if they drift over a line without indicating. It makes sense it could also be geofenced to limit it to highways.
Lane keeping is often hard to disable and you have to do it each and every drive, so getting that off permanently and putting the car offline then that is an unexpected bonus. Probably the same also applies for the speed limit beeper that partially relies on GPS maps. Taping over the front camera also works.
On an enthusiast forum someone made a little circuit board that plugs into the control panel of the steering wheel. When you get in the car, you press one button, and that simulates the button press sequence required to turn off the lane keep assist, speed warning and multiple other systems.
I have driven about half a dozen vehicles with this feature, and it has been annoying 100% of the time, and never helpful at all. In the company van I drive (Citroën Berlingo) I have to disable it every time I start the car. The lane keeping gets confused all the time by snow or dirt or when merging onto the motorway, or fucking background radiation - I dunno. It always shocks me when it pulls on the steering wheel. This crap should be forbidden. In the same car I also have to disable the start-stop system so as not to destroy the engine. Aside from that it's a nice enough van for a diesel, but I've been ruined by electrics.
In my own car (Nissan Leaf 2021), it stays disabled. But then it shows me a lawyer screen on every start asking me to consent to handing over my first born son etc.
Imagine if proper EV's had been invented in 2005 - we would have had some awesome cars.
I don't know if it is because I'm neurodivergent, but most driving aids are incredibly distracting for me. I'm terrified of anything interfering with my steering like lane keeping. Flashed up speed warnings, and especially anything that beeps are super distracting. I drive with GPS on silent, now the car wants to override that.
My car from ~2020 has an intermediate "low" setting which I've been pretty happy with. The default "high" is a frustrating distraction though, jarringly affecting the wheel even when I'm very-well-aware of what's going on and have my own plans for the curves ahead.
If you've ever braked hard, you've used ABS. Its what let's you continue to steer under heavy braking. Previous generations were taught to pump the breaks for a similar (much less effective) effect.
The fact that you've used it and don't know it proves your point. That's an example of good safety implementation.
I have never needed to brake hard enough for ABS to kick in, or at least not intentionally - I don't count wellying on it hard to seat new brake pads, for instance, nor do I count traction control coming in (which uses ABS) under load on loose slippy surfaces.
It's easy to tell when it does - it makes the same BRRRRRP noise it does during the ECU's startup self test from the valve block in the engine bay.
If you need lane keeping assistance you should just accept you need internet connectivity at all times like wtf cars didn’t always have that just drive straight.
Lane keeping assistance is optional on any vehicle. I don't believe there is any current production in which you can't opt out of lane keeping assistance?
Not that I’ve seen. Every time I rent a recent model year, they have the lane keeping assist feature but it only works when you enable adaptive cruise control.
They need to keep lane availability up to date - lanes get closed for repair or realignment sometimes and it’d suck to rear-end an 18 ton grader because you don’t have current DOT info…
Anybody relying on lane-keeping assistance to prevent from slamming into the back of big yellow construction vehicle is doing it wrong, and we should be thankful they didn't hit something else with more victims.
The problem is that the lane keeping assist freaks out quite often and will steer you into obstacles that are in your lane.
I will say though the the new version of the Kia Niro EVs we have is a lot better in that regard - it just kind of gently nudges the steering, it feels more like the car is tramlining a bit. The older versions we had at work would actively try to steer you into other vehicles.
My assumption would be that lane keeping would be about staying in the lines ahead of you, not knowing which lanes are available on the route. Available lanes can change in real-time due to all kinds of reasons.
I think the term has been used for various capabilities over the years.
My friend's 10-year-old Toyota will chirp annoyingly if you drift over a lane line but that's all it does. It doesn't have any ability to steer the car back into the center of the lane. Is that "lane keeping"?
Also great if you are distracted, perhaps by kids in the back or something happening on the side of the road. Mine has chirped at me a few times. It's basically the electronic version of rumble strips.
I've seen lanes on highways that abruptly end with zero markings or signs - the concrete barriers just force you into the other lane just as you realize what's going on.
I would have doubted this had I not experienced it myself on my way home from a movie last night. Not even a construction sign! Let alone something reflective.
First thing I do on rental cars is pull out any devices plugged into the OBD port and follow the wiring for a bit to see if the port is duplicated. I'll plug it back in when they ask for it, that way I know it is not a bad actor at play.
Second thing is to do a factory reset on the infotainment and press "deny" on anything.
Third thing is to use a USB sanitizer so plugging in the USB-port doesn't sync any of my data with the car or initiate a pairing.
Final thing is to check tire pressure, unrelated to above but 9 out of 10 times the tire pressure on rental cars is incorrect. I have a little pen tester in my travel kit.
Are there any electric cars that don't need internet connectivity via wifi/esim at all? I'm looking for something really simple. A chassis, four wheels, an engine, airbags. Basically my current ICE car, just electric.
I can recommend the VW e-UP!s from 2013-2016ish. They have very little tech in them but are relatively modern. You can also quite easily tap into the control systems (climate etc) to remote control it with your own hardware: https://docs.openvehicles.com/en/latest/components/vehicle_v...
They are also super fun to drive and, although they have small batteries, the can charge at 40-50kWh, which translates to 10 minutes to ~85% full. We have used a eUP 2013 model to travel across europe (~900km) in two days, many times! One charge last between one and two hours, depending on speed and weather. We usually cruse at about 90km/h, and the car is basically sipping electrons! The newer model have double the range, but I have not owned or testet them, but might be a decent compromise for longer travels.
What's your current ICE car? If it's a fairly simple front wheel drive platform you can probably transplant the battery and traction pack from a Nissan Leaf or similar into it.
Incidentally if you can get enough cold water into it you can get around 150bhp out of a first-gen Nissan Leaf motor for a few seconds, which is really all you're going to need.
There's a guy in the south of England who makes tubular steel spaceframe chassis replacements for VW Beetles, that are compatible with most kit car bodies. Instead of taking a hard-to-get Beetle engine and gearbox they take an MGF engine and gearbox, but I bet you could cram your Leaf motors and batteries in. There you go, now you're running around town in a ridiculously quick electric beach buggy. How cool is that?
Unlike most vehicles sold in the United States, the Slate Truck is not expected to have any in-car entertainment system; instead, customers are expected to use their own mobile device for audio streaming, navigation, and over-the-air updates for their trucks.
Amusingly, my Cupra Born has all its connectivity disabled... because Cupra Australia just didn't want to bring it to this country. Not a bad thing really, aside from the annoying red notification dot telling me I have no signal!
Why cant users disable connectivity elsewhere other thsn canada? People are supposed to call their car dealer each time after car update before turning it off again? Seems to be a cheap pr stunt to portray canadian regulation in attempt to shed good light on rivian
The same reason Windows only respects users choices in Europe, they make more money with the settings elsewhere in the world and will only change unless regulated.
> In the EEA, Windows will always use customers’ configured app default settings for link and file types, including industry standard browser link types (http, https).
I don't know for certain, but likely because they are required to. There are lots of other examples where companies will only abide by regulations in places where it's required rather than applying it generally. A common example in Canada is with things like lotteries, coupons, or returns - many things exempt Quebec because it's not allowed there, but the companies still place that burden on everyone else they can.
I still don't understand why this isn't treated as a national security threat. If X bad guy wanted to do devastating damage to the US Economy during a wartime situation, even a day "burb" in transportation would swing the tide of a war, let alone permanently disabling thousands of workers from getting to their jobs.
Cell connected vehicles are unnecessary and a danger for so many reasons.
We all know selling your information to 3rd parties is a virtual goldmine. Either Rivian is doing much better than expected in the luxury space or they're unaware of the value of this data. There's no evidence of old fashioned goodwill here.
I think they know only a small percentage will actually turn it off, the data they get from the other 90% is worth the good will you get from the 10% that opt out. It’s a fair trade off
My 2026 Kia EV comes with an "offline mode" in the settings, which disables all the connected features in the car, including OTA updates. I wonder if this sufficiently insulates me from their spying?
It would have been much better to be able to disable telemetry without losing basic functionality such as navigation and safety updates. Having to choose between being spied on and having no connectivity at all is a false dichotomy.
Any connectivity at all is telemetry. The connection itself reveals where you are. Navigation reveals where you are down to the meter, along with everywhere you've been, where you're going, speed, etc. What else are you worried about if not that?
It reveals where you are to the cell towers, but not to the car company. My phone already reveals where I am based on its cellular connectivity, so I'm not too worried about that.
I’m not OP but I just want to point out that navigation doesn’t need to mean I am always sharing telemetry with multiple third parties
I have a garmin watch which is great for overland hiking, multiple day expeditions etc
I download the maps and the watch has GPS to plot where I am on that map. My watch doesn’t have an eSIM at all.
Rivian is an adventure brand so if they wanted to design a maps system like that, where I am not continually downloading tiles from open maps or google and sending my location to them and others, they probably could
I just don’t think they have space for those types of features most people don’t care about while they are trying to compete in a rough industry and deliver new vehicles
It's telling just how completely successful the social media revolution has been, when we don't remember that two short decades ago 3rd-party car navigation options that relied on maps loaded on the device and GPS input and that's all. No SIM cards (though they could have done so at the time), no telemetry.
The experience was even comparable to today's experience - I've been auto-routed around a road closure, like, twice in 5 years? And it _failed_ to route me around a road closure probably twice as well?
Why would you be sharing that? There's no reason why the navigation system needs to constantly tell a remote system where you are. Navigation systems don't even need an Internet connection for basic routing.
Navigation through gps means you're connected to a satelite at all times. has nothing to do with an internet connection. You're directly connected to the U.S. government (Space Force)
A GPS receiver is passive, it doesn't send any signal to the satellites. The satellite broadcast their position and what time it is from their point of view, and the receiver computes its position from that.
Also, there are now several countries that sent positioning constellations (obviously to not have to rely on the US for positioning), and most receivers support several: GPS (US), Galileo (Europe), Glonass (Russia), Beidu (China).
> it will also limit or disable certain functionality in the vehicle (e.g., navigation, active lane centering, and over-the-air updates, which provide new features, better performance, safety enhancements, and bug fixes).
I fear this trend in the automotive industry will only complicate things further and introduce more unnecessary risk in our daily life. Is it too much to ask for a dumb car which is durable and takes me from point A to point B? I do not want my future car to be dependent on the manufacturers CI/CD pipeline.
You're reading too much into the editorialized title, this is a FAQ for Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?
Lane keeping assist likely (a) shares data back to Rivian, and (b) depends on GPS and (live) map data to know location specific settings.. that there are 4 lanes on this road and the left 2 lead somewhere else (etc). Line detection (on-device) isn't always reliable (snow, rain, ice, mud, gravel, construction)
I've only used Google Maps for navigation myself so can't speak to what Rivian does. But Google Maps uses Internet access to determine the speed of traffic on your route, allowing it suggest alternate routes if there's a traffic jam. (It also uploads the speed that you're traveling to Google servers, which is how they know about traffic jams to begin with: in many cities they could buy data from traffic cameras, but in stretches of rural highway where there are no cameras, Google Maps still knows when traffic has slowed down to a crawl. Guess how.) It also uses the Internet access to access reports like "There's a police car / stalled vehicle / object on road ahead". It may do other things with Internet access that I don't know about, but those are the two that I do know about.
And at least the object-on-road feature is one I'm glad they have. I once saw a truck ahead of me in my lane suddenly swerve hard onto the shoulder, which alerted me to danger. (The truck driver remained in control of the truck, thankfully). And there was a wooden pallet lying squarely in the right lane of the highway. I avoided it by moving into the left lane, then once I spotted a mile marker I pulled over and called 911 to report the traffic hazard. About ten minutes later, as I was driving on, I saw a police car on the opposite side of the highway, heading towards where I had reported the pallet on the highway. No way of knowing whether that car was the one responding to my call, but the timing suggests it was. Hopefully nobody had an accident before the pallet got cleared away. These days Google Maps would be able to alert people to the hazard before they got close, so nobody will be in the situation I was where the vehicle in front of them blocked their view of the hazard until they were quite close.
Long story short (yeah, yeah, I know: "too late"), some Internet-required features of modern navigation are ones I'm glad they have.
Google Maps uses Internet access to determine the speed of traffic on your route, allowing it suggest alternate routes if there's a traffic jam.
My phone can pre-download maps into Google Maps for offline use, I've done this in foreign countries where I didn't necessarily have full data connection. There's no reason you couldn't cache the necessary maps on the car's navigation system and let it operate based on that and an incoming GPS signal, never emitting out one bit.
OTOH, if you wanted live data, dynamic routing etc. for your convenience you could explicitly turn data on but then you'd acknowledge it comes with the caveats such as potential snooping of telemetry data.
Admittedly, I would never trust a car manufacturer to actually disable telemetry no matter what they'd promise. So, disconnecting the antennae would be the only reliable method regardless. I wonder if there will ever be a car with a physical radio kill switch like laptops.
FWIW, this was precisely my point (I didn't mention it well). I'm totally cool with a car not having live data (such as traffic jams) when the device is offline, but the navigation ought to function without networking. Heck, it could download the maps from WiFi at home. You guys do have WiFi at home?
Aside from this you may also consider that newer cars are sending out unencrypted but digitally signed data via ITS (in Europe) or DSRC/C-V2X (USA) that potentially anybody with an antenna can collect.
That includes positional data, speed, whether you're pressing the gas pedal or braking etc. Since it is meant as a Car-to-Car solution, e.g. to warn other cars when there is an accident the reach isn't great, but some of the signals (e.g. warning of a traffic jam) may be propagated by other cars.
Because Rivian doesn't have a mode for _just_ lane-keeping. There's Adaptive Cruise Control (which maintains speed) and there's Highway Assist (which maintains speed and position in the lane). Highway Assist only works on certain mapped highways.
fyi: modern vehicles are required to have a e(mergency)Call function (UNECE UN-R 144), therefore all of these cars have a modem with a unique IMEI (that is typically bound to a VIN), therefore you can track the movements of every car pretty precisely.
Disabling the eCall is not possible, and doing so (in the EU) would void your car's registration.
I’m still very happy with my 2024 4Runner, one of the purchases I never regretted a single bit, I did have a Sony head unit installed for a larger screen with support of wireless Apple CarPlay, and that’s enough tech in a car for me. My wife keeps complaining about its lack of auto lane keeping but I’m ok with it bc I enjoy driving it.
>For non-Canadian vehicles, you may reach out to Rivian Service to request that we disable the eSIM card in the vehicle through a service appointment.
Why is that? I really don't want to bring it to the shop to turn off the radio. In Canada it's a toggle in the settings. Is there Canadian legislation mandating this or something?
Reading comments, I expectantly see a lot of cheering for this step, with many calling for further measures. I understand that privacy features are important to some people, but I am not one of them.
Can someone provide what needs these feature covers? Like, what are some reason to disable all internet connectivity?
So you're okay with every single company being able to track you, build a profile to you, and sell that profile to the highest bidder, while you get nothing remotely comparable in value?
Not really. I have enough to worry about in the present rather than worry about imaginary future scenarios. I also think that since this is something most people are agreeing to, if it would turn really sour there would be enough of public outrage to make the worst of consequences illegal.
I pulled the TPUs from my Hondas. There is no software option to disable, but also no features I miss out on (ie Honda app or any of the useless to me subscriptions).
Happy I did, along with the ANC/fake engine noise modules.
I have stopped buying any new vehicles that collect “data” and has an internet connections for a long time. But it seems plenty of people does not care about it.
Very tangentially related- Does Rivian put software licenses in the OS UI somewhere? Couldn't find it when I was playing with my friend's car. Seems odd if it is android-based...
Props to them. I'm holding onto an old car partially cause of this. Aside from semi theoretical problems like privacy and attack vectors, car tech is constantly annoying.
Are either privacy breaches or remote attacks really still in any way theoretical dangers? There have been numerous demonstrations of vehicles or their occupants being monitored, disrupted, or stolen as a direct result of the modern remote/online tech they usually come with now. I know quite a few people - myself included - who are wary of buying any new car that has all this junk tech built in and prefer to stick with older models for now.
There's research demonstrating attacks or showing horrible vulns like Subaru's remote unlock, but I've never heard of someone's car actually getting stolen or tampered with by a criminal by hacking it over the internet. Normally it's more local methods like key fob spoofing. Maybe I missed a story.
That and for me in particular, my car isn't any more secure, it's a P71 so I was able to buy a spare key on eBay.
This is the sign of a company who listens to their customers. They have received feedback saying some people don't want a connected car, so they make it an option.
I’m weighing whether I should get a Slate or R2 next. Yet, somehow, I feel like these don’t compete directly much. Perhaps I’m wrong. My friends with R1s would never consider a Slate. Maybe the R2 is more of a match even at twice the price.
I think that: 1) Slate will still not be available for a while, and 2) Once you get everything you want on it, the price won't be that much better. But that's just my take.
Don't get me wrong, I look forward to Slate being available and think it's compelling, but just my cynical take.
I love the cynicism! My thought is that’s why it doesn’t compete for many people. Either you like Slate for what it is (simplistic, low features, or just really want that customization yourself) or you think it’s too simplistic, want a lot of features, or like the luxury finishes - so you just buy a Rivian without considering the Slate.
I’ve been wanting something like the Slate for a long time and am truly excited by it. The more they’ve commented on specifics however, the more I feel like it’s a risky buy though (for me and my needs). If they do the test drive tour I’m going to make sure to visit it, the whole preorder a car from a company that doesn’t exist thing stokes my anxiety a bit too. Rivian at least I’m familiar with but I’m definitely in the “this company is going bankrupt camp” and don’t see their path towards profitability. So hard for me to buy their product even if they are built for camping
If they can make it a toggle for Canadian vehicles, why do you need to schedule an appointment in the US? Obviously it's so they can try to talk you out of it, but c'mon, just give everyone a toggle.
Annoying how it doesn't disable the cell modem from registering to a network (in Canada). So no it doesn't provide any tracking protection. Or at least that is how it sounds.
It was expensive but every day I am happy with my Rivian purchase. Great to have a vehicle where the actual users are obviously thought of (contra for instance the cybertruck where some variety 'cool factor' was obviously prioritized, resulting in finger crunching hoods and such).
'Elon Derangement Syndrome' as opposed to 'Elon dick ride syndrome'.
I see your type of people on Twitter all the time, they complain that someone was critical of Elon (and in this circumstance he wasn't even calling out Elon. He literally commented on a known flaw with the Cybertruck) yet people like you come out of the woodwork and defend everything. You've got yourself worked up about something that has nothing to do with Elon. I always like checking out those peoples profiles and their whole life revolves around Elon. That is a bigger disorder in my opinion.
Cars before the enshitification, already had tons of security issues, I remember watching a hacker stopping a BMW the reports was driving in the middle of the highway.
This was decades and decades ago, imagine now??
When I bought a 2025 Suzuki Jimny XL, I wanted a car, not a computer on wheels.
- physical buttons everywhere
- head unit is the only touch screen
- Non-invasive safety features
- No firmware update
- No internet connection
- No enshitification
It is what cars used to be back in the day with minor modern touch like LED headlight. Its headlight does not have direct connection to the ECU.
Toyota cars, especially the new ones can be stolen by breaking the headlight and using its harness to talk with the ECU. Virtually speaking, all Toyota cars are being stolen like hotcake in Australia.
People buying these EVs do not understand how deep it goes buying a car you do not own.
Testa has done this over and over, removed features from the car via OTA update. Car was never meant to be a computer on wheel.
"Can I disable all data collection from my vehicle?
Vehicle connectivity is a core feature .. blah blah blah"
I absolutely hate these kind of answers. I understand why the answer is written that way, but i truly hate it to the core. They are marketing speak/CYA answers.
Why i hate it? Because i do not mind the communication, but i absolotely do mind the collecting and harvesting.
I don't want to lose connectivity. I want to lose all the effing data harvesting. I don't mind leaving data and using navigation, but i do not want the data effing harvested.
I want to have phone calls, but i do not want my calls logged for a long time so that these logs can be abused in any form by someone or something.
ALL of these features do NOT need long time logging for it to function.
This is, in a word, crap. We give you a fake option to turn off data and make it egregious by killing features that shouldn't need it like lane keeping. How about instead a real privacy option that actually is true? 'Block identification'. 'disable sim when not in use'. 'no server side storage'. And, yes, do allow turning off all data and NOT from a service call, just a simple option. Also don't block features that clearly don't need that like lane following.
Having ranted a bit though, in the world of car companies an official policy on how to turn data off is amazing. The bar is so low right now that it is crazy to think this terrible implementation riddled with dark patterns is a 'win'. These companies need to be shut down.
My understanding is that Rivian’s lane keeping (and other features like it) are only possible because of driving data collected to train their models.
It’s not such a stretch to believe that there’s some aspect of this that is specific to a driver or to a vehicle, and so requires that they collect your data. Even if this is not accurate, I can see a business making the decision that, given they need more and more data to improve the model, they would not allow customers to opt-out of that training cohort and still use the feature. Incentives etc.
Directionally though, I am with you on auto telematics data collection; I am not sure you can even buy a new car in the US that doesn’t ship with tracking, and many manufacturers (like the one who makes my car) don’t allow opt out at all. Fcking Stellantis
Ideally, they would support Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. There are a few big reasons this is preferable.
- I already pay for internet on my phone, I'm not interested in paying for another cellular service just to get maps and music streaming on the screen in my car. GM ditched CarPlay specifically to push customers to their subscription service. I know some electric automakers are offering it "for free", but I do not trust that it will remain free, and that's important when spending tens of thousands of dollars on something you plan to use for a decade+.
- Third party app ecosystem means I can use the maps and music player I want, and not just what my car manufacturer decides is worth including.
- Auto manufacturers suck at software. I've yet to use an infotainment system that wasn't a stark downgrade from CarPlay.
Basically, my car shouldn't need an internet connection because my smartphone already does all the same things but better.
My car has Android Automotive and CarPlay and Android Auto are disabled. Honestly, if I was driving my car for all days, eight hours a day, the Android Automotive is better. However, I don't. I drive for a few minutes to work on days when it's not safe to ride my bike. That doesn't happen very often, but once in a while. It's just not worth the monthly fee and I'm really frustrated the few times I do get in my car that I can't use my phone because a car keeps jumping in when I say, hey Google. if I'm using maps, I don't see the friendly display. Which direction I'm supposed to turn and so if the kids are talking to me at the same time the jumps up, I sometimes miss my turn indicator. When playing music I don't have a nice convenient touch in front of me to say skip this song instead I have to pick up my phone which of course is illegal now for good reason.
Also, my phone follows me between vehicles and provides the exact same interface in all of them. Heck, I can switch vehicles and my podcast or music starts back up right where I left it. That alone is a major win for the phone-based approach - if I drive my spouse's vehicle for instance, or my old truck because I need to haul something, doesn't matter, they all have the same navigation and audio.
Worth noting that with some brands when the free cellular service for the car's use runs out and you would need to start paying you can go to the network settings and tell it to use an external WiFi network, such as your phone's hotspot, instead of the built in cellular connection.
> For non-Canadian vehicles, you may reach out to Rivian Service to request that we disable the eSIM card in the vehicle through a service appointment.
I certainly appreciate that disabling network connectivity is even possible, but a bit scummy that non-Canadians have to make an in-person service appointment.
Is there some Canadian law at play here that requires they permit Canadians to disable this easily from the GUI? Would love legislation like that in the US.
They could store data and then dump it later when the vehicle is being serviced. Unless their privacy states otherwise, assume data is being gathered and sold. Other car manufactures have been caught selling travel data. It's not even that paranoid. Google has been fined in the past for secretly collecting location data in Android when offline and then relaying it back to HQ once the phone got a signal.
How would they do that? I'm sure you can buy some sort of aerospace component that has the signal integrity to do radios, but it sounds expensive. There's a reason these kinds of components (e.g. muxes) aren't usually physical disconnections.
Automotive power relays are at least a thing, but they're expensive consumables that have significant power draw.
In either case they would have had to add the components at design time and do the physical validation/testing, not ship it as a software update.
I didn't notice until you mentioned it; fixed. Like others have pointed out, one issue has little to do with the other.
Cars were made for 100 years without an internet connection. Even for an EV there is no need for network connectivity or constant software updates. The first time a prominent figure is assasinated with a remote take-over of their vehicle people may start to see this issue a bit differently.
>It sounds to me like this is more akin to the Cellular Data toggle on Android as opposed to Aeroplane mode. If that is the case, it will presumably not prevent your vehicle from connecting to cellular base stations, which means your vehicle will still be trackable by network operators.
Your phone still connects to the cellular network without a sim card or eSim. It is mandated by law in the US. The only way to prevent your phone from connecting/pinging/being pinged by the cellular network is to put it in airplane mode.
Whether there is a sim enabled/disabled/installed is irrelevant. The question is whether this feature is Airplain Mode or if it is just disable cellular.
Ah, I thought you were likening it to the disable cellular data button which does not disconnect the cellular network.
Instead you are referring to the fact that the radio may remain on even if it has no active SIM card.
Given that the primary concern of connected vehicles is changes over time and manufacturer control, I don’t see any reason to make that distinction for most people.
(https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/privacynotincluded/arti...)
>Nissan earned its second-to-last spot for collecting some of the creepiest categories of data we have ever seen. [Their privacy policy] includes your “sexual activity.” Not to be out done, Kia also mentions they can collect information about your “sex life” in their privacy policy. Oh, and six car companies say they can collect your “genetic information” or “genetic characteristics.”
Some laws require discussing very specific lists of categories of information they might have. I'm guessing this is a completionist CYA lawyer accounting for this.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140827195715/https://blog.uber...
There's another post on this article asking for an EV that doesn't: "need internet connectivity via wifi/esim at all? I'm looking for something really simple. A chassis, four wheels, an engine, airbags. Basically my current ICE car, just electric."
I'm hoping that they get a lot of good suggestions, but I'm not holding my breath.
Someone with the requirements you outline is not in the market for any new car, regardless of powertrain.
Once again, are there any that work functionally like my airgapped ICE car? It is only 8 years old. I’m worried there aren’t.
As I said, nothing to do with being an EV. All new cars have some variety of telemetry. You may choose not to buy a newer car, but it has nothing to do with whether it is an EV or not.
But be careful because an 8 year old ICEV from GM has OnStar
BMW was one of the best for privacy the last time I checked.
^^ Not EV, but... :)
You can count the exceptions to this on one hand.
You need government support to make EVs a preferred option. Poor folk buy cheap cars, and they mostly rent. The whole scenario around EV charging is a shitshow, and the tax incentives were insufficient to fix it. I had a Model Y for awhile and really liked it, and now have a fancy Japanese hybrid SUV. It's much less of a pain in the ass then the EV was.
I think a bunch of people have decided that EV means Tesla or Rivian, and maybe Hyundai/Kia, and possibly VW if they think about it. But there are a bunch of EVs driving on the roads that people don't even realize exist, they look like every other car. They tend not to have fancy features.
https://www.slate.auto/en
Unfortunately, they’ve been suspiciously quiet since their initial announcement, but fingers crossed. Might actually have a viable new car option if they’re successful.
I wonder what happens if you disable the e-SIM (in the US) and then a safety recall appears via software update - do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
This is a huge unresolved issue with EVs IMO; ICE cars are required to provide emissions-relevant updates over software which can operate using a J2534 passthrough device, which effectively means powertrain modules have to allow (potentially signed) updates over CAN using software that can be obtained by an end user (a lot of people don't know this; for almost any ICE car in the US, you can buy a 3-day or 1-week subscription to the dealership level diagnostic software for a somewhat reasonable fee and use it with a J2534 device).
But for EVs, there's no such rule and as far as I can tell it's entirely a gray area in the US now; the NHTSA require a "remedy" for recalls but nobody seems to have pushed back to determine whether OTA is truly a remedy. The traditional autos all offer dealerships as a backup option, but Tesla and Rivian have several recalls with only OTA remedies already. This seems sketchy.
I would assume so. Even on older cars, service techs can typically manually push firmware updates over the OBD-II / J2534 port. Rivian's OBD-II port actually hides an Ethernet signal inside of it - so the interface is certainly there.
Fun fact: You can buy an Ethernet adapter directly from Rivian here to connect to the car's internal network: https://rivianservicetools.com/Catalog/Product/TSN00535-300-...
Nice. This is really normal now, for what it's worth - all of the European makes have moved this direction as well (DoIP over ENET). There's shockingly little documentation about Rivian online, though, probably because emissions regulation doesn't mandate it.
https://automotivevehicletesting.com/vehicle-diagnostics/doi...
https://www.iso.org/standard/13400-2
Older cars have no concept of such updates.
Happy with my 70s and 80s and early 90s cars.
A nice feature on that system was that you could put a paperclip between two pins on the diagnostic port and it would blink out the trouble codes on the SES light.
Edit: I eventually recovered most of the cost via a settlement court.
Kia's engines are known to fail predictably even within first 100K miles. They extended their warranty because of it. But then they weasel out of it unless you hire an attorney and go to war.
If this were a widespread policy I bet class action lawyers would be all over it without you having to pay for it.
As if I needed another reason to keep my 2014 skoda.
If i ever have to get a new car, i will disable telemetry, and i will buy it either without telemetry, or with the agreement that i do not consent to telemetry.
(read the fine print before getting a new car. the shit they can do that can go wrong and you have to pay for.. no wonder old cars cost as much as new ones.)
They're worried about the cost of a new car, and the cost of all the electronics, should they go bad.
I really wish car review publications would start adding a ‘Privacy’ section along side the Perfectly, Road Handling etc parts of reviews
(Just stating this as a data point for you.)
You mean you've never had a conversation about it. You can't know if you've met somebody that has that concern unless you've broached the subject explicitly.
2. identify anything that looks like capable of housing a cell modem. that takes some understanding of contemporary car electronics
3. deny RF interface to units identified. that takes some understanding what RF = radio frequency interface is and also getting rid of fear of disassembling significant portions of your car.
All in all that is a great learning experience.
And chances are you would have to get rid of 2/3 or more of oem electronics.
It'll end up a prototype vehicle or something, with custom ECU and stuff. On the bright side it will belong to you and not to the some mckinsey guys running those insurances and whatnot. It has been done too, although I personally prefer to just use vehicles that do not require this level of effort.
The other day there was a thread on unclouded tractors what I missed and I must tell I love my Universal 445 made in Romania in 1989. For all its quirks, it just gets the job done, no connectivity, no nothing, it's an unbreakable 3-cylinder diesel that just works.
I have a tesla wall charger. I never wanted to connect it to wifi, but it creates its own unique wifi access point TelsaWallConnector-blah-blah.
so I thought - I'll just disconnect the antenna!
nope, still shows up.
so... I'll just wire the antenna it to a dummy load!
nope, still shows up.
It appears the wifi chipset has an on-board antenna and an external antenna connector and it uses them both.
I suspect this stuff happens for wifi and cellular chips in lots of devices.
I get some updates OTA, but the dealer has to install some others, and when I took it there they updated it with a USB stick.
Rivian are probably the only major manufacturer I've never had a chance to look at in any RE capacity and I'm getting more curious by the second. The reaction their vehicles had to the infamous bricked-infotainment update actually represented a pretty good adherence to safety guidelines (the drivetrain as well as the speedometer and warning lights on the cluster still worked in a degraded format even when the infotainment was bricked) IMO, so they do seem to apply a reasonable degree of care.
Yes.
You get a letter in the mail asking you to take your car to the dealer so they can install the update.
Been there. Done this.
What if they did the EV equivalent of Dieselgate[1]? Say it has a dangerous amount of torque or something, but you like that.
Could you just turn off the network and keep it in the desired (unsupported) state?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
In Europe, car manufacturers have to show that their cars meet safety standards. In the US, car manufacturers only have to say/certify that their cars meet safety standards. This is the huge sticking point for Trump's attempt to force EU countries to accept cars that have not been proved to meet safety standards (it is portrayed as "unfair/uneven trade barriers" in the US media).
Of course they do. It would be absolutely silly not to. And in the case of safety recalls, their duty to inform you would entail a more traditional and substantiated disclosure i.e. a letter.
Whoa, didn't know that. Well the caveat is finding a decent J2534 device, right? There are a lot of cheapo knockoffs. Then actually knowing how to use the software with it.
https://www.crvownersclub.com/attachments/tsb-15-086-crv-tra...
Many subscriptions are painful, yes - VW brands / ODIS for example are awful to try to get as an individual and annoying as an independent shop; I'm sure the fraction of independent shops who pirate it are quite high. It's funny you mention Ford though, as they are incredibly easy to buy from in my experience, although the login/licensing backend is frequently broken.
However, there's a good cottage industry of companies reverse engineering the compatibility issues back out, and for better or worse these companies are cloned almost immediately too. I recently did key programming on a newer Ford (where Forscan can't) using a $125 VXDiag cable which I could have bought cloned for $30 and a short-term FDRS subscription that cost $50.
Just do as /u/bigfatkitten suggests and get the service manuals when you purchase the vehicle.
Certainly not any time in the last 15 years that I’ve been buying IDS/FDRS and service manual access.
My car needed another key. The stealership quoted me >$400 for it. I took it as a personal insult and did the research and ordered an OBD device and also discovered you can order replacement keys on aliexpress, and they'll even cut them for you with a good picture of your existing key. It was actually a fun project and very satisfying when I was able to successfully program and link the RFID chip to the ECU to start the engine.
May not be feasible with more locked-down modern cars which I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, but I was able to fix it for about $150, not including my time of course. But I have the OBD device to use next time now as well.
I bought a kit off of amazon "simple key" that included a programmer and a key with rfid chip. I think about $80.
You plugged the standalone dongle in the OBD2 port, did a procedure and it would take a few minutes and you would get an "original" key.
(The programmer said it was then locked to that VIN)
They key blank provided needed to get cut (did it at home depot).
I could then get additional rfid blanks for $7 and cut and program them.
Once you had two original keys, you could do the "DIY programming" method to make keys 3 and up.
The DIY method was something like "insert key 1, wait 3 seconds, remove, insert key 2 wait 3 seconds remove, insert new key, wait for something, remove" and you would get key 3, 4 ...
There were similar but separate ford procedures for programming the buttons on fobs to lock/unlock doors, etc
What's your plan for the future? I have an old car, but I know it won't last forever.
But with regard to a car, I don't know. I'll just do the best I can when the time comes. I'm hopeful there'll be options available or where I can cut antennas or whatever.
eBay key fob (new) + local locksmith, easy and no insults!
The other reason i did it is because the dealership and other shops quoted me over 10 times the cost of parts, and I literally did not have the money to take them up should i have wanted to. Car maintenance is expensive, _especially_ at the dealership.
The mechanical parts of a car haven't changed much in the last 25 years, and are easy to understand just by watching a few YouTube videos.
The electronics have certainly gotten more complex, but if you can understand basic computer networking and low voltage electronics it's still quite simple.
If you are interested in learning how to fix your own car, there is a great guy who runs an auto repair business on YouTube and his tagline is: "Remember folks If I can do it, you can do it."
https://www.youtube.com/@SouthMainAuto/videos
> do dealers have any way to update control modules besides OTA?
Yes.
I believe the truly concerned/paranoid will not want to take their car to the dealership for updates at all. Which would, IMHO, be a mistake: having known security holes in your car's software is more likely to lead to a privacy invasion (via getting your car hacked at some point) than letting the dealership get their hands on it for a few hours.
(I should note that all of this is theoretical for me: I drive a car that's old enough it doesn't have any software).
EDIT to add this P.S.: Actually, I can think of one category of people who would be concerned enough to turn off the car's ability to connect to the Internet, but feel fine about taking it to a dealer for updates. That would be people who want to turn off the car's Internet connectivity not because of privacy concerns, but because they don't want anyone to be able to disable the car (either via hacking or via "legitimate" means, i.e. the manufacturer does it) while they're driving. Such a person would care a lot about the car's Internet access being completely off while they are driving, but not care about it being turned on while it is at the dealership.
Personally, I wouldn't want this intrusive system (or telemetry).
Smart cars can record street views, location of WiFi access points and GSM towers, and this data is useful for guiding missiles and drones when GPS is being jammed.
And how can we deal with this? Inspections on import? Country-level DPI to block data exfiltration? But DPI is not perfect because there are obfuscation and VPNs. And today we have Starlinks as well, which are difficult to block. Except from banning foreign smart cars altogether, there seems to be no simple solution. Or maybe oblige the manufacturer to use local computer boards and software when importing cars?
> In late 2025, hundreds of Porsche vehicles in Russia became "bricked" (immobilized) because the cars’ satellite-based security systems (VTS) required continuous connectivity to European servers. Following the suspension of Porsche's operations in Russia, the cars could not "phone home" and automatically activated anti-theft immobilizers, preventing engines from starting.
> Tesla has remotely disabled Full Self-Driving (FSD) capabilities on vehicles in multiple countries—including Europe, South Korea, China, and Turkey—after detecting unauthorized "jailbreak" devices used to enable FSD in regions where it was not authorized.
> Reports from July 2024 indicate that Chinese brands have planned to or have blocked multimedia systems and other features in cars that were imported into Russia through non-authorized channels rather than through official dealers.
> American manufacturer John Deere remotely disabled advanced agricultural equipment looted by Russian forces from Ukraine, rendering the high-tech machinery useless after it was moved to Chechnya.
While this does not fully prevent backdoors and hacking it does raise the bar quite a lot.
What an utterly ludicrous and silly notion.
Is what I would've said two years ago.
I wish it was two years ago.
Glad it's an option be it for regulatory compliance, security, privacy, or any combination of the three.
[1]: https://zed.dev/blog/disable-ai-features
So if being VC funded puts you off an editor, being VC funded may also put you off ycombinator.com
Same, same.
Nothing made me skeptical about the tech industry like working for a VC-backed startup. Ugh.
Fully agree. I also feel like a lot of companies do not need to be on the stock market, especially if they're reasonably profitable, feels like the stock market is where you go to let go of more of your company just to get rid of the VCs whom you owe a lot of money to.
Knowledge of this setting has shifted my perspective considerably.
edit: not enough to ditch Sublime, however.
https://gram.liten.app/
Sources:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46501220
https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_104#_hide-and-disab...
I've seen this pattern before. It's a lame cop-out. "Of course you can do that, but you'll have to accept all these negative consequences. There's nothing we can do about it. You brought this onto yourself."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMChO0qNbkY
Kudos to Rivian for making this a supported user privacy feature.
A: never once installed the app or registered an account, which flummoxxed the salesman so much he argued with me for 10 minutes trying to say that I had to set up the app to even take delivery, even though I paid cash in full. He even cried to mama (the manager) to find out what to do about this impossible situation. In the end, of course you do not actually need to install the app, even temporarily just for a one-time setup, or even register an account. But MAN do they want you to.
B: Within a few weeks found that someone makes a kit that lets you completely disconnect the telemetry & internet functionality module while providing some pass-through connections that normally go through that box.
Apparently in this case all the bad stuff is conveniently in one box you can disconnect, and still have normal bluetooth for android auto, apple car play, or plain bluetooth headset & media. So still have gps & media on the console stcreen. I can only assume that this won't stay so convenient. They could have anything require anything else any time they want.
They do offer an official way to disable all internet features (remote start from your phone from any distance, remote vehicle monitor, tracking/shutdown, etc), but all that does is disable the useful functions for you, while not disabling any of the functions they use for themselves. It's still actively logging and uploading data, and they still have the ability to remotely track and even disable the vehicle.
I've been to the dealer (different from purchase) once for a free oil change and they didn't say anything. So idk if they even tried to do any updates, or they have some other way to do it or what.
https://www.autoharnesshouse.com/store/AHH-DCM77
I do distinctely remember strongly disliking the user agreement I signed for the "internet connected" features of the car when I bought it. 100% rubbed me the wrong way and I couldn't' find a way to opt out, and I wasn't so motivated to physically remove it from my new car. Thankfully.
Shouldn't have to trade privacy for safety.
This is how cars used to be made. Features were standalone modules: there could be some bus traffic about optional data (wiper module with rain sensor could broadcast that it's raining and body control module could hear that and could be configured to close windows when raining) but they weren't strictly integrated in any meaningful capacity. You could change the radio unit to whatever you liked: if you were lucky you could get one that can actually understand what the other modules in the car were saying and show some non-enterntainment info on its screen as well. Navigation used to be a standalone system that had GPS receiver but nothing else in the car couldn't necessarily tap into the location data.
SUre, it meant some more wires and maybe the features had disconnects because they weren't aware of each other that much but all in all that was a good thing. It kept everything simple, isolated and repairable. Now because of more integration the modules need to know who they're talking to which leads to bizarre things like having to code in new headlights and pair them with other modules or they won't be recognized and just stay off.
You shouldn't have to, and yet...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/01/...
My phone does this now. Most phones do it now.
This is the company whose flagship voice assistant, in 2026, can’t tell the intended recipient in a sentence like “Text Bob Mary signed the deal.” And if my phone happens to be thrown into the back of the car by the crash, I doubt anyone will be able to hear me.
Not to mention that OnStar has operators who talk to first responders. the cell phone thing will just call 911 and hope for the best.
I pay for OnStar, and think it’s worth it.
You can be using CarPlay to navigate at that moment to a destination, and because of the way my fiancee has Siri set up, if she says "Get me directions to the nearest Starbucks", Siri will say, "I'm sorry, I don't know where you are."
1. For years "Navigate Home" has done exactly what you'd expect, then one morning it decides traveling to Home Depot is the only possible interpretation.
2. A bog-standard timed alarm goes off, and half the time "Silence Alarm" leads to it insisting that there are no alarms going off right now.
What stings is that these aren't issues with ambiguous grammar or unusual phrasings, these are extremely predictable commands for features I would expect in the minimum viable product.
That lasted about 6 hours before I figured out how to switch back to Assistant.
And I'm OnStar have great margins, because it's basically an insurance product that most customers rarely if ever use. But it's an interesting insurance product because unlike say, car insurance, instead of a claim costing them $10,000-1,000,000 a "claim" costs them maybe 30 minutes of a call center agent's time. Great business to be in.
But all that works in my favor. It's a good deal for me because it might save the life of me or someone I love and I can easily afford it. And they have every incentive to preserve their reputation, such as by not replacing the operator with a chatbot who wants to offer me directions to the nearest Chevron™ when I've rolled off the road into a canyon.
So for all of the reasons you stated, I’ve strongly come to the opposite conclusion
Only if it hasn't been crushed, damaged, or otherwise flung out of the vehicle that crashed so violently that it's actually upside down, as noted in the original comment.
Get an iPhone or an apple watch - they offer this same service with a more sane privacy policy.
But don't worry, the FTC is out to protect you. Their settlement with GM says that can only sell your name attached to zipcode resolution location data and only sell your precise location trace attached to an opaque ID rather than your name.
Or if you take it in for service and they plug the antenna in. Better than nothing, but if your privacy and security depends on not being constantly tracked it's not good enough.
More fair to say that you satisfied your level of concern. But it's entirely not schizo for someone to be concerned that there was more than one tracking vector, especially given that manufactures already active inhibit efforts to disable tracking and ordinary practices of the automotive industry.
Or, in other words, please don't privacy shame people. If you felt your approach was sufficient-- awesome! Better to be nothing like the people who were others names online for asking about disabling telematics at all, only to be all shocked pikachu when their insurer jacked their rates later based on their driving activity. :P
Same. This is the first thing that I've ever read that makes me think I might be willing to buy a modern vehicle.
The gen 1 system uses cameras primarily. It’s not awesome lidar or AI. It needs up to date road information.
I’ve been driving down I-5, a major interstate and had it turn off on me, presumably because I hit a dead spot, as conditions were fine and I5 is one of the most popular routes there is.
I’m fine with all of this. I prefer that it hand back control to me rather than make me another statistic like Tesla’s system.
I think if I might be critical, the idea that the car graciously hands over control to you at a moment you are capable of catching might be a bit of a blind spot. The car could lose one of the signals it needs at an inopportune time and you would need a split second and correct emergency reaction to not spear off the road or collide with something. The physics of cars at highway speeds is awe inspiring, problems happen really, really fast.
I'm very curious at what level the restrictions operate. With every other manufacturer I've looked at, they're extremely coarse-grained; it's more like "is there a known long-time-horizon hazard in this area that is known to impair the system" than a "we mapped every lane and you need a database." I wonder if your I5 issue was a weeks or months-old construction area, for example. I haven't looked at Rivian much, though, and it could be totally different or extremely fine grained, there's no reason to suggest otherwise either.
That is a desirable outcome.
I have driven about half a dozen vehicles with this feature, and it has been annoying 100% of the time, and never helpful at all. In the company van I drive (Citroën Berlingo) I have to disable it every time I start the car. The lane keeping gets confused all the time by snow or dirt or when merging onto the motorway, or fucking background radiation - I dunno. It always shocks me when it pulls on the steering wheel. This crap should be forbidden. In the same car I also have to disable the start-stop system so as not to destroy the engine. Aside from that it's a nice enough van for a diesel, but I've been ruined by electrics.
In my own car (Nissan Leaf 2021), it stays disabled. But then it shows me a lawyer screen on every start asking me to consent to handing over my first born son etc.
Imagine if proper EV's had been invented in 2005 - we would have had some awesome cars.
Result, I drive a 2012 car.
I encourage you to take a look.
Good. Lane Keeping Assist should be illegal.
Did you also disable ABS and refuse to use smart cruise control?
Why do you think smart cruise control is useful?
I can't tell if ABS is useful or not. My car has it but I've never used it.
The fact that you've used it and don't know it proves your point. That's an example of good safety implementation.
It's easy to tell when it does - it makes the same BRRRRRP noise it does during the ECU's startup self test from the valve block in the engine bay.
I think that's only for the speed limit alarms. Wouldn't have that if people would stick to limits, I guess...
But maybe that’s what you meant?
I will say though the the new version of the Kia Niro EVs we have is a lot better in that regard - it just kind of gently nudges the steering, it feels more like the car is tramlining a bit. The older versions we had at work would actively try to steer you into other vehicles.
My friend's 10-year-old Toyota will chirp annoyingly if you drift over a lane line but that's all it does. It doesn't have any ability to steer the car back into the center of the lane. Is that "lane keeping"?
I can imagine it can save a life someone dozing off and drifting.
It's a safety feature increasing the safety of myself and everyone around. Not a replacement of anything.
Second thing is to do a factory reset on the infotainment and press "deny" on anything.
Third thing is to use a USB sanitizer so plugging in the USB-port doesn't sync any of my data with the car or initiate a pairing.
Final thing is to check tire pressure, unrelated to above but 9 out of 10 times the tire pressure on rental cars is incorrect. I have a little pen tester in my travel kit.
They are also super fun to drive and, although they have small batteries, the can charge at 40-50kWh, which translates to 10 minutes to ~85% full. We have used a eUP 2013 model to travel across europe (~900km) in two days, many times! One charge last between one and two hours, depending on speed and weather. We usually cruse at about 90km/h, and the car is basically sipping electrons! The newer model have double the range, but I have not owned or testet them, but might be a decent compromise for longer travels.
Incidentally if you can get enough cold water into it you can get around 150bhp out of a first-gen Nissan Leaf motor for a few seconds, which is really all you're going to need.
There's a guy in the south of England who makes tubular steel spaceframe chassis replacements for VW Beetles, that are compatible with most kit car bodies. Instead of taking a hard-to-get Beetle engine and gearbox they take an MGF engine and gearbox, but I bet you could cram your Leaf motors and batteries in. There you go, now you're running around town in a ridiculously quick electric beach buggy. How cool is that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slate_Truck
https://www.slate.auto
Unlike most vehicles sold in the United States, the Slate Truck is not expected to have any in-car entertainment system; instead, customers are expected to use their own mobile device for audio streaming, navigation, and over-the-air updates for their trucks.
For anyone in the same situation, https://web.archive.org/web/20260430234304/https://rivian.co... leads to the correct page.
> In the EEA, Windows will always use customers’ configured app default settings for link and file types, including industry standard browser link types (http, https).
https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2023/11/16/preview...
Website redirects to the regional homepage instead of showing the actual article. I don't get why this is still a thing.
Cell connected vehicles are unnecessary and a danger for so many reasons.
I have a garmin watch which is great for overland hiking, multiple day expeditions etc
I download the maps and the watch has GPS to plot where I am on that map. My watch doesn’t have an eSIM at all.
Rivian is an adventure brand so if they wanted to design a maps system like that, where I am not continually downloading tiles from open maps or google and sending my location to them and others, they probably could
I just don’t think they have space for those types of features most people don’t care about while they are trying to compete in a rough industry and deliver new vehicles
The experience was even comparable to today's experience - I've been auto-routed around a road closure, like, twice in 5 years? And it _failed_ to route me around a road closure probably twice as well?
Also, there are now several countries that sent positioning constellations (obviously to not have to rely on the US for positioning), and most receivers support several: GPS (US), Galileo (Europe), Glonass (Russia), Beidu (China).
I fear this trend in the automotive industry will only complicate things further and introduce more unnecessary risk in our daily life. Is it too much to ask for a dumb car which is durable and takes me from point A to point B? I do not want my future car to be dependent on the manufacturers CI/CD pipeline.
Curious why lane keeping assistance would need to communicate externally. Isn’t all this processed in the vehicle?
Lane keeping assist likely (a) shares data back to Rivian, and (b) depends on GPS and (live) map data to know location specific settings.. that there are 4 lanes on this road and the left 2 lead somewhere else (etc). Line detection (on-device) isn't always reliable (snow, rain, ice, mud, gravel, construction)
And at least the object-on-road feature is one I'm glad they have. I once saw a truck ahead of me in my lane suddenly swerve hard onto the shoulder, which alerted me to danger. (The truck driver remained in control of the truck, thankfully). And there was a wooden pallet lying squarely in the right lane of the highway. I avoided it by moving into the left lane, then once I spotted a mile marker I pulled over and called 911 to report the traffic hazard. About ten minutes later, as I was driving on, I saw a police car on the opposite side of the highway, heading towards where I had reported the pallet on the highway. No way of knowing whether that car was the one responding to my call, but the timing suggests it was. Hopefully nobody had an accident before the pallet got cleared away. These days Google Maps would be able to alert people to the hazard before they got close, so nobody will be in the situation I was where the vehicle in front of them blocked their view of the hazard until they were quite close.
Long story short (yeah, yeah, I know: "too late"), some Internet-required features of modern navigation are ones I'm glad they have.
My phone can pre-download maps into Google Maps for offline use, I've done this in foreign countries where I didn't necessarily have full data connection. There's no reason you couldn't cache the necessary maps on the car's navigation system and let it operate based on that and an incoming GPS signal, never emitting out one bit.
OTOH, if you wanted live data, dynamic routing etc. for your convenience you could explicitly turn data on but then you'd acknowledge it comes with the caveats such as potential snooping of telemetry data.
Admittedly, I would never trust a car manufacturer to actually disable telemetry no matter what they'd promise. So, disconnecting the antennae would be the only reliable method regardless. I wonder if there will ever be a car with a physical radio kill switch like laptops.
That includes positional data, speed, whether you're pressing the gas pedal or braking etc. Since it is meant as a Car-to-Car solution, e.g. to warn other cars when there is an accident the reach isn't great, but some of the signals (e.g. warning of a traffic jam) may be propagated by other cars.
See this German talk on the European system: https://media.ccc.de/v/glt26-688-c-its-mit-einem-esp32-ampel...
I think they have a English translation or dub somewhere
Disabling the eCall is not possible, and doing so (in the EU) would void your car's registration.
Why is that? I really don't want to bring it to the shop to turn off the radio. In Canada it's a toggle in the settings. Is there Canadian legislation mandating this or something?
Can someone provide what needs these feature covers? Like, what are some reason to disable all internet connectivity?
I am genuinely curious.
Happy I did, along with the ANC/fake engine noise modules.
My phone still tracks me :-)
That and for me in particular, my car isn't any more secure, it's a P71 so I was able to buy a spare key on eBay.
Don't get me wrong, I look forward to Slate being available and think it's compelling, but just my cynical take.
I’ve been wanting something like the Slate for a long time and am truly excited by it. The more they’ve commented on specifics however, the more I feel like it’s a risky buy though (for me and my needs). If they do the test drive tour I’m going to make sure to visit it, the whole preorder a car from a company that doesn’t exist thing stokes my anxiety a bit too. Rivian at least I’m familiar with but I’m definitely in the “this company is going bankrupt camp” and don’t see their path towards profitability. So hard for me to buy their product even if they are built for camping
Edit: and mad
hmm. not sure who this 'rest of us' is. is it a free-range organic bot farm?
I see your type of people on Twitter all the time, they complain that someone was critical of Elon (and in this circumstance he wasn't even calling out Elon. He literally commented on a known flaw with the Cybertruck) yet people like you come out of the woodwork and defend everything. You've got yourself worked up about something that has nothing to do with Elon. I always like checking out those peoples profiles and their whole life revolves around Elon. That is a bigger disorder in my opinion.
Maybe your the problem?
greed
This was decades and decades ago, imagine now??
When I bought a 2025 Suzuki Jimny XL, I wanted a car, not a computer on wheels.
- physical buttons everywhere
- head unit is the only touch screen
- Non-invasive safety features
- No firmware update
- No internet connection
- No enshitification
It is what cars used to be back in the day with minor modern touch like LED headlight. Its headlight does not have direct connection to the ECU.
Toyota cars, especially the new ones can be stolen by breaking the headlight and using its harness to talk with the ECU. Virtually speaking, all Toyota cars are being stolen like hotcake in Australia.
People buying these EVs do not understand how deep it goes buying a car you do not own.
Testa has done this over and over, removed features from the car via OTA update. Car was never meant to be a computer on wheel.
Vehicle connectivity is a core feature .. blah blah blah"
I absolutely hate these kind of answers. I understand why the answer is written that way, but i truly hate it to the core. They are marketing speak/CYA answers.
Why i hate it? Because i do not mind the communication, but i absolotely do mind the collecting and harvesting.
I don't want to lose connectivity. I want to lose all the effing data harvesting. I don't mind leaving data and using navigation, but i do not want the data effing harvested.
I want to have phone calls, but i do not want my calls logged for a long time so that these logs can be abused in any form by someone or something.
ALL of these features do NOT need long time logging for it to function.
This pay-with-your-privacy system has to stop.
Having ranted a bit though, in the world of car companies an official policy on how to turn data off is amazing. The bar is so low right now that it is crazy to think this terrible implementation riddled with dark patterns is a 'win'. These companies need to be shut down.
It’s not such a stretch to believe that there’s some aspect of this that is specific to a driver or to a vehicle, and so requires that they collect your data. Even if this is not accurate, I can see a business making the decision that, given they need more and more data to improve the model, they would not allow customers to opt-out of that training cohort and still use the feature. Incentives etc.
Directionally though, I am with you on auto telematics data collection; I am not sure you can even buy a new car in the US that doesn’t ship with tracking, and many manufacturers (like the one who makes my car) don’t allow opt out at all. Fcking Stellantis
I'd much rather side with the company that was willing to allow the user to disable net connectivity...
- I already pay for internet on my phone, I'm not interested in paying for another cellular service just to get maps and music streaming on the screen in my car. GM ditched CarPlay specifically to push customers to their subscription service. I know some electric automakers are offering it "for free", but I do not trust that it will remain free, and that's important when spending tens of thousands of dollars on something you plan to use for a decade+.
- Third party app ecosystem means I can use the maps and music player I want, and not just what my car manufacturer decides is worth including.
- Auto manufacturers suck at software. I've yet to use an infotainment system that wasn't a stark downgrade from CarPlay.
Basically, my car shouldn't need an internet connection because my smartphone already does all the same things but better.
Instead, Rivian adds a purely performative toggle that makes the car's navigation largely useless and doesn't provide a good alternative.
I certainly appreciate that disabling network connectivity is even possible, but a bit scummy that non-Canadians have to make an in-person service appointment.
Is there some Canadian law at play here that requires they permit Canadians to disable this easily from the GUI? Would love legislation like that in the US.
Hope to see more of this.
Automotive power relays are at least a thing, but they're expensive consumables that have significant power draw.
In either case they would have had to add the components at design time and do the physical validation/testing, not ship it as a software update.
Cars were made for 100 years without an internet connection. Even for an EV there is no need for network connectivity or constant software updates. The first time a prominent figure is assasinated with a remote take-over of their vehicle people may start to see this issue a bit differently.
New definition of "absurd" just dropped...
(https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/rivian-allows-you-to-dis...)
Disabling a SIM card almost certainly means no connection to the network.
(https://grapheneos.org/faq#cellular-tracking)
Whether there is a sim enabled/disabled/installed is irrelevant. The question is whether this feature is Airplain Mode or if it is just disable cellular.
Instead you are referring to the fact that the radio may remain on even if it has no active SIM card.
Given that the primary concern of connected vehicles is changes over time and manufacturer control, I don’t see any reason to make that distinction for most people.