Just when you think Stellantis couldn't do anything worse...
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
I had already scratched Jeep off my car-buying list years ago.
Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them away?"
I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?"
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
In most vehicles, you can pull the cellular capability (either a physical sim or the RF component). You'll lose telematics, but will also lose this.
“Ok", "Remind me later", "To opt-out, call..."
The jokes write themselves in 2025
The last (hopefully only) Stellantis vehicle we owned had trouble with its transmission’s network connection.
“Nothing stops a Ram, except routine driving”.
I’m completely unsurprised they’re pushing spam to the dashboard.
The crazy thing is BMW has been doing this well for years. They should have just copied the playbook. There’s a little shop icon in the app where you can buy digital services, swag and schedule dealership appointments.
Sometimes it has discounts or track day invitations in there.
Imagine you will buy a house and somebody will have so much gall to slap a billboard on the side of your house. Repeatedly. Would you tolerate this behavior? Obviously not, then why companies thinks that it is OK to show ads on my fridge or in my car? This is outrageous behavior and I hope that some nasty regulation will end this nonsense so we can hear crying of companies how big government is bullying them and hampering innovation...
I never owned a car with such a system. Do they at least give you a way to install uBlock and NoScript or will that brick the car?
You're joking, right? The systems are locked up tight. I did manage to hack into my Porsche Macan's system so that I could turn Apple CarPlay on (it's disabled in the Macan, but supported by the system because the unit is shared with the VW Atlas which has CarPlay), but it involved a pretty complicated jailbreak.
You're joking, right?
Only 3.1415% joking. I predict people will eventually get credits for saying things like, "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." in their car, bonus if the kids also repeat it. But seriously I figured someone would have found Easter-eggs by now that allowed some form of super-duper-root similar to windows god-mode.
I am honestly surprised that car manufacturers have not been sued into oblivion for adding distractions.
There's less attack surface on these systems than your typical windows install. The only reason I was able to hack the Macan is because they'd left a debug avenue open such that you could plug an ethernet adapter into one of the USB ports and use it drop a shell, and then exploit a bug with handling of a certificates to get privileged access. I was more surprised they'd left that USB ethernet avenue open than that there was a certificate handling bug.
I believe since I did it, somebody found another way in by inserting a malicious payload into a USB firmware update image.
I had an old Prius with a nav system that disabled all the controls when the car was moving. But it also had a full-screen page of legalese that you had to dismiss every time you started the car.
So Toyota's lawyers were OK with drivers reading a legal contract, but not with drivers pressing a couple buttons to get where they need to go.
Drink verification can to continue journey
Trying to estimate whether I'm old enough that when I buy the last car of my life, there will still be ones without screens to choose from.
To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs.
I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
All new cars have screens since reverse cameras are mandatory. You’ll have to shop on the used car market.
The screen doesn't have to be obnoxious like this, though. A Chevy van has a small screen embedded in the rear view mirror, which is impossible to see when not in reverse.
Oh really? My current car is over 20 years old so I'm way out of the loop. I guess I'll hope for options with smaller screens that control fewer of the functions.
Keep that car as long as you can. Modern cars are shit. Peak of cars was probably 1990s/2000s.
You could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you generally had to go looking.
The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart" features, like traction control, can be turned off.
My 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware carriage someday
People drive 70 year old cars today. Just buy a sensible car from sometime before the 2020s, keep up with it and put on 400k miles on it.
Just when you think Stellantis couldn't do anything worse...
This is the company that ran Chrysler into the ground. The only remaining Chrysler product is one mini-van.
They raised the prices on Jeeps so much that they lost their market. They went the "mild hybrid" route, with such silly things as 21 miles of electric range.
The Stellantis dealers signed a joint letter demanding that the CEO be fired. That was done. It didn't seem to help.
(I own a pre-Stellantis Jeep Wrangler, and would like to buy a replacement, but Jeep now has nothing I want.)
I had already scratched Jeep off my car-buying list years ago.
Now the bulk of car-buying research is not "how good is it?" but "what are the purposefully in-built annoyances? Can I hack them away?"
I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?"
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
In most vehicles, you can pull the cellular capability (either a physical sim or the RF component). You'll lose telematics, but will also lose this.
“Ok", "Remind me later", "To opt-out, call..."
The jokes write themselves in 2025
The last (hopefully only) Stellantis vehicle we owned had trouble with its transmission’s network connection.
“Nothing stops a Ram, except routine driving”.
I’m completely unsurprised they’re pushing spam to the dashboard.
The crazy thing is BMW has been doing this well for years. They should have just copied the playbook. There’s a little shop icon in the app where you can buy digital services, swag and schedule dealership appointments.
Sometimes it has discounts or track day invitations in there.
Imagine you will buy a house and somebody will have so much gall to slap a billboard on the side of your house. Repeatedly. Would you tolerate this behavior? Obviously not, then why companies thinks that it is OK to show ads on my fridge or in my car? This is outrageous behavior and I hope that some nasty regulation will end this nonsense so we can hear crying of companies how big government is bullying them and hampering innovation...
I never owned a car with such a system. Do they at least give you a way to install uBlock and NoScript or will that brick the car?
You're joking, right? The systems are locked up tight. I did manage to hack into my Porsche Macan's system so that I could turn Apple CarPlay on (it's disabled in the Macan, but supported by the system because the unit is shared with the VW Atlas which has CarPlay), but it involved a pretty complicated jailbreak.
You're joking, right?
Only 3.1415% joking. I predict people will eventually get credits for saying things like, "Brought to you by Carl's Jr." in their car, bonus if the kids also repeat it. But seriously I figured someone would have found Easter-eggs by now that allowed some form of super-duper-root similar to windows god-mode.
I am honestly surprised that car manufacturers have not been sued into oblivion for adding distractions.
There's less attack surface on these systems than your typical windows install. The only reason I was able to hack the Macan is because they'd left a debug avenue open such that you could plug an ethernet adapter into one of the USB ports and use it drop a shell, and then exploit a bug with handling of a certificates to get privileged access. I was more surprised they'd left that USB ethernet avenue open than that there was a certificate handling bug.
I believe since I did it, somebody found another way in by inserting a malicious payload into a USB firmware update image.
I had an old Prius with a nav system that disabled all the controls when the car was moving. But it also had a full-screen page of legalese that you had to dismiss every time you started the car.
So Toyota's lawyers were OK with drivers reading a legal contract, but not with drivers pressing a couple buttons to get where they need to go.
Drink verification can to continue journey
Trying to estimate whether I'm old enough that when I buy the last car of my life, there will still be ones without screens to choose from.
To be fair, I have a 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee. It was the first year of their then new model rollout for the GC. It was (as I understand it) the last of the Mercedes JGCs.
I love this thing, it's a "cold dead hands" kind of car for me. Only has 120k-ish miles on it.
I won't say it's my last car ever, I just have a hard time visualizing swapping it out for anything.
It starts, all the buttons work, it's cosmetically 95%. The single biggest issue is that last year it was down for a couple of months simply because of parts availability. It's not unreliable, but it's swapped a few things (water pump, radiator, A/C has had work twice, guess it's a bit notorious in the community). Purchased in 2013, it's a 12 year old car.
But waiting months for suspension components (air suspension, which I adore) was a real drag. Even with a dealer supplied rental.
That would be the thing that sends me over the edge long term, I think.
It'll be a shame when it happens, I love the car.
The dealer wants to buy it every time I take it in for routine maintenance.
All new cars have screens since reverse cameras are mandatory. You’ll have to shop on the used car market.
The screen doesn't have to be obnoxious like this, though. A Chevy van has a small screen embedded in the rear view mirror, which is impossible to see when not in reverse.
Oh really? My current car is over 20 years old so I'm way out of the loop. I guess I'll hope for options with smaller screens that control fewer of the functions.
Keep that car as long as you can. Modern cars are shit. Peak of cars was probably 1990s/2000s.
You could still buy some rad cars into the '10s but you generally had to go looking.
The fiesta st is a decent example. An economy car, so very simple, but with a sports package. The only "smart" features, like traction control, can be turned off.
My 2016 Corolla seems to be the last year without a SIM (it does have a screen but whatever it just shows me what's playing on the stereo), but despite a Corolla being bulletproof and me rarely driving anymore, i do still wonder whether i can get away with this car forever or if I'll have to buy some spyware carriage someday
People drive 70 year old cars today. Just buy a sensible car from sometime before the 2020s, keep up with it and put on 400k miles on it.
black construction paper?