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Comment by craftinator | Hacker News Reader

I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet.

Connected cars using a data communication module (DCM) are going to be required in every market eventually. The EU has already mandated this. In Japan, Toyota rolled out its Connected Cars initiative to all its vehicles in 2018. In the USA, Toyota put a DCM in select cars for telemetry almost ten years ago and this year they stated all their remaining vehicles will get them. All the luxury brands such as BMW and Porsche have a DCM for telemetry, safety, and service support.

States that use fuel taxes to fund road improvements will need to find other ways to tax electric vehicles and data derived from DCM will help them. Plus, autonomous transport will need to communicate.

Great, the EU has picked up its surveillance effort of citizens again.

Long time ago. Ford and Toyota already stream real-time telemetry in the EU.

I think the GDPR would make an opt-out requirement mandatory. Still you can always physically disconnect the module and likely there will be an aftermarket solution to disable whatever warning lights come on.

> The EU has already mandated this.

Are you thinking about eCall? That is only supposed to be activated during an emergency.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/security-and-em...

If communication module is mandatory even only for emergency, it makes easier entire car to be connected.

The EU requires the module to be powered off except in an emergency. So it's not in contact with cell towers all the time, except when it needs to make an emergency call. It's easy enough to detect the transmissions with simple hardware.

I am _so_ happy the newest vehicle I own is a 2004 model, and only 1 of my 4 vehicles is "modern" enough to have fuel injection - on all the others the most sophisticated electronics are the spark/ignition timing black boxes (for which there are aftermarket and even open source alternatives...)

I'm not sure I'll make the rest of my time out without buying something newer and "digital", but I fully intend to keep my stone age motorcycles for at least as long at I can legally ride them...

Taxes sound like a lame excuse to have mandatory tracking. From odometer readings at inspection to registration charges it is neither the only nor the most efficient way to charge for road usage. Especially since it would in practice regress to a 'max theoretical charge' as an opt out for taxation purposes - even if bounded changing for some absolutely ridiculous assumptions like your car spends all year going in a free loop at the maximium safe speed 24-7 while loaded to maximium capacity.

> I'd really like to be able to disconnect my car from the internet.

Someone needs to create a database of 1) what cars contain LTE modems and 2) how to modify the car to disable/compromise them (e.g. how to unplug or block the antenna).

But your over-the-air updates!

I would love to see this.

You can do this with a Tesla of course; either disable remote access (leaving open firmware updates and traffic analysis to the mothership) or remove the Wi-Fi and cellular antennas. While a bit involved, it is entirely possible and will leave you with a perfectly "working" Tesla.

The car doesn't require connectivity. Although it sure is nice being able to pre-heat or pre-cool your car before you go drive it.

There are also jailbreak options for Teslas.. you too can run a virtual machine inside of your entertainment computer.

We should get it right (vs the banking shitshow) this time and mandate FRAND access by third parties at the network-car interface.

And ban auto companies from offering first-party, non-vehicle services.

They're welcome to spin off divisions, who can compete with everyone else.

At least this time around we already have OAuth.

Buy a car from the 90s or early 00s that doesn't have such features.

If you get one with an old unpatched firmware, you could root it and you patch it to take it offline...

Where is my Tesla-homebrew?

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