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Comment by Karsteski | Hacker News Reader

Sigh...

While I look forward to having an electric car someday, the trend in new cars does not look promising. Far too many instances of car companies having too much control, because of the advent of internet-connected vehicles.

Is there a solution to this? I don't know. Especially because I can see legislation cementing these sorts of practices in very much convoluted ways.

One can only hope competing car brands emerge whose competitive advantage is along the lines of "Your car, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it".

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I'd like to get a Tesla, but I won't, because you can't own a Tesla. You can only pay licensing fees to be the user, and Tesla can modify or disable the car at their whim, while also tracking and recording your every motion.

We need lawmakers who actually care about privacy and ownership rights.

When I worked in mortgages in a previous career, we had a presenter talk to us about Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). Back in the day, banks by default would just tack it on as an extra insurance for them in case you were to default. You're basically paying insurance against yourself to cover the banks losses. Once it was added, it was basically permanent for the life of the loan.

Then one day, a senator I think from Utah was asking about his his costs after signing. The bank explained to him that it was PMI and he couldn't remove it.

Thanks to that situation, PMI cannot be enforced if the loan to value ratio is below a specified threshold and the banks cannot force it on you if you meet that threshold prior to closing or after you reach it.

In a nutshell, this is what needs to happen before a lawmaker bothers.

This is why it’s important for many of the software engineers from hackernews to consider a career in politics after reaching a certain level of wealth and seniority in their career. If some of the greatest minds in the tech industry can rise to positions of power in government we can build a better world the way we know it should be, rather than hoping decrepit politicians come around to good ideas eventually.

Unfortunately, most businesses will only react to three things; stuff that makes them money, stuff that costs them money, and laws that are enforced effectively. Look how hard Apple is fighting against allowing alternative payment systems for apps. And against Right to Repair. Yet they start to budge a bit when lawmakers make them feel uncomfortable, or even pass laws (though most of Congress isn't really interested in the legislative side of the job.)

There are many electric cars on the market that are just plain "old" cars: hyundai ioniq, renault zoe, peugeot e-208, etc... No subscription and they work quite well.

But they are practically useless outside of cities. No range so they are not an option.

They're not great for long roadtrips, but they would be fine for weekend or short trips to places with charging. For example, from where I live to the coast is about 80 miles, and many of the coastal cities have at least L2 and some L3 charging. This would be fine with many of these cars. You might not need to charge at all with some of them.

My scenario might be a bit extreme, but closest food store is 40 miles away. Closest charger is 200 miles away. (Talking from Europe) Visiting my parents take 300 miles trip (one direction), and requires charging stop. And this is considered here as relatively normal driving trip.

And in winter, the range drops significantly. It is 7 month winter here.

Why would I buy a car which is useful only for short weekend trips when there are better options available?

"It's not useful in my specific scenario, which I acknowledge is extreme, therefore the cars are useless outside cities." Not everything has to work for everyone in every situation to be useful. These cars are perfectly useful for many people, including outside cities.

This applies almost my whole country, including many others, maybe less extreme. It is a bit different outside of US, what I’m trying to say.

It sounds like the charging infrastructure isn't there yet where you live. Doesn't mean the cars are useless for many many people, including people in rural areas. In the US, I don't think most rural people are 40 miles from the nearest food store, and I'd be surprised to learn that's true in most European countries either.

It's usually the exact opposite way round – distances between things in the US are usually larger, not smaller, than in other countries. You only need to look at a world atlas to see that's the case, with a few obvious exceptions. What in Europe would be seen as an extreme road trip across a whole country (because it would take a whole day) would seem quaintly short by US standards (because it could be done in just one day). Hearing it said the other way round sounds very odd to me (and I'm not from the States, as my user name suggests).

You are right, my mind was set for coastline which is very populated. This is not the case when getting more into the middle. But main concern was on charger locations. I don’t know what is their status in inland.

Your comment violates the site guidelines [0]. Please edit it and remove the personal insult.

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

For you maybe. I live in a city, so something useless outside of a city is just fine by me. If they're "practically useless" and "not an option" then who's buying them all?

I had an impression that parent commenter implied it being as global solution. Instead, the others would need to still go for expensive long-range vehicles with subscriptions.

Plug in hybrids are the best of both worlds. You can have a small battery for use over normal day to day driving which keeps costs down, but when you do need to drive a substantial distance you can take advantage of the high energy density and quick refueling of fossil fuels. I got one recently and it's great, I have a long commute so I drive 400 miles per week, but I can charge at home and at work so I'm paying the equivalent of $1/gallon for 90% of my driving, and I only need to get gas like once a month. The monthly fuel savings compared to my last car are like half of my monthly car payment.

I've been driving a 2014 BMW i3 ev for 7+ years; it works great, but has about 100mile range, since it's using smaller batteries.

I wish it WERE internet connected: for BMW to update the maps of the nav system can (supposedly) only be done at the BMW dealer, costs something like $180 for the map updates (North America), and requires a two day stay at the dealer, with associated labor-time fees.

BMW is just a laughable Big Money Waste.

I own a BMW also. Will never own one again after the maintenance nightmare they are.

Does this apply to their EVs as well?

The idea that a car would automatically download an update that changes how something on the car works is insanity. I'm not buying a car with that "feature."

That ship is departing as we speak [1] - that article was from 3 years ago. I'm sure it's worse now.

BMW was definitely ahead of it's time charging a service fee for enabling AndroidAuto/CarPlay (among other car features).

https://www.consumerreports.org/automotive-technology/automa...

The idea that a computer would automatically download an update that changes how something on the computer works is insanity. I'm not buying a computer with that "feature."

I love and work every day in computers, but I like my consumer electronics as dumb as they can be. I just need to complete a joke of "I like my electronics as my XXXX: dumb as a rock"

Yeah. We've had the same hopes for mobile phones and at best you can hope for makes that do not overload their models with their own sh1tware on top of Android.

I have both a new electric Audi and new Tesla. In either car I can just remove the sim and it'll completely disable all of the internet based features. A lot of the FUD around new cars is spread by grumpy old automotive journalists.

If you were to remove the sim card, would that void your warranty with either of those manufacturers? If so, that is not a long term solution, unfortunately.

No. They just stop calling home to the mothership. My Audi actually had a faulty sim module for a few months until I had time to get it fixed and other than not being able to check the charge status while away from the car it didn't really bother me.

> In either car I can just remove the sim

For now!

Does this impact your access to Tesla services or charging infrastructure? Can you still supercharge?

As far as I know yes you can still supercharge. The only thing I lose is the ability to remote control the car when out of bluetooth range as well as all the map & streaming features.

Should be able to supercharge. It communicates with the charger over the charging cable to tell it what account to charge.

You might lose access once you're on old enough software though.

What happens when they (inevitably) move to eSIM?

The Audi has a "cellular off" option in the MMI. I'd have to dig into the Tesla to verify.

Remove the antenna, or break the wire trace antenna.

"Just void your warranty with this simple trick!"

Wait until they put in eSIMs. Those you can probably disable as well but with a different level of expertise. Or you can damage the antenna or just stick aluminium foil tape onto it.

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