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Comment by nazgulsenpai | Hacker News Reader

The more I read about car subscriptions and the "connected" nature of current and upcoming vehicles the more inclined I am to keep my current car running until parts for it are literally unobtainable.

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I’m glad I ride a bike. The rampant anti-consumer abuse and fee stacking you see with cars do not exist for other types of transit.

The rampant anti-consumer abuse is mainly an American thing, and it's not just cars.

Err, BMW has subscription fees for heated seats and steering, and I’m pretty sure they’re not American.

They're making cars in America, and selling them in America. We're talking about American-market stuff here.

However, I have no idea if they do this subscription fee stuff for their EU-market stuff. Anyone care to chime in?

Isn't that what a lot of environmentalists/climate helpers suggest anyways?

I've heard that driving a vehicle until everything falls apart is a lot more green/climate friendly than immediately switching to something new.

Environmentalists/climate helpers can’t agree about anything. People worried about carbon will usually want you to keep the car, but others assume that the engine is more polluting.

I was on a local council once and some lunatics were arguing about cups. One faction believed that styrofoam was better because it was lighter, the others pearl clutched and demanded a styrofoam ban and wanted to ensure that a certain type of wax was used on cups.

I wish I was a rich person who could have stockpiled circa 2003-5 Honda Pilots and Odyssey’s. IMO the perfect family car.

My Pilot had 245000 miles and was fantastic, I had to get rid of it last year. The new car I got to replace it sucks, with the stupid touchscreens and shittier interior.

Ha I have a 2005 Honda Pilot as my beater vehicle. More than 200000 miles and it runs great. Great pickup as well even after all these years.

I wonder if we get new small manufacturers shops that build dumb vehicles.

I'm hoping for this as well. It's probably going to be way more expensive than normal though, considering how efficient car manufacturing is and how hard it is for new players to get into (and the loss of revenue for not having "smart" features)

I'm not aware of any dumb TV manufacturer after over a decade of smart TVs. I'm afraid the demand for dumb devices is simply not sustainable. People get accustomed to the new normal very quickly.

Any TV is dumb if you cut off its internet access in the firewall. A car with a sim card requires a bit more.

No, some still require a menu/GUI for something as simple as cycling inputs. LG, for example.

My sister and her husband bought a "smart" sound bar. Theoretically it only needs an audio hookup. It does some type of HDMI passthrough, I think it is called "ARC". It has a WiFi connection but they never hooked it up.

After about 3 hours of use, it would have to be powercycled or the audio would constantly cut in and out. My dad looked at it & he decided to connect it to WiFi to check for a manufacturer firmware update. There was no update. However, this fixed the issue entirely. The problem never happened again.

A literal wired speaker, requires a WiFi connection to work properly.

This comes up over and over again. There is a brand that sells through Wal Mart in the US (Sceptre) which tends to not have smart features. They are not high end sets.

You can also get 'commercial' sets intended for signage that are apparently OK too. Jeff Geerling did a video on an interesting one from Sharp/NEC that takes a smart module, which can be a raspberry pi, here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-epPf7D8oMk. There are some caveats, but it's something to keep an eye on IMO.

It seems to be true that there are no high end/aspirational sets that don't have smart features. I haven't personally seen any OLEDs, for example (although I am not an authority on this).

The commercial TVs without smarts are getting hard to find. We don’t allow unmanaged OSs in some secure areas and finding them is harder and dramatically more expensive than a few years ago.

In the US you can do that already, but I wonder if it will be cheaper for decades to come to purchase a used commercial vehicle (typically a pickup truck or van) and overhaul it as long as the frame is good. The amount of information mechanics can find online these days about some pretty esoteric rebuilding procedures boggles my mind. What I see folks refurbishing in Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, Pakistan and elsewhere to keep on the roads is astonishing (albeit only possible in current markets as we implement them with high-skill, low-cost labor).

There are a hell of a lot of light-to-heavy duty diesel pickups in the US and the aftermarket offerings are enormously deep and broad, for example. I imagine that will take awhile to fade away, and if metrology gets advanced and cheap enough, and integrates well enough with machinists on the floor, I can see a possible future where these parts live on in electronic form to the point where reproducing them from scratch gets into the realm of economically feasible.

This is very unlikely, as the regulations are set up to protect the incumbents. Just to sell a new vehicle in the US you have to crash test several copies of the vehicle.

Very unlikely. All the startups are EV manufacturers with even more technology.

Like how Apple ruined the MacBook Pro from 2016-2020 (butterfly keyboard, loss of ports, loss of magsafe) and I was holding on desperately to the 2015 model until they gathered their wits again.

I certainly see no reason to grasp hold of GM's current range.

The difference is that cars are a extremely competitive market, and the "no connected" version will always be offered.

> The difference is that cars are a extremely competitive market, and the "no connected" version will always be offered.

Are they? Cars are an extremely difficult market to break into, much more so than laptops/etc.

All mainstream manufacturers are already on the way to do the whole "connected" thing (the hardware has been there for a decade, it's just a matter of software) and the vast majority of people don't seem to mind.

Starting a car manufacturer is already a huge expense, even more so if your only customer base is the small percentage of the population who understands the downsides of connected cars.

More likely we'll see reverse-engineered aftermarket replacement controllers that behave just like the original but don't have any connected/DRM crap in them - that market is much easier to break into and you may not even need to make any hardware - just refurbish & reflash the original ones.

It’s definitely an extremely competitive market. But…

Can you name a currently-produced car that doesn’t have the SOS button on it? It’s been mandatory in the EU since 2018. I can’t find proof that it’s mandatory in the US, so maybe you can find one that doesn’t have it.

Anyway, it if has that button (technically named eCall), it has the hardware in place to be fully connected. So the manufacturers figure they might as well use it for other data collection and get some money out of being forced to include that hardware.

Such is life

Cars are insanely competitive, to a point. But it’s a dying market with a captive supply chain that’s been spun off over the years. Everyone is trying to milk the cow for as long as possible.

The little companies that make knobs or whatever AND deal with the bullshit associated with car companies are investing zero. One of the reasons why cars now look the same.

I doubt the parts for mine will ever become unobtainable, at least the parts that make it stop and go, as there's a huge aftermarket. Indeed, I suspect the "smart" stuff I've added will become unrepairable first.

(It's a stereotypical American "land yacht" with some performance mods and a bit of computer monitoring --- not control.)

That sounds anti-social. Perhaps a "polluting vehicle tax "or a "unsafe vehicle tax" will change your mind.

(The above is satire, but analogous statements are frequently made in earnest.)

Because they are earnest. If your behavioral choices negatively affect others, that must be accounted for somehow, either through paying extra so we collectively can deal with the fallout, or banning it, if it causes too extreme of an effect on others. Negative externalities must be accounted for, this isn't a controversial statement to anyone other than entitled people.

If this is the excuse being stated, but there is some ulterior motive, then that's another thing.

The people who are driving decade+ old cars don't need a paternalistic tax to remind them they're "doing it wrong". They get reminded every day. If you think they're the entitled ones your ivory tower must be a tall one.

If your behavioral choices negatively affect others

The mere act of living can "negatively affect others" by consuming resources.

Let's not go down that path to an authoritarian socialist dystopia.

If that’s your bar we’re already living in a socialist dystopia.

Same, and given the car I own, parts will not run out this century.

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