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Comment by morkalork | Hacker News Reader

Kind of crazy that they push the whole outdoorsy camping image in all their ads and build something so flawed. How does that work? Go explore the great outdoors but don't go too far, or you're battery is gonna die if there's no cellphone service? I don't know about the US but it's not hard to go that far out in Canada!

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Yeah this was actually pretty scary for me because I do go car camping in very remote places with no service at all. Luckily I'm fully prepared for my car not being able to start.

It's just sad because I bought a Subaru because it's supposed to be a reliable, outdoor adventure car. To see it fail this way is just sad.

Yeah, I live in Vancouver and I can get to a no-cell-service location in like, 30 minutes. This is blatantly inexcusable.

For real. The real scandal here isn't that this is happening as 3G is phased out -- it's that it was always a problem whenever you drove anywhere without cell coverage.

Which is precisely when keeping a working battery is most important, since you can't call for help, being in an area without cell coverage!

2018 Outback owner here. A truly outdoorsy driver will always carry booster (a.k.a. jumper) cables and/or a boosting-charging pack if the vehicle doesn't have a manual transmission and no other vehicles are likely to be around. I would never go even slightly off road in my Outback without a boosting-charging pack amongst my other gear. A manual transmission has allowed me to bump-start dead vehicles many times over the years, but not this automatic model. Anyways, Subaru needs to get this all cleared up.

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