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Comment by windowsrookie | Hacker News Reader

You’ll find this happening with many things. Chrysler/dodge/Jeep vehicles built before 2016-2017 were using Sprint’s CDMA network for their telematics. When they shutdown the network it shutdown all cellular features in these vehicles. On the plus side, if you’re looking for a modern vehicle with no way to “phone home” take a look at those. ;)

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That's good to know. I have been getting along fine by driving older cars, but obviously that won't last forever. I have always assumed that whenever the day comes that anything which still runs was built to phone home, I'd have to learn how to take the dash apart and remove the SIM or the antenna; but perhaps the endless grind of technological obsolescence will do the job for me. Wouldn't that be ironically nice?

There needs to be a guide to physically removing telematics from vehicles.

In a lot of cars its the infotainment system. In my car there is an information system that runs in tandem with the stereo and feeds information to the dashboard. Pull that out and it cannot communicate to the manufacturer. However pull that out and your stereo no longer works. There are after market stereos but nothing that fits nicely in your dashboard AND has a usable UI (there exist tesla-style giant LCD screens but the software is what you would expect from an unlicensed chinese manufacturer)

For my car I bought a plastic cover up plate that made a standard DIN size head unit fit nicely.

Wait 5-10 years for the telemetry systems they rely on to go obsolete.

Ford will download telemetry data via ODB2 during ever service visit. There is no obsolete

Almost nobody with a 5+ year old car goes to a dealer though, so while Ford can download this, in practice they never will. One the care case someone does, the tool will download data, but Ford will no longer be maintaining the system it uploads to anymore.

If you need ford required service your nondealer has to pay for the ford system. That ford system that hooks to your ODB2 port calls back home and sends all the APIC data. Have you ever gotten a new key made for your Ford? That’s one of those services which requires a ford system. It’s the same system ford has used for almost 20 years now. But you are correct, it will no longer be maintained for random reasons…

In the US at least, you can look up the fccid: https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/fccid

In a lot of cars, this will be an identical board (since the manufacturer only wants to certify one vs many of them). This gives you at least a start of what to look for.

If sure that would void the warranty or some other consumer punishment.

I wish there was a law that products which data mine had to be free and it was illegal for paid products to do it.

That's not how warranties work in the U.S..

If you do something to Part A, it doesn't void the warranty to Part B unless the manufacturer can prove it did.

If you unplug the cellular antenna, that should not affect the physical characteristics of the engine for example.

Companies can claim anything they want such as 'warranty void if you remove this sticker' (or not responsible for damage), but that does not automatically make it true. A Supreme Court opinion even said "warranty void if removed" stickers might even be illegal, but they would need a case to come to them before they can determine that.

"Oops, I accidentally ran over a faraday cage and it seems to have unintrusively wrapped itself around the wireless transmitter..."

Even if free there need to be limits to what they can do, and strong liability for anytime else, including if they are victims of a zero day attack.

>There needs to be a guide to physically removing telematics from vehicles.

Add the server's IPs to the car's host file. ;)

This happened with my wife's Fusion Energi.

It used AT&T 3G to communicate with Ford's MyFordMobile servers. Ford sunset MyFordMobile shortly after AT&T sunset 3G nationwide (US) two years ago. They had a service program which replaced the head units with more modern SYNC 4 ones that have 4G radios in them and work with Ford's FordPass service.

However, the dealer nearby us didn't know about the service and, because they didn't have the parts on hand, would have needed to hold that car for two weeks before doing any work.

So, just like that, we lost remote start (via app), location tracking and a bunch of actually useful features.

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