I do not want my car reporting on me
I do not need "over the air" updates
Sell me the car. I will drive it away and make my own arrangements for maintenance.
I want an asset, not a subscription
Old man shouting at clouds?
I do not need "over the air" updates
Sell me the car. I will drive it away and make my own arrangements for maintenance.
I want an asset, not a subscription
Old man shouting at clouds?
Reasonable person reacting to insanity?
I believe there's a small but growing market for "dumb" tech. Unfortunately there aren't really many options for cars that I'm aware of. I suspect a quality-but-stupid display company is incubating somewhere, just waiting to nail manufacturing.
I'm pessimistic. The product would be too niche.
The problem is twofold:
1. Experts who have the users best interests at heart have bee disempowerd by business-culture and technological change (opening up new avenues of customer exploitation that were previously impossible).
2. A lot of these issues are technical and hard to understand by the average consumer. Furthermore consumers have been trained over the last few decades to put up with a lot of crap. Even if a individual consumer doesn't like something, it will be a vague feeling or a gotcha that happens long after purchase. And what choice are they given by the market? Usually none (e.g. all the copycatting).
Just as an example of how terrible the market can be: I understand the quality of many household appliances has fallen through the floor over the last few decades: they break more quickly, more expensively, and are harder to repair. To enable that, many of the major players own so many brands that even a totally unsatisfied consumer is likely to be a repeat customer, even of the exact same model they hate (e.g. have a terrible experience with a Whirlpool washer, then swear off the brand and end up buying a Maytag, which is literally a restyling of the same exact model).
The car has to continue working without ambient data, because it won't always have ambient data. So just metaphorically (or literally) rip out all its antennae.
I have worried about an upgrade killing my system or bricking the car but more than 10 years late it's good.
That this is even plausible should be cause for concern.
In cars the general rule is legacy auto companies are terrible, although there are some companies doing okay.
Tesla has done a great job, with apparent good boundaries between the UI/infotainment and drivetrain. You can reboot the screens while driving even (which is worrying but they seem to be well divided). They pay people for security attacks on the cars. Tesla has faster update paths for the main UI, and seem to update the drivetrain less frequently, but they do add and remove some features over time. They have "recalls" that are just software updates. A few other companies have done a good job designing and executing on frequent software updates, Rivian is one that has done a good job. Notably though, Rivian did push a bad update this year that messed up people's cars, had to install a new update a few days later. Before that I would say rivian was equal to tesla in quality. Other than they they are but that is a big difference.
VW is kind of in the middle. Wants to have good software and updates, but it has been a very painful sequence. They had updates that took too long, they were afraid they'd run out the 12v battery during big updates, possibly bricking a car, so you had to bring them to the dealer. Lately I think I read they had a successful over the air update. Oh yeah, tesla and rivian do all their updates over the air. Park you car for an hour, pick "go". Don't do this on a trip ;0)
Then all other legacy cars are terrible. Maybe the worst ever is the GM Lyriq which had a stop sale order it was so bad. Basically unusually, reboot the ui frequently and it keeps getting stuck on people. Hardly believable that they had those problems, apparently no related to a software update bug.
There's android auto and apple carplay. A lot of people like them, I think they are very decent. Legacy auto has almost given up on writing their own UIs, they are mostly bad, but some companies are coming back and trying to stop using them so they can control the experince, and maybe charge people for new features eventually. Tesla and Rivian never charged for their main software. Tesla continues to sell FSD for outrageous prices and it is not done, drives like a scared and maybe drunk beginning teenage driver.
I don't know about VW, but my Honda has decent (not great, but decent) software for the head unit (Android, basically). Because my car has no modem whatsoever, it's never been updated, which I vastly prefer to having to deal with "upgrades" of any kind.
IMHO, car software should be developed like a pre-internet videogame: finish it, test the hell out of it before release, then bugfixes or minor enhancements only, distributed through a totally consumer-controlled channel.
A car is a tool, and like a hammer, it's UX shouldn't change after you buy it.
Paradoxically, being able to fix mistakes later has had an adverse effect on software quality.