Jeep Introduces Pop-Up Ads That Appear Every Time You Stop
tech.slashdot.org
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The author also outlines how to disable them: by creating a user account with Jeep and agreeing to T&Cs and remotely disabling notificaitons. Such centralised control leaves them open to them deciding to re-enable ads in the future if they feel like it.
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
> “This was an in-vehicle message designed to inform Jeep customers about Mopar extended vehicle care options. A temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”
So everyone can put down the pitchforks now, unless you are assuming deliberate malfeasance.
People should not even entertain the stupid idea
imagine you get to a stop sign, come to a complete stop, and then an ad pops on right as you're trying to figure out if you should make that right turn
hell, the loud crash bang honk sounds on radio shows and radio ads have been banned in many places for that reason.
I think that pre-traffic-report sound effect probably contributed significantly to me purchasing a new head unit that let me play mp3s off burned CDs.
I suppose the "Fuck off forever" action is to crash the car through the window of the dealership...
It should be corporate headquarters' window ...
I don't know how many years I have known these brands, but they are constantly in the news regarding bankruptcy. I am aware of the history with Mercedes, followed by Fiat, and now with PSA; it feels as though they are the lab rats for all of these foolish decisions and everything that has gone wrong.
I guess I'd hammer my infotainment screen if I'd seen such an ad.
Yes, the companies will slowly disappear into oblivion with competitors (ie: China) gradually eating their launch.
When you ask “how can we be more like China?” you’ve lost 1/2 the chat…
I'd very much hope so, but I am seeing humanity adapt to and support much worse terms and conditions, under the banner of "Meh.".
Either by competition or by hedge funds that want to short it into the ground ("cellar boxing").
Just incompetency is another option of course.
or admit you don’t know about vehicles.
You're talking about a vanishingly tiny and irrelevant demographic that decides on a car based on placebo and branding.
A car is a thing that gets you from point A to point B.
Right???
So, tracing that decision is a bit harder than it looks.
I've lost respect for entire institutions, no joke. You literally will not believe some of the people they created.
Perhaps in this case it means Jeep can sell their cars at a lower price. Perhaps Jeep is already perceived as a budget conscious brand. The market segment they’re targeting may care about that.
Kindle does this with their ads. They are targeting a consumer with ~$50 of disposable income to spend on an ebook reader, who would rather pay that little and have ads. I’ll never buy a Kindle because not only do I not want ads on the screen, but they have also neglected their high end device which is the segment of the market where I’m at.
It's why Ford was able to bring back the Bronco and take a decent chunk of that pie.
I’d always thought of Jeep as an overpriced brand. There are cheaper off road vehicles available if you don’t care about the brand.
a tacoma/colorado is not equivalent to a gladiator or wrangler.
Source?
I have a feeling it's opposite. Maybe most people here would do that, but most of the general public? Doubtful.
For most people, driving comfort (we have more/less kids or aging grandparents, so need a bigger/smaller car) is a primary filter. Next is cost, where people are very aware there is not only the price but also the fuel economy and the maintenance. People know very well the parking spots in the city are limited and polluting cars are not allowed in more and more cities, so also look at small size or good enough eco scores.
There are exceptions: People getting a car from work spend whatever money they can get, and rich people optimizing for status get a BMW or maybe a Tesla.
First, people buy the same brand they had if they were happy with it and the price is sane. That's totally reasonable in my book; and not just for cars.
Those who lease do not care about long term reliability, since they replace cars in 3 years while all major components are under warranty. So they are more likely to try new things. Again, reasonable.
I am sure there are exceptions, but I know of no one who picked a fairly expensive car (and $850 per month is a lot for a car) and started with the budget. My 2c.
This is pretty much what the person you replied to said, just in a different way.
median income in the US is still an unimpressive 58k and a reasonably well-maintained used-car would still represent a significant chunk of their income over several years. it's a car culture, and people care about that stuff -- they'll shop around.
as to if they can shop and resist marketing -- different discussion.
Folks who want a bare bones 4x4 rig
And
People who want a grocery SUV that they can take down a gravel road to a trailhead a few times a year and put ducks on the dash.
Jeep is definitely targeting the latter group here.
The "priority" boarding on budget airlines is already like that and I'd be surprised if there isn't already a "VIP priority" boarding for an extra fee.
In the longer term though, I wonder if we could have mobile (robotically operated?) kitchens, optimized to finish preparing the dish just as they're about to arrive at your doorstep.
You can easily cancel any order from:
• Main-menu -> non-media options -> accounts -> non-media accounts -> miscellaneous settings -> status settings -> purchase settings
• Main-menu is neither the default or top menu, but can be accessed from:
• Top menu -> Other services -> Main menu
• “Cancel purchase” is conveniently located on the touch screen between “Double order” and “Disable purchase cancellation”
• Please use the cancel purchase pin for your particular order which was accessible from within the ads “more info” option, prior to you purchase event. We value your purchase security.
• These instructions, as all others, are included in this very exhaustive and complete service agreement, which you can agree to when you activate this vehicle.
• If you didn’t read these service terms prior to activation, no matter, the next section of these service terms provides instructions for accessing these service terms again. Including these, and the next section’s instructions, if you need to review them.
Please enjoy all your purchases!
What they might do though is play with the route. Say I tell my self-driving car to take me to the grocery store. There might be several routes it can take. It might infer from the destination that I'm going to buy groceries, and purposefully pick a route that takes me past billboards that advertise for things at that store.
It would be easy for the rider to never notice that what advertising is on a route is influencing route choice because they will be expecting variable routes. They will just assume the variability is due to factors like current traffic.
But what if the car was free?
In fact if you are already scanning the environment with a galvanometer for things like obstacle detection then you only need to point an extra laser to the rotating mirror and synchronise it. So for an extra buck for the laser pointer, you could have something like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmRfDEhTeYg
Huge, huge opportunity for reaching people about your products.
OTOH cars do have very good speakers and their ears are not needed much for the road
We could have transport funded by advertising - think of the captive ( quite literally ) market, and the ability to have full surround advertising for the whole of the journey.
The future is bright.
In my country stellantis (owner of jeep brand) tried to save by money by hiding that their car's airbag is killing people. Now there's been enough dead that that they can't just ignore it and made a recall but waiting list is very long.
They knew that since at least 2016, 8 years before the recall. They could have done it slowly since then, avoid drivers death and not having people locked out of their car waiting for airbag replacement.
I guess they were working harder on the new Jeep advertisement system.
And they are not alone, other manufacturer decided to keep it under the rug, like wolkswagen.
there is the old saying "an eye for an eye", if each time a mother or a kid died because of these airbags you hanged stellantis director's relative, the world would be a better place.
Yep: <https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843310123/how-government-agen...>. It's hard not to assign a dollar value to a human life when you're trying to do useful large-scale disaster planning.
So that's why Stellantis is testing this with Jeep: Nothing to lose.
I've been thinking of making a "sentiment database" for car brands where users share their personal, subjective view of a car make/model. I'm sure something like this probably already exists.
Their sales of 11.4k cars in October put them just between Mazda (12.3k cars) and Porsche (10.3k cars) with roughly 1% market share.
But they are at least competing in the market - some brands like Chevy, Chrysler and Subaru don't even make the top 25.
Of course many of these brands are ultimately owned by the same multinationals. Stellantis-owned Jeep, Dodge and Ram brands aren't doing well in Europe, but their Opel, Peugeot, Citroën, Vauxhall, Alfa Romeo and Fiat brands are selling just fine.
[1] https://www.jato.com/resources/media-and-press-releases/volk...
Is it? I thought it was in deep troubles.
But if Peugeot sold 61k cars in Europe, Opel/Vauxhall 31k, Citroen 23k and Fiat 18k the group overall is much better placed in the EU than Jeep's sales of 11.4k would imply.
> Opel, Peugeot, Citroën, Vauxhall, Alfa Romeo and Fiat
All of those had long separate histories before Stellantis. Although when I checked Vauxhall/Opel (basically the same cars except Vauxhall is the UK branding) have been GM subsidiaries since the 1920s!
PSA Peugeot Citroën merger was in 1976.
Daimler-Benz + Chrysler merger was in 1998.
Fiat Chrysler merger was in 2014.
Stellatis was the merger of PSA Peugeot Citroën and Fiat Chrysler in 2021.
(an owner survey; rating the brand of a car you don't own is so subjective as to be of very limited use except to car marketers)
Which I thought is funny.
Do they only appear when you stop? Are we sure the ad peddling software is bug free?
Is this a criminal safety investigation matter now, or will we wait until they show up while driving and someone dies because they got lost in some wilderness due to lack of navigation?
Not to try to start a political flame situation, but I genuinely think the next 4 years will see a lot of "innovation" and business experiments in the automobile space. Elon certainly won't leave NHSTA alone, when he can instead get his way to clear the path for new Tesla opportunities.
No way that any sort of criminal investigation occurs over something like this. Tesla would love to be able to have extra flexibility on their giant screens.
(Also, it seems very unlikely someone would die due to lack of navigation, but being too distracting due to a glitch seems more likely.)
Car companies know no one wants this. They just don't care.
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/ford-in-vehicle-advertising-...
With median US income around $43k/year, these geniuses thought there’d be a huge market for these monstrosities (and I am in no way anti-SUV).
This was after axing their Dodge sports cars that were actually selling, and dicking around with the Ram pickup. The bread & butter of their lineup.
But ARU! Listen you c-suite morons, sell the products your customers actually want to pay for. Stellantis’ stupidity is going to bankrupt a lot of dealers if they can’t execute these re-rollouts successfully and finally clear this glut.
And now I see shit like this. Pure, unadulterated enshitification.
How do these ideas not get shot down 2 seconds after they leave someone’s mouth? I guarantee you, not one person who heard such an idea thought it was a good one. It is impossible to witness such stupidity happening and think this will accomplish any business objective or be a good direction for the brand.
$90k is absurdly high, but everyone will take out a car loan anyways.
Stellantis are really struggling with their vision and direction. Carlos Tavares, the CEO who grew PSA and managed the merger with FCA , utterly failed at his job, to such an extent that he was recently fired (with a golden parachute though). They're up for a shake up, let's see what happens.
> How do these ideas not get shot down 2 seconds after they leave someone’s mouth?
Here's how: https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/17/hack-the-planet/
It's the "it's one egg Michael, how much could it cost, $10?" joke, but real
A premium 3rd row vehicle that's not a GM/Tahoe with those stupid reverse lights? My kids school is full of these. Seems to me like plenty of people were asking for them.
Though I do have yet another question to ask a dealer when I must purchase another vehicle.
It's a race. Still maybe not so evident, but declared.
Articles are (re)posted at a rate of like five or ten a day, but many articles will receive zero comments and few articles will have any comments of note. Also, the admins effectively deactivated new account creation a while back.
These days, it's a link aggregation site for two robot "editors". I can't stop chuckling every time I think of how much money it caused its various acquirers to light on fire over the years.
I don’t like this kind of exaggeration because it misses the core issue. And because the argument can easily be refuted, e.g., ads are only displayed when the car is parked.
The real issue is that a car remains operational, and the manufacturer continues to profit from it long after the purchase by ignoring the owner's right to self-determination. It’s not just about distraction from ads but rather about the fundamental business model of manufacturers. They retain control over the vehicle and use it to generate additional revenue—often at the expense of user freedom. Many essential features are locked behind paywalls or tied to subscriptions. The buyer owns the car, but not full control over it—and that is the real problem.
> These ads appear every time the vehicle comes to a stop. Imagine pulling up to a red light, checking your GPS for directions, and suddenly, the entire screen is hijacked by an ad. That's the reality for some Stellantis owners.
Italics mine.
Used in a sentence, "Hey does the rental car come with GPS?" "Of course, it's not 2008 anymore"
They are cornering us. Options are getting fewer and fewer.
[edit]
I also know that some Fords for 2024 (specifically the Maverick, but possibly others) had a single, dedicated fuse for the telematics system which could simply be removed.
I only happen to know about Nissan and the Ford Maverick because I was buying a truck and my research narrowed me down to those two models. I'll bet the story is similar in at least some other models from other manufacturers. Perhaps in other manufacturers, there is also a fuse, or perhaps the modem / GPS are simply easy to get to, and do not cause problems when removed? People post that useless Mozilla article as is if it actually conveys any information, but we need real, actual information when it comes to privacy.
Sorry ED but the Sep 2023 articles from Mozilla are so useful, in fact, that when I speak to the "people in the street" they don't know it, and have no idea of the situation - and they the people who feed the phenomenon by not saying no to all that is happening and NO to the whole idea. They promote it with their own money, unaware. They must be woken up. The article is there so that you can tell people "did you know?". I posted it here often, whenever it was possible that some participants had not noticed it.
It does not list models which would pass the test, but it is not its purpose.
And it is difficult to list them models, given that in Europe the e-Call box, GPS and microphone, are mandated by law on all models past 2018 (it should turn on only upon disaster but guess what), and cars (which ones? It's everywhere) stop working when you try to remove it.
They'll tout that word everywhere and people will believe them. For your and everyone else's safety and security, do not jailbreak your in car entertainment. Your wipers and ABS might even stop working.
If other auto manufacturers follow suit, this too will be normalized. Enshittification seems inevitable without collective action.
Links to a 11-minute video of a boomer browsing the internet
I'm sorry but this is too funny. An article about wasting people's attention wastes people's attention.
But... they actually show ads in your car every time you stop!? This is so bad I don't even know where to begin. The audacity!?
If anything needs an executive order to ban it...
This idea that every product must produce a recurring revenue stream has permeated way too deep. Buying a luxury automobile should entail luxury features.
I almost accidentally bought a scanner off Amazon that had a monthly fee in the fine print. As in the damn thing wouldn’t work if the subscription stopped. Wtf?
Frankly it’s tiresome and pathetic. It’s bad enough that pennies are pinched at every step of the manufacturing process to the point hardly anything lasts even 5 years anymore.
We get screwed over and over again so some asshole can hit their quarterly targets, or so the company’s stock can tick up a quarter point.
They're nowhere near bankruptcy. Sales are falling for a variety of reasons, and as a result they got rid of the old CEO.