Jeep owners fed up with in-car pop-up ads
kbb.com
kbb.com
> But the problem could presage a more significant issue for future drivers. Last year, Ford filed a patent for an in-car advertising system that would use the car’s speakers and display screen to serve ads to drivers and passengers. That system would also use the car’s GPS tracker to serve ads relevant to the driver’s route.
This is some Black Mirror type dystopian vision of the future for me. Just like nowadays you can't buy a "dumb TV" I imagine in the future it might be impossible to buy a dumb car that doesn't have these kinds of features built into the head unit.
You can, if you buy used. I know it's weird to buy a used TV, but they cost pennies on the dollar and you can get some really nice models without today's ubiquitous annoyances.
Same goes for cars. If enough people refrain from buying new cars, and put in the effort to keep their older cars on the road, maybe manufacturers will take the hint.
The combination of weird speaker ohm specs, CAN Bus controlled factory amplifiers, integrated vehicle information systems (where the display is across several screens) in modern cars and the abandonment of the DIN stereo size make doing aftermarket installs harder and harder.
The Chinese are producing some astounding things - you can buy a drop-in centre console replacement for an older Chrysler 300C that looks factory but has a big touch screen, Carplay/Android Auto and a dongle that interfaces with the CAN bus based amplifier and steering wheel buttons. I suspect for really popular cars this will be an option, but it can't be done for every car released.
It does, though.
My wife drive a 2019 F-150 Platinum. The only way to change the behavior of at least half of the features of that vehicle is through the infotainment system.
My understanding is that it's actually running a Linux kernel under the hood - literally in this case! - but it's not exactly an open and well-documented system.
Sorry but this is just not an appropriate level of outrage and reads like corporate apologism. If you go to the doctor for a broken arm, you don’t expect to get an inner ear implant whispering “wouldn’t you like a Coca Cola?” as part of the fix. Sure maybe another doctor will take it out, but it’s abusive and unnecessary, and fixing the abuse after the fact is just extra cost for the customer.
In any sane world, the market would recognize that thirsty bullshit like this is a signal that the perpetrators are completely out of ideas in their field and have started grasping at tiny amounts of cash they can get by selling their customers instead of their products, rather than being in it for the long term. In other words.. all in on looting the brand value, taking the money, and exiting ASAP.
My first option would be to buy some other car. However of that’s not possible, I would pay several thousand dollars and deal with a rough interior to avoid Ads that play on my cars console and speakers.
The opposite seems to be what happens. The manufacturers cater even harder to premium consumers who aren't in it for the long haul so you get heated subscription seats and stupid doodads that nobody needs but seem impressive on the test drive.
I just bought a new car (well 3 years old) because the transmission was going on the old one and at 240k miles the cost to fix it was more than the car was worth. Even if I had fixed it, the body was already showing signs of rust. (the new one is also a plug in hybrid which I believe over 10 years will save the difference between fixing the old one and this one - but only time will tell)
150$ a month to enable acceleration greater than 50mph.
you can buy a computer monitor and connect it to apple tv. sure it won't be as big but it can't phone home.
They are sold as monitors and digital signage displays and cost a lot more than a consumer TV.
https://www.newegg.ca/lg-48gq900-b-48-uhd-120-hz-refresh-rat...
And that's an outlier— most are 27-36", with 32" being the overwhelming sweet spot.
In contrast, my TV is 77" diagonal, and most people would consider 55" to be about the minimum size for a new TV at this point, outside of special applications such as the bedroom/kitchen/etc. I don't know where I'd begin to go about purchasing a 77" 4K display from a digital signage vendor.
Samsung makes them larger than 77".
So, if the trade-off is size vs advertising, I'd prefer to have a small, ad-free monitor instead of a large ad-box.
Which is regrettable, but it's easy enough to just keep it offline. Presumably there's no such opt-out for drivers of these vehicles.
I can just not buy a TV and my life is great. Probably better. I can't not buy a car except in a few select locations if I want to participate in the economy.
That's both dangerous and fragile.
As opposed to a TV that you own? You even paid for the cable subscription.
I think the concern is that once/if a critical mass of manufacturers include in-car ads, the rest can follow (because people still need vehicles in most areas), and the consumer has no more choice.
I mean, this is still awful, right? Subscriptions for the car I spent tens of thousands of dollars on?
>Seems to work fine with streaming platforms, for instance.
It's awful here, too, in my opinion. But tolerable because I didn't spend multiple years paying to own the product.
Alternatively framed: $1000/year discount for opting into ads.
I'll save us the back and forth: there is no model you can present (or reframing of a model) that will make me think advertisements (or an everlasting subscription to remove advertisements) in the car that I own is okay. It's profoundly depressing that I have to write it out that explicitly.
For now.
I've yet to see an advertisement on a bus or train that wasn't easily ignorable. It's a lot harder to ignore things when you're driving
Buying a car, which haven’t had ads previously, only to discover after the fact that it serves ads is a change to the status quo. Even more so if the ads were pushed via firmware update and not something that was originally spec’ed (no clue if this is what happened, but sounds plausible, given lack of details).
That's why I mentioned "digital ad displays" specifically, because as other commenters have noted, are starting to pop up in some places.
Advertisements inside my car, especially if the begin to use my speakers, is infinitely more annoying than a billboard (which, yes, is also annoying).
Advertisements on trains/etc. are more annoying than billboards, but less annoying than advertisements in something I am supposed to own.
Far more so in the US[0] than in any of the parts of Europe I've lived in or visited[1].
[0] Around much of CA, RI, MA, passing through NV and CT, and the cities of NYC, Salt Lake City and Newark in NY, UT and NJ.
[1] Spain, France, UK, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungry, Finland, Greece, Cyprus.
The bus advertising business seemed to have taken a beating a few years back. It is true that in Washington the bus shelters have ads, often electronic.
I regularly complain about both of those things to all of the relevant political and transit authorities.
The car industry is probably one of the most stable economic pillars the US has.
You mean the industry that famously went bankrupt in 2008 and had to be bailed out? Looking at the list of sectors[1], there are plenty of sectors that I think are more stable: Consumer staples, utilities, and healthcare.
Yes. It's extremely well connected to the levers of power.
Other examples would include the protectionist legislation offered when they were getting their shit rocked by Asia the last time around, in the 70's, every time we've gone to war overseas for oil, and the CAFE standards which have generous exemptions for all the vehicles they actually make money on because no other manufacturers bother to make 3 ton trucks for suburbanites.
> it’s so stable because it’s a cultural first class
Looks biased from an outsider view but I guess most cultural habits gets biased at some point.
I disagree, https://www.lendingtree.com/auto/debt-statistics/
"The average car payment for new vehicles was $737 per month in the third quarter of 2024, up 0.7% from Q3 2023
Auto loan delinquency rates are up compared to last year. 4.6% of outstanding auto debt was at least 90 days late in Q3 2024, according to the New York Fed, up 17.4% from Q3 2023. Meanwhile, the percentage of auto loans that fell to 30 days past due was 8.1% in the third quarter of this year, up 9.9% from 7.4% in the third quarter of last year."
I'm shocked that a somewhat predeatory lending company has great statistics about this - the whole article is interesting.
As for manufacturing, I also disagree -- due to current affairs w/ Trump and tariffs : https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-...
Oh yeah, something something they all took bailouts in 2008 and Ford was the only one that could pay the loans back while GM killed off several brands e.g. Oldsmobile and Pontiac.
I certainly don't plan to. You can always chose a different car. I doubt the Jeep users will put up with it for long.
People get so weird about easily solvable problems, like the developer who gets tasked to make the button red and instead writes an entire theme engine abstraction even though there's exactly one user.
Please tell me how I, someone who doesn't manufacture cars, can easily solve the problem of manufacturers choosing to put advertisements in cars?
Especially with Uber, Doordash, Instacart, etc. Having a car is almost a liability in many instances.
Now I agree this gets to be a dodgy proposition if you have kids, and the further out you are from major pop centers. Suburbs maybe, rural areas are definitely out.
I did for many years and definitely contributed to the economy
It just is what it is, like Brits drinking tea, Scandinavians liking their saunas, or the French being obnoxious about Frenchness.
The US was the world leader in railroads. US cities had state of the rail based public transit systems. LA had the most extensive streetcar system in the world. Even St Louis used to be as accessible as NYC.
People changed because corporations lied to the public and meticulously destroyed public transit in the US.
People can change again.
The car-centric, suburb-centric culture cannot be sustained economically or ecologically, and will therefore come to an end. How do we want that to happen - intentionally and progressively, or catastrophically?
Obesity rates track historically with car-centric culture, should we just accept that is who we are, or can we work on cultural and policy changes that alleviate that problem?
Other countries like the Netherlands went through the same car-centric design phase and realized it was too expensive and bad for the country so they reverted. We can and should keep cars, but our reliance on them for our very existence is quite fragile and unnecessary.
Why does the average American have to spend $300 - $800/month or more in direct costs (insurance, gasoline, tires, loan payments, etc.) plus indirect costs (taxes for infrastructure) in order to go to the grocery store to buy a tomato or take their children to a playground?
> If you want to do things like improve the environment, you can either scream and stamp your feet about it or you can meet people where they are and devise solutions that work in a car-centric culture.
Instead of "screaming and stamping my feet" - isn't that what Road Rage is? I prefer to just work with organizations and political leaders to devise and implement solutions that reduce our need for car-centric culture and improve our economic resilience. That means fewer surface parking lots which are economic outflows, more bike lanes, slower speed limits, and better roadway design that incorporates segmented bike lanes, bus lanes, and more.
The Netherlands is roughly the size of Maryland. If The Netherlands was a U.S. state, it would be 42nd in terms of land area.
How is this relevant in your mind? Do you imagine most Americans crossing entire states in their daily commute? Do you imagine people and goods do not cross European borders?
I'm not sure it is. Have you visited the Netherlands? You don't walk or ride a push bike between cities there, any more than you do in the USA. Bicycles are the predominant form of transport because of how they design their suburbs. A car in suburban Holland isn't going to move any faster than a bicycle, and there nowhere to park. This is a deliberate design choice.
The population density of Utrecht (a major city in the Netherlands) is 1000 people / sq km. The population density of Annapolis (the capital of Marylands) is over 2000 people / sq km. If density is the reason Marylands should be less car centric than Holland.
> To the east of where I live there is a highway that is 287 miles long and is almost devoid of any services whatsoever, no civilization to speak of, not even a gas station. You can Google it, it is known as the "Loneliest Road in America".
Doesn't the word "lonely" give you a hint on why this is irrelevant? You aren't going to ride a push bike to pick up fuel for your tractor in the Netherlands either.
It's the USA's sprawling suburbs that weld you to your car's, not your cities or your rural expanses. It's true that's hard to change now. But there is no reason it had to be that way. Your suburbs could have been as compact as those in the Netherlands. The Netherlands made a conscious choice not to do it that way (they built free ways, decided they didn't like them, and turned them into canals [0]). I'm not sure how the USA arrived at their current arrangement but it wasn't because you "had to".
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/14/utrecht-restor...
The relevance isn't that it is lonely, the relevance is that it is not unique west of the Mississippi. But I welcome you to point me to a country the size of the United States that has solved this problem. I think you'll find they come in two varieties, either they're as spread out as the United States or the entire population is almost entirely against a coast/border wit much of the rest of the country remaining mostly empty.
> It's the USA's sprawling suburbs that weld you to your car's, not your cities or your rural expanses. It's true that's hard to change now. But there is no reason it had to be that way. Your suburbs could have been as compact as those in the Netherlands. The Netherlands made a conscious choice not to do it that way (they built free ways, decided they didn't like them, and turned them into canals ). I'm not sure how the USA arrived at their current arrangement but it wasn't because you "had to".
Western expansion in the United States was a deadly affair prior to railroads and highways. The Netherlands was largely already a developed country when they did all of what you describe. Much of the United States today lives and dies by what little transportation options they have. There is a reason there are over 3,000 ghost towns scattered across the United States west of the Mississippi and it is not because of the sprawling suburbs. When you have one major highway in or out, city planning kind of takes a backseat.
Russia, China, India. Almost everywhere because to pull the US pattern of suburbia off you needed two things: to build the suburbs in the era of the car, and be rich enough to afford the cars. The USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand met those two criteria. Almost no one else did.
The size of the place had nothing to do with it. New Zealand isn't that big. As I said the Netherlands for a while decided to emulate what USA pattern. They had the money, and they started to build the freeways to enable the expansion. They decided against it. Whatever caused them to do that, it wasn't size. It was probably because the preferred the denser style of living.
Most people do, because it and easier and cheaper lifestyle. Maintaining all the larger house block, the long travel times, the increased freight - it all takes effort and money. Perversely, you get more exercise in these denser cities because you walk / cycle everywhere.
> Maryland is about 250 miles long and 100 miles wide.
30 miles is a pretty normal commute for people who work in Chicago but live in the suburbs. Not the whole width Maryland but we do have many smaller states too.
The size of Maryland? Yes, I do. Not likely "most Americans", but a much larger portion than you'd suspect.
My commute was ~30 miles for over a decade, back before I went remote. That was considered "local". From 2016-2017, my commute was ~80 miles.
All of the above are one-way distances, and they're not at all exceptional in the US. Yes, the size of the Netherlands relative to the US is definitely relevant to this discussion.
Within Columbus we have a few buses and that's it for transit, unfortunately - though we are working on building new bike lanes and reforming our zoning code to allow more dense development within the city and hopefully throughout the region too. Nothing but good comes from this and makes us wealthier as a city.
Most people living in Columbus who do commute to some job site, do so within 30 miles or less, and in cases where they commute longer than that it's because they actively choose to live quite far away from their workplace. We also have a large portion of the population (children, elderly, etc.) who do not have to make a daily commute like what we are discussing here, but instead do their daily activities locally.
What's important to note here is that there are no options - we affirmatively mandate that citizens purchase a car and incur all of the associated expenses in order to participate in daily life, whether that's going to church, the farmer's market, to a friend's house, or to the park.
In one area of Columbus I've routinely seen with my own eyes kids crossing 5 lanes of 45mph + traffic to get from one apartment complex to the housing development across the roadway. This is taken as normal. It's not. It's fucking stupid.
> My commute was ~30 miles for over a decade, back before I went remote. That was considered "local". From 2016-2017, my commute was ~80 miles.
Maybe that's a bad, and incredibly expensive design we should stop subsidizing? I'm not sure why we should focus on these edge cases, and they are indeed edge cases, when we can spend money more effectively to move more people more efficiently around our cities. If you want to live 80 miles away from your job more power to you, but I don't think everyone else should have to pay for it.
Where did you get the idea that they reverted? Car ownership in Netherlands has continued to rise despite widespread biking culture.
https://english.kimnet.nl/publications/publications/2022/02/...
https://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2019/08/the-car-free-m...
Having cars doesn't mean less bicycles ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HdqTZs3vjU
(Full disclosure: I am one of them. Reluctantly living in a suburb because kids; will move back to the City as soon as they get their thumb out and build enough housing to make it more affordable.)
Anyone who has had the privilege to live in a city where walking is easier than driving knows how much more freeing not having a car is than having one.
While we now do have a suburban-centric subculture, the car is just a tool that enables that subculture to easily access economic opportunities without having to interact with the classes segregated out of desirable locations by contemporary (explicitly racist) federal housing policies [0]. Although, I guess now that I look at it in that light (and noting the fact that every major city is still very racially segregated), I suppose that is just who we largely are and historically have been.
[0] https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Feder...
It's a recent thing ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
I suppose it will be a bigger deal for folks who really enjoy TV and don’t want to miss it. But man… I can’t help but think of how much better myself and my family will be if they push me over that edge.
FAFO, Hulu, FAFO.
The software feature flag for regulatory approval is simple. Which, optimistically, might give the rest of us a vector into controlling the feature ourselves.
I don't disagree it's an ahole move
"why are we getting off at this exit? there is a sale nearby..."
Dystopian doesn’t even begin to describe this situation. These executives are out of their mind.
Indeed. I always assumed this was the impetus for FSD: these vehicles confine the most captive audience, so they will be a surveillance/advertising gold mine.
You are trading ads for relevant ads.
You can still get Sceptre dumb TVs at Amazon and Walmart.
'I'm sorry Dave, I can do that. You don't need to be in the neighborhood where the protest/strike is happening/drugs or other illegal things are sold/xyz reason, and police have geolocked the area from entry for the good of the public'.
That will give so much power to the ruling class. I intend to keep a non-self driving car as long as possible.
https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
You can, just not at a price that you would want to pay. ('tis the beauty of supply and demand)
There is an entire older generation that is used to ads being blasted in their cars. The visual assault is new though.
Sharing location does not necessarily need to impact privacy.
To me, that fact that you’re making an unsolicited pitch to me to capture my money is an insult and assault on my attention. Even if it somehow happened to align with something I wanted, I then wouldn’t want it from that company.
I block ads anywhere I can. I don't watch tv, listen to radio, watch youtube, etc. I basically don't see ads. And when I see or hear one out in the world, I immediately shift my focus elsewhere. It's automatic at this point, I hear or see the start of an ad and immediately dissociate or turn my attention elsewhere.
I'm not interested in splitting hairs over " acceptable" advertising, because that's an oxymoron to me.
I understand this is a hardline stance. But ads should really be annoying the shit out of all of us. People discussing the benefits of privacy encroachment for the sole purpose of "serving me better ads" are, in my opinion, missing the point. Or at least missing my point. I don't want ads, especially ones that are targeted based on data collected from me. These are the most likely to effectively sway me towards buying something.
If I want something, I'll go online and search for it and might decide to buy it. I don't need some marketing schmuck who spent their entire 8 hour day trying to build a perfect string of words and sound effects designed to trigger deep seated biological responses in me. If I want your product, I will find it.
Sorry for the rant.
The Jeep situation is weird in some ways - is the car cheaper because it's ad supported? What did the owners sign up for?
1) The psychological manipulation inherent to all advertising has shifted from diluted, mass manipulation to pinpoint-accurate, targeted manipulation right down to the individual level, with impunity via plausible deniability.
2) Advertising is a major distributor of malware, with the ability to target anything with a chip.
Given either one of the above, I absolutely cannot trust any advertising delivered via modern technology. Since we have to contend with both issues, I view modern advertising as one of greatest threats to my mental health and individual sovereignty that exists in my day-to-day life.
Here is a tip that I just recently learned that has improved my browsing experience with uBlock Origin. In the settings menu under "Filter Lists" there sections under the heading of "Cookie notices" and "Annoyances" that are not enabled by default. Blocking cookie popups has been wonderful, and I can only imagine what kind of annoyances are now being blocked for me.
I don't trust random sites on the internet to follow the law anyway, so nuking your cookies and localstorage when you close the browser or navigate away is what you should be doing if you're concerned about this sort of thing. Obviously sites I need to stay logged into get on the allowlist.
luckily some kind soul her pointed me to the cookie autodelete extension. Which does just this. I am able to add the three sites I want to keep persistence as exceptions and just let everything else burn after a day. The fun part is how it trips the firefox "looks like you have not used firefox in a while" dialog every single time. I don't fix it because that is how I know it is working
TLDR: Blocking cookie popup = not allowing cookies.
Though none of the parts I've had to replace are computer related. Mechanical parts are much more likely to wear out or rust.
I admit I steal their vehicles sometimes in the dead of winter. Mine has no working heater. Unless it's under 20ºF or so, I don't even bother to put the hard top on it.
I've had my Jeep for 15 years now, and am starting to feel the itch for a new vehicle. I have my eye on a 1992 GMC pickup. It belonged to my grandfather who passed away in ~2005 and has been stored in a garage since then. I've put about $4k into it getting it roadworthy again after sitting for that long, but it's only got 15k miles on it and the interior is mint. If I bother with it, it needs the paint buffed a re-coated on one side that was partially in the sun where it was stored - at which point it will effectively be a brand new vehicle.
I'm looking forward to that big carburated V8 after a decade and a half driving a 2.5L i4 :)
The obvious boycott would be to sell the car and never buy a Jeep again. Until the next car you buy is also updated to include ads and quietly sell tracking data they've collected about your family, so then you sell that car and never buy from that manufacturer again either.
Then before you know it, you end up buying an American-made luxury sedan to take the kids to soccer because you've convinced yourself that buying a premium ad-free car with the optional monthly subscription for the seat warmers is worth the investment and all the "affordable" options are either ad-supported American-built cars or artificially overpriced due to trade wars.
They'll backtrack if they lose enough money.
The big players here are KBB, edmunds, consumer reports, and all the car magazines. If they scream manufactures will listen.
The overwhelming majority of people finance their vehicles. It's not even their car to sell.
I attribute the glitch to the fact that ads are being presented at all. Seriously. Why would anyone buy from these people? How can someone look at the electronics in a modern vehicle and not think that they are a huge negative and not a positive? I Would love it if those electronics were there for me but it has been clear for a long time now that they are there to take advantage of me. Every touch screen/gps screen/etc makes me think 'this vehicle tracks everything I do, sells it to my worst enemy and will advertise/nag me to make more money and not to help me out'
Increasingly, it looks like my next new car is going to have to be an old car.
in general though there won't be.
No product manager with a lick of sense would allow that. No, if online reports are to be trusted, it waits a while before the ads start showing up.
See https://sandsprite.com/blogs/index.php?uid=7&pid=462&year=20....
It has the drawback of breaking the GPS and compass. Also I imagine any recalls that are fixed via over-the-air updates won't apply. Hopefully that never happens, because I don't want to have to try to explain to the dealer that I need them to apply the update locally.
And lo, that's exactly what Jeep's parent company, Stellantis, is doing.
IMHO ads in a car infotainment system should be outlawed. Let me focus on the road, and if I need to stare at the infotainment screen, let it be just for the GPS navigation.
> A vehicle is considered a lemon if it has at least one defect that substantially that impairs the use, safety, or market value and the car has not been repaired after a reasonable number of attempts.
Same thing really with infotainment and requiring them for basic car functionality. Most of them suck anyways and you cannot operate a touch screen without looking at it. Stop putting climate control behind that screen.
It is a blight on humanity and future generations are going to look back on us with the deepest pity on how we voluntarily did this to ourselves just to not pay for anything (directly).
Soon long commutes will mean even more exposure to ads.
It was already the case with billboards anyway.
Now billboards are being forced inside your car.
"... now with full self-driving! Where your captive audience can't use the safety excuse for avoiding your very important and lucrative propaganda!"
I've owned Ford stock for 10 years, I think I'll finally sell it today
My one hope is that there are enough car manufacturers on the market for competition to stifle this. That doesn't work in many areas of tech because they are controlled by a monopoly or duopoly. Chrome is free to dump all over users because Google leveraged their other monopolies to drive out competition and gain a browser monopoly.
This kind of anti-consumer behavior that tech pioneered has really lowered my opinion of the whole industry.
So here we go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHEOGrkhDp0
That all said, I would gladly fork over whatever money someone wanted just for a new XJ, just the way they were in 04 or 98, or a similar time machine GMT400 or GMT800 truck from GM.
This will allow the car to be sold for thousands less, effectively allowing you to trade your soul for a $1000 down $150/mo lease of an otherwise bare bones car.
The irony.
Backlash sure, but five years later they're probably put advertising in your steering wheel.
This crap is being tried on that vehicle because JEEP drivers are some of the least discerning car buyers on the market. A perfect test bed for the most toxic features American manufacturers can imagine.
So it's a great sign that they are noticing and complaining. If this group can't handle it, hopefully they will consider it a failed experiment. For now.
You should have said that people who buy Fiat Chrysler are basically blind and undiscerning because the whole company basically operates on generating total garbage with few exceptions (some Cummins powered trucks be among those).
guess I'm about to become a vintage car collector.
Same. My truck is already a classic. People ask if I really love that truck and then I explain the de-evolution that is taking place in modern vehicles. When that truck fails and if I can't find anything I will happily ride into town on my 1947 tractor or a horse or my old side-by-side.
I've owned multiple Jeeps in the past.
Never again.
They’re everywhere, man! Isn’t it time to have an alternative to capitalism? UBI and cooperative gift economies (science, open source etc.)
Capitalism, warts and all is still the best way to lift people out of poverty. You may not like the fact that some people have way more than others (and objectively speaking way more than they need) but the people who saw and see their income lift above the poverty line would not like to see it go down again once the next "people's party" gets to power.
Personally, I'm not quite there yet, but the older I get, the more I see their point...