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Given the increasing computerization of modern cars, how could you possibly verify that this wasn’t possible on *any* car you buy?

The only way I can think of is “don’t buy a car made within the last 25 years”

This is why some hardcore folks go ‘trad diesel’. Just glowplugs and mechanical parts!

Notably, you have to go back to 70’ish era to get that kind of equipment. Almost everything else has some kind of ECU.

Cellular connections didn’t start becoming somewhat common until the late 90’s-early 2000’s though.

There is a UK company that puts engines with mechanical fuel pumps in newer cars. Particularly newer landrovers. £10k ugrade, and the last car you need ever buy.

https://dieselpumpuk.com/

So, either a modern safe car with a remote killswitch or a deathtrap car that will kill you in many exciting ways. Sophie's choice of cars.

It’s only a sophie’s choice if you’re really bad at math, if not you’ll take your chances with the kill switch thing that’s never been confirmed to hurt anyone over the thing that kills tens of thousands of Americans a year.

I was being facetious, I'd take the remote killswitch car over the deathtrap any time.

Or something that's engineered in such a way as to be modifiable into a desired disconnected state.

E.g. 5th gen Toyota 4Runners: https://www.4runners.com/threads/how-to-disconnect-the-track...

If one wants to buy a modern car, and one cares about preserving disconnected functionality, one just needs to research if there's a workable fallback mechanism.

Or, you know, deal with the 20mpg but a vehicle that will last until the heat death of the universe #2uzfeClub

Yeah exactly this.

FWIW while cars are essentially backdoored nowadays with all the cellular/OTA updates BS you can still disable it. I suspect this won't be an option in the near future, the way things are going.

I can't wait to see Hacker News comments in 2035 lamenting how they used to be able to "just use a bypass cable" to make their cars not phone home, by the time EVs and even general ICE vehicles have telemetry so deeply integrated with the vehicle it's impossible/illegal to be disabled.

I have a 92 civic it certainly can’t be remotely shut off.

I also have 2008 mazda3. Great reliable car. Also no connectivity whatsoever.

Don't buy modern cars. There is a real movement to keep driving cars from circa 2010. This was around peak car for me. You could still block off the egr valve, remove the cat and any dpf nonsense. No 'driving aids' to distract and infuriate me. No touch screens to distract and infuriate me. No software updates. Can still get over 50mpg. My car is going to keep being fixed as long as it is viable.

Unfortunately increasingly illegal in the EU because of the ULEZs, mandatory driving aids, etc.

Buying a car from 2010 is a guarantee that you won't be able to drive it in 5-10 years..

Can you point me to the directive/regulation that states that? I am in the EU and I'm not aware of any such thing. I have two cars that are 2006-2008 models and I am not planning on replacing them.

There are EU-wide mandatory air quality standards that get stricter as time passes and that are being enforced through low emissions zones which practically make diesel cars illegal. This may not be the case in your country yet but it will arrive with time.

Regarding driving aids, some cities in my European country are looking to make them mandatory in the city centre.

Overall this is being done to keep poor people from driving.

My nearly 30-year-old Range Rover is fully ULEZ compliant nearly everywhere in Europe except Paris, because it can run on propane which only really emits water and warm carbon dioxide when it burns - no "smog", no NOx, no HC, no CO, none of that.

Annoyingly in post-Brexit Britain I need to wait two years until is *is* 30 years old to drive in ULEZ zones. It was fine until Brexit kicked in - yet another Conservative disasterpiece.

OK, I'll bite. Name 2 or more cars from 2010 that got better than 50mpg. I'll wait.........

* The 2010 Toyota Prius had 51 mpg. * Volkswagen Golf TDI Bluemotion (Diesel, around 62 mpg) * Volkswagen Polo Bluemotion (also Diesel, closer to 71 mpg) * Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4 (Diesel, around 68 mpg, some tests speak about 74 mpg when driven with some sense.)

Pretty much anything with a 1600cc-ish diesel engine, from Europe.

Ford Transit Connect, for example, which could just about do 60mpg on a steady 70mph motorway run.

I am not sure everyone is speaking the same language here. A UK gallon is 25% bigger than a US gallon, so UK mpg is correspondingly higher. Also the testing is presumably different, so numbers measured in the UK are not comparable with US numbers even taking account gallon size differences.

I assume the questioner is asking about US mpg? The Prius was there for sure in US mpg (just, at 51mpg), not sure about others.

> OK, I'll bite. Name 2 or more cars from 2010 that got better than 50mpg. I'll wait.........

Not 2010, which makes this so infuriating..

A 1986 Honda CRX HF was rated 51 MPG highway. That was an engine with stone-age technology, and it was possible.

Just imagine +40 years of incremental development with modern materials and modern engine control systems. What could a 2026 Honda CRX HF do in MPG if that development had been allowed to continue all these decades? Certainly above 60, probably above 80 MPG? Maybe above 100MPG.

Instead society is selling us 6000+lb monsters with worse mileage than back in the mid 80s.

Deleting the cat is straight up delinquency.

As is disabling the EGR system.

EGR makes emissions worse. It was the wrong fix for the wrong problem.

Diesel vehicles now have SCR and AdBlue, which fixes the problem properly, but they still have the EGR defect.

If I tested my emissions using UK MOT standards before and after removing the cat and egr, and showed both an improvement and a pass, would that still be problematic for you?

Even if it makes the emissions test better? Which it can...

I hope deleting the cat brings a permanent black mark in the MOT history. I wouldn't like to get a damaged car second hand.

Correct

I will not buy a post patriot act vehicle

So you exclusively buy pre-2000's shitboxes? Is there a reason for that, when you could literally just rip the modem out of a modern car instead?

If you're driving such old cars, I have to assume you're mechanically inclined. At which point, a simple bypass cable or literally just removing the telematics unit out of a modern vehicle should not be too much to ask for.

Bonus points for gaining moderate security with immobilizers that way, so any random guy can't just start your car with a set of wafer jigglers.

Why would you assume it’s a shitbox

My 2001 Tundra is a beast that will never die, has amazing AC/Heat radio etc…

There are fleets of garage specials out there with low miles and tons of spare parts or are easy to maintain with a Chilton guide

I started my working life fixing cars and obce they started putting in electronics it became impossible.

So I stick with things I can fix

You can usually delete the modem on your car.

No need to go that far back. My 2010 vehicle has no remote connection.

> The only way I can think of is “don’t buy a car made within the last 25 years”

You don't need to go that far back. None of my cars have any kind of connectivity, the newest one is 2014. I'll never own a car with any kind of remote connectivity, the risk is far too large to ignore.

So you'll be buying mid 2010's cars for the rest of your life?

Hell, I have always wanted a '67 mustang. Time to ditch modern cars and get one.

I particularly hate the 'modern' trend of have a large touch screen tablet instead of all the knobs and buttons.

Fair enough, though fwiw automobile makers seem to have taken note on the pushback to the touch screen controls, and 2025MY vehicles are actually starting to shift away from touch screens and back to physical controls again.

I assume you joke here but large parts of the car enthusiast community are considering this strategy for near term. 2010s is widely argued to be era of "peak car" in terms of vehicles that are well built with minimal complex extras added for compliance with emissions and over the top safety regulation (less lane departure warning systems to turn off...).

My own group of car buddies, pretty much all we do is shop and trade 2010s vehicles now, rather than buy new.

Yes.

But can I please have an electric car, all the bells and whistles, that I take to a dealer/mechanic to get upgraded?

Maybe once a year?

If that, and at my choice....

Sure, build one

> So you'll be buying mid 2010's cars for the rest of your life?

That or earlier, yes.

Yes. And I've structured a decent amount of my life around transportation independence.

My last car will probably be my current car from 2013, which I have replaced the engine in, and plan on replacing the transmission in when that goes, as well as other parts as needed. Rust is basically what is going to kill it and I can stave that off for a long time.

When that day comes, it won't really matter. I live near a quarter mile from a train station, 200 feet from a bike trail that connects to my city's bike network, and 50 feet from a bus stop. No need for a car really ever. Rentals exist for car needs every few months, but there are usually other options.

The key for me was to not be dependent on any singular mode of transportation and to have redundancy so that if any single option isn't working, I have at least one other option to go places.

> Assuming that one of the most critical times you might need a vehicle is fleeing oppression

That's a hell of an assumption.

If we're talking about population distributions, I would argue that "having lived in war zones" puts you well outside the center of the curve.

It is extremely far from it in the US, I promise.

But direct answers:

1. They don’t know that can happen. The salesman doesn’t point it out.

2. They figure all cars will be that way soon so why worry about it.

3. It’s never happened to anyone before so why worry about it.

4. We don’t know anyone who has ever had to flee from oppression in their car so why worry about it. And this is America, if that’s what we’re worried about we’ll stock up on ammo.

Etc

> So can someone who owns a modern car please help me understand why you would buy a car that has the mere capability to be remotely shut off?

In practice, getting t-boned at an intersection where I have the right of way is a much greater risk to me than my car getting shut off, so it makes sense to optimize for safety in the former case.

Like smart TVs, the only possible alternative is buying a 10 year old model on the secondhand market. Vehicles without these features have not been produced in a long time

Or never wire the tv. Thats what I did. Everything runs through my Apple TV (admittedly captured by my years of employment there) but could just as well run through a Kodi instance

Dumb TVs are still being made. I bought this Sharp commercial TV just last year: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CCMXNRFH

Of course they're not mass-market and will be lacking on some other bullet point features, but if you really care about your TV not turning into an ad billboard in 2 years, they're the way to go.

You’ve got me thinking. I drive a Chinese made EV. If China ever had a nuclear war with the west they would definitely brick all of the cars they’ve sold us. Also it doesn’t have to be China that issues the command. Remote shutoff of cars is a great cyber warfare target.

Disable brakes and set acceleration to max, on all of them simultaneously, would have rather bigger impact than switching them off.

Doing it intelligently through an automatic OTA update that waits for the user to be in a difficult scenario would be much smarter.

Bonus points for adding a time-based kill switch so this feature gets pushed out months in advance, just to ensure everyone with such a vehicle has this malicious update installed.

I’ve looked at the fuse box for my car and found the fuse that powers the Ariel Module. Removing this fuse breaks GPS and all cellular connectivity. Hopefully it breaks automatic updates. I am tempted to leave it disconnected to see if my car skips an update.

The rest of the car works fine. If the political situation heats up then I can remove this fuse to isolate my car from the internet.

Some people connect a toggle switch in place of this fuse so they can leave the car disconnected from the internet when they are not using online functions.

I would be surprised if simply removing a fuse voids my warranty.

Not sure about the warranty effect, but on many other vehicles there are also bypass cables for the telematics units that allow you to physically remove them entirely from the car without losing any functionality (well, other than the online functionality obviously).

In my case, I'll gladly take potentially voiding the warranty on a car that almost certainly has it expired anyway, over being surveilled and monitored by the manufacturer so my usage habits can be reported to insurance companies.

> So can someone who owns a modern car please help me understand why you would buy a car that has the mere capability to be remotely shut off?

That’s not what is going on here. These cars are not being intentionally shut down remotely. Instead, a software update for some computerized components of the car was pushed down to the cars and installed with the owners permissions, but that update apparently has severe bugs that should have been caught by QA.

This is a distinction without a difference. Intentional or not, these vehicles were disabled remotely.

Even if the owner gave permission to install the update, I would strongly wager that they did not give concurrent permission for the update to change the behavior of the vehicle.

Of course, I sincerely doubt the EULA offers any way to separate those permissions; you are all in, or you are all out. Assuming that you even have an option to opt out.

And that’s exactly why these cars can never be trusted under any circumstances, ever.

"Do you want to update? Yes or later". And blocks semi-critical stuff so you must address it.

"Update now. You cannot refuse since you said no 3 times"

Or, other parodies, "Just say MAYBE LATER to drugs"

if you really mean help you understand why and that wasn't a rhetorical exageration, it's not hard to understand.

Most people have a variety of things they are looking for in a car they want to purchase, and other factors are more important to them than this one, which they figure probably won't happen anyway. There may be few options that aren't updateable over the air, and those options don't meet their other criteria -- if they even get that deep into considering it, which they probably don't, they just aren't really thinking about it. But even if they did. you don't have the option of buying your perfect fantasy car. I'd like to buy a car with manual mechanical controls instead of touch screen controls, but there aren't that many options for that either, and they may not meet my other needs.

Realistically I would be cycling out of my city because if there was anyone else except me running from oppression, we would be all caught in the same traffic jam.

I happen to live on the outskirts, but there are several choke points where it would be really easy to set up a barrier. Those choke points apply to cars mostly.

> Realistically I would be cycling out of my city

Good for you, sensible and community minded to keep roads clear(er)

You have no dependant children or pets that you must take care of too

Lots of child comments mention fleeing oppression as being something outside the norm. A more relatable thing to flee for Americans might be hurricanes and wildfires-- both of which sizeable numbers of Americans have had to flee somewhat regularly.

Same reason people buy most things these days: convenience. Do you own a cell phone? It can be remotely updated (and even shut down by malicious actors), yet most people own one and don't think twice about it.

> So can someone who owns a modern car please help me understand why you would buy a car that has the mere capability to be remotely shut off?

Because afaik, all the modern cars have this as a 'feature', but there's lots of other nice features they have.

The best of both worlds right now is an earlier modern car where the 2g/3g modem can no longer connect to the outside world. Even better if you can pull the modem, but they're usually up behind a lot of trim.

They generally just don’t think about or even know it’s a thing.

Most people push button, aim steering wheel, and voila.

Don’t even have to push a button nowadays. That convenience is apparently worth the risks. It’s really nice to not have to have keys or worry about turning the car off or on.

Is this an EV? I assume such a feature would be quite dangerous for an ICE vehicle.

> why you would buy a car that has the mere capability to be remotely shut off

One answer to this I would presume is: there are no other new cars for sale without this flaw.

Why there aren't regulations or forced options in the market without these functions (as well as with physical control knobs instead of touch surfaces) is a good question too. There is huge demand for cars without most of this nonsense, yet I don't see that demand being met.

I doubt anyone wants a car whose infotainment system can be improperly updated to cause catastrophic power and engine failure while driving, if given this information and a choice to avoid it.

The more cynical/conspiratorial among us (myself included) have come to the conclusion that this demand isn't being met because powerful people want it this way.

I mean in a post-patriot act America, is that really a conspiracy?

Apparently so since I got downvoted?

You can usually remove the fuse that powers the 5G antenna. That will probably isolate your car from kill switch software updates.

Agreed that most people don’t think about this. I’m a preper and I hadn’t thought about this.

I'm buying a reliable and comfortable way to travel around the home town, not into warzone.

Yes, I want it to be connected to the app, to conveniently see fuel level, location, etc.

Wouldn't it make sense to keep your prepper car in the garage (next to the welder) and low-mileage? Use the one with fancy electronics as a daily driver and hope the revolution doesn't happen during your commute.