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Comment by technothrasher | Hacker News Reader

I have essentially gone with option 2 in my Audi A3. Every time I turn the car on, it puts up a dialog that warns me that I've made the terrible, terrible decision to not allow remote data and forces me to say, "no, do not turn it on for me now," before I can do anything else on the screen. Every, single, time.

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This, but worse, happened with my inlaws when they purchased a new Lexus (IIRC, a 2025 RX350). It has whatever kind of built in navigation & traffic feature but they wanted to use Android Auto. You can do that, but not until after you go through Lexus' vehicle/driver registration process to enable their built in system. If you don't, not only will neither AA nor CarPlay work, but if you try to use the built in nav it will fail with a superimposed modal after a couple of minutes to nag you into creating an account.

I think that makes it qualify as defective if this wasn't disclosed prior to purchase.

Rip out the factory display and put in a third party one that doesn’t have the telemetry.

I'd return the car if it were me.

This is what RPGs are for

You trust that they aren't sending data anyway?

Corporations don't usually expose themselves to lawsuits like that.

Well, that’s just patently false. Corporations make risk calculations, and they are perfectly willing to expose themselves to lawsuits when their calculus shows that it will be profitable for them to do so. This is why so many companies appear completely unphased when being fined millions of dollars; they can make billions of dollars in profit while the court cases drag on. Heck, I’m pretty sure that’s a central part of the business model for some SV startups (Uber, Airbnb, etc). Disruption, baby!

You're right, which is why they include forced arbitration clauses to prevent you from exercising your legal rights to sue them into following the law.

Since you won't go through forced arbitration and the arbiter will always agree with the company, they are not exposed to your petty legal action and are free to do whatever the hell they want, regardless of whether it's legal.

See: LG.

Disappointing but not surprising. Those touchscreen interfaces are usually full of nags. I liked the Versa I rented recently cause its "low-end" radio system was the only thing that let me listen to the damn radio without jumping through hoops. Toyota's is an L even though their cars are better otherwise.

I long for a future in which we can do what we did 20 years ago, when we just had double-DIN radio sockets in the dash so we could just choose, buy, and upgrade the car's stereo and touchscreen/phone interface at will.

Is that not a thing anymore? I'm out of the loop. My 2010 Vic has a 1.5-DIN socket and I did replace the radio, it's super nice.

Not really, not even “you need a dash kit” situation, because HVAC controls and other essentials are now integrated with the radio.

Makes sense. Even cars that don't have those nasty touchscreen HVAC controls will have other car settings in the onscreen system.

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