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Comment by vGPU | Hacker News Reader

This is a feature for Tesla repair - Tesla has always been able to remotely start your car without your keys. Adding in a toggle to disable it is new, and appears to be in the A/B testing stage currently.

I wonder if there was an “incident” we aren’t aware of that prompted this, like the snafu with Tesla employees sharing videos.

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Every root capability will be abused in time. Either by malice or by (human or technical) exploitation

You either own your car and the connectivity to it, or you don’t.

Your driving data and history should be yours alone and not in a cloud available to third parties directly or indirectly

Tesla is unique in that they do improve the vehicles over software.

But those notifications could be sent to a phone to allow.

Tesla is not unique by any means. Cars nowadays are cellphones on wheels. Software updates are common. What is not common is Tesla's yolo attitude - in the car industry.

Sadly, this is true, and is why I won't buy any newish cars.

A nice perk of 3g going away is that you can buy new-ish cars that won’t be able to connect to the cellular network anyhow. Toyota for example didn’t update some of their models to 4g until 2019.

This is the big brain level of thinking that we need! Is there a way to see which cars use 3g?

Just search car name + 3g, discontinuation of SOS, etc. Here’s an example from Toyota that lists all the good years: https://www.toyota.com/audio-multimedia/support/3g-faq/

This, but also Tesla won several bogus high-profile cases with the data they siphon off the vehicles. Hard position.

Can you just rip out all internet connectivity from the Tesla and will it still work?

It does work without internet connectivity, yes.

Does it work without connectivity in perpetuity? Or does it have some kind of “needs to be connected every month” kind of setup?

It will work, you just won’t get any updates. It won’t refuse to drive.

You can just take out the SIM card

Which is buried behind the dash. It's not a "just" thing like you say.

The antennas are in the side mirrors and can be easily disconnected.

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