Hacker News Reader

Comment by purpleidea | Hacker News Reader

I would buy an electric car tomorrow, I have access to cheap charging, and I don't even do long commutes. But there is zero chance I want a spyware car that's like another cell phone.

The U.S. is being protectionist because of Chinese cars that can spy on U.S. soil-- just do the right thing and stop all the car spying nonsense. Require manufacturers to open the code and let us even develop alternatives.

Tell GM.

View on HN

I have an electric Hyundai and you can disable all internet connectivity fairly easily. I have mine disabled and the car works fine. It never connects to any internet connection. I suspect that most other modern cars are similar. The firmware is closed source, but it works fine. It supports CarPlay and Android Auto, which are effectively open standards, so you can replace the infotainment system with whatever you want. This is standard for modern cars.

Has anyone checked that "disabled" actually means disabled? The last 20 years of surveillance creep in computing tells us that these check boxes are often meaningless.

I can't upvote you high enough for this. GM just paid a huge amount for accidentally selling driving info to data brokers I'm sure you've heard. SDV is a strange concept to me. I'm not on the engineering teams doing that work but there are lots of people kicking up dust about exactly your point.

It was no accident.

America is the only country where buying private data is legal so this is a flawed idea. Ford would definitely spy on you for those adbucks.

Heard of Slate Auto? Full electric, simple, no cellular modem at all, hand-crank windows.

IDK. Grok bot works with Tesla’s grok so today I learned I can just ask how’s my house is doing. It responded how much solar I’m making vs consuming, hows batteries are doing, is garage door open and flagged that my heatpump water heater is off (i shut it earlier because it can get little loud).

Yes you can sort of get there with Siri and HomeKit, bug nowhere close to sophistication.

Yes please. Make it a selling point and people will buy it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com