They think they’ll get more money, but they don’t realize that people won’t even consider their cars due to lack of integration. I recently bought a used car for my kid. One of the nicer ones I looked at didn’t work with his phone, so we eliminated it from consideration.
Guess I can remove Chevy/GM from my future vehicle short list.
Removing smartphone integration from its vehicles opens the door for GM to grow its in-vehicle subscription revenue. Yep 💩
I’ll happily celebrate whatever loss hits Google.
but this is so shitty I prefer Google
We need a Linux OS and DE for cars
i use carch btw
KDE Plasma Car: can use Customize Panel to move around physical parts of the car (HELP the steering wheel is inside the engine somehow HOWDOIFIXTHIS)
Help I used grub to switch engines but forgot to switch fuel type now it only boots into emergency mode
Could it be money?
It’s money, isn’t it?!
It’s not money. The executives of these companies revealed the reason they are doing this is because they believe they can provide a better end user experience. They wouldn’t lie would they?
So, by utilizing built-in systems, the car manufacturers would indeed be able to collect more data about how you use the systems in place, while also possibly getting more money out of you through subscriptions.
Nooooooo that’s totally unlikely. It’s probably just for our best!
Money.
There I wrote the whole article in one word.
I can’t wait to get a rental car that doesn’t allow me to use my own maps.
You want the Rental+ package for an extra $39.99, which enables the car’s built-in Garmin.
The big question is why we started adding computer operating systems to our vehicles to begin with. But the answer is still the same as ClydapusGotwald states…money. I’m starting to think the answer to most of the worlds woes is…money. Maybe money has been the problem all of this time. Fuck money. We can utilize our resources and feed and house everyone without that shit but then there wouldn’t be any space billionaires and we need them to save us all. /s
The big question is why we started adding computer operating systems to our vehicles to begin with.
Originally, automakers tried to shoehorn proprietary subscription services into their vehicles for GPS and roadside assistance and satellite radio. But the opt-in for these services was scant, because they were obnoxious to set up and overpriced relative to - say - a TomTom or a cell phone’s core features. And you could get after-market integration added to your vehicle through its entertainment system, so why bother with the clunky manufacturer options.
CarPlay and AndroidAuto were concessions that automakers began to adopt because they sold more vehicles that way. Reversing this out will likely have the same effect it did the first time - by driving people to foreign car companies like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and Kia.
I already see Kia cars on the road fucking everywhere. And moves like this will only accelerate the trend, I’m sure.
why we started adding computer operating systems to our vehicles to begin with.
Because fuel injection operates better than even the most high tech carburetors across a wider range of environments. And if you have more sensors and active feedback you can better control everything from emissions to warm up time. Everything trickles down from racing / luxury vehicles. Once you have processors involved, might as well do fancy things with them inside the cabin too.
A lot of the dash / center console nonsense is consumer cost cutting, but frankly it should’ve been separate from the start. Any budget phone is a better GPS / media platform than a half-baked system by a vehicle manufacturer. At this point it should just be a USB-C or bluetooth connection so the device without the bargain basement processor can do the heavy lifting for a user interface.
At this point it should just be a USB-C or bluetooth connection so the device without the bargain basement processor can do the heavy lifting for a user interface.
But that’s what car play and android auto are
No those are links between two separate systems. I just want to use my phone screen and the car’s speakers / power.
Oh gotcha, a simple head unit
It’s not about money, its about power. Don’t be so naive. You don’t have to whitewash these horrible people. They want to help out the baby killers to spy on you. That’s all it is.
Nope, it’s money. Only some of them care about power. They all care about money.
They don’t care about money. Only poor people care about money. Once you get a certain level of wealth it snowballs forever (fiat currency).
If Ford cared about money or GM or whatever. They would make a decent car, and try to build their brand. Yet there hasn’t been a single positive development in cars in at least 20 years. Maybe more airbags but only because it’s legally required. Everything else has been pure degeneration. Even the slightly better fuel economy has come at the much greater cost of reliability as new vehicles will rarely even last half as long as older cars because of stuff like the start stop technology filling the oil with water and the terrible paper thin designs needed to meet fuel economy requirements.
The idea that you think these people care about money is laughable. Money can’t even buy anything anymore. Not to mention that the gold standard was removed nearly a century ago. An average home is like 450k and the taxes on it are honestly worse. You will never own a single piece of property in the world. The rich have so much power that they can get 2% interest loans while you can only get maybe 5-6% if you are lucky. So you see even the money is set up for power. To make sure you and everyone else never has any or can ever own anything, but you must work daylight to dark to survive, while their accounts increase while they sleep, having never produced a single valuable thing in their life.
You are just applying your poor person mentality to a world where that doesn’t exist. You want money because to you, money is a way to escape a life of servitude to corporations, but even that is an illusion.
Why do you think Elon musk spent billions to acquire Twitter? Why buy a company that has nothing of actual value outside of some IP and data, when the U.S economy has not grown in 50 years? Money? Fuck no. Power, influence, protecting his billionaire pedo friends from citizen justice. These sorts of things.
Money itself is about power. Every aspect of it from the ground up is designed to facilitate the mass stealing of value from the working class, and putting it into the hands of a small class of managers. Money is a treadmill to keep you desperate and silent. You think America has private healthcare because of money? Fuck no, it’s because it’s just another screw to turn to manipulate you. Another thing you will be without if you are out of work for a month or two from an injury. We have been in a post scarcity world for nearly 100 years. 90% of the people on the planet wouldn’t have to work rn and we could have an even better standard of living, but that won’t happen because they are afraid of what people will do when they aren’t desperate, trying to make it from one week to the next as their wages drop year after year, and also because people in countries without women’s autonomy and rights will have billions of little parasitic humans that they have no way to take care of. At this point humans are mostly becoming a liability. The more you have, the more they destroy the environment and compete for the same limited amount of resources allocated to the poor and working classes. Most jobs today simply exist so that they have leverage on you, nothing more. You know what leverage is about? Power! You guessed it.
Wake up sheep.
How can there be power without wealth (money)? Power and wealth go hand in hand, but you try to separate them. Maybe that’s why you seem so angry with the name calling and sheep categorizations, the dissonance. The misanthropy in you is strong. You are the change the world needs, not your words. Help someone in need and you’ll find way more sunshine in your life.
You sound like like you’re a desperate anime antagonist.
Some of them care about power, they all care about money. In this case it’s money.
Knobs are better
How long until they start putting some kind of DRM in cars that prevents you from just installing an aftermarket android auto head unit?
They’ve been trying that for a while. They do it by routing critical cat functions through the radio that don’t need to go through there.
This. Of course, you could just mount a cheap tablet in front of the head unit and be done with it.
Daaaamn. The closest thing I could think of was my friend’s 96 (98? Whenever the EK body started) Honda civic that had the factory alarm and remote locks in the radio. He ended up splicing some wires and shoving the factory radio into his glove box or something to get around it.
Most cars are basically bricks without the main unit, for example the air conditioning is set using proprietary commands on the can bus from the fancy touchscreen. Or setting all the options of the adas, sensors and so on
Or an aftermarket floor mat or air filter?
oh look another problem I’m too poor to have
Yes, blame automotive business that you arent able to aquire a new car free, that falls in line with todays snowflake mentality.
- nowhere in their comment are they saying they blame automakers by specifically
- nowhere in their comment are they saying they should get cars for free
Stop getting so offended, snowflake.
Removed by mod
Offended by a simple comment but calls that person a snowflake. Prime loser mentality 👍 good work, snowflake.
We found the biggest moron on the internet.
day old outrage account
Bait used to be believable
What a piece of human detritus you are. Have a great day!
Are you a billionaire or are you lazy?
The cars (in EU) used to be under 20.000€ ~6 years ago. Yes, I understand inflation exists.
Got off mah lawn you damn kids!
Rock and roll is too loud and oatmeal is too spicy!
So manufacturers can bill you monthly for the same features…
Rent seeking behavior. They want subscription revenue instead of wanting to deliver what consumers want.
For the most part, it’s believed that carmakers are doing way with Android Auto support simply as a way to expand their control over user data. Because Android Auto utilizes your phone’s connection, all of the data that runs through it goes straight to Android and the phone manufacturer. So, by utilizing built-in systems, the car manufacturers would indeed be able to collect more data about how you use the systems in place, while also possibly getting more money out of you through subscriptions.
You are unfortunately correct.
And then carmakers will cry that Chinese cars are reading over the market.
It’s not free you know.
Yes, the software doesn’t cost anything but the chipset is supplied by a single manufacturer Qualcomm and costs a bomb.
That’s such an obvious deflection, though. My last car was a GM vehicle, with built-in OnStar right there in the box behind the rearview mirror. Built into the price I paid was hardware I didn’t want, didn’t pay a subscription for, yet was collecting my driving data and selling it.
Building a functionally useful infotainment system to replace Android Auto, with all of the bells and whistles needed to complete, is going to cost them the same or more. The difference is the rent seeking behavior, the demand for subscriptions, and getting more opportunities to spy on their customers for profit.
There’s more than just Qualcomm in the ARM market.
Also, so what? Do you think the cars are currently sold at a loss? They profit on each car sold, and that includes the infotainment.
You can’t run it on a Mediatek or a Rokchip or whatever?
Back to the days of rip out the head unit and stick one in that does have the features you want?
Good luck. Everything is integrated now with nonstandard form factors. The work and cost to do my 2020 transit is ridiculous. Phone mount and Bluetooth it is.
I imagine they’ll try to make this increasingly difficult; maybe even impossible.
It already is for a lot of modern cars. Especially EVs. I imagine they are so tied into the functionality of the car that it makes the vehicle impossible to drive without the OEM headunit.
Couldn’t a savvy user just find an exploitable firmware revision, never connect the vehicle to the internet, and install aftermarket software or hardware to bypass the authentication checks? It would be more of a pain in the ass than the previous drop in system, but I’d imagine it’s possible.
Right, but that requires somebody to find and document exploitable firmware revisions, create and distribute hardware/software to exploit them, develop the aftermarket software/hardware, and all that potentially separately for each car model. And then that just becomes a war with the manufacturers, who might try to update their firmware more aggressively, lock things down more, and threaten/sue people working on such things.
Depends on how heavily things are locked down, and how much money this tech-savvy person is willing to risk on a bricked automobile.
If the auto industry successfully locks 99.9% of their buyers into their walled garden by making it such a pain in the ass to bypass it, they’ve already won.
I’m doing my part by living car-free, never liked them. Unfortunately that’s not an option for everyone.
The vehicle comes from the factory connected to the internet.
You’d have to find the exploit before they do, and it would be hard to replicate because once they find out, the only cars vulnerable to your exploit are ones manufactured before the patch who have been disconnected from the internet (which is like 2 cars).
It’s theoretically possible but very hard to replicate. And on top of that theres always the risk of the car manufacturer voiding the warranty on your $50k vehicle and/or cozying up to your insurance company and convincing them any damage is a result of you preventing their systems from running as intended.
It’s a messy high risk low reward game to play. Better option is to just buy a different car if you can.
I doubt it will be completely impossible - we’d just be returning to a situation similar to game consoles and modchips - any aftermarket parts need to lie to the “authentication” checks in place first.
I would expect that certain aftermarket groups would specialize based on popular models, maybe even prioritizing models designed to be interoperable with others design and parts wise (Subaru and perhaps Toyota comes to mind).
If it doesn’t affect emissions those mod chips will not violate your warrantee - magnuson-moss was writen decades ago to protect replacing your factory radio. There are a number of other laws around third party access to car diagnostics.
I just had a little magnetic clip for my air vent where I could attach my phone and put up a map.
I’d sooner go back to doing that than use a “Gemini-based AI assistant” in my fucking car.
I quite literally just bought one of those clips recently because I am done with Android Auto, and Google in general as much as I can be.
That’s another reason the manufacturers are increasingly locking vehicle features behind the touchscreen. If you buy a 3rd party replacement, you can’t control the AC.
Car mechanics are basically going to need to become hackers.
99% of them won’t, but yeah, a couple will figure out how to ‘unlock’ your car, like a smartphone, install a custom OS on it.
Are you talking about music/NAV systems or CEOs?
I’d rip out the touch screen SO fast
And then lose control of numerous functions of your car.
It’s simply not an option in modern cars.That’s the “why I can’t do it” part.
But if it was possible to get knobs and buttons for everything and a small-ish screen only for info, I’d take that. I’d pay for that. Touch screens are dangerous. I’d at most be comfortable to swipe on the screen to show different infos like GPS, temperature/airflow, music/radio. Otherwise I want buttons and knobs with little lights.
I 100% understand what you mean. I just bought a VW ID.4, and IMO they have a good balance. Everything needed for normal driving is handled with buttons, and although some are touch, they do have haptic feedback, and it works OK IMO.
I was looking at the Skoda Enyaq, because it has traditional buttons and more things operated through them.
But it cost about €5000 extra for the same features as is in our fully equipped ID.4 when used and 4 years old. But now I’m happy we chose the ID.4 instead of an Enyaq with fewer features. Because the ID.4 works way better than I expected.
It’s crazy and previously absolutely unheard of that the Skoda version of a similar car to a genuine VW is more expensive.Oh wow, it IS odd that Skoda would be more expensive and €5k is a lot! Very odd indeed.
I’m glad you found a car you like!
And replace it with what? You can’t just hot glue knobs on the center console and expect them to work.
That’s the “why I can’t do it” part.
But if it was possible to get knobs and buttons for everything and a small-ish screen only for info, I’d take that. I’d pay for that. Touch screens are dangerous. I’d at most be comfortable to swipe on the screen to show different infos like GPS, temperature/airflow, music/radio. Otherwise I want buttons and knobs with little lights.
No need to do that. You could get a Slate and put in what you want.
I am always surprised I don’t hear more discussion about Automotive Grade Linux.
Gonna be honest. Its a multi thousand kilo death machine. I’m going to leave it to professionals to fuck with. I’m going to force as much of the liability on others as I can.
Something something year of the Linux car
You heard it on Lemmy first!
Because it’s corporate controlled embedded Linux, you aren’t guaranteed any freedom or control. Hell you aren’t even guaranteed access to a debug menu. Technically a car manufacturer could make a open a free car running embedded Linux that does give you freedom but the chances are absurdly low.
TiVoization
Man, that sounds INCREDIBLE!!! Never heard of this! Linux on my pc, my laptop, my phone, and now my CAR! 🤣
That’s what most? cars used for a long time (there is also GENIVI)
Many manufacturers are switching to Android as the base OS so they can just hire app developers rather than developers that know other UI toolkits
