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)
Money.
There I wrote the whole article in one word.
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.
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!
Why buy a new car? It would be cheaper to build your own car at this point. You can also spend money on reliability and strength, instead of surveillance. There is absolutely no way in hell I’d ever buy a new car. The culture has deteriorated too much and the people making cars don’t give a shit if the American economy implodes because no one has a car. America is about to become Cuba.
Why buy a new car? It would be cheaper to build your own car at this point.
Edison Motors (in British Columbia, Canada) can do a full EV conversion on any pre-1995 vehicle (few complex electronics that require futzing with) for $15k-$50k CAD depending on the type of vehicle and its power requirements.
Pick up a late-80s Type II VW Jetta and it’s likely to be at that lower end.
Pick up a late-70s dent side Ford F-350 dually, and it’s likely to be closer to that upper end.
Still, you’re looking at half to a quarter of what a new vehicle costs.
Great. If you ignore that you still have a 40-50 years old car at that point. It’s not like EV was the only invention over the past 5 decades.
Back to the days of rip out the head unit and stick one in that does have the features you want?
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.
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 wish I could develop my own apps on my own car. I mean I own the car… why can’t I “sideload” my own created apps? Their apps are sht anyways.
It kind of makes sense to not allow people to do that - just imagine what horrors people will create that totally will kill people. Cars are dangerous.
People have been able to change their own brake pads for as long as cars existed.
There are two things hidden here:
- People totally got killed by doing their own maintenance
- There is a difference between physical maintenance and, well, you know that people will install some buggy self driving app
the entertainment system should have zero access to anything that controls the movement of the car. androidauto apps can’t implement self driving functions either. if it’s possible, the car manufacturer was incredibly irresponsible and needs to be sued into oblivion. see, the actual problem is not that irresponsible users could implement “self driving apps”, but that the entertainment system lacks any real security, is filled with vulnerabilities, and often even have remote access capabilities with bluetooth/wifi/cellular, and bad actors could load malware wirelessly that would kill the passengers and whoever else on the road.
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.
I am always surprised I don’t hear more discussion about Automotive Grade Linux.
I’ll use a 3rd party auxiliary screen for Android Auto if this ends up proliferating to other brands as a grab for subscriptions.
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.
