Nope! I have a 20+ y/o car, so mine is not. No touch screen, no spyware, just a car with buttons and knobs that we drive around.
everyone should buy/wear these new driving hats I found
Luckily I drive a piece of last-millenium machinery.
May the japanese engineers that designed it with reliability in mind be praised.
I pulled the fuse that runs that stuff in my car. Don’t need anything it disabled, so I don’t give a fuck.
Sure if I ever need service it might be a problem, but I’ll cross that bridge when and if I get to it, and maybe we’ll have better data protections by then.
Which car is this easy to privacy-ify?
Sorry to not reply, haven’t been around for a bit, I have a 2023 chevy bolt EUV, but the EV version is the same, and what I was planning to get if not for availability. Idk about their ice vehicles, ofc, nor any line of vehicles outside the US or non-electric. This was really the only one that checked all the boxes for me (privacy available, decent range, fully electric, cargo space and can* haul short distances. *owners manual says not to haul with it but you can. Should not be used to haul long distances as extra load just destroys the range, but I need 5-10 miles tops, and it can do that fine)
You can actually pretty easily remove the on-star module of you need the gps to work (only really useful over using a phone for pulling a full 12 amps by default from a level 1 (standard plug) outlet with location-based charging, but nobody I know, including me, wants to risk their wiring or get it inspected to assure I can pull that much amperage, so it literally makes no difference, plus when I have an electrician out, it’ll be to install a different plug to use a level 2 anyway which will pull at max, since my garage has an appliance hookup currently), but if you don’t the one fuse kills all of it, and I think maybe the bluetooth microphone as well? I don’t connect my phone to my car at all since that defeats the purpose, but I read something about it. I don’t think it applies to phone calls, just voice controls. Something to look into if it matters to you.
I’d be curious if anyone documented how to privacy-ify it? Like someone who checked that it disabled all the sensors, like microphones, cameras, seat cushons, GPS, etc.
Honestly, it’s a “budget” vehicle, it doesn’t really have bells and whistles (for example, the infotainment system hardly gets used because it has physical buttons, but it does have the legally mandated backup camera on a different circuit, I haven’t seen any cabin cameras), and they are only really highly available because most of the used ones on the market started life as cheap base package rentals, like mine.
I doubt they would bother being nefarious for a vehicle like that, when most people wont bother pulling a fuse even, but I’d also like to see that.
It’s also probably recording the password you typed on your phone.
Don’t give the password to police? They’ll just ask your car.
This is one reason I haven’t bought an electric car.
So what’s the solution? What’s the car where we can opt out or easiest to remove the sensors without it breaking?
