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Germany makes a big ruckus about their local industry struggling to compete with Chinese manufacturers, but meanwhile the Volkswagen Group stumbles from one scandal to the next. As far as I'm concerned, if that's the way you do business, go bankrupt. I know all big manufacturers have their warts and flaws, but VW continues to be the frontrunner year after year.

Don't forget that other manufacturers collect the same data, they just didn't have a collection of blunders that allowed access. No malicious intent this time, but it clearly highlights that companies need to learn to put policies in place to make double sure PII is actually protected to the degree the law already requires. We also need laws that force companies to make opting out of this kind of data collection much easier, or to make it opt-in in the first place.

>No malicious intent this time

it must be 1984 because otherwise collecting centimeter precise location data of vehicles would definitely be malicious....

> they just didn't have a collection of blunders that allowed access

Correction:

They just don't have a known collection of blunders that allow access.

I bet if you look closely you’ll find more.

I'm hallucinating, but IIUC, there is a philosophical loophole that makes tracking a car through factory installed means is a total wild west; because you don't know who owns or drives the car, but a car is sold to dealerships and resold to households to be used and maintained by anyone, you technically wouldn't know if it's driven by humans, just what you made seem to be doing something. Is that (still) correct?

More importantly also give people a way to check and use that date. Is my employee using the car personally (a violation of the laws allowing me to deduct the car)? did my employee really use the correct route? is my wife cheating on me? Did my kids really go to the library or were they racing across town?

the above is all I can come up with. For many none of that applies and so the data can only be used against us.

> they just didn't have a collection of blunders that allowed access

That is no little difference my friend!!!

> ... need to learn to put policies in place to make double sure blablal is actually tralala.

no. they already have too many policies. and this and that. adding one more is how we got there. (of course they have policies for making sure PII is kept safe.)

no. this is a cultural issue.

As you've brought China into this, which is the greater scandal?

1) VW Group collects data on its customers.

2) Chinese-made vehicles have potential two-way telemetry and control (we don't know, it's closed-source), and we've just allowed tens of thousands of 1.5-tonne, potentially autonomous vehicles with goodness-knows-what sensor packages, plenty of demonstrated ability to kill, injure, catch fire or block critical infrastructure, and backdoors to a not-exactly-friendly foreign government, unfettered access to our streets.

I'm not saying Chinese EVs are a Trojan horse, but I can hardly think of a more effective way to do it, if they wanted to. Even assuming there's no "actor" component and they do nothing more than passive data-gathering, that's still.. huge.. right?

2) is ridiculous speculation and fearmongering. Why shouldn't I feel the same about Tesla's or any other car?

I don't care how much media tries to brainwash us that China is my enemy, facts are that there are way more tangible proofs of all us being consistently spied by US-led agencies, we have proof that from dams to electrical grids the US has one button methods to create chaos in most of the world, and yet, people consistently go into these far fetching anti Chinese speculation when the proof is that the spying, meddling boogeyman is in Washington.

This all feels like the usual US exceptionalism, where the only country that is exceptional and allowed to ignore rules is US, and others cannot.

> Why shouldn't I feel the same about Tesla's or any other car?

You aren't? You should.

I do not think 2 is ridiculous. Not at all! But I agree we should fear that from all vehicles, no matter what make.

#2 is absolutely ridiculous. As OP said:

> 2) is ridiculous speculation and fearmongering. Why shouldn't I feel the same about Tesla's or any other car?

The idea expressed is the notion that one should be afraid of this "special threat" posed by Chinese-made vehicles... which is utter nonsense and fearmongering.

It seems like you and the OP are in agreement here.

EDIT: Fixed my bad Engrish and grammar in the second-to-last paragraph

Because Tesla isn't owned and controlled by a foreign government and military rival. (OK, Elon is a little too cosy with Putin for my liking, but not to that extent).

I think it's reasonable to be sceptical about whether a state that brings us disposable vapes, TikTok and throwaway fast fashion has our best interests at heart.

> Because Tesla isn't owned and controlled by a foreign government and military rival.

Musk going into bed with AfD puts him on an “adversary radar” for me, an immigrant in Germany. So hold your horses. US is cool until it isn’t. Political goals decide who US likes and this can change from one election to another.

1) Imagine how biased you are, to throw such ridiculous arguments: China did not invent disposable vapes, those are even banned in their country, it did not invent algorithm-driven video social media and even less fast fashion (Zara was the first huge brand popularizing it, and the clothes were made in Spain).

2) Musk is literally a member of the next cabinet. And you have no clues and are probably delusional if you think Tesla vehicles aren't sharing their data with US agencies. It's obvious this happens.

3) China is not my military rival. Not sure why do you believe that, unless you live in the strange american exceptionalism where US has to be the biggest military dog in the world and if there's another country that could threaten this position it has to be limited.

It has never attacked my country or any of my allies, whereas I can remember many of my allies putting their foot, colonising and fighting China and its neighbours.

Ask a philippino sailor what they think about your 3rd statement, maybe? Cue non-US news source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/11/whats-behind-escal...

Unless you're ultra-wealthy and particularly powerful, you should be skeptical that most any State has your best interests at heart... and even those rich and powerful folks tend to get swatted down if they become too much of a nuisance.

Isn’t Musk an unelected part of the US government now?

He’s also talking about interfering in my country by giving huge sums of money to a wacky Spode-a-like conman that’s already taken billions out of our economy.

To my mind we should be skeptical of all foreign interference no matter where it comes from.

I was writing from a US-aligned perspective. If you view the US as a hostile power, then yes the same - to some degree - applies to Tesla. Although I think they're not as good at covering their tracks for something like that.

I don’t view the US as a hostile power I view them as our closest ally.

On the other hand Musk is part of the US government now and he is out to fuck us up.

So what do we do? We live in interesting times unfortunately. We’ll just have to see what happens.

> If you view the US as a hostile power, then yes the same - to some degree - applies to Tesla.

Times change. Your allies of today are your foes in a decade. You don't know.

Still, there's billions and billions of spying devices and US-controlled electronics.

And I'm not making this up, we know for a fact NSA has put backdoors and hacks in both commercial routers and chips that are used everywhere in the world.

Yet you americans think it's fine if you do it, and it's also fine to speculate about other countries maybe doing it, and going into these crazy scenarios where Chinese EVs start ramming people.

Give me a break.

Such comments do nothing but remind me that US exceptionalism, the idea that the US can play by a different playbook is a huge danger and menace to world peace. It will keep pissing off allies and non-allies alike.

The worse part here is, that overpriced EV's are donated by EU taxes, companies can ask about 8000 EUR per vehicle. Same for photovoltaic panels, made only in China. Buying stuffs on market is one thing. Twisting market by government, is another story.

I guess it’s the lack of everything in a partially state owned company. Here you go: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Act

They don’t really think about competition. That’s an arena for power fights, empire building and incompetence on every level. Think about software and Cariad disaster. Cars were a byproduct. Germans associated them for generations with good life and bought without thinking. I would say, until Golf 5 the cars were brilliant, advertising fun and I would buy one. But now… just another expensive car brand.

state-owned company where the 2 families owning the majority of shares block using the earnings to do any investment. The only thing were the state-stake comes into play is in not crushing unions in Germany (which they don't mind doing in the US) and not letting the whole enterprise fail (which it should ...)

I just keep hearing the same point of inflection, about golf 5. Then there was a big decline, not only VW, but all the others also. What happened?!

Not sure about “golf 5” but I have a Mk.7 Golf from 2014 and it’s an amazing car.

There’s no telemetry left in it (3G was turned iff years ago).

It has all the safety features.

It regularly gets 60 something MPG (Imperial).

The Adaptive Cruise Control is all the self driving I need.

It’s great.

Legislation. They are required to gather that data. The keyword to start with C-ITS.

as a person working in consulting for a few years now, i have to say - i am not surprised. at all. neither the negligence wrt to data protection laws as well as regarding it security. it's all just a big show with fancy charts showing how smart a solution will be. in the end nowadays it is often implemented by folks who barely speak an intelligible version of english (and certainly not german). i probably wouldn't be as frustrated about this if i was at least among the chosen ones benefiting financially of this bloated nonsense.

I own both Mercedes and Skoda (owned by VW) and I feel like both companies are headed in an extremely bad direction. The other day I saw that now Mercedes wants to charge me 200-300 USD/year for navigation and the ability to remotely lock your door.

The fact is they let you pay $100k for a car and then they behave like Facebook and other consumer platforms where you pay with your data and can buy add-ons.

You can't combine the two. In this case you paid for your car, so it's yours and they are hands-off unless you ask them for something. Also, the car should not randomly stop working after three years and ask you for extra money.

Unfortunately, I don't have any faith in Tesla either. While in front of innovation surely they are behind moral. If I were to buy a car today, I'm not sure where to look.

This is what happens when you dont control the machine you purchase. Stallman have warned much of this, but it is often on deaf ears, because consumers' behaviour don't change.

People are suckers for convenience without considering the details of how something is made, supported, or serviced, or the TCO.

It’s more that our major markets are totally dominated by the standard pattern and there are no meaningful alternatives outside of bike and mass transit, which are not meaningful alternatives to vehicle ownership.

This is the most important point IMHO. There is no rational argument that someone is voluntarily signing up to some consumer-hostile behaviour by choosing to make a purchase if (a) every supplier in the market is playing the same game and (b) it is difficult to function as a normal member of society without buying that type of product from someone. Smartphones are a textbook example of this. For many people so are cars and TVs. General purpose computing is in danger of going the same way. Don't get me started on so-called smart homes.

Call it a failure of the free market and competition to provide effective alternatives. Call it a lack of oversight and regulation from governments that increasingly back businesses and economic figures over protecting their own people. It doesn't really matter. Until there is clear law that says selling products to people that will actively act against the interests of the purchaser must at least be prominently disclosed before purchase and probably in the more serious cases simply be banned by law the enshittification will continue because it makes the decision-makers a lot of money.

If anything our regulatory system has been hijacked by capital sponsors to reinforce the fundamental monopolies that operate our economy, and the secondary consequence is that if we do not continue to do it at this point, our economy will implode. So the government is not only captured but also has only one meaningful choice: to further reinforce the monopolistic control of the western economies in the hopes of continued “economic growth.”

Obviously this should be seen as a disaster scenario (and highly likely outcome) for a capitalist society.

I agree that there is a lot of regulatory capture within Western governments and this is bad. I respectfully disagree that we can't fix it.

In particular I reject the notion that any organisation or system is too big to fail. If any commercial organisation or cartel is reaching a position or scale where its failure would represent a significant threat to the economic stability or indeed the democratic government of its host nation(s) then it is imperative that it should be quickly - and if necessary brutally - brought to a position where either it no longer poses such a threat or it is effectively destroyed and space is created for alternatives (possibly derived from the original) that will better serve the society they are part of.

I think what will happen with that is "performance shops" will start jailbreaking cars. You can already unlock additional power in your ECU by going stage I, II or III with custom and reputable ECU modders and the car feels completely different. It's a matter of time before ECU devs add going around subscription limitations, I think.

ECU modifications are rare (most people don't care) and car manufacturers don't lose money on it. If money gets on the table, I'm 100% sure they'll sue the workshops like John Deere did. And given the lobby VW has in Europe they can also pass some extra laws to reinforce their case.

I don't know about that... There's a whole industry of performance parts that softly depend on ECU modifications. There's much less of an incentive to swap parts if your ECU doesn't keep up with the performance gains.

But you are absolutely right on the loss of money aspect.

Most "ECU tuning" are just minor config file changes. The map is sufficiently complex being an R^2 data, enough to justify it being a skill. Actual car-guy-firmware-hackers are ultra rare.

Performance tunes are very often illegal in the US for messing with emissions stuff. The EPA have been cracking down HARD lately.

I can see a future where auto manufacturers lobby to make “unlocking” features highly illegal due to the DMCA or some other.

I was just going to say this. It has to have a CARB sticker. No CARB sticker, no pass. Passing a smog test in most US states typically uses on-board telemetry combined with a rear-wheel dyno. Most smog shops won't touch vehicles that lack OBD2 but still require smog tests every 2 years. Also, I'm unsure if smog shops still use an external NOx/CO probe like ye olde days or rely entirely on the vehicle to be non-VW "smog mode" honest.

That's a very CA viewpoint. I moved from CA to NC and as long as the onboard computer isn't throwing a code and your emissions stuff (appears to be) in place they don't care. I have two vehicles that are tuned and they pass emissions no problem. They can see this (different means per manufacturer, I think BMW throws an invalid checksum and Ford does it by key trigger count or something) but since the vehicles are still blowing clean it's fine.

We just had a few counties discontinue emissions checks and now only do safety checks up to 30 years past which they don't inspect at all.

Keep in mind the EPA is cracking down HARD on businesses that sell any kind of "tuning" or "delete" device, handing out fines in the millions of dollars and shutting down businesses.

It's all well and good to say "you can get away with it", but the businesses selling these products can't.

You're projecting California onto the entire country. Many states thad mandate 50-state compliance for new sales stop caring after and most of them only do a plug in test anyway. Many states don't test at all.

Vehicle mods exist in the same sort of patchwork of "illegal to various degrees but nobody cares" gray areas that weed does.

At the end of the day enforcement is capped by political will.

Most manufacturers are moving to secure boot by default for all components.

> You can already unlock additional power in your ECU by going stage I, II or III with custom and reputable ECU modders and the car feels completely different.

Yup, especially since that many cars artificially limited to "segment" the model into more models but are basically the exact same car. Some ECU modders, at least in the EU, also play it fully legit: they'll reprogram the ECU so that you've got more power and they'll help you with the paperwork for the DIV / insurance so that it's all legal.

Tesla can outright decide to total/brick your car and not sell you parts. They're worse than Apple.

While an VW-owned, separately-managed Scout appear to be making a better EV, but could still take it in the direction of the corporate drones.

EU is also quite involved by making sure that a car can’t simply be a car anymore but needs a lot of complex systems that may ore may not work as intended, like remote capabilities etc.

Which regulations mandate these "complex systems"?

There's a summary from the EU: [0]

Looks like they're not all working that great: [1], [2]

I don't think all assistants are that bad in general, but I'm not sure that taking all capabilities and responsibilities (well that point is a bit of an open question with these systems) away from the driver is the right approach.

If you drive like a decent human being (and as required by law in most places), it can be quite safe already, adding complexity may actually cause issues. That some people don't drive that way shouldn't be the reason to force these systems on to everyone, better to do a good job in teaching driving (driving schools in my country are expensive, but otherwise mostly worthless except for the safety training which strangely enough is done after getting the license), etc.

[0]: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/80f... [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38472167 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41968551

It's all part of a plan. The EU is very busy setting up the equivalent of the chinese "social credit". It started with "ESG" rating by banks (where you're already attributed an ESG rating depending on which companies you invest your money in) and now it's likely they'll be moving forward with computing your yearly carbon emission to then decide if you can go on vacation or not and how far.

Don't underestimate the globalists' plan to control every single individual. They have an agenda "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (World Economic Forum plan).

Lately the EU wants to establish a registry of every single possession of every single EU citizen, down to watches, jewelry and paintings. There are literally vids with members of the european parliament asking the EU commission "guarantees" that this new registry won't be used to then confiscate these goods.

Tracking every single car is part of the plan.

And, no, I'm not seeing things.

People should vote to GTFO of the EU and should vote for much smaller goverments because the only things awaiting citizen at the end of the road is misery.

The EU is heading at full speed towards a dystopian totalitarian supra-state.

I don't know about watches, jewellery or paintings, but if any one class of personal possession _should_ be subject to this kind of totalitarian control, it's cars.

They literally cause more harm to non-participating bystanders than cigarette smoking, with even less ability to opt out. (For those of you aged under 35 - non-smoking bars, restaurants and public spaces used to be a rarity in Europe).

And why? Because we somehow ended up in a situation where we use the same piece of equipment to drop our kids at school 1km away as we do for ten-hour, 1000km inter-city journeys with two weeks' worth of luggage. They're vastly OP for most of what people use them for, but it feels necessary because everyone else has one - we end up obligated to carry around big, heavy, impact-protected vehicles to protect us from all the other big, heavy impact-protected vehicles.

>>People should vote to GTFO of the EU

Being in the EU is literally the best thing that has ever happened to my country, and it continues being an incredible benefit to everyone here. The suggestion that we would be better off out of the EU is actually insane.

>>And, no, I'm not seeing things.

Fantastic, that means it should be trivial to provide sources for everything you've said.

Wow, someone has been reading too much Nationalistic propaganda.

There’s no need to talk about hypotheticals here, let’s look at a country that actually left the EU. The UK so far is worse off financially, has worse trade deals and literally no better “sovereignty” nor privacy since leaving the EU.

The real totalitarians are the national governments who claim they should operate without oversight and then blame everything on foreigners.

Citation needed

re: EU central registry of assets, here is a Bloomberg Law piece from July 2024, detailing the chairman of the EU parliament's tax subcommittee's desire to get a "European registry of assets". it seems fairly straight forward.

[1] https://myconvergence.bna.com/ContentItem/ArticlePublic/2620...

edited to fix link

Call me crazy but one guy in one subcommitee stating he wants something does not justify the massive conspiracy theory.

I asked ChatGPT to fact check all of this, enjoy: https://chatgpt.com/share/677297b2-6ea0-8013-a376-7c14f78d96...

i'm afraid ChatGPT was wrong about the asset registry. the EU parliament's tax subcommittee most definitely does want such a registry.

here [1] is a feasibility study released by the EU in 2024 re: "Feasibility study for a European asset registry in the context of the fight against money laundering and tax evasion".

[1] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/0d8...

That's not a terrible idea for high-value assets.

There are already national registries of land, residential/commercial buildings and most types of vehicle. Business ownership and shareholding is also a matter of public record in most territories.

And while there may not be a national requirement for registries of other classes of high-value financial asset, you can bet the banks know, and above a certain size, $100k or so, I can't see the down-side relative to what's already legally mandated. (By all means argue for "total privacy", but this is not what the law has decided on in most places - that ship sailed long ago.)

EU has prevented many dystopia from even forming. The main reason we have seen so little war in our continent is the EU.

Edit:

"computing your yearly carbon emission to then decide if you can go on vacation or not and how far."

I am one hundred percent behind that idea. Make this law. Please. People need boundaries. Freedom is not the absence of boundaries.

> Freedom is not the absence of boundaries.

No, of course not. Freedom is total control.

You could probably do that in a country like north Korea but not in a free country

This seems to be more conspiracy theory than fact.

My car was made in 1998. Used cars are probably the best option for the time being.

Surely hackers have figured out how to block radios in the new cars?

Ignore the best car for self inflicted reasons, then get upset for not finding anything else. Where was your moral compass when you bought merc (or bmv or whatever else) when they were shoving basic necessities in higher trim packages to rip off people for years?

Refuse to sign any agreements about data collection (even for rental cars!), read the small print, if you are a EU citizen, send them GDPR Data Subject and then Data Deletion requests according to Article 17! https://noyb.eu/en/your-right-erasure-article-17#:~:text=Wha....

I don’t think Mercedes is owned by VW.. may be you thought of Audi..

I think they might have been only saying that Skoda is owned by VW? The fact that the referred to "both companies" after that made me assume that, although I know next to nothing about cars (and hadn't even heard of Skoda before, but maybe it's not as well known to Americans like me).

Video of the talk: https://media.ccc.de/v/38c3-wir-wissen-wo-dein-auto-steht-vo...

Deliberate problem. The inevitable corporate "oops, we fixed the auth" and common reply of "never ascribe malice to incompetence" is textbook psychological warfare. More importantly it's an effective overtone move vs collecting the data at all.

Explicit instruction isn't necessary or desired, it's trivial to write a unfunded 'compliance' requirement, practically guaranteeing a specific outcome.

The "sprint problem".

There is a technical or moral concern that does not immediately make money, or worse, reduces income.

Every development sprint tasks are prioritized.

All that needs to happen is for the desired items to have, say, a priority of 3, while items in the sprint are always priorities 1 and 2.

That ensures those items are never done.

Examples? Google web applications tested and bugs fixed for Firefox.

There's a person whose job is to prioritize.

If that person, and that person's management, think that security and privacy are a priority, then things get fixed.

Where's the incentive for company leadership to spend resources on security currently?

As long as there's no incentive to improve security, there will be no security.

Examples of incentive: laws. Fix security or you can't sell your product, if you can't sell product you don't get a bonus or get fired. Don't gather location data if it's not critical for the functioning of the car or you can't sell your product, etc.

In my experience it’s really up to technical leadership to highlight what will happen if security flaws are ignored. If more senior leadership continues to ignore these issues, then it’s a culture issue and I wouldn’t stick around.

Surely it’s all about risk mitigation; some out-of-date NPM package with a minor flaw might cause the can to be kicked, but a major flaw with demonstrable consequences should get priority.

You have a point. The problem in the german car industry there is no technical leadership. From the bottom management upwards they are all politicians. No technical people.

Is that unique to the German car industry? Outside of a few tech corps or some small startups, mainly in the US, most shops seem to 'run' their tech function more like buyer/seller e.g. "here's some Euros in exchange for [thing] we'd like" instead of the traditional employer/employee dynamic where your boss can evaluate your work to some degree.

Arguably they'd be better off actually doing that as a true buyer and just engaging B2B for their easily solved CRUD variants than this weird go-between that combines the negatives of managing employees with the negatives of buying unknown solutions.

No doubt it happens elsewhere. I meant only what I know for fact. Bur a good example where seems very much to be running similar is e.g. Boeing

GDPR already exists. It just needs to be enforced in this context.

Against VW? Ha ha ha!

This is why you don't bring your car for service at dealers. On "dumb" cars, that's when the transfer happens and it can be location data and even car audio.

That's also why you don't install these little trackers to find your car when it gets stolen, because when it isn't stolen, they make money selling your location data, and that's the real product.

Weaponizing convenience, as usual.

If you bought a brand new car, the loss of warranty is not worth not bringing it to the dealer. If you have a car already out of warranty then absolutely, service it anywhere else. But we have an EV and the 8 year warranty on the battery is also dependent on servicing the car within the dealer network, so we're in a bind for a while.

And yes, I know that legally you don't have to service the car at the official dealer to maintain the warranty(at least in the EU/UK). The problem is that even if that's legally true, dealers will always try to weasel their way out of it. The service can be done at any VAT registered garage, but it has to be done using the exact compontents advised by the manufacturer and as advised by them - so if your garage gives you an invoice for "engine oil" you're screwed, it has to say "engine oil 5W20 SAE23531" or whatever is officially advised. Same for every other item or your service is invalid. And even if you do everything exactly as described, the dealer will just reject your warranty claim because you didn't service the car with them, then you have to take them to small claims court and you will almost certainly win, but it's time and effort. So as always, the law says one thing, and in practice things aren't that simple.

>>That's also why you don't install these little trackers to find your car when it gets stolen

Certain cars are impossible to insure without a tracker. And if you're a new and young driver good luck finding any policy that will insure you without a tracker. It's not always about convenience.

If the company is in the business of scamming people on the warranty, can't they do it just as easily whether you service with them or not?

Just have the official dealership ask the customer for $300 to replace the prefabulated amulite on the ambifacient lunar waneshaft, and when the customer declines, you can refuse their future warranty claims on that basis.

>>If the company is in the business of scamming people on the warranty, can't they do it just as easily whether you service with them or not?

The way this works is that if you need warranty work done, the dealer submits a claim to the manufacturer saying "this car will need X hours of work and these parts to fix it" and if the manufacturer can see it's been serviced within their dealer network they just approve the claim. If they can't see the full service history on their own system they will ask the dealer to submit full documentation and proof that the car has been serviced properly before approving any work, and that requires effort from the dealer - so they'd rather say no. It's not that they want to scam you out of warranty - they just don't want to put the effort in.

If you take these corporations to court these arguments don't stand up. In your oil example, if you had a warranty claim due to say a broken suspension component then the type of engine oil used wouldn't be relevant. It just allows them to try to weasel their way out of claims.

Yes but my fear of having to litigate anything is around 1000x higher than my fear of being overcharged for service or spied on by the manufacturer.

The cost of first party service for 2-10 years (warranty period) is just part of the cost of ownership it’s as simple as that.

...that is exactly what I said? Dealers will(and do!) just reject any warranty claim based on the fact that you haven't serviced the car with an official dealer. You can show them all the documents and laws and they will just ignore you. Taking them to court works but it just ends up costing you time and money.

Dealers do not reject claims. They make a large portion of their income from claims. The manufacture rejects claims. if you use the dealer for service they have records of that and so can sometimes prove that the relavent maitenance was done correctly but they want the money from warranty work either way and so they lose if the claim is rejected.

they make money from regular service as well and want you for that. However warranty work is too valuable to them to ignore

Yes, but like I said in my other comment - the manufacturer will reject any claim for a car that doesn't have a full service history within their own dealer network. The manufacturer will allow the dealer to submit other proof that the car has been serviced properly, but that takes time and effort, which the dealers don't want to spare, so they decline your warranty claim by not putting it in front of the manufacturer(because that would mean more work for them).

Manufactures are not that bad. They know the law and so they won't ask for maintenance records unless that could be relevant. Many claims are rejected though because the wrong chemical (oil, coolant...) will cause failures which they know the symptoms - that is why they require specific records - they know that issues of a specific nature are often caused by not following maintenance schedules.

Of course it is in the manufactures interest to reject claims where they can. However it is also in their interest to pay out for claims since ease of handling issues is what builds loyalty.

> If you bought a brand new car, the loss of warranty is not worth not bringing it to the dealer.

In the US, Magnonson-Moss prevents denial of warranty service unless the denier can prove that the damage being repaired under warranty was caused by "third party" work done on the thing being brought in for service.

Knowing where my stolen car is located is a problem for the police and then my insurance company and then me. The tracker is not adding an incredible amount of value for most consumers outside of large fleet vehicle and heavy equipment operators.

Briefly looking at the market it seems it's mostly focused on those two use cases plus parents attempting to monitor their children's driving locations and habits. So they're also weaponizing our children to an extent.

New cars are all equipped with SIM cards.

Don't know if that's true for Canada. Finally an upside to prohibitive data rates!

So we have cookie consent banners for web sites but in a car the manufacturer can just steal all the data they want…

Oh you do agree to it when you start the car for the first time, so it's not any different than cookie consent banners in that sense. It's just meaningless because you can't not agree to it.

How does it work when buying a used car?

Legally, it doesn't - there's no way that whatever the last owner has agreed to is binding, but the functionality will continue to run regardless.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42524422

They don't only collect, they also share this data online to interested parties, unprotected. With full name and email.

And born date! Just a little bit of background: if you call to any clinic or private service, health or otherwise, is custom in Germany to verify your identity asking your born date and address; both fields were disclosed. So if I see X parks in a clinic, I could call and get the results of any treatment or whatever… just terrible !

Can someone point me in the right direction on how cars submit the telemetry in the first place?

Clearly some cellular technology is in use but this would require an eSIM or something from your local carrier. Do modern cars have "free internet" baked into them somehow that lets them upload this data? Whats the technology/protocol called ? How does it work in foreign countries with different carriers.

I rented a car recently in Germany. Before even connecting my iPhone via Apple CarPlay, the dashboard of the car displayed a 4G sign and had its own navigation system that seemed to be live. You also pay a “cross border” fee if you intend to drive the car outside Germany to other EU countries, and most mobile operators in the EU also include some sort of roaming across the EU. So I guess that could be one explanation.

Edit: there also seems to be an “SOS” button to connect you with an operator of some kind. There is a dedicated button for that (saw it in this car, and a few other I’ve rented).

Edit 2: and this car seemed to know the speed limit. At first I was sure it’s doing some OCR, but then I realized that it gets it via the internet based on my location.

This.

For a several years now, all new cars sold in EU must have an S.O.S. button that will call emergency services. As a result each and every car has some sort of SIM card built-in and a cellular plan that works across entire Europe.

This SIM card must be free, but its a gateway to things like upselling (pay us $XX and get a wifi in your car) and also a way for the manufacturer to have always-on connection with the car.

Some manufacturers (KIA/Hyundai, Ford, Toyota) offer complimentary free app that you can use to check car location, open/close it, turn on AC (hybrid/ev) etc. with option for more paid features.

Edit: As for the speed limit, its also Europe regulation from this year - car must know the speed limit and beep if you exceed it. Different manufacturers do it differently, but since this has been optional feature for so many years in every car, all manufacturers had this ready - and its mostly based on built-in navigation + road sign recognition. It could use cellular but since this has been feature for so long I don't think this is how it works in majority cases.

Cell internet, same as your phone. The car manufactures get a bulk deal with the cell companies for data which means their cost is much less than yours. They are likely to have some sort of kick us off when busy (for non-emergency) deal in place - the data can be up loaded tommorow or use last weeks maps. They will get a separate deal with some carrier in every country instead of roaming.

I always wondered how it's possible that Germany regularly announces some "5/6/7G breakthrough" or some ridiculous investments in mobile infrastructure of new frequencies, yet the mobile internet for individuals is so miserable and expensive. Their industries get all the broadband.

Love this:

> VW Group proved their incompetence with regards to vehicle data and everything people accused Tesla of seems to happen at VW Group.

Ever since cars started having cell modems in “for emergencies” it has been clear governments are encouraging this sort of thing to enable mass population monitoring.

It is practically mandatory for manufacturers to do this.

Thanks to Starlink it is also possible for a private entity to track every device with cellular access. I don’t think people on here are ready for quite where all this goes.

> I don’t think people on here are ready for quite where all this goes.

Exactly.

People should vote for less government and should vote for those willing to defend freedom of speech.

Actually: we're heading towards that dystopian future because of all the government lovers and apologists.

There are only 40% of the EU citizens that don't want the EU. It's not enough.

That is only half of the story.

The other half is what government there is should be doing a lot more to protect the privacy of people on their territory from foreign state and private entities.

Part of the problem is that the governments have grown so big they can't do this without pissing off their own stake holders.

If you float the idea of clamping down on the privacy violations of one thing in some sector of the economy you'll have the existing big players and the regulatory agency they're in bed with instantly complaining that they "need" these things in order to satisfy the regulators demands for records and paper pushing.

Imagine if there was a push to force cars back to the degree of connectivity they had in 2004. The EPA, the NHTSA, the big OEMS, they'd all be up in arms because they've gotten so used to all the number crunching make-work they've created for themselves over the past 20yr.

>>There are only 40% of the EU citizens that don't want the EU.

40% of EU citizens are not right in their heads then. That number should be a lot smaller.

That is a little harsh. Good that democracy is about respecting the opinions of other people.

No, democracy isn't about that. It's about respecting other people's choice - which I do. It's the old "I will defend your right to have an opinion, but I reserve the right to call this opinion stupid". I respect the Brexit vote - I still think anyone who voted for it is missing brain cells in critical parts of their brain - these two things aren't mutually exclusive.

Actually, you are right. And even when I do think that the EU has many good and also many many bad things, I think is good all in all. My choice is still no to insult people who think differently, in a such complicated not-white-black topic.

No one criticized democracy, and it's not an attack on democracy to hold people with bad opinions in low regard.

That low regard in the history has change to hate, persecution and qualified vote, to mention a few. Specially when not saying “they are wrong” but “they are incapable of thinking”.

So per se both a bad thing, but I personally regard such expressions as dangerous for the long term democracy

I respect your opinion, and agree that democracy is critical.

"Democracy is the worst system, other than the rest". Ideally we would have an LSAT-like exam as a qualifier to vote, but any kind of testing to be allowed to vote would be manipulated eventually by corrupt administrations. Therefore, the only remedy to an ignorant society's decisionmaking is quality public education and broad suffrage.

Funny enough, ‘Cariad’ translates to ‘hell chariot’ in Romanian—a name that feels oddly fitting given this fiasco.

Imagine how bad software development in car companies must be - it's worse than that in reality. A giant clusterfuck of incompetence, especially from the top.

I can absolutely attest to this. Like 200%. The level of incompetence in SW is just beyond comprehension. Just mind blowing. Unbelievable stupid.

I have a really hard time understanding why we as a society (or various societies) are okay these kinds of things.

Sure, I understand that there is little I can do about it, but why are powerful people okay with their car company or phone company knowing everything about them?

Are people in California and the EU at least covered by data privacy laws?

There are clear financial reasons for governments and vehicle manufacturers to want this to happen.

From the consumer standpoint, what’s the alternative? Every new vehicle has one of these devices (recently mandated in USA by 20XX). If you want to buy a new vehicle, there’s no option but to have a telematics device installed. If you think you’re competent enough to rip the component out yourself, hopefully it’s not integral to the functioning of the vehicle. If it isn’t, your warranty will be void if you do

What are the financial reasons for governments to want mass surveillance? I can understand some other reasons, which I think are illegitimate, but I cannot think of a financial reason.

At any rate, governments are all made of people who are also tracked at all times. Just because some parts of government would like mass surveillance, why would legislators who can do something about it be okay with having their car be constantly monitored by private parties or the police or anyone?

Why would legislators, donors, and lobbyists be okay with their own location data (and in some extreme cases like with Nissan their "sexual behaviors" etc) being sold to data brokers, for example?

Is this true though? Can't you insist that the dealer or manufacturer disabled telemetry? I've wondered about if there are guides for disabling telemetry at a circuit level on various models.

We’re not ok with it, but this is where unlimited lobbying has gotten us.

The rich and powerful companies literally make the laws they want.

I am by no means ok with it. And I try to vote with my money when I buy.

I try, too. It is less and less possible every day.

> Independence limited, Freedom of choice is made for you, my friend.

There will be no products without those “features”.

> I have a really hard time understanding why we as a society (or various societies) are okay these kinds of things.

Because using mass surveillance you can provide better service. That's a fact you can't argue with.

My understanding of GDPR law is that the fine is up to EUR 20M per breach. I have some experience with the data protection culture in Germany and it's frankly excessive at times. It's incredible that this was able to happen at this scale. In theory the company could be bankrupted by fines if the letter of the law is followed, never mind the reputational implications for a company only just getting over the emissions scandal.

All do. Nothing new - so what's your solution?