And because we know cars do not have to have all that crappy software. We have cars lasting decades without it.

My 20-year-old PC hardware will just about work, but a lot of projects are dropping support for 32-bit x86 these days.

If you brought the newly released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonah_(microprocessor) in 2006 - no Windows 11 or later, no Debian 13 or later, no Ubuntu 20.04 or later...

The older modules were more durable, but even those start to fail after that much use. In the past, you could go to a junkyard and pull a new module, but now everything is vin-locked to the car, so you need to buy a new module from the manufacturer, but oops, they are no longer selling them. Now what do you do? It's a real problem.

Some shops try to reverse engineer the modules and create clones, and that works a little bit, but it's a real problem. But that was for modules made in the early 2000s.

Now fast forward to today where the electronics is completely different and much less durable. You have basically PC motherboards being inserted into cars. I think people have not yet understood the implications of this in terms of their car's durability.

I've been talking to a guy with a 2007 Volvo and the upper electronics module failed -- it's in the rear-view mirror. Now, you can still drive that car, but he pulled one from a junkyard and tried to replace his -- now the CEM wont recognize the module. OK, with Volvo, you can crack the CEM pin and get it to accept the new module since the reverse engineering community has managed to figure that out.

But with modern cars? With the "software defined vehicle"? You are S.O.L.

When a mechanical part fails, you can fabricate a new part, and aftermarket vendors come and make replacement parts. But with software? The vendor isn't releasing the code. You can't make a replacement.

Cars with (double) DIN units are ok. When the built in GPS is missing half the roads in your area or Carplay/android auto stops working you can just buy a new headunit for a few hundred dollars. But cars with everything "integrated" aren't ageing as gracefully and it's not easy to upgrade the built in systems. 20 years old is fine, 10 years maybe not.

Yeah but those were primitive (as in simple, more reliable) and hardened electronics, and you had tons of knobs to set most important things directly even if the screen would die completely.

Now its just a tablet glued to some annoying location and no physical controls. Do you expect a tablet to last 20 years battery notwithstanding, the touch to be perfectly sensitive for so long? Most people don't, for good reasons.

Pull the fuse during your test drive maybe.

Do you have a car now? A phone? If you are wearing pants you are being tracked right now!

Funny that you say that because of all the big tech companies, Apple has the best track record at fighting for consumer privacy. And you certainly cannot say that for any of the car makers that currently have an EV lineup.

Your touchscreen is already spying on you.

The principal is there though.

The power of a tablet is far more than is required for an infotainment system. Make a standard, like we used to have for radios and regulate everything to expose all the controls via a standard connection. Standard parts for replacing and sizes for fitting.

The only way we can have nice things is by regulating. I don't want proprietary tyres either.

Auto start is pretty much universally hated especially since it's ubiquitous and can usually only be turned off for a single ride. But cool, I'm glad you like it.

Cameras and electronics make the car much more expensive to repair.

But I'm confused, are you pro-technology in car or are you one of those that say "this exact level of technology is perfect, any more or less would be bad". I see this weird tech hater sentiment. For instance some are worried about technology taking blue collar jobs but if you suggest removing technology to create more jobs, they would be against that. Consider how many jobs the washing machine has taken. We could create millions of manual clothes washers if we got rid of them!

https://www.newsweek.com/automatic-start-stop-technology-new...

> when they are really complaints about capitalism

it's not a complaint about capitalism. It's a complaint about asymmetric bargaining power in the seller/buyer relationship.

That's not inherent in capitalism. It's inherent in an anti-competitive market. The failure is in gov't making sure there's sufficient regulation to prevent monopolistic practises.

I'll raise the flag of "Don't nickel and dime me" in every battlefield.

If it's silly and it works, it's not silly.

Criticising our entire economic system tends to have very little effect. Criticising specific poor business practices and/or technologies that enable them has a much better chance of improving people's lives.

Because we don't care about capitalism, we don't want over the air updates to our cars.

As another poster already said, the complaints are not about capitalism, even if sometimes they are worded in such a way, but they are about monopolistic capitalism.

For "capitalism" without other qualifications, there are no alternatives. The so-called socialist or communist economies have always lied by pretending that they are not capitalist. In fact all such economies were the extreme form of monopolistic capitalism.

Towards the end of the nineties of the previous century, a huge wave of acquisitions and mergers has started and it has never stopped since then.

Because of this, to my dismay, because I have grown in a country occupied by communists so I know first hand how such an economy works, the economies of USA and of all the other western countries have begun to resemble more and more every year with the socialist/communist economies that were criticized and ridiculed here in the past.

While the lack of competition and its consequences are very similar, in some respect the current US and western economies are even worse than the former socialist/communist economies. At least those had long-term plans. While those plans were frequently not as successful as claimed, they at least realized from time to time useful big infrastructure projects.

The main role of the laws and of the state must be the protection of the weak from the powerful, for various definitions of weakness and power, to prevent the alternative of attempting to solve such inequalities by violent means, when everybody loses.

Therefore there must be a balance between the economic freedom of the private companies and the regulation of their activities.

It is obvious that in USA such a balance has stopped existing long ago and the power of the big companies is unchecked, to the detriment of individuals and small/medium companies.

The US legislators spend most of their time fighting for the introduction of more and more ridiculous laws, which are harmful for the majority of the citizens, while nobody makes the slightest attempt to conceive laws that would really protect the consumers against the abusive practices that have now spread to all big companies.

Do personal computers even really emerge under communism? it is yet to be seen. But this specific technology seems to only evolve under capitalism to suit the needs of a certain type of buisness against the consumer.

If it emerged under communism, it probably would be equally as bad. I imagine if it emerged under communism or socialism it would be designed to solve a similar problems: securing the needs of the state against the citizen.

It is fair to discuss new inroads of the capitalist devil such as this one

Those against capitalism are going to speak out against what capitalism will lead to be exploited. I don't consider it "silly" to be against something that will lead to disaster, even if the disaster is systemic. Like, so what? Honestly. You can be against giving bad actors new tools without the tools having to be bad themselves. That's the premise of gun control for example.

But it's true? How does an automaker that doesn't engage in those tactics compete when the rest of the market does?

Imagine having a car that pulls packages from npm or Docker hub whenever it gets a network connection. If there were cosmic justice that's what many HN users would get.

> an electric motor, all other things being equal, is better than a combustion engine?

This is not the core argument. Motors maybe superior - we can agree on that. The power source (batteries) and the environmental impact they have - that has always been the core argument. [1]

Again, without sources, these are just opinions.

Sources:

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30046087/

[flagged]

> Cite your own sources that they're not.

Cite my sources for what exactly?

> that they're not.

You made an assumption about something I never said and used that as the base of your argument to make a point.

I didn't say anything, I simply asked them to cite a source for that kind of a grandiose claim. If you make a claim like that without citation(s), the onus to prove it lies on the person making the said claim, not on me to disprove it.

Cutting someones breaks requires physical access to the hardware.

Changing: if (brakeDepressed()){ engageBrake(); } To: if (brakeDepressed() && currentTime < '5/6/26 4pm EST'){ engageBrake(); } Can be deployed to thousands of vehicles, and would stop brakes from working during peak commute time on the East Coast.

> A lot of times these hypothetical fears are disconnected from reality.

Conversely, a lot of times people don't fear real dangers of reality until it bites them. "Hackers wouldn't care about me, and the single password I use on every website is super good and complicated."

> but people generally don't engage in destruction for destruction's sake

Generally true, but they do engage in destruction when there's profit to be made or when it becomes in their geopolitical interests, and sometimes that destruction is quite notable: Remember when it was safe to assume that passengers could passively wait out airplane hijackings?

Your average script-kiddie might not seriously consider cutting everyone's brakes simultaneously, Al Queda would have been giddy.

I can imagine a nation state behaving badly in 2026 ...

Software has an atrocious track record for security. Doubly so for hardware manufacturers. It only takes one smart cow to disable millions of vehicles vs a local knave cutting brake lines.

I yearn for the days of wrapped software where developers had to make a gold pressed release. Not, “we can patch it later”.

If you want to talk about society, then this is about systematic security not individual security. If someone somewhere can push a button and flash your car with OTA firmware to drive you off a bridge, political assasinations become a lot easier.

In fact, with all this data they are collecting, you wouldn't even need to be the next edward snowden to get this treatment. You could set the firmware to target, say, every left-wing voter in america.

You don't even need the own the car with such behavior. Everyone becomes a pedestrian eventually.

1990 AU Ford Falcon family here - still in near showroom condition (well, looks good but has a scratch and a minor ding) with ~ 600,000 km on the clock.

> when the antique needs maintenance.

You're talking about all the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, et al cars, tracks and tractors that litter our district? Yeah - there are a lot of them in this part of the world.

All the farmers love the bleeding edge gear and are getting into AgBot boom sprayers, etc - but they still can't shake a love of keeping the really old stuff going - pimped up rat-trucks abound and we rebuilt an old Alice Chambers tractor ourselves two years back.

Isn't the role of the VW MIB2 (as in "Modular Infotainment Baukasten") explicitly the infotainment part of the vehicle (and NOT the instrument cluster, cruise-control, etc.)?

I never had an issue with those, as their reach is isolated (or "limited" as people would say today) to the infotainment part of the car. It couldn't even take control of the climate system back when I had one.

Can't argue much about MIB3, it is just a few years old and a child of the Tesla Software-defined-car era (albeit still tries to uphold Volkswagen's DNA of strictly separating roles of all components, partly making it the mess it is...)

The quip is on point, correct and highly timely.

Volkswagen tried to evolve to a more "touch" based HMI -that everybody hated- and is now touting it's abandoning that HMI as the largest redeeming factor of it's cars.

China is banning the ridiculous "innovations" on car handles and further "innovations" on steering wheels.

The Tesla software stack has few advantages: it's cheap and can be easily revised when the Beta-user discovers issues with it. So I have to pause and think to who's benefit it's made the way it is.

From an HMI perspective a Tesla is a nightmare, getting in and out one is constant question as to -why- these design choices were made. Especially after taking out "just doing things different" as a reason. A friend's first additions was loops to the physical door-releases so that passengers could actually get out should something happen and incapacitate the infuriating button-based door releases.

Luckily there is progress such as the recent Ferrari HMI that actually thinks about how the HMI will be used. The central screen even offers a palm-rest for when manipulating the screen. Integrating physical buttons and switches with the canvas of a screen is the logical way forward.

The car industry is soul-searching as we speak on what to do with technology and our interaction with it. But one thing is absolutely certain: whatever Tesla did is not the future.

I think in this case the point being made is "bad software makes the whole product bad", not just "bad software is bad".

Its similar to how bad brakes or a roof prone to leaking makes the whole car a bad car. The "weakest link" undermines the whole system.

> software isn't the core competency

Software is a essential part of modern cars, remove the software and they don't function (or in some cases are not allowed on the road). The car manufacturers "core competency" is making cars so I would argue that software is definitely a "core competency" of a modern car manufacturer.

I love minding my own business and not having to worry about driving through narrow roads, etc. People definitely drive SUVs so they can try not to care about other people.

Modern (suburb) SUV's spectacularly suck at most tasks, you have been falsely advertised to.

A 2010 Toyota Corolla is most likely a better offroader, a 1.8t VW Passat is a better tow truck.

If not for the tax benefit these SUV's enjoy they are useless.

CAFE regs made USian hugecars relatively profitable, and car makers got USians to demand them via savvy marketing. That's what I reckon anyway.

Towing a boat or camper is quite common - not gonna get a second vehicle just for that.