| ▲ | moooo99 2 hours ago |
| It is amazing how Volkswagen keeps messing up.
I am currently in the market for a new car, an EV specifically. Volkswagen brands were at the top of my list for many reasons, among them the excellent driving assist implementation. I got an offer from a dealer three weeks ago and was going to order the car, then the API for the community integration got turned off. I decided to hold back and see what comes from it. Now this, which ultimately - since I am a GrapheneOS user - makes me completely cancel my plans. I really do not understand VWs thinking here. It would cost them little to nothing to continue not blocking the the inofficial API and not block GrapheneOS (or other non Play Protect androids) users. It would have no adverse effects on the average Joe, but it would gain a lot of support and enthusiasm from heavy users, differentiating from other brands. Not to mention the fact that it is the USERS data in the first place |
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| ▲ | this_user 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| German companies, especially old school industrial ones like VW, have a very hard time understanding open platforms. The view everything through the lense of liability and compliance first. Their thinking is that if someone runs their app on a custom ROM and uses that to manipulate the app in any way, and that causes some extremely hypothetical damage, that they might be held liable for not having prevented this situation. Obviously, the chances of that are virtually zero. But they'd rather make their product worse than assume with any kind of risk, even if it is virtually zero. That is simply the way in which German enterprises operate. |
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| ▲ | anonymousiam an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | If they have concerns about the security of their app on some platform, they have the choice to either put "security" into the app, or to trust the platform vendor to provide the security. The correct solution is the first way. Deferring trust to the platform provider is the lazy way. If their APIs are done correctly, they shouldn't be afraid to expose them. | |
| ▲ | formerly_proven an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | If I had to guess it’s liability concerns around the app-based remote unlock and parking + R155 and CRA. A lot of european companies have moved to require attestation in their apps, likely spurred on by the CRA. | | | |
| ▲ | user3939382 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | VW didn’t seem too concerned with compliance when they were rigging their pollution tests. | | |
| ▲ | zie 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | That was just engineers engineering their way into creating Electrify America :) | |
| ▲ | xenocratus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | They'd have you know they actually cared a bit too much about said compliance itself. | | | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 32 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Them cheating the tests WAS them ensuring THAT compliance. In fact, that's how a lot of compliance works in industries where there's little checks and bounds and little enforcement and relies on self regulation. | |
| ▲ | this_user an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, the only reason they did it was to be able to comply with the requirements of the test. But the reality is that every once in a while you have a scandal like this or something like Wirecard, and it happens, because the culture is such that absolutely nobody thinks it possible. That includes officials and regulators whose first instinct will often be to come after the people trying to expose the scandal, as has happened in the case of Wirecard. | | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >because the culture is such that absolutely nobody thinks it possible Only naive laymen or newcomers to Germany think it's not possible. German business leaders, lawyers and politicians know exactly how much corruption and scamming is going on in the business sector, and it's not a little. >first instinct will often be to come after the people trying to expose the scandal, as has happened in the case of Wirecard. That was purely malicious to try to protect Wirecard, not because the regulators couldn't possibly imagine corruption and law breaking exists, that was the story they used as cover for their corruption. Like you're a regulator and instead of doing the thing you were hired for and look at the evidence the economist showed you, you instead "use your instincts" to decide not to do your job and not look into Wirecard because you can't imagine something bad can ever happen? Come on! All those regulators should have been fired and tried for corruption and/or conspiracy to crime. |
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| ▲ | neya an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah sure, the company behind Dieselgate and single handedly destroyed the diesel market is worried about compliance? Give me a break. | | |
| ▲ | adrianN an hour ago | parent [-] | | VW is large enough that different parts of the company can have very different opinions. |
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| ▲ | OsrsNeedsf2P 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| VW is obviously not thinking that any noticable portion of the userbase uses Graphene, and someone (somewhere) is going to get a promo by making VW infra adhere to "standards" or something |
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| ▲ | riedel an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | Actually we need to force our European governments to use services that do not depend on foreign services (ie. Google or Apple). Then I guess it will only then become obvious to them how crazy the situation has become. The company's have done their thing to ensure that the average guy wouldn't even try escaping their lock-in. So chances are becoming smaller and smaller to hope for a critical mass of users to complain. | |
| ▲ | echelon 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I don't use Graphene, but now I'm out of the market for a VW. Vendor lock-in to Play services is ridiculous. A car is a big purchase, and ideally not something I discard after a few years. I'd like it to not treat me like a second-class citizen and renter who can't make decisions over how to extend the life of my purchase. | | |
| ▲ | zamadatix 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's ridiculous, but are we only saying that because we're on HN or is it because the portion of the userbase who thinks it's actually a bad thing is the larger one? | | |
| ▲ | tarxvf an hour ago | parent [-] | | Who cares if it's the larger one, so long as they are the correct one? | | |
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| ▲ | oaiey an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think there was no specific thinking in that space at all. They went for attestation of the app for security reasons of the API and their testing only runs on normal android and iOS devices. Consequently, they realized later this and write a response pointing to their tested platforms. So understanding why they drop it is IMHO easy. Understanding why they use only attestation based API despite and forcing their third party ecosystem out is stupid. Companies do not understand open communities. |
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| ▲ | bojan 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Same here. I'll be in a market soon and I had my eyes on a VW i4 or a Škoda Enyaq, but this makes me seriously reconsider. I really wanted to support local industry and buy a European product this time, but they are making it seriously difficult (no, don't get me even started on Stellantis). |
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| ▲ | bogeholm 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Mercedes has some interesting EV options, and they have some models at the moment that are not necessarily that expensive. Through the grapevine I overheard something about surplus production due to mandate to build a certain number of EVs. If you don’t want/need a new car, the used car market in Germany is pretty active with EQAs and EQBs. | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Go with Dacia, though their EVs seem to have very low range. | | |
| ▲ | abyssin 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | 2022 Dacia Sandero is a great car. Analog buttons, good build quality, well designed. And it’s cheap. | | |
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| ▲ | gslepak an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm kinda glad that it's VW blocking GrapheneOS users in a cynical way. When my parents got a VW Jetta they never stopped complaining about it and never bought one again. So it tracks that they'd also be the car manufacturer to block GrapheneOS and stomp on their user's privacy. It's an easy market to win at this point. The bar has been lowered so much. Already have a nice car? Just don't display utter disdain for your user's privacy and you get our $$. |
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| ▲ | y-c-o-m-b 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Volkswagen brands were at the top of my list for many reasons You should definitely reevaluate how you constructed your list. VW has a history of being scummy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal) and their ICE cars are notorious for being unreliable compared to the Japanese car-makers. To be fair, EVs do change the equation a bit, but given their scandal plagued past, there's no way I would put them at the top of any list. |
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| ▲ | michalhosna an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > their ICE cars are notorious for being unreliable compared to the Japanese car-makers. I always read this online, but my personal experience in EU doesn't match that at all in quite a sample of people and cards of last ~15 years. At least not for older cards. The reliability after 100k km seems to be somewhat similar. The repairability of VW-group stuff in 3rd party services is soo much better and cheaper. The WV-group is huge and many models across the brands share same parts and full engines. There exist non-OEM alternatives and people know how to fix those cars. I have never bought new car. But driving anything but VW got expensive fast. Toyota cars can have bespoke parts even between different parts of the year for the same model. Continuous improvement isn't really that cool for cars. | |
| ▲ | jstanley 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The emissions scandal is completely different, because in that case they were illicitly making the car work better for its owner. | | |
| ▲ | bogeholm 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Unless, of course, said owner cared for the environment | | |
| ▲ | bluGill 15 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | Said owner cares about their experience above the environment. Sure people care about the environment, but it is always lower than all the other factors in their personal list of things they worry about. That is why so many rich fly private jets to environment conferences. People put Greenpeace and similar bumper stickers on their SUVs that never go off road and rarely have more than one person inside. They care about the environment, but only when it doesn't impact anything else in their life. | |
| ▲ | jstanley 13 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | They can always drive less frequently or more slowly, that's within their power. |
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| ▲ | formerly_proven an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | As opposed to the rest of the auto industry which has a stellar track record of adhering to emissions and fuel economy regulations /s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_device | | |
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