Ford until recently sold a minivan that was ugly as sin (looked like an '87 Vanagon) because it was a panel van with seats added. They are popular with the campervan community.

As it was essentially a commercial vehicle meant for upfitters turning them into work vans for electricians and plumbers, it would probably be easiest of all to disable telemetry.

From what I can find, permanently disabling FordPass at the hardware level is as simple as unplugging the cell modem or pulling its fuse.

If you don't mind used, the Ford Transit Connect Wagon is an excellent option for an everyday vehicle that doubles as a camper. We have one and love it. It fits a double mattress with plenty of headroom room to sit up in bed. Ford discontinued it in 2023, hence the used requirement, but I believe you can turn off the internet connectivity on that model. We have a 2016 model (still going strong after 150,000km!) which has no internet connectivity, thankfully.

I know some models of Ford allow you to pull the modem out. It doesn't even nag you about a connection problem.

By a slightly used one that has a 3g modem. My 2018 car no longer can phone home.

> absence of data is data itself

oh that is endless.. if you are aware enough to do something about telemetry IMHO do that and don't obsess about loose ends.

I have essentially gone with option 2 in my Audi A3. Every time I turn the car on, it puts up a dialog that warns me that I've made the terrible, terrible decision to not allow remote data and forces me to say, "no, do not turn it on for me now," before I can do anything else on the screen. Every, single, time.

Like #2 prevents the spying. Let's ask some smart TV brands executives their opinion on the matter.

I'd rather see it as a standard feature than as a new market.

I already like Honda and own models before they were connected to the cell network. But they are still not 100% there current models:

> Amplitude received from HondaLink: VIN, Location. Cross-context tracking: Amplitude received the VIN plus Location from HondaLink — an unresettable identifier tied directly to other personal data.

They are so close they should say "fuck it, we're going to be different, we'll disable all the crap" and then market the heck out of it.

There’s “oh he’s at the grocery store” data,

and then there’s “he’s driving in a way we don’t like, let’s make him pay more for his insurance” data.

I'm sure that will go about as well as protecting the privacy of individuals in the face of "but the CHILDREN!" age verification.

In-vehicle monitoring allows car manufacturers to remind the user to buckle up, keep their eyes on the road, stay off their phones, remind them to take breaks, turn the radio down in tense traffic, remind the driver to take a breath based on increased heart rate to minimize road rage, etc.

Heck, we could really reduce lack of seatbelt related injuries and deaths if we could eliminate the 'drive' function while seatbelts are not properly worn (which we can now check with our AI cameras )

What are you some kind of anti-safe-driving nut?

Until people care about this, there is no reason for our representatives to limit it.

good luck!

sadly, politicians are very happy about the centralization of power... they are the same team with the corporations.

I'd love to push back, I'm not sure what that looks like though. I can't even get an open source/open hardware phone that's decent, let alone a car.

Using a smart phone doesn't make someone tech savvy.

I wouldn't trust anything Tesla says:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-workers-shared-sens...

Such a fun car! It's my first fun car and oh man what a toy.

I feel seen. I used to think rms was just a crank, but maybe he was right all along: I increasingly treat any closed-source software (and even some open-source--vscode for instance) as hostile and untrusted.

I was kinda wondering the same. Only issue will be when insurance companies refuse to insure you because they can't get the "commonly available" data.

I hate everything about newer cars except for the power/efficiency. And luckily I don't drive enough to care about that.

Some cars you can just pull the fuse on the ECU with the modem.

Just read the paper instead: https://automatictransmission.khoury.northeastern.edu/paper....

I think it does take away from the point. I could not be bothered trying to filter the information out of whatever this llm layout is.