I am planing to buy a new car. Which of these are better relatively speaking in terms of privacy, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, or Audi? I can’t buy old used cars. I have to buy a new car. I like new safety features but I don’t want privacy invasive features, or subscription services.
Are you in a hurry?
If not, you could keep an eye on Slate Auto
With no embedded modem, the Slate Truck is the antithesis of today’s connected cars.
I was gonna post about Slate. Awesome stuff. A shame they don’t ship to or build in Canada.
A shame they don’t ship to or build in Canada
I was about to say “Yet. US & Canada cooperate on car regulations, so it’s trivial to support both markets”.
But, web says the tariff situation got in the way, and Slate has no plans for it. Ugh. That sucks :(. Hopefully sanity will be restored eventually, and it’ll become possible again.
I want a better timeline please.
I figure if/when they start selling maybe they will expand. Likely, years away. I can wait.
the irony of that site… 229 cookie partners
why are these your 3 options, also what market are you in? assuming that you’re talking about these three you are in Europe, get yourself a Dacia and call it a day.
I am in India. Used car market here is not all that great unfortunately.
I have no idea about how the car market is in India, those three options are pretty awful for privacy… and reliability too, they commonly have check engine light issues and need a lot of work
Practically all modern vehicles are privacy nightmares on wheels. They have identifying sensors all over the vehicle, on both the exterior and interior. And all ECUs (monitoring and controlling sensors and actuators from a vehicle’s particular subsystems) are (indirectly) connected to a cellular modem, which is likely to support ‘vehicle to everything (V2X)’ communications: where the vehicle exchanges sensory data with external networks (primarily the manufacturer’s), road infrastructure and other road users nearby.
Your most effective remedy is to hamper the functioning of the modem, that is if the manufacturer doesn’t throw an error code as a result of it. If that isn’t an option, check if it allows you to physically disable sensors (taping off, or limiting the FOV of cameras, or unplugging microphones). And lastly, if even that isn’t an option, disable as many “features” as you can; even though some may require you to manually re-disable them, every time you restart your vehicle…
Keep in mind that in doing so, you might also disable actual features (ones you might find genuinely useful). Mozilla’s somewhat outdated reports of manufacturer’s privacy statements might give you some idea, of which brands could be considered the lesser of evil. But these are subject to constant change, as are the over-the-air updates of vehicles in their fleet, and their dynamic user manuals…
Avoid BMW then.
Also, depending on the location they can be unreliable (US higher end models at least).
A coworker bought one with 60k miles for about 30k (included 100k extended warranty). He has a Toyota now. I believe the beamer was considered a total dud around 110k due to electrical issues.
Of your options, I not go with BMW as they are pushing subscriptions based features. In my new car journey I may settle on a low millage model 3 if I can get it with the lithium pack.
buy a bicycle
on a lot of cars, you can simply pull the fuse to the modem.
Do you have a list for these cars?
I would like to know this.
you can probably find in your service manual, or electrical diagram.
What is this bougie BS on an ML instance?
Bike + public transit.
Fuck cars.
Chat is having a car bourgeois?
