I want to buy a new car, but it needs to be privacy friendly. Sadly you cannot really buy any new Car that is.
Has anybody any experience on making your modern car not phone home to its company, by removing the hardware it uses to do?
While this seems like a great plan; I wouldn’t put it past manufacturers to throw an error message and disable the vehicle for ‘safety’ when it detects a missing network connection for an extended period and/or disabled hardware during self-test.
I hate this dystopian hellscape :(
The car would likely inform the owner to visit a service center and disable features that rely on network connection, but would not disable the car. The warning would be crying wolf, so a warning of actual concern may be ignored as part of the known connectivity error; which may lead to bigger problems.
Given recent examples of cars doing exactly this (disabling drive due to perceived hardware/software errors), namely BMW: I’m not very hopeful.
When I was last working in the automotive industry about two decades ago, a lot of effort was being put into protecting BIOS on diagnostic laptops, so that only “authentic” manufacturer diagnostic tools could be used to service the vehicles.
Pretty sure that development has continued.
It’s entirely dependent on what car you buy, they’re all different. On some cars it’s integral to the ECU or some other component. On other cars like my Subaru it’s a box you just remove, then you’ll need a custom harness to make the speaker audio work again.
Without saying what car it is nobody can help you without saying “just unplug it”.
Looks like you should start a guide because you know a lot more than me
Speaking as someone who worked for a corporate auto maker, it won’t be an easy task since they try to make it as difficult as possible to disable online activation if even providing the ability at all.
The only real solution is pulling the head unit and trying to find any modem and desolder it, which who knows if it would function as it had before hand since everything is integrated.
It will also hurt resale value.
When I worked on auto-maker on the head units, they were integrated on the chip, the ones that had a sim slot where you can insert and extract it were the ones for development. Recent cars, their GPS and screen media menus uses the Linux inside the modem chip.
Sounds a lot like a smartphone where one SoC chip does pretty much everything… CPU, cell modem, WiFi, USB host/device switching, quick charge, the whole lot 😢
Black box tracking device. Just like Intel Management Engine, AMT and Microsoft Pluton! Proprietary Blobs. You don’t own your device.
Unless you get an expensive car, I think they do that to reduce expenses. Expensive cars have dedicated CPU for that, but they still communicate with the head unit for online data.
Maybe you could build a faraday cage around it or something. Wrap it in foil.
You can root some head units and disable modem that way. It can get sketch, though, and there’s a risk of bricking the head unit.
I am never buying a new car again. It will be hard, but I’m only buying old cars and repairing them. Not sure what to do about fuel when that stops. I Not sure about how to deal with a lot in the future, but I’m going to keep trying.
There will be simple conversion kits available I should hope.
I thought I read about Chevy doing a electric differential, but I did find this:
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/03/16/magna-introduces-ebeam-electric-rear-axle-for-pickup-trucks/
You can have good luck just by buying 10 year old cars - they might have connectivity, but the it will be to a cell/network standard that no longer exists and so for practical purposes the car cannot connect to anything.
Planned obsolescence restoring our privacy through incompetence is kind of fun to think about.
toyotas are typically outdated. my 2002 car has a cassette deck, but no CD player. i can imagine a car from 2010 barely being able to recieve DAB.
that car will last 20 more years anyway, so i’ll just wait this dystopian shit out. why “upgrade” when your car starts every morning and gets 35-40mpg?
I have thought about something like that. Maybe getting an early model EV and maintaining it. I love the idea of electric vehicles, but they’ve just always been expensive. Cost is also the reason I have never bought a new vehicle in my life as well.
I don’t think there is such a thing as a non-connected early-model EV, aside from really niche stuff that was mostly leased to fleets, like the 1998-2002 Ford Ranger EV or the 1997-2003 Toyota Rav4 EV. Good luck finding one of those, though, and also good luck getting reasonable modern-EV-equivalent range out of the lead acid or NiMH batteries.
3G was ended in 2022, which opens up a lot of models. I think 4g started being implemented around 2014.
Even before the official end man, towers were retired and so odds were against getting a connection though somecimes you could
Fortunately(?) the planet will have no future if it continues to be the case that basically everyone needs their own personal automobile to function in it.
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I have a strong suspicion that Sirius XM is some form of government mandated mass surveillance hardware. There’s absolutely no other explanation that every car manufacturer just includes that garbage as a standard equipment that you just can not opt out of.
These auto manufacturers will nickel and dime you for smallest things like rubber mats they expect us to believe that piece of shit like Sirius XM is included out of kindness of their heart.
Sirius pays them. You’re more likely to subscribe if your car already has the radio. Same reason your shitty Walmart laptop comes with McAfee.
It’s becaude it’s a free trial. XM either directly pays car manufacturers or subsidizes the additional hardware costs, XM gets people to try their service who never otherwise would have, car dealers get another feature to add to their list.
Rubber are a nickel and dime feature because that is one of the few areas where dealers can make money. Most people walk into the dealer knowing the cost the dealer is paying for the car, and they are determined not to pay a penny more. this leaves zero money for the dealer to pay for the lights, building, and other overhead, not to mention a fair salary for the salesman (apologies to the tiny minority of females in car sales) who sold it.
If everyone (not just you!) would go to buy a new car with the plan to get a fair win-win deal for everyone then the dealer wouldn’t have to find all these ways to nickel and dime you on extras.
If everyone (not just you!) would go to buy a new car with the plan to get a fair win-win deal for everyone then the dealer wouldn’t have to find all these ways to nickel and dime you on extras.
Yeah I’m going to be honest, you’re not going to be finding much sympathy for car dealership owners from me. Maybe it’s different around you, but around these parts they’re invariably some of the richest people in town.
All Carsalesmen Are Bastards.
Defund the dealerships!
Buy an older car and spend the extra money on replacing and upgrading components.
You might want to read this
https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/categories/cars/
We need guides on how to do this for all cars
Yeah, that’ll most likely disable the car / limit it. They often have anti-tamper detection in critical ECUs as well.
Your comment makes me wonder if one could get around AT by installing faraday cages around where the chips are.
I block telemetry on my IoT devices and they still work. I’m curious if cars would be bricked if they couldn’t call home, or if you could selectively allow certain messages through.
I’m curious if cars would be bricked if they couldn’t call home, or if you could selectively allow certain messages through.
I can’t speak for every car but at least Teslas do not mind being offline. You cannot control which messages they send because they connect via a VPN to the mothership. So it’s an all or nothing kinda deal.
You can also pretty easily remove the SIM card on older models with just a few screws. Newer ones use eSIMs, never looked into how to get rid of that one but I assume it is more complicated.
Your comment makes me wonder if one could get around AT by installing faraday cages around where the chips are.
The antennas are usually external, mounted somewhere else in the car and can be unplugged. Never checked if it can still get a signal without the antenna though.
edit: Also, the PCB itself is mounted inside a faraday cage because the entire thing sits inside of RF shielding.
Probably, but exactly what you do would depend on your exact model. I would get the technical service manual for your vehicle, find the part about replacing that module, and follow the directions to remove it.
Is it even in the manual though?
He means the manual repair shops use. It lists how to replace pretty much every single component in your car.
I know. I’m curious if it’s listed in there or if it’s ommited.
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If you plan to get a GM vehicle, from what I’ve seen. Most OnStar modules are right behind the infotainment screen. However, if you remove that, you lose your microphone.
If you wrap your whole car with aluminum foil then the signal can’t get out. Be sure there are NO GAPS!
Does this include the windscreen?
YES, DUH!
Signals get out extra good from the windscreen.
I imagine you could do this by creating a Faraday Cage of some sort around the antenna that would phone home.
In my old car, the BMW i3, I was part of the Reddit sub there and many of us were upset because we had 3G radios in the car that were getting disconnected which meant our smart features would no longer work. But someone was able to replace the 3G modem for a 4G modem somehow. So it may be possible if you can find that component and rip it out or find a way to replace it with a defective part instead, for example.
Your best bet is to find a car where its easiest to disable the antenna/cellular modem for, so look for a car that has a fuse for the DCM(digital communications module) you can pull, as having it be a fuse means you can readily reconnect it should you need to, try to find its schematic online, or find the repair manual for the car or use a car maintenance program,
Apparently its also possible to call the car company and ask for an opt out when serviced,
I vaguely remember some people experimenting with replacing the head unit with aftermarket ones, but no idea how well that would actually go in practice
