In the end, the KIA car company made its cars into subscription models, I really hate this because in the end the car we buy with our own money doesn’t feel like it belongs to us. Should we finally buy an old school car ? so as not to be affected by this subscription models or is there a way to crack the software installed in it ?
The cost to maintain the servers to send extremely small packets of data to instruct the car for the entire fleet of cars they sold could be less than $100/m.
Indeed; what we need is a jailbreak and a way to operate these systems on our own independent or third party / aftermarket resources. In a REAL competitive market, someone else could set up a server and offer to run these applications (or others!) for a different price. Not that I’m even particularly fond of capitalism myself nor how vulnerable it makes your car to turn it into an IOT device.
This WILL be hacked though, eventually.
The question is, who will venture deep enough and understand all the hurdles like the car self-bricking after even trying to peek at the SW or HW.
Someone figured out how to remotely take control of Chrysler vehicles with the Uconnect 8.4 systems a while back. So people are out there working on these things. Also, the more popular the car, the more likely someone is working on it.
To FCA’s credit in that case, they listened to the researchers and implemented several fixes very quickly to address the problem. I wouldn’t put it past many manufacturers to do the hands-over-the-ears “la la la” thing when faced with the same situation.
It’s called working at a towing company, and I already have. I know what those “roadside assistance” firms do from the inside, because we’re the ones who actually do the work when they call, and most of them are trash; you could just skip the middle man and call us directly, but the good ones actually pay decently and are more likely to get our help. Prices become better for individuals when they act as a group who collectively pool resources to subsidize cost on the basis that having a lifeline to fall back on when you don’t need one is better than not having one when you do need one. Technically any handful of people can found a private social club that they all pay ten bucks a month into but don’t always use, and such a club’s warchest will snowball to thousands of dollars while no one is looking. Then when suddenly one person is in trouble, the club swoops in and eats the cost. Socialization of risk. Mutual aid. Wish more people did that.
Those prices on the screenshot are annual, not monthly.
I’ll agree that the services are overpriced, and I know I’m in the wrong place for this sentiment, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to have a reoccurring fee for something that costs actual money and man-hours to maintain. And I’d rather that fee be a bolt on vs baked into the price of the car (or whatever) so I can choose whether I want to pay it.
All that being said, I don’t pay for the kia online svcs because I think they’re overpriced.
