133 points

Friendly reminder: Mozilla studied 25 car brands and NONE of them passed the privacy test. Mozilla even said that cars are “privacy nightmares”.

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24 points

I mean this is gotta be on the newest Internet connected cars right? Cause like aint no way my 2017 ford focus has that many “privacy issues” it doesn’t even have android auto lol.

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37 points

Has what’s called a Telematics Control Unit. And that thing phones home. It’s basically a wifi modem.

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-5 points

No it does not. Some models may. But mine does not. Also, as far as I understand you would have to have like a cellular connection or something for your car to phone home anywhere? And not only is that not a service offered on my car? . It would also mean someone has to maintain that device and ensure it’s communicating basically 24/7 . I mean who’s paying for the cell service. Is it running on 3G which is defunct now? If I even had one How can it phone home? I don’t understand.

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14 points

Nope, still a privacy nightmare

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-3 points

Go ahead and explain. Cuz there’s nothing internet connected on my car.

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15 points

Notable was (I believe) Nissan, who included a clause about tracking your sexual activity.

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55 points

Car companies really seem to be going all-in on technofeudalism. It’s definitely not the industry I would have expected.

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16 points

Here’s the reason: it’s not the industry that’s the problem. It’s the system surrounding the industry.

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43 points

“you will own nothing”

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28 points

Collective ownership of communism gonna start looking a lot less scary to everyone when they own nothing anyway.

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6 points

Communism would be nice economic model to try, but i wonder if its possible to setup in such a way it wont become mockery of itself like how russians did it. At least if hypothetically there was some kind of revolution after people get enough of current exploitation, most likely horrible people would worm into positions of power using the chaos and it would turn out like soviet union eventually. Peaceful and well though plan would be more resilient to corruption, but in current world even serious talk of such things gets shot down immediately.

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5 points

people would worm into positions of power

Literally the reason models like that will never work. They don’t account for human nature. Humans love finding ways to put themselves ahead of others. You put a system in place to make people “even” – we’ll find a way to be more ‘even’ than Frank. That guys not nearly as ‘even’ as me. At the end of the day we are apes with hierarchical social structures. Any economic or political model that has a snowballs chance of succeeding needs to account for that.

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4 points
*
Removed by mod
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3 points
*

I think the first thing has to be making the government more representative. Congress should be something like 10,000 people based on the original ratio. We don’t have to go that far but a country of 325 million people needs a very large people’s house. Then we need to make it to where people vote, not land. Get rid of districts, first past the post, and the Senate.

Without those changes anything we do is doomed to just be another way to make rich people richer.

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41 points

One of several reasons I really want to do an electric conversion of an old car rather than buying a new electric car.

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9 points

Renault Twingo, the original one with the eyes

Would sell like hot cakes in Paris

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9 points
*

I’m not sure how feasible that is. Batteries are heavy, and take up space, and there’s only so much room under the hood for battery modules. If you cram it to the max, can the frame take that load all the time? It might work for a short-ranged car - maybe 100km range, to avoid going much heavier than the normal curb-weight.

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9 points

You’re not wrong about those things being issues, but also people do electric conversions all the time, there are shops that specialize in it and premade kits you can buy for it. Low range is certainly a very common outcome, but I don’t have big range requirements for most of my driving. Plus, I love taking on projects that are way over my had and muddling through them somehow. It’s how I learn best.

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5 points

This is actually a not uncommon swap and some companies have even started selling kits to do it on certain vehicles.

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5 points

I have my shopping list together to convert an old Kia Rio to electric for 100 km range, it’s about 400lbs of lifepo batteries and a 200lb motor. So slightly more than the cratered ICE motor I’d be taking out.

But yah, if you want to drive across the country, convert an SUV or light pickup for the room to keep the batteries, and remove everything weight wise that you can to compensate.

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5 points

I’ve thought about this also but that’s insanely expensive and older cars are very unsafe by comparison.

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4 points
*

I no longer have a family and don’t prioritize personal safety, but there are a lot of cars that aren’t too old which are still quite safe and lack all the connectivity crap.

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21 points

I’m pretty happy with my 2007 pickup truck. Not sure I’d be interested in a new one even if I could afford it. I consider even the automatic windshield wipers to be too fancy for my taste and would rather have the traditional ones. Connecting my car to the internet is out of the question.

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7 points

I’ll die before I give up my automatic wipers! Thankfully my 2004 and 2013 VWs have it and don’t lock me out of features like new cars.

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