[oellegaard]

I own both Mercedes and Skoda (owned by VW) and I feel like both companies are headed in an extremely bad direction. The other day I saw that now Mercedes wants to charge me 200-300 USD/year for navigation and the ability to remotely lock your door.

The fact is they let you pay $100k for a car and then they behave like Facebook and other consumer platforms where you pay with your data and can buy add-ons.

You can't combine the two. In this case you paid for your car, so it's yours and they are hands-off unless you ask them for something. Also, the car should not randomly stop working after three years and ask you for extra money.

Unfortunately, I don't have any faith in Tesla either. While in front of innovation surely they are behind moral. If I were to buy a car today, I'm not sure where to look.

[chii]

This is what happens when you dont control the machine you purchase. Stallman have warned much of this, but it is often on deaf ears, because consumers' behaviour don't change.

[magic_smoke_ee]

People are suckers for convenience without considering the details of how something is made, supported, or serviced, or the TCO.

[pluc]

I think what will happen with that is "performance shops" will start jailbreaking cars. You can already unlock additional power in your ECU by going stage I, II or III with custom and reputable ECU modders and the car feels completely different. It's a matter of time before ECU devs add going around subscription limitations, I think.

[alexey-salmin]

ECU modifications are rare (most people don't care) and car manufacturers don't lose money on it. If money gets on the table, I'm 100% sure they'll sue the workshops like John Deere did. And given the lobby VW has in Europe they can also pass some extra laws to reinforce their case.

[grecy]

Performance tunes are very often illegal in the US for messing with emissions stuff. The EPA have been cracking down HARD lately.

I can see a future where auto manufacturers lobby to make “unlocking” features highly illegal due to the DMCA or some other.

[AlotOfReading]

Most manufacturers are moving to secure boot by default for all components.

[TacticalCoder]

> You can already unlock additional power in your ECU by going stage I, II or III with custom and reputable ECU modders and the car feels completely different.

Yup, especially since that many cars artificially limited to "segment" the model into more models but are basically the exact same car. Some ECU modders, at least in the EU, also play it fully legit: they'll reprogram the ECU so that you've got more power and they'll help you with the paperwork for the DIV / insurance so that it's all legal.

[magic_smoke_ee]

Tesla can outright decide to total/brick your car and not sell you parts. They're worse than Apple.

While an VW-owned, separately-managed Scout appear to be making a better EV, but could still take it in the direction of the corporate drones.

[harha]

EU is also quite involved by making sure that a car can’t simply be a car anymore but needs a lot of complex systems that may ore may not work as intended, like remote capabilities etc.

[deadbunny]

Which regulations mandate these "complex systems"?

[TacticalCoder]

It's all part of a plan. The EU is very busy setting up the equivalent of the chinese "social credit". It started with "ESG" rating by banks (where you're already attributed an ESG rating depending on which companies you invest your money in) and now it's likely they'll be moving forward with computing your yearly carbon emission to then decide if you can go on vacation or not and how far.

Don't underestimate the globalists' plan to control every single individual. They have an agenda "you'll own nothing and you'll be happy" (World Economic Forum plan).

Lately the EU wants to establish a registry of every single possession of every single EU citizen, down to watches, jewelry and paintings. There are literally vids with members of the european parliament asking the EU commission "guarantees" that this new registry won't be used to then confiscate these goods.

Tracking every single car is part of the plan.

And, no, I'm not seeing things.

People should vote to GTFO of the EU and should vote for much smaller goverments because the only things awaiting citizen at the end of the road is misery.

The EU is heading at full speed towards a dystopian totalitarian supra-state.

[dmuso]

My car was made in 1998. Used cars are probably the best option for the time being.

Surely hackers have figured out how to block radios in the new cars?

[CrimsonRain]

Ignore the best car for self inflicted reasons, then get upset for not finding anything else. Where was your moral compass when you bought merc (or bmv or whatever else) when they were shoving basic necessities in higher trim packages to rip off people for years?

[jll29]

Refuse to sign any agreements about data collection (even for rental cars!), read the small print, if you are a EU citizen, send them GDPR Data Subject and then Data Deletion requests according to Article 17! https://noyb.eu/en/your-right-erasure-article-17#:~:text=Wha....

[reacharavindh]

I don’t think Mercedes is owned by VW.. may be you thought of Audi..

[saghm]

I think they might have been only saying that Skoda is owned by VW? The fact that the referred to "both companies" after that made me assume that, although I know next to nothing about cars (and hadn't even heard of Skoda before, but maybe it's not as well known to Americans like me).