The minivan market is small. There are really only 4-5 available and every single one sends telemetry data from the car and makes it hard/impossible to opt out of selling your data. Additionally, without pretty extensive work there is no means of physically disabling the telemetry, which forces you to trust they'll honor your opt out request (vs re-enabling it with some update).

I'm clearly in the vast minority on this, but it's so frustrating that there are no options beyond buying and installing a third-party bypass to disable this type of tracking. Worse, I'm aware that the absence of data is data itself. Is my insurance going raise my rates because my vehicle won't provide telemetry for them to buy?

  if an owner decides they are uncomfortable with the data sharing described within them, they are faced with (arguably) unfair choices:
  - 01 accept the agreements regardless of their concerns
  - 02 stop using their car's connected-vehicle features - which includes remote start, the app, and other very useful features
  - 03 stop using the vehicle entirely

As expected. I think consumers also need to push back on these practices, but the problem is, majority of consumers are tech savy but not privacy savy.

I know what my next car will be.

Wait...

I'm pretty sure some high-risk customers around the world with money would be happy to have no-brain "choose a proper car without a snitch inside" button.

Maybe a quick public way to drop snitch options from customer choices would slightly improve the situation. Right now it requires a full-time research it seems.

And IMHO this kind of ubiquitous data collection is even a national security threat, as an adversary can easily track your servicemen to find sensitive personal to either assassinate them on the eve of a conflict, or at least to collect Kompromat to be used to gain intelligence.

Salesman told me that it does not work without a smartphone.

And that it requires the dealer - the vehicle is a still statue without a whole infrastructure behind it to let it work (must be network connected and exchanging with some servers in China, he said - I do not know to which extent; the company greenlights the links to your other gear, and without that the car will not work... Things like that).

Everything I need can be handled via CarPlay or physical dials/buttons in the vehicle. All this surveillance - on post-COVID priced vehicles no less, averaging ~$50k - is absurd, and I refuse to engage with it.

what is ATA? what do they collect?

EDIT: Advertiser/Tracker/Analytics

The article focuses on Chinese vehicles, but caution should be exercised with all vehicles.

"But they are my tools and helpers. More smarter they are, more help I get from them"

"They may not remain as your tools and helpers forever. Smarter tools and helpers turn into your masters and enemies."

"But my tool seller tells me that smarter tools give me more benefits"

"Your benefit is not exactly the goal of a seller. Their sales are their goal. They add smartness to the tools only to beat competition. Seller is not a sage with a mission of telling what's good for you."

"So, what's good for me?"

"As I said, always keep your subjects dumb. History tells you that fall of every empire is primarily due to the ruler's inability to keep their subjects in line, as the subject got smarter and autonomous. As someone said - it's not about food, it's about keeping those ants in line."

"But dumber tools would mean I need to work harder to beat my own competition."

"That's exactly the weak point of yours, which is exploited by the seller. They flare up fights and sell you the smart arrows. They put you in a gladiator fight and make stock bets. They normalize your working as a slave for your home loan. They won't even let you have time to think about what you are supposed to do with your life."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"You need to reclaim your thinking time. You need to realize how many ways things were 'normalized' for you. You need to break that normalization."

"Should I buy a smart car or not?"

"You shouldn't need a car at all. Live in a city that has good enough public transport and walkable distances to things you need. Car driving is normalized and forced by the city planners who only cared for the sprawl of the city, not the ease of living."

"But changing jobs is not an option in these times"

"Not if you are ready to break your normalized ways"

"..."

I wonder if this is going to create a market for older tech/vehicles that were made prior to ease-of-malware integration? I imagine some sort of cyberpunk future where people are scouring landfills for old 16-bit video game console chips that haven't been backdoored.

then using the app (which if you do, you deserve) added 20+ trackers.

only Tesla have full trackers and PII leak on the car itself. which again, you deserve.

The need is for people to have at least half a brain, and it's not happening. Almost all privacy conversations I've ever had with people ended with "so what".

-Companies with interests contrary to your own will know X, Y and Z about you.

-So what?

Smartphones generally allow the user to disable cellular data ("mobile data")

If cars are "smartphones on wheels" then why not turn cellular data off

If that's not possible then perhaps cars are not "smartphones on wheels"

The ability to control whether cellular data is on or off is argubaly an important "feature" of the smartphone. Otherwise, why include it