A pirated car would just be a more free way to access the $10k/yr pay wall you live your life behind. Car-dominant infrastructure is vendor lock in.

Edit: fixed picture

  • FlexibleToast@lemmy.world
    3313·
    10 months ago

    These are things that need a subscription, though… These are remote features that require internet connectivity and application serving. Things that don’t just come with a one-time fee. These are actual services being provided by Kia or Hyundai. This isn’t the same as putting a hardware feature of your car behind an arbitrary pay wall.

            • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
              8·
              10 months ago

              Then if the manufacture is just communicating with the car using standard internet, what is stopping self-hosted software communicating with the car?

              • Lmaydev@programming.dev
                1·
                10 months ago

                Yeah on second thought it likely has to be satellite or something.

                Otherwise roadside assistance would be shit haha

                What it boils down to is why would a company spend money so a small percentage of tech enthusiasts who buy their cars can use advanced features for free.

                We always forget we’re a tiny percentage of any market.

                • baseless_discourse@mander.xyz
                  2·
                  9 months ago

                  Otherwise roadside assistance would be shit haha

                  If I have to guess, I think they are probably on different systems. As roadside assistance pre-dates smart cars, and satellite in general has pretty bad receptions under a roof.

                  What it boils down to is why would a company spend money so a small percentage of tech enthusiasts who buy their cars can use advanced features for free.

                  Because “laws”.

                  Of course, there is no way to let corporate do good on its own. Corporates will never respects its user, the environment, and basic consumer rights; if they are left to operate on their own.

                  If the EU can force apple to care a little bit about the environment and basic consumer rights, then they probably can let the car companies do the same.

        • jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works
          42·
          10 months ago

          An internal Ethernet connection to a replaceable cellular modem would be a solution to this as you could use whatever carrier you want to, or just replace the cellular modem with any other source of internet connectivity you choose.

    • seejur@lemmy.worldEnglish
      27·
      10 months ago

      149 to send a ping to locate a car? For an API call to lock unlock? How many API calls are worth 149 per year? In which world?

    • fakeman_pretendname@feddit.uk
      132·
      10 months ago

      Make the car cost £400 more, once, when it’s bought first hand. That will cover any costs for the lifetime of the vehicle. There you go, chuck the subscription in the sea.

    • voxel@sopuli.xyz
      74·
      10 months ago

      yeah, i agree. it costs them money so there’s little to no incentive to run that stuff for free.
      also the price is reasonable (about as much as a single Nano ec2 instance on aws + mobile plan that’s required to connect the car to the internet) and pretty much negligible when compared to amount of money you’ll be spending on that vehicle anyway.
      then there are privacy concerns tho. do you trust kia with knowledge of your exact car location, 24/7? (I’d assume it doesn’t connect to their servers without the subscription?)
      also that information (Exact location of all kia vehicles, with exact model numbers and registration information) seems like a goldmine for car thieves if leaked (or accessed by a third party.)
      also, fuck heated seat other hardware/local software subscriptions

    • XTornado@lemmy.ml
      2·
      10 months ago

      I see your point but the costs to most if not all of what they offer are minimal… And for sure most of that could be a single payment when buying the car, calculated an estimated usage during the estimated life of the car, they could just be part of the price of the car not even indicated.

      • MethodicalSpark@lemmy.world
        42·
        10 months ago

        The vast majority of people won’t know how to manage a server in their basement. It makes no sense to invest in this capability that will be utilized by an extremely small fraction of car buyers.

        I would very rarely advocate for a subscription service but this one makes as much sense as a mobile phone plan.