For over a century, the automobile has represented freedom, power, and the thrill of mechanical mastery. The connection between driver, machine, and road defined what it meant to own and love a car. But in today’s digital era, a different trend is unfolding. Cars are no longer just machines designed to take us from point A to point B. Increasingly, they resemble something else entirely: smartphones on wheels.
I made sure my last car I bought had no modem in it. This is going to get a lot harder for my next. I will be probably limited to the used vehicles market.
I’m gonna be honest, I want my car to be an iPad on wheels. 120fps, buttery smooth animations, 3000nit brightness 19” vertical panel with CarPlay Ultra.
However, I’d be totally satisfied with the Slate truck model that has an app on a tablet that hooks directly into the truck. That’d be honestly more ideal.
Software enables new revenue streams. Manufacturers can lock out features and force people to pay subscriptions. The industry wants to normalize that so they get bigger margins and a source of revenue that extends long after the initial sale. Motor vehicle as a service.
I like controls that don’t distract from driving. Computers without any internet connection aren’t a problem. I don’t mind all the buttons and switches being connected to a micro-controller. It saves a lot of wiring and complexity. While I don’t like screens I can see how they are useful for some people. Ideally you can use a vehicle offline and with the screens off.
You can turn a lot of this stuff off. Still. Most of the driver assistant stuff is optional still.
In another few years? Probably not. They will probably change insurance policies to hold you liable if you drive without it.
They’re trying to for sure. Thats why I insisted on no electric doors, windows, or locks when I bought my truck. The CD player built in got yanked for an aftermarket mp3 CD player . no digital displays indash either
So the slate has a market after all
If you think that thing won’t have trackers everywhere, you’re dreaming.
Yes it’s why China was able to leapfrog and become a EV manufacturing giant. They were never able to compete in the traditional ICE vehicle market with the Europeans, Japanese and Americans. Since building an internal combustion engine that complies with the regulation, is fuel efficient and fast is really difficult for them since they lack the century of experience that the other manufacturers have. An electric engine is much less complex and since China has decades of experience building batteries, electronics and software, because they make the smartphones for almost every smartphone brand in the world, they were able to set up shop and catch up to foreign competitors very quickly in the EV market.
Since building an internal combustion engine that complies with the regulation, is fuel efficient and fast is really difficult for them since they lack the century of experience that the other manufacturers have.
My 2c:
You’re right they are going to become the EV king, but its not because they lack experience making ICE engines. Chinese vehicles with ICE engines are being sold on the European market and have been sold there for a while now. They weren’t able to out compete other manufacturers on the EU market because other brands have been well established and their lower prices were not significant enough. What I mean is: you aren’t going to disrupt a well established and saturated market with the same product.
The shift to EV presented an opportunity of equal ground on the EU market, in fact on worldwide markets. Domestic makers were not fast enough to adapt and so Tesla was able to gain a significant portion at the start. Other makers caught up soon but weren’t able to offer EV cars for the same prices as they traditionally did ICE cars. Now you have an unsaturated market with highly priced products. Chinese companies can exploit that. They don’t even have to disrupt any markets, they just need to enter them. Demand is there, supply is lackluster.
Its also an opportunity for new companies to start up and start picking at the old guard of 50+ year old car manufacturers. This is where you’re right. New companies don’t need to develop an ICE because its complex and difficult, making an EV is easier. Its just ironic the old car companies weren’t able to adapt. Was it their old ways? Bureaucracy? Oil investments? I don’t know.
I don’t think that’s the reason. China makes tons of aftermarket replacement parts and even OEM parts.
Aftermarket.
There’s no Chinese translation for copyright infringement.
侵犯版權
Cars have been giant
smartphones{tracking and data collection gold mines} for years nowIt’s nothing less than a war against property rights.
They are pushing software into cars because they see copyright, and more specifically the DMCA anti-circumvention clause, as an excuse to retain their control over your property after they sell it to you. Rentiership is 100% of their goal, and providing useful functionality is nothing but an afterthought at best.
“Subscriptions” to hardware you already own is entirely FRAUD and executives of companies that engage in it deserve long prison sentences.
John Deere cough cough
we always flip off the John Deere plant as we drive by. Family tradition.
Yes, and car manufacturers are becoming SaaS vendors
Shit as a Subscription
Thank you
They’ve been. Demand your privacy back
The sad thing is ‘smartphone on wheels’ is a slur.
Smartphones don’t have to be soulless and uniform and enshittified and subscription based and completely inaccessible and straight up anti-consumer/designed to fail, but here we are.
I really hope Slate takes off though (and they make a nimble hatchback for their next chassis). It feels like the antithesis of all this.
Kind of disappointing Bezos is involved though.
Backed, not owned though, and not alone:
https://slaterides.com/slate-auto-investors/
I view it as a net positive if Amazon wants them for EV delivery. A substantial guaranteed commercial customer is huge, and Slate isn’t exactly into dystopian tracking electronics or anything.
The simplicity of the Slate interior is fantastic. They developed a screenless touch screen that you can rotate without even looking at them. I wish I were in the market for this type of vehicle.
Interior photo
Yeah, that is so perfect.
Imagine a sedan or hatchback. It would be light as a feather (in terms of curb weight) and still feel spacious being so ‘clean’ inside.
My radio doesn’t even have a screen 😅
The only computer in my car is the radio, and that stays off most of the time. I’m honestly thrilled to not have so much tech in the car. Its nice to be able to fix nearly anything with some pliers, a multi-meter, and an adjustable spanner.
No engine control module in that thing?
Nope! Mid 70s MG, carbuereted. As far as I know it has a crank triggered ignition, ergo fully mechanical.
Edit: autocorrect assumed I no longer had this vehicle
Cries in atmosphere
Tuned to run slightly lean with an aftermarket catalytic convertor installed.
I do my best not to destroy the environment while still maintaining a vehicle I can work on myself
Lean burning increases mileage, but produces nitrous oxides.
Rich burning produces carbon monoxide, which eventually converts to CO2 in the atmosphere.
Unit for unit, NOx emissions are 265 times as damaging as CO/CO2.
https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/how-climate-works/some-greenhouse-gases-are-stronger-others
To successfully convert NOx, catalytic converters need a stoichiometric or slightly rich fuel/air mixture to the engine.
Guess i have work to do. Thank you 🙏
Indeed.
Unfortunately, no matter how well you tune your carburetor, just a change in atmospheric temperature is enough to throw off your mixture.
The only feasible way to adjust it fast enough to keep up with atmospheric changes is with some kind of fuel injection, an ECM, and an O2 sensor to provide the feedback needed for closed-loop mixture control.
Fortunately: https://speeduino.com/
the automobile has represented freedom
That’s a part I never understood.
Cara are fucking expensive, they’re literally money drains. Unless you have that much money, you ainns having a car.
In Europe, bot having a car generally nis perfectly fine, you still can go everywhere easily as that place hasn’t been turned into a cars-only paradise
In the US, and countries that modelled themselves after it, you’re not going anywhere without a car. Public transit it shit at best and in many places completely absent. Want to try a bicycle? Good luck, you gotta mix in with the murder cars.
Cars do not represent freedom, they’re the opposite
In Europe, not having a car generally is perfectly fine
In cities.
For those living in the countryside, not really, as distances are huge and public transport is rare (think a single bus that stops at a bus station a km or two away and passes maybe once every 2h) or non-existent.
That said, over 70% of people in Europe live in urban areas.
This depends on the country. Switzerland has excellent transit to even remote towns. And it has an excellent car culture for this reason as well.
Compared to walking or riding a horse they are freedom. They cost a lot, but also enable a lot.
i wish we had transit here, but that doesn’t mean cars are not freedom. Even in europe most people drive.
Imagine a car without cellular connectivity
a 40k-50k USD phone.
You mean, like the car that I drive currently? It’s pretty tough to picture, honestly.
Tough to picture? Maybe improve your arts skills.
No need to improve your art skills. All you need to do now is feed your 2026 Civic some keywords to generate an AI image.
Archive link to an FAQ for the Slate electric trucklette that claims no sim cards and minimum digital bits. No clue if it will be a good vehicle so don’t take this as an endorsement. https://archive.ph/PMKpC
Anyone know other options?
Fucking sim cards in cars. I hate everything.
Find a car that fits your needs and then pull the fuse powering the sim card before it leaves the lot. If it breaks, put the fuse back and don’t buy it.
My 2019 corolla lost the right speaker and mic access when I did that. I fixed the right speaker by crossing some wires, and the mic hasn’t really been needed enough for me to dig deeper to fix it.
Suzuki Jimny, still comes in a very basic electrical system
Have they ever made an electric car that didn’t have that fucking SHIT ?
Yes, plenty. The pre-faclift Ioniq for example
My 2015 Nissan Leaf asks every few weeks if I want to allow the telematics to phone home. When you say no, it obeys. (I also removed the SIM card anyways.)
You can convert an older car to electric. As basic as it gets but with a new mode of power
For $40,000 plus.
Also the price of most new cars.
When I ask car people about that they say (basically) “no, it won’t fit”.
Yes, there can be challenges about where to put the batteries, and some vehicles are certainly easier than others. But that hasn’t stopped a LOT of people from doing it anyways.
30 seconds of internet searching will show plenty of retrofits. One guy retrofitted a 1980s Delorean with a Chevy Bolt electric powertrain, and now it accelerates twice as fast as it ever did with gasoline.
If the state of open source phones are anything to judge by, we will have open source cars at some point, except the foot brake isn’t working yet, so you’ll have to use the hand brake for now. Cars and phones both take a lot of resources to develop, and maybe you’ll be able to “de-Stellantis” your car at some point instead of going fully open source, but judging by the recent steps Google has taken to weaken de-Googling, I’m not sure how long that would last either.
Some of these comments are the most elitist, contrarian bullshit I’ve ever heard.
This article is about the positives and negatives of car connectivity, not how cool you are because you choose to ride a bike. You’re so cool because instead of choosing to not connect your phone to your car, you bought a rusty 07 Camry?
I’m not the biggest fan of the choices these companies are making either, but if your 1997 Mazda 929 is a personality trait, it’s not much different from the ding dong who bought the Ram 3500 to showcase his peanut balls.
Personally I think it is cool to not give money to anti-consumer companies, which I assume all car companies have become by now if they all have computers. Certainly they cannot forever resist the temptation to use the power they have over users when they control the software running on our hardware.
I don’t disagree with either of your points. However, I’m not edgy because I refuse to shop at Target. I’m saying these comments are a bit smug.
You’re so cool because instead of choosing to not connect your phone to your car, you bought a rusty 07 Camry?
Yes.
Yeah, I completely agree.
I drive old cars because they don’t spy on me and they’re inexpensive to own. I have an 07 hybrid and an 06 minivan. They’re only an expression of my personality to the extent that I don’t care about my car and need something to get from A-B. I don’t flaunt it, and I’ll probably replace it with an older EV because refilling gas is annoying for my dedicated commuter (the hybrid).
I’d rather ride my bike, but my work is too far away (2 hours on transit, ~1.5 hybrid w/ bike, maybe 1 with a riced ebik, each way), and my reasons for sticking with my employer and not moving are more important than my preference for cycling.
My mode of transportation is about utility, not expression of personality. I’d drive a truck if it made sense, I just haven’t found one that makes more sense than renting one the 2-3 times per year I need to haul something that doesn’t fit in my minivan.
When I need to upgrade my car, I’ll find something sensible and maybe remove the parts I don’t like. It’s not a big deal.
Agreed. Minivans are legit.
Hello, I’m here for my check-in so that you can tell me whether or not I’m allowed to like something. Let me know when you’re ready to start.
Neither I nor anyone else cares what you like, but don’t act like what you like makes you better than anyone else.
Turtles are awesome.
Whatever you say, bud. I’m really just here to get my certification from the board.
Thanks.Seeking approval seems to be your forte.
