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Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

bloomberg.com

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Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#21

Post by sz4kerto »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #2

I don't want my car to be a software platform. I want it to be like my microwave. It might have software, but software is only incidental to its operation. I do not want to tweet from my microwave. I do not want ads in traffic. This is non-negotiable for safety reasons alone. I don't care what I have to do to attain that. If that means replacing the radio. I will do it. If you brick my car if I don't have a Manufactu…

> I want it to be like my microwave.

Yes. Plus: I want it to be like a simple microwave that does what I need: heats for a certain amount of time at a certain power level. 2 physical knobs.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#25

Post by tshaddox »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #2

I don't want my car to be a software platform. I want it to be like my microwave. It might have software, but software is only incidental to its operation. I do not want to tweet from my microwave. I do not want ads in traffic. This is non-negotiable for safety reasons alone. I don't care what I have to do to attain that. If that means replacing the radio. I will do it. If you brick my car if I don't have a Manufactu…

The microwave analogy is tricky, because those are generally not worth repairing (or even doing routine maintenance to prolong life) and are cheap and reliable enough that you wouldn’t want to pay a subscription for them unless it was a very cheap subscription. I’d love to have that situation for a car, but I don’t think it’s realistic without moving to a subscription model.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#26

Post by obviouslynotme »

lostlogin wrote: post #8
obviouslynotme wrote: post #2

I don't want my car to be a software platform. I want it to be like my microwave. It might have software, but software is only incidental to its operation. I do not want to tweet from my microwave. I do not want ads in traffic. This is non-negotiable for safety reasons alone. I don't care what I have to do to attain that. If that means replacing the radio. I will do it. If you brick my car if I don't have a Manufactu…

> I do not want ads in traffic. This is non-negotiable for safety reasons alone. I know it’s what you want but is it preventable? What’s the difference when today there are LED screens across the intersection you are trying to navigate that are intensely bright and displaying moving images? I’d argue that dimmer images in the car would be less distracting. However we appear on track to get both these dismal options.…

It has nothing to do with flashing images, which I do not tolerate in my car either. It has to do with ads themselves, which have always walked the line between interactivity and malware. I don't want someone to be able to run arbitrary code on my car for $0.0004. No way.

Could you imagine ransomware on your CAR? While you are driving in it?? No thank you.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#27

Post by bellyfullofbac »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #4

It is only a matter of time before there are jailbreaks and free / open source car operating systems. For related 'food for thought', see Cory Doctorow's "Car Wars" which combines car software hacking with self-driving vehicles for a unique near-future sci-fi story. Edit: downvotes? Instead, you could respond with why you disagree and we can have a discussion. Do you think there will not be jailbreaks? It has been ha…

There's a worry that insurance won't cover you if the car manufacturers say "Oh he hacked the software". Accidentally hit someone? Now you have to pay the full damage. Got into an accident? Sorry, pay your own hospital, your coverage has been cancelled.

A neater hack would be for the jailbreak to delete itself and restore the original software when it detects that the car crashed, e.g. do it on airbag deployment.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#28

Post by FpUser »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #11

We will rent everything, and we will love it. https://medium.com/illumination/in-2030-youll-own-nothing-an...

The only things I rent currently are Utilities, Internet Access, Standby servers for my business, Auto Insurance and Netflix. No SAAS / PAAS / MyAss etc.

So no I will not love any further encroachment and actively resist it.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#29

Post by 0xB31B1B »

I think its totally fine for a car maker to charge for OTA updates in a Saas/subscription model. The reality is that software requires long term maintenance and charging subscriptions is the only way to get a lot of the features to work out for the life time of the car. What I am NOT ok with is charging for normal things that do not need to be OTA updated or are not upgrades, like apple carplay (the example in the article). The way I see this working out is that if I buy a MY 2021 car, I should not have to pay a subscription to maintain the features I bought it with, but if I then want upgrades in subsequent model years, I should pay a monthly fee for those upgrades.

Re: Cars are about to be a software platform, subscriptions and all

#30

Post by jackdrb »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #11

We will rent everything, and we will love it. https://medium.com/illumination/in-2030-youll-own-nothing-an...

'we will love it' is the expectation that companies hope for, but I cannot imagine permanently renting such essential products (for a significant proportion of people) like cars.

Fingers crossed, but realistically one can only expect the worst.

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