Hacker Read top | best | new | newcomments | leaders | about | bookmarklet login

Can you even buy a car without all this software crap anymore?


sort by: page size:

Car manufacturers try to hook you into their software when you really should never use any of it. Unfortunately these days you can't even buy a car without a pile of software in it. Instead you should use only the products that come with the phone and totally ignore the preinstalled crapware that comes with a car. We need to go back to the days where a car does only one thing and one thing well.

Do all new cars have software?

Don’t forget the software of your car, which is gradually becoming nontrivial.

Speaking of the lack of software as a feature, are there any new cars you can still buy that aren’t bloated with software anti features?

Things work like that just fine: buy an old car and call it a day.

The less software in my car the better.


Really? If the car contained no software, people would still buy it over alternatives that contain software at various levels for a better driving experience, comfort, and entertainment?

"I don't want software running my car."

Too late. Every car since about 1993 is entirely reliant on electronic computers, and many were even in 1980. Most of them reprogrammable, though usually cumbersome to do so.


What about my obsolete car software?

Which is why the last car I bought, I intentionally chose something that had practically zero software.

You said it so well, cars have become too bloated with software that barely any local mechanic would want to touch it. Happened to me and this is the major reason why I am slowly shifting to older cars, they are way easier and cheaper to repair.

Cars are nothing like software, they clearly deteriorate with time to the point parts eventually need replacing. You could argue there's a better case for a subscription model for buying cars than for software.

Or any automobile software.

Not for certain cars, however, as it seems you can still buy just about any part, new or even enhanced, for common 50s-70s American cars --- which don't even have a computer.

That may be true. But software is also much more ubiquitous and essential these days. At least in the 90s you could be confident your car wasn't buggy.

Do cars these days also come with non-replacable non-free software or tons of tracking?

Even 2005 sounds new to me. I drive cars from the 1980s.

I'd love to be able to buy a new car without any software. My phone does anything I would want to be able to do in a car. But it's not possible, due to a combination of regulations and what the mass market wants.


"cars are basically software at this point"

Really? A lot of the value add is software, but there is still a ton of hardware that goes into a car.


Oof, so true. Dealer software is stuck in the 90s.

Cars are already full of software.
next

Legal | privacy