https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ultra-the-nex...

I’m trying to keep mine alive as long as possible.

On a related note, the Bluetooth stack in my F150 doesn't work very well with phone calls. I can place calls fine, but receiving calls will not route them through vehicle audio. I have to turn on speaker phone to participate. It's a known problem "won't fix" from Ford, regardless of the fact that they've sold millions of these trucks (mine is a 2017 and has never worked).

I discovered this just yesterday while researching the Equinox for a friend.

She is no longer interested in the Equinox despite her loving its looks.

If it's a pre-computer car, all you need is a machine shop or access to one.

1980s widespread adoption of electronic fuel injection - this is generally a good thing, cars become more complex but run better more of the time

1990s widespread adoption of more advanced emissions control systems - for reliability i'd say this is only a backwards step - none of these systems are required to propel the car down the road but many of them can stop a car from driving. They are additional complexity, weight and cost for limited functional benefit (in this generation, fuel economy improvements were fairly small compared to the leap from carbs to EFI in the previous gen).

2000s widespread adoption of on-car networks, the emissions diagnostics technology introduced in the previous decade was now no longer the primary use of on-car networks. Now your car stereo knew how to increase its volume as your road speed increased etc. screens became larger and colourful. Onboard software (typically bug ridden) became a security risk.

2010s widespread adoption of telematics maybe? That was more mid-late 2010s though

Don't they have proprietary batteries? So you're out of luck at end-of-life if that company still isn't in business. And if a part fails are there replacements?

I'll give you the price is cheap. But if we're just looking for cheap then OP has nothing to worry about. There's cheap transportation in a variety of forms if you buy used.

They've done it, actually:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyyHqhAeuF4

Which is to say if they made cars that only lasted 3 years they could only charge $35k for the high end ones, and a lot of people would be looking to buy a base model without the optional heater. Or worse for them, if cars become too unaffordable people will start demanding good public transit.

That's the rep Nissan has with their CVT transmissions.

You could also face a recall if enough of them do it.

https://www.jalopnik.com/1805274/worst-transmission-recalls-...

It's too bad that the dozens of old Prius models littering your grocery parking lot can't reply to you on HN.

Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.

What's the vintage of the vehicle? When I was in the 'car enthusiast' phase of my life ECU "reflash/remaps/tunes" were very popular and still happen on more 'modern' cars.

Just to be clear - I hate these systems. They are unnecessary, don't improve safety, and increase the cost of new cars for everyone.

But, no system in any car works the way you described it. Even if the car recognizes a speed limit sign from an adjecent street(which happens all the time and I have experienced it too) - the only thing that will happen is that it will bong at you, it won't do "an emergency stop". The more hardcore version of the EU laws around it will require cars to stop applying throttle when going faster than the limit, but literally no legislation proposed or implemented now or in the future requires the cars to actively slow down(ie - apply brakes without your input).

I also don't have any need for that, because I never answer or even use my phone while driving.

Airplane mode also usually keeps Bluetooth and WiFi enabled so that's one thing to look for.

e.g.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-privat...

> You must inspect all reversing lamps fitted to vehicles first used from 1 September 2009 other than quadricycles and three-wheeled vehicles.

Older vehicles don't require a reverse light. My P-reg vehicle (1996?) didn't have a working reverse lamp, but passed the MOT. I have since fixed it.

The EU mandates the presence of an emergency cellular radio on board of new vehicles in case of crashes. It took some convincing, but that radio is now supposed to be off by default.

You can demand a refund for Windows keys that came along with your computer if you disagree with the ToS (which has been tested by a French court IIRC), and that ability is actually included in the Windows EULA these days, but getting that kind of thing enforced will be draining. Repeated calls and repeated emails at the very least, filing complaints and threatening legal action if the vendor doesn't want to comply.

I knew a former manager of OTA (over the air updates) at one manufacturer. I said that needed to be used for emergency updates only and not so people could be late with features or QA. She totally agreed and said it was becoming a battle with all the software teams thinking it meant they could be late and it'd be OK. They think it makes the deadline fuzzy or non-existant.

Update your apps all you want. Change the layout. Betray your users and sell their data to AI, whatever, the consequences are on you.

Update my car, change its performance or range or the layouts of the buttons in the infotainment system so that I might be distracted or expecting an outcome that is suddenly no longer possible and I or the people I injure in the accident have to live with the consequences for the rest of our lives.

Maybe not within the confines of the head unit but you can still stick your phone onto the dash like I do in my (dumb) cars.

The correct place ELA / T&A consent should be defined is in something like the GDPR -- along with strict requirements as to what standard of consumer free choice is required for it to be enforceable.

What we actually need is a Consumer Protection Alliance that is made by and funded by people who want protection from this and are willing to pay for the lawyers needed to run all of the cases and bring these cases before a judge over and over and over again until they win.

This would mean people like you and me and a million others of us paying $20-$50/month out of pocket to hire people to sue companies that do this shit.

This thing about judges... if you brought a complaint to court that doesn't show any harm, you'll get the opposite result that you want: judges will expand the legality of clickthroughs. This is what happens, without a doubt.

Privacy advocates have numerous strategic failures. One is failure to show meaningful harm of specifically the data gathering permissions in these clickthroughs, in any legal venue, anywhere. The harms have always been of other issues, like a data breach, and even then, the harms amount to ones of dollars per person, in places where judges have approved data breach settlements. Another failure is of leadership/education: they cannot communicate the very simple idea to the public that there is privacy in the sense of limiting government overreaching versus privacy in the sense of limiting dissemination of embarrassing personal information. There are so many steps in this privacy mission before the judges.