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- cross-posted to:
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Polestar will no longer be allowed to sell new vehicles in the United States beginning with the 2027 model year after the Trump administration denied the Swedish electric-vehicle maker authorization under federal rules governing connected vehicle technology, according to Reuters.
The decision essentially blocks Polestar from introducing new models in the US market as Washington continues to express national security concerns over vehicles with technology tied to China.
Other automakers with Chinese ownership have sought different courses of action. Volvo Cars received authorization from the Commerce Department in May, though the automaker said it must continue demonstrating compliance across its US lineup.
These features, minus the map updates, existed for decades before cars were internet connected. They employed this exotic technology called “a remote.” The remote always worked unless its batteries were dead, didn’t require paying for a subscription, didn’t track your every move, and there were no servers that could be turned off to prevent it from working. In fact, even if your car’s manufacturer went out of business completely, it would still work! Crazy, I know.
Even if this absolutely must be done via smartphone with some ghastly app or another, Wi-Fi exists and has a similar range. Despite all the tech elsewhere in my life, I have never felt that it was not suitably enriched by not being able to twiddle with my car from anywhere outside of the 100 foot or so range of its remote.
Given that the current fad seems to be to use Android Auto or Apple CarPlay for your navigation anyway, on-board navigation is really rather moot. And even if it weren’t, update data could readily be handled locally via a connection to your phone or even, ye gods forbid, a USB cable to the same. Back in the good old days this could also be handled with a physical disk, which admittedly you typically had to pay for but you could take it or leave it as you pleased. And the damn thing would work without it. Nowadays this could be trivially handled with a simple internet download and a $2 SD card, which come to think of it is precisely how my current aftermarket head unit does it.
This is a hole the automakers have quite purposefully drilled directly into their own respective feet by getting greedy and salivating over recurring subscription revenue. It’s to benefit them, not you, and I have zero sympathy for them because of it.
I’ve never heard of a remote to start air con, but sure it could exist. Live traffic and map updates - the other 2 of the 3 things - do not.
There are workarounds for all of it, though. A separate device for navigation with its own maps, even physically going to the car to warm it up (that’s what my parents did). But these are convenience features, and those alternatives are all less convenient.
My WiFi network doesn’t extend to where I park my car. When at work, shopping or away, that is probably true for the vast majority of people.
Whether it’s Google using my personal data to show me ads or paying a small fee to the car manufacturer makes little difference.
My sum total point is that, yes, people do want these features. What you meant in your post was that you don’t want them. And that’s fine, but you’re overreaching.
Remote starts from the factory that set heat and cooling are about 20 years old sorta. Mostly in the form of auto client control paired with remote start.
But remote starts have been around since the 1960s. And just leaving your ac/heater set to what you like or pre setting it before you get out isn’t hard.
My dad’s old truck when I was a kid was a 1980s Toyota with a remote start. We would just leave the heater set to max before we got out and then it would be ready when we started it in the morning to go to school!