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.
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.
Cars have been giant
smartphones{tracking and data collection gold mines} for years nowThey’ve been. Demand your privacy back
Yes.
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.
Just?
Yes, and car manufacturers are becoming SaaS vendors
Combining two of the things I most hate. Makes sense.
It’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.
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.
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.
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.
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 car is basically an accessory that turns my phone into a car, yes.
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.
Bill Burr calls it “driving an iPad”
Sadly yes and they’re mainly taking the worst aspects. Normal built in features like heated seats as subscriptions, dropping smartphone integration for their own far inferior dogshit UI and features, and so on.
No need for data grabbing AA/Carplay shit in my car, stock ui works superior. But give people the option
Volkswagen is so bad at this! They have phone connectivity but they bog down the infotainment with they’re own crap software. The GPS is so bad it slowes down the whole system. I will never use vw maps. Ever. Just stop!
And Chevy just doesn’t have android auto on or apple play on their lower trim levels. But they do compensate by integrating Google maps at least.
Kia is the best though. Minimal proprietary software. Plug your phone in and android auto automatically comes up.
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