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from the control-with-a-macbook-wheel dept.
Apple Reportedly Teams With Kia to Produce Apple Car:
Apple is investing about $3.6 billion in a car partnership with Kia Motors, according to a report out of South Korea.
[...] Apple will set up production with Kia and build Apple cars at the company's facility in Georgia, Korean newspaper DongA Ilbo reported, though the report did not cite sources for the information, Bloomberg reported.
The newspaper also said that the two companies could sign a deal on Feb. 17 and are planning to introduce Apple cars in 2024, with an initial target to produce 100,000 vehicles a year.
Last month, South Korean automaker Hyundai, an affiliate of Kia's, announced it was in preliminary talks with Apple on developing a self-driving car, before quickly backing away from the statement and saying it has received requests from a number of technology suitors to develop autonomous electric vehicles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @03:53PM (21 children)
My spouse and I are both in the market for new cars, but after seeing how newer cars log everything the driver does and sends back telemetry data to the car companies so they can track everywhere the driver goes, how fast, etc., we opted instead to keep our old junkers. I would rather buy a 50 year old junk heap than give up my privacy.
Last spring I offered a local Toyota dealer CASH, even paying the MSRP on a $30k car. After a month of negotiating (not on price, but on this niggling little detail as I wanted the tracking hardware removed from the car) they turned me down. The parent company said no.
I instead spent $7000 on a total rehaul of my 2004 car.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:01PM (16 children)
Dunno about the US but the legal requirements for car production - especially air bag triggering systems - require logs to be kept. And airbags are compulsory.
Maybe not transmitted (my car is a 2016 Ford and it can't talk home in any way), but stored in the ECU in a black-box fashion. They also mandate an emergency calling facility if you have your phone connected to your car and the airbag deploys.
You will likely never be able to buy a car without such ever again. You're about 10-15 years too late to do anything about it, because it's been in cars for at least that long, legally mandated for that kind of length, and the time to object was back then, not now that it's in every car on the road.
To be honest, if you have your phone in the car, that's doing exactly the same anyway, so it's not like you're escaping it unless you literally turn your phone off for the full length of every car journey.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:10PM
I am not strongly opposed to the idea of vehicles logging important things in black boxes that can be recovered in the event of a major accident. I'll expressly state, in case it is not obvious, that this logged data has no way of being "transmitted" or communicated to anywhere except the innards of the black box.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:41PM (7 children)
Every aspect of your automobile down to the lowest detail has been made to comply with Federal laws.
Why do you think all cars look identical these days? They have to be to comply with all the laws.
As for the tracking... nobody in office except an outsider to the Swamp like Trump was would dare to roll back any Federal laws that control you. You only hope to roll back any of this in America is if more outsiders are elected to national politics.
(Score: 4, Informative) by julian on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:50PM (6 children)
-Former President of the USA, Donald Trump
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:59PM (5 children)
Trump Said ‘I Like Taking The Guns Early,’ Not Harris [factcheck.org]
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:23PM (4 children)
You have got a script running in your head about Trump, so you reply with a gun story about him. This is about automobiles. Not the same thing at all. Trump was going to (did he?) roll back increasing MPG requirements on car makers, giving them more flexibility to design cars consumers want. The vehicle tracking did not come up, to my mind, and since he was only in office one term, there is only so much you can do.
As for what Trump said in any one occasion... I don't put a lot of weight on it. I judge him by his ACTIONS, not words. Actions are what matter.
As for Trump himself, I've got no cult admiration. You will notice in my post that I said an outsider like Trump and that we need to elect more outsiders. I stand by this. The entire government is corrupt, and the bums need to be thrown out. The government is nothing more than a moneymaking scam for its participants: politicians, NGOs, policy making organizations, etc. Their entire livelihood is based on telling Americans what they must do. This is not how a free country is run.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @06:44PM (2 children)
> You will notice in my post that I said an outsider like Trump and that we need to elect more outsiders.
...an outsider (but not already corrupt like Trump)...and we need to elect more outsiders.
ftfy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @09:25PM (1 child)
You say Trump was corrupt. You know one thing he has done that has not enriched him? He donates his presidential salary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05 2021, @01:46PM
I've heard Trump say that he donated his salary, but I want the rest of the story. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify [wikipedia.org]
Where is it donated? Does it go to a closely held foundation, where it benefits his family? Is it like many of his pledged donations that were never actually donated?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-promised-millions-to-charity-we-found-less-than-10000-over-7-years/2016/06/28/cbab5d1a-37dd-11e6-8f7c-d4c723a2becb_story.html [washingtonpost.com]
OR see archived version, https://archive.is/8WqsZ [archive.is]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday February 04 2021, @08:14PM
If he did this it was in no way, shape or form with consumers in mind. It was entirely with the idea of increasing fossil fuel use. His entire energy and environmental policy was heavily geared towards this.
Consumers tend to want what cars they get marketed (brainwashed?) to want. Why else would pickups all have their beds shortened to useless proportions so they can have extended cabs and double cabs? Essentially they have made them SUV's with an unprotected cargo area. As far as the rest of new cars go, I wonder who really needs their vehicle to be what they have become. A multi-informational display shows reams of unnecessary information. Plus what the dashboard displays show. Symbols for various things can light up that require you to consult the big fat manual (over half of which is dire warnings about what can go or you can do wrong - probably written by lawyers) to find out what they mean. The dashboard tells you the speed limit if it can see a sign (if it can, I can) and it warns you if you are speeding (who else gets that warning?). Headlights have four settings, and that's with a basic model. Ditto with the wipers. Excitedly they explain you can connect your phone, no, I don't want to. My phone is a phone. You get automatically enrolled in trial periods for satellite radio and a connect service to the car company (might have to link your phone for that). You can turn your car into a WiFi hotspot! You can plug in a USB drive with your own music and video, it will "conveniently" connect and add track information (who else gets that information?). I've found my way for decades without a GPS. Loads of other "features".
What I really want is apparently no longer generally available. Bench seats. I would be OK with just a CD player (heck, I even still have a huge box of cassettes I recorded way back), although being able to plug in mp3's would be OK. None of that needs to go beyond the car though. Certainly don't need or want Google Play or Apple Play. A drop down tailgate instead of a hatchback. I would be fine with manual roll down windows. A standard transmission instead of a continually variable (automatic) transmission. A simplified display (drivers are distracted enough).
I suppose I should shake my fist and yell for you to get off my lawn.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:12PM (2 children)
In my 2012 car, I opened up the center console and physically removed a black box - the thing had two antenna connections going to it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @06:07PM (1 child)
For those of us old enough to remember, does this not remind you of something that might exist behind the Iron Curtain, and then, only for targetted individuals?
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday February 04 2021, @10:57PM
Yes it does.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday February 04 2021, @10:58PM (3 children)
How about employing a wire cutter?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Friday February 05 2021, @09:53AM (2 children)
And now your car refuses to start, and even if it does won't pass its next test.
It's literally a mandated function, part of the ECU (that's controlling your engine timing) and connected to the airbag via a safety-critical path. You're either cutting something that will be logged in the ECU and make it go mad with alerts, or you're cutting the ECU itself because its integrated and there is no "wire".
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday February 05 2021, @02:18PM (1 child)
Yes, the situation is getting worse, but in some parts of this planet a service would not only cut whatever needs to be cut, but also flush firmware.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday February 08 2021, @08:16AM
Good luck with that on any vaguely modern car. The firmware has nothing to do with it, because the logging is WORM, so can't be "deleted", only "acknowledged" to make it stop showing the light. And the date of both activation and acknowledgement are logged and can't be cleared.
Hell, many modern cars, even the most expensive garages can do no more than the basics on them and you have to take them back to the manufacturer to clear certain warnings. A friend of mine has phoned 20 garages to ask about his ABS system light and they all say they can do the work in theory but it won't clear the light until you take it back to Toyota. The equipment to do so for even a single brand costs as much as a new car, and a local garage might be dealing with 20-30 brands that all require expensive kit, agreement to their terms (i.e. if we find out you've been clearing logs you lose your licence to use the device/software), etc.
Basically, those days are gone and have been for a long time. Keep driving very old cars (which will one day be mandated out of existence, even if only through stricter testing) but one day that's no longer going to work out for you.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 04 2021, @04:52PM (3 children)
"You're driving your iCar wrong."
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday February 04 2021, @05:15PM (2 children)
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 0) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday February 04 2021, @10:54PM (1 child)
I don't know about AC, but I'm making fun of Apple for associating with Hyundai/Kia. Although it makes business sense for Apple to market a small cheap cuckmobile on the basis of "environmental friendliness" rather than develop a more premium style associated with electric or hybrid cars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday February 05 2021, @01:30AM
I'm directing this at the AC, not you... There's *lots* to make fun of Apple for, no need to be dishonest about it.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩