The Downside of "Always Connected"

A better way to force automakers to tighten up ship is for customers to stop buying that crap.

That will move the engineers to fix their wagon really fast.

The problem is that those 'connected' features are often not described when the dealer is showing off the car, or they're bundled under the 'standard options.'

Most times, the purchaser does not know all the details of their car purchase until several years of owning the car, and sometimes the car still has secrets when the owner finally sells it or trades it in.

We need more "full disclosure" laws to force the corporations to reveal the crap they're trying to do behind our backs. While we're at it, we need more "full disclosure" laws to improve REAL government transparency, and protect us from all those idiots trying to run things in DC.

I would sure like to know all the details of a machine that, at the bottom line, I am responsible for in the operation of said machine.

I purchased a truck that had a tire inflation monitor as standard. The owner's manual said "here is the control that re-sets the monitor". There was none, I called and was told "Uh, that's a mistake, only the dealers have them". Upon further research, I found it could be purchased for $200.00.

I didn't really need it (Auto-reset with correct pressure) but it is the principal of the thing.

Exactly. Personally, I've never seen much value in it. I get in my vehicle. I want to drive it. I care about how it accelerates, how it stops and how it handles. A radio is nice but that is it. I don't need all of these bells and whistles and blinky things, to distract me and otherwise detract from the driving experience. Just more points of failure, if you ask me. I guess that's why I am happy driving my 18 year old truck.

I agree. I always liked old motorcycles. My newest one is a 1985. Talk about road feel and getting 'into the moment', nothing better.

Now we have a 2011 Highlander (family of four now). Everything is electrically controlled: brakes, steering, acceleration. Nice for mindlessly driving interstates, but no road feel. It can make you lazy.

I can't imagine driving along hoping my door doesn't fly open or the motor/transmission suddenly stop from some hacker. They (the hackers) have exposed a weakness. It can be busy enough dealing with drunks/idiots I'm sharing the road with; I don't want to deal with those sitting at a desk 10 or 10,000 miles away.

Got my vote. Although I do confess to using GPS occasionally.

Same here. For long trips. But I use a standalone GPS. Not an integrated one.

I confess, Ditto to this.

I do miss using the old maps and dad's comments, "Fold it ALONG the lines, just like it was! No, no, the other way!"

I need the larger display as my eyes age and it is just a neater package that fits in the double-DIN space in the center console.

Still, I have had some really strange cock-ups with eh Garmin GPS.

Occasionally, and randomly, it takes you on some weird diversion into dead-end streets or more often into a housing community only to turn you around again and send you back the opposite way to take you on the correct path.

I'll have to reread the owner's manual. I swore it said the GPS is a Garmin, but it might really be Gremlin.

Interesting. I haven't had a Garmin in a while now but, I never had any problems with mine. I am currently using a TomTom. They seem to work pretty well, navigation wise. They do seem to fall short hardware wise, though. I have several that only turn on sometimes, and that is after fiddling with them for a bit. Probably has to do with the FL heat inside a vehicle.

Fortunately, I can keep mine in the garage most of the time.

Florida heat is also murder on carbon fiber interior parts.

I have a Tom Tom, but I decided I didn't like keeping up with extra chargers when I traveled on business and had to carry stuff from plane to plane and car to car. Then I found that Tom Tom had an app that would work on my smart phone. Since it actually downloaded the whole map set into the phone's memory, it would work even when the phone wasn't in a city or anywhere near an internet connection.

That Tom Tom app worked great. One charger to keep track of, and one device, my phone. I had it for three+ years and I was delighted with it. When I upgraded my phone this year, I had to upgrade the app because Tom Tom had improved it and no longer supported the old app. (Although is seemed to work fine on my old phone). The new app is buggy, has a more difficult to use interface, and the voice directions can't complete a sentence. ("In 600 yards, keep...") Well, it will complete a sentence, but not until it begins the next sentence. ("right. Take the off ramp. At the end of the off ramp, turn...")

I recently was told, but I have yet to confirm, that it was Tom Tom that supplied the mapping app that Apple released on its phone, much to Apple's embarrassment.

Just get Google Maps app.

I never use Tom Tom or Garmin any more.

If you get out of network range and haven't already downloaded the area you are in, Google Maps doesn't know where you are. The Tom Tom app is the only one I know of that will download the entire USA (or whichever country you want) into your phone so that you are never without a map, even if you are without the network.

My job takes me out to places where there is no cell coverage, no network coverage, and the apps that depend on constant contact to the net aren't very helpful in those cases. I tried one, MapQuest, that lost me when I went out into the boonies and, when I got back close to town and asked for help looking for a gas station, insisted I was someplace in the Netherlands. I had to uninstall/reinstall to get that one to work again.

But, whenever I am in a town, I use Google Maps. It's the easiest thing to use.

I'm a pretty big GPS user, mainly to get a semi-accurate ETA while on the road.

Used to use a Garmin, now I use the Navigation feature of Google Maps in my Android phone. I like it, it even helps be 'see' the traffic on the surface streets so I know if I'll need to take the alternate route to get to the onramp on the way to work.

Me too.

GPS is OK. If that gets hacked, the worst that can happen is I'll get lost. I won't drive into a river just because the Garmin lady tells me to.

The reason is that gimmicks still sell and marketing knows that.

Too many people see the latest wink-blinky lights and come down with the gotta-have-it syndrome.

If you strip that garbage out of the vehicle they all start to look too much the same year after year.

Ask these guys....

Always connected=always subject to hacking.

Having been a "Software Engineer", and even teaching a college level course on the subject at one time, I'm appalled at the lack of quality control in the software that is produced today! When we used to create SW for applications that were "life critical", or "security" related, the quality control process drove everyone bonkers...BUT...we created code without bugs! The operation of a vehicle is a "life critical" application. There should be NO BUGS!

The reality, Tom, is that even software that goes into aerospace has different levels of scrutiny.

No one is going to write code to DO-178B Level A criteria for operation of the Lavatory Occupied sign. That level of scrutiny is reserved for things like flight controls and FMS navigation. It's very costly to do that.

The bigger problem here is probably a failure to properly classify the criticality level of the code. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't an internal push to classify the auto's code as non-critical just to keep development costs within budget.

Still, I keep coming back to the thought that cramming a bunch of features into a car simply for the wow-factor is just simply dumb. Dumber still to buy it, in my sordid opinion.

"I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't an internal push to classify the auto's code as non-critical just to keep development costs within budget."

Ah yes, the Accountant and the Engineer, so constantly at odds with each other. You never see such vitrol and hatred in Nature, or even in fiction. (Dwarves and Elves in the middle of Yet Another War over some slight the Elves made to the Dwarves five thousand years ago still show more mutual respect for each other than Accounts and Engineers.)

When, oh when will those pencil-necked pencil pushers realize that the bottom line is not saving a few cents an item, but instead Safety is the bottom line, if it is not safe, then people get hurt and/or die, and despite what those thrice-damned and twice-accursed actuary tables say, you CANNOT reduce a human life into mere numbers.

A friend of mine bought the cheapest car he could find. Hand crank windows, no A/C, five speed manual transmission AND no electronics.

Really, can you still find those? In my day, it was called a stripper model. Almost impossible to obtain, anymore.

The car he bought was a Chevrolet Aveo. Here's a story about another car(?) that can be ordered in pretty basic trim: http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/autos/2015/aug/22/jeep-patriot-old-school-budget-wise-crossover-still-selling-well/

I still miss my old Dodge pickup truck. Everything was manual. The starter was a foot switch placed above the gas pedal. You had to heel-and-toe the gas pedal when starting it. You had to know how to double-clutch in order to shift the transmission. I think the radio was an option. It didn't have one. It did have electric windshield wipers, which was a rarity on cars in those days. Most were run off of vacuum and would stop when you opened the throttle.

Before that I had a small Dodge school bus converted to a camper. It was hard to start because of it's high performance Chrysler engine. I resorted to hand cranking the engine like you would on a Model T Ford. It used to mess with people's minds when I would pull out the crank and walk around front and start cranking away.