My current car is old. I had a lot of repairs done on it recently. If I get a new car, I don’t want features. Lane assist, backup camera, DUI Camera, telemetry, auto breaking or other frankly silly features. Call me grumpy, but I find modern cars very distracting.
Can I ask a dealership to disable these at purchase? Is there a car that works best for being private besides just older cars?
I drive very little in a year. No, I can’t ride a bike.
I have disabled all kinds of telemetry and radio on many different kinds of cars.
You cannot buy a new car without it.
Your best bet if you’re concerned is to buy an 0s model. Contrary to popular belief, this all became inescapable a little over ten years ago. 0s models with systems like onstar are still acceptable because the 2g cell networks they use to operate simply don’t exist and the system itself was relatively easy to disable and we’ll documented in cases where it’s not easy.
Reply with your needs and habits and I’ll point you at the right model.
when you buy the car they will most likely try and setup your phone to it to “activate your warrenty” just decline this if they ask you to do anything with your phone say no and just dont link anything for the most privacy an the other features should be able to be disabled in settings
My car is a 2012. It doesn’t have any of the stuff you mentioned, though I wouldn’t mind having a backup camera. I’m also fine with any safety features required by law since those aren’t surveillance–it’s the privacy-invasive stuff that will keep me driving this car until it’s no longer repairable. I put very few miles on it per year now that I’m retired, so it should last a long time.
I’m still interested to see if any replies here have alternatives for bypassing all the surveillance stuff. I saw an article on how to disable/remove the phone-home modem in a particular brand of car, and it was very complicated. You had to disassemble and remove a whole bunch of stuff just to get to it.
auto-braking
It was really cool driving a uhaul that was way too big for me to be qualified to drive only to find it did some automatic ffucking braking or downshifting shit going down hills and it’s like, yes, thank you, that’s exactly what i want when i’m maneuvering something unfamiliar the size of a whale- random automated bullshit i don’t understand randomly fucking with what Im doing
stick to cheaper models and lower trim levels.
I was able to disconnect the cellular antenna on my 2015-2020 car and replace it with a dummy load. funny enough I found the lojack device the dealership had in their while doing this so I removed that too. that’s good enough for me.
If you live in the USA:
Despite all of the arising automobile safety technologies, there are just a few that are required by regulations. These mandated safety functions consist of Seatbelts, Airbags, LATCH child safety seat system, Tire-Pressure Display, Electronic Stability Control, and Backup Cameras. All-new vehicles will certainly have that tech and in addition, the NHTSA recommends the following Motorist Assistance Technologies:
FWD Crash Warning
Automatic Emergency Situation Braking
Lane Departure Warning
Whether you can ask the dealer to turn them off is dependent entirely on whether the manufacturer will allow them to do that. Generally the manufacturer is the one who allows the dealer access to scan tool tech that would be able to do this and what access they have varies by manufacturer.
There are things you can potentially do yourself including pulling fuses or relays (where applicable), disconnecting antennas (depending on your level of skill to get access), and asking an aftermarket shop to physically disable certain systems.
The main problem with this is, 1. It could void your warranty which may mean you aren’t eligible for some warrantable repairs including but not limited to recalls. 2. You could potentially do some damage to systems yourself by accident that you would be on the hook for. 3. You will likely lose other features you paid for. This is of course dependent on how the manufacturer integrated the systems you want to remove or disable.
It may be a better idea to see what options you have to avoid paying for those optional features and make your decision based on what manufacturers allow you to remove them when you order the vehicle. This may be better for you than trying to drive a dealer vehicle off the lot. It will take more time though.
I think if I were you and I had to have a newer car I would try to buy a used car that doesn’t have these features you don’t want.
Adding to your point… “impaired driver detection” is already federal law, however it is still held up in the federal rulemaking process. There were (if I recall) deadlines in 2024 and 2026, but the rule making process can take a long ass time, so for now, it is still a future thing, but I mention it to say that there is broad congressional support for in-car surveillance tech. It’s definitely coming.
The main problem with this is, 1. It could void your warranty
Manufacturers cannot void the warranty because of aftermarket modifications. They can deny claims for failures that are caused by the aftermarket modifications, but they cannot “void” a warranty. In several years of working on this stuff, the only times I ever saw voided warranties was when cars were salvage branded titles, such as from total loss accidents, flood recoveries and so on. And even in those cases, federal emissions equipment warranties remained in effect. There are reasonably strong consumer protections for aftermarket modifications that go back several decades. They don’t entirely stop manufacturers from doing dodgy shit, but it has limited it.
Good point, and a good thing to add to things to consider. Thank you.
I was more thinking along the lines of the different classes of warrantable repairs and different classes of recalls.
You could absolutely have a recall pertinent to your vehicle that turns out to be voluntary and the automaker refuses to honor it if that system has been deactivated, tampered with, or modified.
Very well said. I plan on keeping my car until it dies. Eventually, I know I will need to get a newer car.
I wanted to make it particularly clear that some safety features are non-negotiable if you buy a new car from a dealer because the manufacturer is required by law to include them. But some people do believe that more safety features are required by law than actually are and even in the event that some of them are telemetry isn’t, and may be disabled in some instance depending on the vehicle.
I personally am willing to fix my older car until it dies and I can’t anymore over buying a brand new one but I’ve also never bought a brand new car in my life. I understand that my approach is possibly prohibitively expensive for quite a lot of people.
Anyway, I hope you find what you’re looking for.
The automatic emergency braking is probably one of the absolutely best safety features in “recent” cars…and i say “recent” because this has been standard equipment on all trim levels for probably a decade.
ABS brakes were a game changer. People used to panic and spin around taking out 5-6 cars.
In this case it’s automatic breaking systems.
I just don’t like the idea of my car making driving decisions. Plastic bag goes across the highway and I get rear ended due to the car breaking for me. Nope, don’t want it.
Good call, mine used to rapidly brake because it saw nonexistant obstacles. More than once.
All cars now have these:
That’s the AM/FM antenna and data antenna. Remove it, wrap the data antenna in foil. Or, just unplug it.
A sharkfin antenna is just a design feature. It says nothing about what data is being transmitted.
You think a dealer would unplug it as part of a sale? Never bought a car at a dealership yet.
It’s unlikely that any dealer would disable features. They’ll tell you they can’t do it for “liability” reasons.
You can maybe look into the base models of cars around 2019-2022. You won’t escape everything completely, but it’s better than getting an old car. I once had a 2020 Kia base model that only had the backup camera among the stuff you listed.
Also some of that vintage, it’s easier to remove or disable the parts that phone home, compared to newer cars.
I drive a 30-yrar-old Honda.
It’s totally worth repairing an old car.
Learn more about total cost of ownership (TCO). My car costs a couple thousand a year in repairs and maintenance, but that’s significantly less than replacing it would cost. Your car might be similar.
It’s totally worth repairing an old car.
it’s also a lot cheaper, especially if you have shitty credit
Much of it can be done at the fuse level, but you’ll need to do your research.
If it’s got a physical SIM (perhaps a criterion) pull that for anonymity, do your research to make sure it won’t brick the car. eSIM and you’re in there pulling antennas and shit, more research.
A lot of infotainment centers can be replaced with third party stuff with good sound systems. Again, research. Honestly, backup cameras are pretty good, you can keep the rest. Physical buttons on the steering wheel for next song and volume are pretty great, as is a heads up speedometer.
Perhaps an old mercedes and put the difference into refurbishing? Older Prius?
Maybe an ebike ? Depending on where you are and what you get it can be pretty much sitting and pressing a button (perhaps a little hacking needed in some places).
TLDR: research, shit’s bad out there.
Do you want privacy or none of the technology features?
Many tech features come built in and you may be able to turn them off individually in the car settings, though probably not all features if they’re related to safety.
If you’re worried about privacy and the car phoning home, then that’s a different topic.
Short answer is no. All new cars do it. Dealers can’t disable it. It is what it is.
There are a few niche cars that don’t have all the tracking cruft, good luck getting one.
If old means 20 year old to you, I would recommend buying used from around 2015 ish. That seems to be the time things started going “smart”. Some not too recent cars can be software modded by good techs/tuner shops to disable stop-start and similar. Probably other annoyances too, but I would assume it’s very dependent on make, model etc.
That’s because backup camera law just passed in 2014, effective 2018. Which means that screens of some kind became mandatory in all cars.
Once you have to have a screen, might as well throw a few features in to make use of that expensive screen since it’s just a couple bucks here or there to add things like an infotainment.
Now that people need the touchscreen anyway for the infotainment, might as well get rid of those expensive buttons and just do everything with a touchscreen menu.
As long as we have all that other stuff, might as well throw in a cell modem and get some $$$ from the insurance companies and data brokers to get some ongoing revenue from these cars we sold.
And as much as I don’t like having to look at the camera to back up, it does seem to have a wider FOV and the backup sensors see things even further out, and the rear end of cars are just so high and back windows are so small (I think these are now all this way for rear end crash and rollover reasons) that you just can’t see out the back like you could out of an older car. It’s pretty much just how it has to be with the safety requirements these days.
