Ask HN: Privacy-Friendly Car?

9 points by jakobdabo 1 year ago | 6 comments

Hi HN. In light of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42803279 (Hacking Subaru: Tracking and Controlling Cars via the Starlink Admin Panel) and some revelations in the comments, I would like to ask if anybody here is aware of any modern electric car that can be used without ever connecting it to the network?

It's also important that the car shouldn't collect telemetry and location data and wait for the first opportunity (like gaining network access while being serviced) to upload that all.

mattbrewsbytes 1 year ago |

My guess is you'd have to go DIY and retrofit an ICE car with batteries and motors. There are companies that do this but its probably expensive.

If you rank your priorities and privacy comes before EV then you could just buy a 10 year old used ICE vehicle. They have very little, if any, connected-ness, mostly just SiriusXM linkage if paying for the subscription.

bigfatkitten 1 year ago | |

> There are companies that do this but its probably expensive.

Depends on the vehicle, but you should budget for $40-80k.

bigfatkitten 1 year ago |

Disconnect the LTE antennas, and terminate the antenna ports with 50 ohm loads. As far as the car is concerned, it's outside cell coverage.

If the car can't work without cellular coverage, then you've made a very poor life decision in buying it.

fckgw 1 year ago | |

This. Most vehicles have some fuse controlling the telematics or cellular modem. You can just disconnect that hardware from your vehicle.

bigfatkitten 1 year ago | | |

On modern Fords you can pull the TCU fuse without issues. On other makes, doing that will throw errors.

tacostakohashi 1 year ago |

Privacy is rather limited in any car given registration plates and automatic scanning.