In a Christmas message to his followers Monday, former President Donald Trump said he hopes supporters of “Electric Car Lunacy” would “ROT IN HELL.”
Trump’s Monday afternoon Truth Social post continued a theme he had been developing with several other posts since Christmas Eve, attacking Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting two criminal cases against him.
The frontrunner of the 2024 presidential race for the Republican Party nomination added a missive against “THUGS,” which he said were more “evil” and “sick” than all world leaders. In the grammatically confusing post, Trump also appeared to attack Israel, which Trump lumped in with Iran, as well as both Russia and Ukraine.
I hate modern electric cars not because they don’t have a gas guzzling engine, but because of the fact they’re “modern” (proprietary software connected to the cellular network).
But of course, Trump only said this because all of his supporters drive gas guzzling behemoths of steel to compensate for something. And, of course, telling someone to rot in hell just because of a type of vehicle they like makes him seem like an incredibly mentally stable person…
Yes, modern gas cars have proprietary software connected to cell networks to track you too.
Yes, but many times you can somehow rip the thing out of there. It’s super difficult but I know like two people that managed (don’t know which models, but they were new cars). I imagine in an electric car, the main head unit is probably more connected to the actual inner workings of the vehicle, making it impossible to just replace it, along with any of the electronics it’s connected to.
You’re missing the fact that an electric car is just electric motors and a battery in a car as well. Those are exceedingly simple to install in other cars and many conversions are happening with tesla motors for example.
There is no difference. The software is what controls the cars nowadays. Single massive screens are in virtually every car now. There is nothing about being electric that makes cars more or less hackable.
Not really.
I have a modern gas car and a modern ev, and they are comparable on this point. The telematics are invasive and have been the path for “recalls” on both vehicles.
The main difference is that the gas car does implement a legally mandated standard for diagnostics, but only for things that cannot be wrong with ev (only facets pertaining to hydrocarbon emissions). If the gas car has a problem not related to emissions, it’s proprietary diagnostics.
Once upon a time some vendors just concentrated all their stuff into a double din you could rip and replace. Then you have some with the standard form factor, but you needed to somehow keep a proprietary module in the mix or else a bunch of the car wouldn’t work. At this point, it’s generally a lost cause to even think about rip and replace of the head unit for most cars less than 10 years old.
Some folks like in a gas car they can visually see the belts and components like alternators and do their own oil changes and air filter changes while the evs generally have things more tucked out of sight. However they don’t really have analogous sorts of failures, so you would not have engine air filter, oil to change, nor any belts or associated tensioners, so it’s just replacing easily serviced components with strategies that are more robust.
You can have EVs have obnoxious components fail that are a pain to replace, but gas cars generally have the same stuff too and those are also tucked out of the way. Saw a video recently of one model where changing the timing belt required the mechanic to basically take apart most of the car, due to various obnoxious clearances.
How high are you right meow?
You don’t like electric cars because of a thing that is also in modern ICE cars, and the difference is that it’s a thing you don’t understand so you believe it’s worse on electric cars?
I’m a car guy and I’ll always have gas powered hotrods but I get electric and look forward to doing electric swaps. I’m with you and have no interest in buying a car that is going to spy on me, no thanks.
He’s just trying to stir up anger and resentment in people. He is mentally stable. His goal is just to make people angry.
…or more specifically, “a very stable genius”.
(And that’s straight from the horse’s
assmouth.)I never thought about this but you’re right, the always on tracking aspect would suck. The proprietary software not so much though. Every car in the last 20 years has this. Of course open source software connected to a cellular network would be less of an issue. So I see your point now after writing this 😋
The issue is the right to repair is being challenged in an almost unprecedented way. Propitiatory software allows the developer to cut off access to critical diagnostic abilities as well as lock basic features behind subscriptions etc. Do you really own your car? The future is being fought now.
To be honest, we’re dealing with corpos here, so a fully FOSS car is just a dream. But to be honest, if the software is not connected to any network in any way and doesn’t control stuff that could kill me in case of a bug or whatnot, AND I have the right to flash whatever I want on there and tinker with it (since it doesn’t control vital driving features, that should not be a problem), I can live with it. Only under these three conditions though.