> Subaru’s problem is that no such standardized system yet exists, forcing it (and eventually other brands) to have to nix its Starlink telematics offerings and related data harvesting.
It does exist, it's called J1939 and it is popular already in trucks and non european truck-like consumer vehicles i.e. pickups.
It also allows the effortless integration of aftermarket systems like F+R sonar emergency braking, trailer ABS units, radar cruise, low speed acoustic devices and various other bolt-ons like power take-offs.
In fact, it's this standardization that allowed some hundreds of third party fleet telematics systems to plug into virtually any OE vehicle and pull out a whole bunch of useful data, such as the odometer, fuel level, road speed, torque request and selected gear.
It does however currently lack useful standardization for electric vehicles. They can fit within the standard, but there is no standard way to read the voltage of a particular cell in one of the vehicles' many battery packs, for example. Or the state of charge or battery wear as a whole. I think this contributes to the high integration effort in EVs at the moment. Or why you see few upfitters doing custom bodies for EVs. Things could be a lot more .. plug and play.
J1939 or CAN is a network protocol many vehicles use for control module to control module communication. The “standardized system” you were commenting about is referring to access to the server side info. Currently manufacturers can pull telematics data like odometer, trouble codes and PIDs (data items like speed, brake status and very much more) which helps with service reminders and streamlining the repair process. Aftermarket shops are at a great disadvantage in this regard.
The telematics are on a layer above J1939. If you think of J1939 like HTTP/REST (and standard response formatting), then the telematics would be a client on the vehicle. You could find the telematics control unit and unplug it, I suppose. Many fleet owners buy vehicles without default optioned telematics and pick their own. I don't think the argument is the invasion of privacy with telematics, but rather, that mechanic shops would like to access the vehicle data for diagnostics, which they can do if it is according to a standard.
Somewhat related to this, I've recently been shopping for a new car to replace my current Subaru that I've had for over a decade. It's been a great car so I figured I'd get another Subaru but, man, some of the newer "features" have completely turned me off to the company.
One is a system called DriverFocus that monitors the drivers face, runs some sort of facial recognition software, and alerts anytime it doesn't think the driver's face is paying enough attention. Unsurprisingly it's horribly buggy and has a ton of false positives, but even worse: you can't disable it! There's a setting in the menu that will turn it off for that trip, but it will turn itself back on during a future start.
To make it even worse, some models can't be purchased without it now. I can only imagine what the company will be doing with that facial data down the line. I absolutely don't want a car that constantly spies on my face in a way that can't even be turned off.
Between that feature, this telemetry article, and some other anti-user features it's incredible what a customer hostile company Subaru has become. It's a shame because they used to be one of my favorites.
My current car is pretty old, but it had a really loud buzzer that went off if you started the car without the seatbelt on.
I never drive without my seatbelt, it's just automatic for me to put it on, but I often start the car and let it warm up a bit while I rummage with my stuff on the passenger seat or whatever.
I had to buy an ELM device and hook the car to my laptop and use some dodgy Russian software to disable that stupid buzzer.
I dread buying a more recent car because it seems they're rapidly adding more and more stupid, annoying, and privacy removing anti-features that you can't disable.
And touchscreens. Touchscreens have almost no reason to be in a car. Volume and AC control on a touchscreen, over my dead body.
Subaru has a long history of questionable safety features which can't be turned off. My parents used to have a 1983 Subaru GL sedan. It had a digital display. If you exceeded 55 Mph, the US national maximum speed limit at the time, redlines would appear beneath the speedometer digits and a buzzer would sound as long as the speed exceeded 55. There was no official way to disable the buzzer although I'm sure some enterprising people found non Subaru approved ways to do so.
Huh. I sometimes drive a 2017 Outback and I was shocked at how annoying its "helpful" systems are. No matter what problem it thinks is going on, its response is to beep annoyingly in various amounts. With, as you say, a lot of false positives. The thing makes me twitchy. I was thinking, "well, maybe it's a relatively new feature". I'm very sorry to hear they've gotten worse!
EU upcoming mandatory safety feature list includes driver attention monitoring system. These kind of features might be included in all cars going forward.
The manual transmission versions of their models are lacking many of these new features because they are not compatible. Its almost enough to make me want to learn.
+1 to learning. Absolutely a blast. And frankly I don’t even find it annoying in traffic. These days lots of sticks have hill assist so don’t have to worry as much about the delicate process of engaging the clutch on a hill.
Now missing my 2015 GTI with a 6-speed stick. One of the most fun cars to drive.
Actually just bought a 2022 Subaru Impreza Hatch with a 5speed, and it's been a blast to drive. No cameras or spying on drivers with the manual model. It still has a radio and cd player separate from the a/c and climate controls.
My 2013 E350 MB monitors driver alertness through steering, brake and throttle input alone. And it's surprisingly good, facial recognition is not required. The only time it gets triggered is when I'm doing late night or very early morning driving, when you'd expect deteriorated attention - I don't feel drowsy so it's beeping is quite annoying but that's the whole point...
In my time as an ambulance driver I was surprised how many accidents were caused by people just not looking at the road!
I'd wonder, how could two cars collide like that, and the only explanation I could find was that the drivers just weren't looking.
It sounds like they need to work on false alarms, but in principle I believe that software like this is going to save many lives, more than automatic driving.
The problem with this is its a black box of complexity that the user has no control over that effects the usefulness of a product they "own". When it breaks they have no recourse but to bring it to a "Company" repair shop and pay to have it fixed. They cant upgrade it they cant modify it they cant turn it off. Its modern day "Company store" bullshit
2026, if they can do it by then. The preference is for “systems to discretely [sic] detect alcohol on drivers’ breaths or in their blood.” So probably not cameras.
> Massachusetts' updated law currently requires all vehicles sold within the state (from the 2022 model year onward) using telematics systems to be equipped with a standardized, open-access data platform that would allow customers and unaffiliated mechanics to gain access.
I'm reminded of this iconic speech by Eben Moglen in 2010 [1][2]
> The real impact will be the financial handicap that comes with an inability to harvest and then sell customer data to commercial partners.
Handicaps are relative. The carmakers just don’t get to make money a new way. There are many ways they don’t get to make more money. Not an actual problem to anyone.
It's like saying, "this nutrition labeling law is handicapping us because we have no idea how much sugar we put in our foods."
There's a difference between a regulation that hampers real innovation and a regulation that hampers people doing the thing the regulation is designed to prevent. The regulation is designed to force automobile manufacturers to only launch invasive features if there's a way for customers to service them. And they're complaining that the regulation... does that thing.
And importantly, none of their competitors can make money in this way (from MA customers). So car companies that don't aggressively sell customer data are no longer at a financial disadvantage. Seems like a great use of regulation to me.
It’s like saying that other private property and privacy laws are all inflicting financial hardships on people who want to sneak into our houses and photograph our family members while they sleep.
Alternatively: without this new source of revenue, auto manufacturers will be less able to compete on price and maintain the same margins. As a consumer, I don't get to decide whether I'd like a "repairable" car that doesn't harvest my data for $X, or am willing to settle for a data-harvesting, proprietary vehicle for $(X - Y) - the state has made that choice on my behalf and decided the latter should be illegal to sell to me (read: for me to purchase).
That $Y probably ends up being small enough that it doesn't matter to the average high-paid HN reader, but consumer prices do matter to people at the margins. There's a reason ad-supported Kindles exist, even if I personally would never buy one.
That's a good point -- even if you approach this from a very strict Libertarian perspective, this regulation is pretty definitively an outcome that resulted from the free decisions of the majority of people who chose to live inside the state.
So I guess taking the traditional Ancap question about free markets, and reapplying it, it's reasonable to ask: how can regulation that is the result of people's free voting choices not itself be considered free?
And then you can get into whatever responses people have to that question in general about whether free choices can result in coercive structures that are worth opposing, which is not really my point here. My point is, I don't really see a huge fundamental difference between a free market deciding that a product isn't worth producing and a free democracy deciding that a product isn't worth producing. I don't see why one should inherently be viewed as more legitimate than the other.
If the voters don't want automobile manufacturers to violate their privacy, and they want to pass a law about it, that's their choice as a community. It seems just as valid of a choice as anything else the free market could produce.
> … even if you approach this from a very strict Libertarian perspective, this regulation is pretty definitively an outcome that resulted from the free decisions of the majority of people who chose to live inside the state.
Are you serious?
If you approach this from a "very strict Libertarian perspective" then the rights of the 25% (at least) who did not vote in favor of this rule are being infringed. It doesn't matter that a majority were in favor, because Libertarian ideology is not collectivist. Individual people have rights which are independent of what the majority choose.
> My point is, I don't really see a huge fundamental difference between a free market deciding that a product isn't worth producing and a free democracy deciding that a product isn't worth producing.
In the former case, if someone does decide to produce the good for others to use they are free to do so, even if the majority disagree. And if you really can't find anyone willing to produce the good you want to buy (unlikely), you can at least make it yourself without penalty. The difference between "no one is obligated to produce what you want" and "other people can use force to stop you and others from producing what you want for yourselves" is perfectly obvious.
> If the voters don't want automobile manufacturers to violate their privacy, and they want to pass a law about it, that's their choice as a community.
More collectivist nonsense. The rights of the voters favoring this measure, as a group, do not exceed the sum of the rights of the individual voters, and no individual voter has the right to use force to prevent other people from making or buying products the voter doesn't approve of. Ergo, the group also lacks any right to enforce their will in this matter on the minority who disagreed. They are not a party to the transaction and have no standing to interfere.
> If you approach this from a "very strict Libertarian perspective" then the rights of the 25% (at least) who did not vote in favor of this rule are being infringed.
No, from a Libertarian perspective, those 25% chose to live in that state and enter into a free agreement with their neighbors to participate in representative democracy. It's no different from them choosing to participate in a necessary market like buying Internet or a car, and the same forces that would make it too expensive/time-consuming to run for office or move to a different state also prevent them from forming their own automobile company or paying exorbitant prices for privacy-respecting products (if those products even exist in the first place).
Of course, they are "free" to start their own automobile company, just like they are "free" to make their own political party.
> Individual people have rights which are independent of what the majority choose.
Look, I agree with this statement, I think this is an important statement to make. But it's a perspective that's totally inconsistent with Ancap philosophy; by this logic the market itself can infringe on my freedom by refusing to cater to niche consumer wishes (which it often refuses to do). I'm looking at this issue through an Ancap Libertarian lens because that's what OP originally suggested in their criticism of the ballot measure -- regardless of whether or not I agree with Ancap philosophy, I'm examining the situation through their worldview.
From an Ancap perspective, people choose to participate in markets, and it's just as easy to move out of a state to avoid a regulation as it is to move out of a state to avoid a market.
> The difference between "no one is obligated to produce what you want" and "other people can use force to stop you and others from producing what you want for yourselves" is perfectly obvious.
No, otherwise agreements wouldn't exist. Do you think your freedom is being abridged when you sign a terms of service agreement? People voluntarily chose to take part in representative democracy. Even if you don't buy that citizens can move out the state, the companies choosing to sell in those states certainly have the freedom to move out. They have the power to even move to different countries. They voluntarily chose to enter into an agreement where people would have the democratic freedom to vote for regulations. They aren't forced to be here.
From an Ancap Libertarian perspective, this is the exact same scenario as you signing an agreement with Apple when you purchase an iPhone. That agreement may restrict what you can and can't do within Apple's ecosystem, but you chose to sign it. They chose to incorporate and sell in Massachusetts.
You mention this point as well:
> In the former case, if someone does decide to produce the good for others to use they are free to do so, even if the majority disagree.
But the analogy here is more like you going into Apple's ecosystem and saying that you should have the freedom to put any app in their store. You still have the freedom to build automobiles without oversight. You just don't have the freedom to infringe on other people's spaces and violate their collective agreements. The people of Massachusetts are not obligated to give you a platform to sell your goods in their community, you don't have the right to force them to do that.
> They are not a party to the transaction and have no standing to interfere.
If I violate Apple's TOS and sell pornography on their app store, can I say that Apple isn't party to the transaction between me and the buyer, and that they have no standing to interfere? Communities have the same rights to set up rules about how they will operate as companies and platform providers do.
Now, separately, we can get into an argument about how free transactions can actually result in less free outcomes, but that's approaching this issue from a different lens than the Ancap lens that OP was using. And part of the problem of using that lens is that as soon as we do venture into questioning whether free transactions universally result in more freedom, we're left evaluating the market through the lens of market outcomes, and regulations like this tend to look really good when you're approaching the market through the lens of encouraging free outcomes rather than purely guaranteeing free processes.
But my point is not to convince you that Ancap Libertarianism is good or bad, it's to take Ancap Libertarianism at face value and apply it to the situation, and I don't see how voluntarily built communities, interacting with companies that have voluntarily entered into those communities and signed agreements with them, is any different at all from you signing a contract to publish your apps on the Apple store, or buying a tool under a license. When you argue that communities have no right to set rules or regulations, what you are effectively arguing is that the people who make up that community don't have the right to form a voluntary contract with each other. Which is obviously an anti-Libertarian sentiment.
The forces of expense/resource-availability that keep you inside of a state with rules that you disagree with are literally the exact same forces of expense/resource-availability that keep you locked into market-wide abuses and that keep you from going away and forming your own markets that better serve your needs. It is impossible to criticize one without criticizing the other.
> No, from a Libertarian perspective, those 25% chose to live in that state and enter into a free agreement with their neighbors to participate in representative democracy.
Yet more nonsense. They were born there. They never agreed to abide by whatever rules their neighbors choose to impose. Leaving is not zero-cost and no one has the right to force them to choose between acquiescing to others' demands and leaving their home—as if there were even anywhere else they could be expected to go where they won't face the same unreasonable demands.
> But it's a perspective that's totally inconsistent with Ancap philosophy; by this logic the market itself can infringe on my freedom by refusing to cater to niche consumer wishes (which it often refuses to do).
Again, more nonsense. Your rights are not infringed upon by other people not giving you whatever you happen to want. They are infringed upon when other people step in and threaten you with harm (for example loss of property, imprisonment, or capital punishment) when you attempt to provide the things you want for yourself, or through voluntary cooperation with others.
> Do you think your freedom is being abridged when you sign a terms of service agreement?
No, because that is a voluntary arrangement. If I don't agree to the contract we go our separate ways and no one loses anything that already belongs to them. People do not "voluntarily chose to take part in representative democracy"; their participation is compulsory. It's not just "take it or leave it" (which is already getting into contract-of-adhesion territory) but rather "take it or give up your entire life up till now and hope, against all odds, that you can find somewhere to live that doesn't have exactly the same problems". And that applies just as much to companies as to individuals.
> When you argue that communities have no right to set rules or regulations, what you are effectively arguing is that the people who make up that community don't have the right to form a voluntary contract with each other.
More nonsense. The individual people who make up the community have every right to enter into voluntary contracts with each other. They do not, however, have the right to compel anyone to enter into those contacts as a condition of living near them, or to make anyone who doesn't agree to the contract move somewhere else.
The rest of your reply is just more of the same. It's clear you have no idea whatsoever what "Ancap" Libertarianism actually means. You're approaching it from a collectivist mindset which is diametrically opposed to the actual ideology, and confusing voluntary interaction with laws based on force.
> People do not "voluntarily chose to take part in representative democracy"; their participation is compulsory. It's not just "take it or leave it" (which is already getting into contract-of-adhesion territory) but rather "take it or give up your entire life up till now and hope, against all odds, that you can find somewhere to live that doesn't have exactly the same problems". And that applies just as much to companies as to individuals.
How can you possibly understand this concept in regards to citizenship and not understand the concept of wage slavery, coercive markets, and abusive contracts? How is it possible for you not to draw a line connecting the concepts of being born into a bad market and being born into a bad government?
Every principle that you are talking about with government coercion also applies to Capitalist markets. People don't choose to get born into poverty or into coercive structures where they're forced to take bad deals, bad jobs, or to buy bad products.
How can you possibly understand the concept of free association in regards to building a company with corporate leadership, and not understand that communities can also form free associations with each other via formal agreements? You don't get mad that Facebook has a governing board that votes about things. And how can you possibly not understand that the same barriers to free association in regard to location under governments also exist for markets?
This is a wild comment to read, you need to take a step back and ask yourself why a localized monopoly/duopoly/coordinated-market over goods and services is a free outcome, but a government isn't. Both structures in effect have the same coercive power.
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> They do not, however, have the right to compel anyone to enter into those contacts as a condition of living near them
The people living in that state who built the government own the land, they formed an organization that leases the land to citizens under a contract. It's no different from an apartment complex; I can be born to parents living inside of an apartment, and I'll have to obey those rules too. The people of Massachusetts set up an organization that provides public goods and services (including access to land) as part of a contract of residency. What gives you the right to force the people of Massachusetts to provide access to public goods and services to companies? You think you can force the Massachusetts government to provide access to public advertising space, legal recognition, road access?
These are cars that drive on public roads that are owned by the people of Massachusetts, you don't own those roads, you don't get to take them away from the state. Build your own roads on private property if you want to drive unlicensed vehicles.
> and confusing voluntary interaction with laws based on force
Our market is based on force. All of these companies use the force of law and the threat of state violence to enforce contracts. All of them are willing to drag you to court over contract violations, and all of them are willing to use state apparatus to enforce those contracts. There is no difference between a company using state violence to enforce a contract and a state using state violence to enforce a contract.
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In general, it just kind of blows my mind that people can be so in-tune with how collective governments can go wrong, and not realize that corporations are collectivist organizations, and that the "market" of governments and states is not fundamentally different from a "market" of companies who maintain ownership over natural resources.
> as if there were even anywhere else they could be expected to go where they won't face the same unreasonable demands.
The same people who make this argument will also argue that the market isn't being coercive when industry-wide abuse happens, when the only two functional cell phone OSes both collect spyware data, when every landlord in a community imposes unreasonable demands on their tenants, when every job demands arbitration agreements, when every car company starts collecting driver data.
Why not? They’ve been making cars for 100 years and margins go up and down, no data sales during they heydays. Anyway, it’s not anyone’s job to protect their margins.
I may never buy a new car again. Literally zero “smart” features that have ever been advertised in cars sound like a net benefit to my use case, but they all sound like a massive breach of my privacy and sometimes even autonomy. I support every law that makes this sort of telemetry and tracking harder - up to and including completely illegal - and don’t care in the slightest if it destroys the extant industry altogether
I posted a similar comment elsewhere. No tracking. No smarts to speak of - I do like Bluetooth, but I put a basic aftermarket Bluetooth unit in my 20-year-old car back when it was only 10 years old, and I'm still using the same one. Tactile volume knob. Physical controls for heating and cooling. I do have to take the key out of my pocket to push the remote entry button and put it in the ignition to start it (though if I really wanted to, I could get an aftermarket that would make it act like a modern push-to-start). I would like heated and ventilated seats, but really - other than creature comforts like that, and modern safety features like ABS and crumple zones, I'm perfectly happy with a 1975 user interface for my car.
I've "smartened" my ~50-year-old daily driver with a bunch of electronics and various upgrades. There's plenty of options in the aftermarket, which you have complete control over. Or put another way, I'd rather have more smiles per gallon than miles per gallon...
> Numerous automakers (e.g. General Motors) have likewise shown presentations stating that data acquisition would soon become an important revenue source for the industry.
Does anyone have any links referencing these presentations?
I know selling data to data brokers is a hot topic, but from my (extremely limited) exposure to this topic in the industry I got the impression that the actual value of such data was almost negligible. Certainly minimal relative to the price tag of a car.
I think the statement is to be interpreted different ways. It's not just the data itself that can be sold to external parties as a revenue source, but also the value that can be derived from the data and used both internally and externally.
For instance, being able to determine when a vehicle is due for maintenance and preemptively directing the customer to automakers preferred service department via email/txt/phone. From what I understand money is no longer made on the car itself, instead it's made on the financing and maintenance.
Moreover, there is also a lot of value that can be derived from telemetry data long before it reaches the customer's driveway. Transportation from factory to dealership, hot/cold dealership lot locations, test-drive analytics, stolen/lost assets, etc...
Everyone seems to be concerned about location information being collected and sold (due to the privacy concerns obviously), but the value in the data collected is not just based on location.
Predictably, manufacturers keep making this harder and harder. They make money from the data and don't want to lose that. In my old corvette, it was a simple as pulling fuse 27. In the 2022 model that breaks other things (compass, Bluetooth), so I’m going to go find the lte antenna connectors and replace them with 50ohm resistors whenever I have a free weekend next.
That's exactly the fix I want: Make it impossible for the software to know it's been disabled. It should behave as if the car is perpetually in a tunnel.
I don't care if it stops maps from being downloaded--most cars have vastly inferior navigation software compared to phones.
It does have to have a SIM card somewhere in it, right? Can't you just pull that out? And if it refuses to work without one, put a SIM card that's disconnected or is from a foreign country.
Yes, I know, my current phone has one in it but I haven't used it yet, but should be handy for traveling (you can use it in dual-SIM mode by keeping the physical SIM card installed). This is a relatively new technology, and I keep seeing people say that the automotive industry really likes to stay behind on hardware. So I don't think it's likely they're putting these into cars just yet.
Trouble is the car has GPS too, so if it saw you were in the US with a non-US SIM card it might decide to insist you take it to a dealer. That's why I like the 50 ohm resistor idea.
Does anyone know if any bodies are trying to define an open standard? I wonder if the money they're spending fighting this would be better spent developing this standard.
When car shopping a free months ago I learned that Kia wasn’t offering its UvoLink service in Massachusetts and I put it together pretty quickly. I was surprised though to discover the its sibling brand, Hyundai, _does_ offer its telematics service, BlueLink, in MA.
It does exist, it's called J1939 and it is popular already in trucks and non european truck-like consumer vehicles i.e. pickups.
It also allows the effortless integration of aftermarket systems like F+R sonar emergency braking, trailer ABS units, radar cruise, low speed acoustic devices and various other bolt-ons like power take-offs.
In fact, it's this standardization that allowed some hundreds of third party fleet telematics systems to plug into virtually any OE vehicle and pull out a whole bunch of useful data, such as the odometer, fuel level, road speed, torque request and selected gear.
It does however currently lack useful standardization for electric vehicles. They can fit within the standard, but there is no standard way to read the voltage of a particular cell in one of the vehicles' many battery packs, for example. Or the state of charge or battery wear as a whole. I think this contributes to the high integration effort in EVs at the moment. Or why you see few upfitters doing custom bodies for EVs. Things could be a lot more .. plug and play.