I remember many years ago thinking, "if they can have a add a SIM card on a phone, why not add one in your car? Imagine an Internet connected car?"
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.
Not just the ads. They are likely tracking your location, and drive events. These can be sold to your insurance company who may adjust your rates, or even drop you if they consider your driving patterns to be risky. When we got our Ford Maverick, first thing I did was disable this. Kudos to Ford for making this easy.
Downside is that we got a recall notice about the software for the backup camera needing an update. I scheduled an appointment, and it took over 3 hours. Asked the service guy why it was taking so long to flash to software, and he said our system needed an update because we had not enabled over-the-air connection with Ford which allows this to be done in the background. Evidently the download speed for this was incredibly slow according to the SG, so it took over two hours before our Mav was current, and they could apply the backup camera fix. Note: I was very suspicious about this claim. I thought it was more likely we were being purposely held captive in the service waiting area -- which has a big screen constantly running Ford ads. I guess that is OK. I had my Kindle, and was into a great book at the time, so I actually was not too put out.
I highly doubt the overworked service center employees were wasting your time, they probably were just as annoyed as you were that your car was sitting in a service bay longer than expected.
Do you really think that a dealership would tie up a service bay to keep you captive?
Service is where dealers make their money. You’re convinced that manufacturers will sell data to insurance companies yet believe that dealers will sacrifice hours of profit. That doesn’t work out.
We were not in the service bay. Our Maverick was outside. The Service Guy said they had to download the update to their servers. From there it was a quick trip to the service bay for the updates. That is the reason I had asked in the first place. I could see the Mav outside. Not blaming the SG. I am sure it as not the Dealership, but someone at Ford Corporate??? Not so sure.
Also: I made sure we were the first appointment, arriving at 7:45am for my 8am reservation. Soon another guy was behind me. One thing I have learned it to always schedule "the first time in the AM" if you do not need immediate service.
Edit: In retrospect, they had turned on the OTA system in the Mav. So maybe when the SG said it was downloading, I thought "to a server" but maybe it was directly to the Mav. As I noted, was not a big issue. Still not using the OTA features.
The dealer is paid per job for warrentee work so they still want you out quick.
even for non warrantee service they are generally paid based on how long the job is expected to take not how long it takes them. The only reason to not hurryitoo much is they warrantee their own work and so if you bring it back that costs them.
Of course I do? Across all my utilitarian devices, e.g. phone, desktop, laptop, I already find updates to be a large net negative except for the vague and nebulus 'security'. If a car 'needs' updates then it isn't doing its job.
I can't imagine the expletives that'll come out of my mouth the day I'm running late for a meeting and my car won't start because its in the middle of an update.
I consider OTA updates to be of negative value, actually. If my car needs fixing, I'll bring it in for servicing. If it's not broken, I don't want my car tampered with.
Come back to me when there's a punitive liability model for OTA updates. If the garage manages to break something during, that's on the garage, not me. It should be the same for OTA updates: the company pushing the update should be liable for any failure and for providing replacement transportation if they manage to break my car with an update.
Hence why folks should be pushing right to repair and similar legislation through to prevent this before it happens. Technical hacks are tactical solutions, good policy implementation is the strategic, long term solution.
What I didn't think about was this would be an opportunity for ads and subscriptions. And everyday you'll own less and less of your car. I'm shopping for a car right now, I may have to just put a fresh coat of paint on my old one.