Comment by mystraline
5 hours ago
At this point, when I look at ANY electric vehicle, I'm seeing basically what Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow warned about.
Its a DMCA DRM hellscape, full of equipment that was sold (with a state registration no less), and these car companies still maintain remote control and real ownership indefinitely.
Mercedes EQS won't "let" owners open the hood.
BMW "rented heated seats" bullshit.
GMC Hummer EV Requires dealer-level authentication to reset the 12V battery or perform certain repairs.
Tesla uses proprietary diagnostic tools and encrypted software.
Volvo has explored payment-based bricking.
Even the EFF warned about this 12 years ago in 2013 : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/drm-cars-will-drive-co...
Will I consider an EV? Sure. Am I going to place primary buying decision on reparability and full ownership? Damn straight I will. If that means I buy hybrids and/or ICE vehicles. I want something I can maintain without running to the vendor to ask permission, or even "giving" them the ability to say no.
This is absolutely not limited to EVs, the same enshittification is in a lot of ICEs and hybrids as well. Today's cars won't be driving in 2040 when a student could buy it for a grand wit 300 000 miles on the clock, and keep fixing it himself in order to save money.b
Owning a car (or device) you have "purchased" is getting more and more difficult to achieve. So is owning of anything at all that can or is allowed to connect online. You basically pay for it in order to rent it because you no longer control its lifetime.