Hello internet users. Someone in my family is looking to buy a car and wanted some recommendations for a private one. They are looking to buy new, and need Android Auto and CarPlay. I know all new cars suck for privacy by default, but I was hoping someone here could offer some insight as to which cars can be made better and what cars offer the best experience with minimal compromises on privacy and no subscription bs. I also have a Home Assistant instance that they can access remotely if there are any cars that can work well with that.
Edit: Android auto and CarPlay aren’t as important as I thought.
Unlikely to find a new car without a calling home function.
Definitely not one with car play.
Best you can do is find the cell antenna port and put an RF sink on it (they’re used for testing radio output).
Tell me more about this rf sink
The technical term is “dummy load”, most antennas are around 50ohm “impedance” which in an incredibly roundabout way means the antenna is indistinguishable from a 50ohm resistor at whatever frequency it’s tuned to…which means you can replace the antenna with a 50ohm resistor.
This all assumes you care about leaving the radio functional (radio amplifiers will burn up if they can’t dissipate the energy they’re creating) and in most cases it’s probably fine to just cut the trace as close to the source chip as possible. That said, if the system is especially evil and well engineered it’ll throw errors in some cases so better to leave everything functional but unable to hear or transmit.
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I think if you remove internet connection from the car and use it with a phone with graphene os is it would be OK but I could be wrong.
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Sorry, but I have bad news for you. Privacy in major car brands no longer exists.
You don’t say where your family member lives, but you might look into smaller regional brands that focus on cheap cars for less overdeveloped areas of the world. Be aware the tradeoff is probably in safety features.
There are things you can do though.
GM for example you cannot remove OnStar from their vehicles. But with my Subaru removing the starlink module was a ~20 minute procedure. You’ll need an aftermarket harness in order to maintain the front speakers.
When you go just ask if there’s cars or models without the car itself having a SIM card but that still has carplay. People love to drum this stuff up but they still make dumb cars. There’s usually like 3 variations maybe 4 of each model. Go lower on the model to get less features but still the right amount of them.
I don’t have a great answer to your question, but you might be able to find a relatively cheap car that isn’t “smart” and doesn’t have a touchscreen or anything. Do they make those anymore? Then, you could add an aftermarket stereo receiver to it, like some of the options in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t1GdI9UsEI
Yes, that’s still a “smart” stereo but it’s NOT connected to any of the car manufacturer’s metrics or systems, right? So the separation makes it seem more privacy-friendly to me. I could be thinking about this incorrectly, but it seems logical to me. There might be some stereo receivers that are more private than others, but you’d have to do your own research for that.
Do you know of new cars that don’t have all the smart nonsense?
Damn, I’m looking around and don’t see any, even the cheapest Toyotas and Kias have a big touchscreen with Android and CarPlay. I’m not sure what happens if you take that out and replace it with an aftermarket receiver, but it appears to be possible because Crutchfield sells receivers for a 2024 Corolla: https://www.crutchfield.com/g_473950/Digital-Multimedia-Video-Receivers.html
I’m also seeing people online saying that there are cars made for businesses that still come with no “smart” features. But I have no clue how you would buy one of those, I doubt they have them at dealerships: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatcarshouldIbuy/comments/124n5qw/what_cars_less_than_5_years_old_are_recommended/
Or, you could just get a used car, save some money, and check all the low-tech boxes.
Would love some info on where all this shit is located in the car. Someone should make a database of the different cars and how to block shit
Dacia, least bad one. Made a dedicated phone for the car without personal info as well. Rooted calyx OS , microG, organic maps and spottube. No simcard and VPN on WiFi. Not sure how much is still leaked but a lot better at least.
The average salesman will act like they know but they don’t. About the only choice for a private vehicle is going to be an older vehicle. New ones are getting less private and larger and more expensive. Go with an older but we’ll cared for Honda or Toyota.
Couldn’t you ask the guys at the dealership to remove the router and such from the car? Say you don’t want internet. If so, I’d say that’s the best you’d get in terms of new cars.
If you want an actual dumb car that’s reliable, I don’t think anything beats a TJ series Jeep wrangler. Not good gas mileage, but the I6 engine in them is fantastic and it’s still relatively easy to get parts for them despite being 20 years old. You can add an after market head unit for CarPlay out android auto.
If you really do go new, you can disable the cellular radio. It’ll cost you a lot of convenience features, and you won’t get updates. But no cell radio, no ability for it to give your data to the mothership.
