I am sure this article has been shared before, however I wanted to have a look at this topic.
The articles short summary is this:
All 25 car brands we researched earned our *Privacy Not Included warning label – making cars the worst category of products that we have ever reviewed
I am currently driving a 2014 Ford Fiesta which just has a radio with a CD player and Bluetooth. I do not need more than that in a car.
The reason I am looking at all is that that the Fiesta does not belong to me and the friend owning it will be moving out in a bit, so I kinda need another one.
There seems to be one brand that is not as bad as the other ones (but still bad): Renault; mozilla's review...
Maybe I will have a look at their cars.
What do you guys think? Stick to older used cars and not use an EV or look at which of the manufacturers have the least bad privacy policy?
In case you actually ever need a car and want ACC:
Adaptive cruise became available in the 1998 Mercedes-Benz S-Class and in the early to mid 2000s expanded to executive cars of different marques and then later on, towards smaller/cheaper cars.
There absolutely are cars you can get that have adaptive cruise, that don't have any network connectivity beyond the built-in cellphone (because they used to do that) or Bluetooth to connect your phone.
It definitely differs between implementations. I hear Distronic Plus on a W212 Mercedes (so 2009-2016 E-Class) was fairly good for its era, with smooth braking, but I'm biased because pre-touchscreen-hell Mercedes cars are something I have a soft spot for (so pretty much anything made before this decade, really - they kept touchscreens out of the equation for longer than Audi at least). On W211s you could get regular Distronic, which didn't come to a complete stop, it was only meant for highway use. Also all these systems were optional back then, so you can't buy cars blindly. Hell, I bought a 2019 C-Class being pretty sure it had ACC and it... did not.
I unfortunately can't give any advice on Japanese cars, I've only owned a Subaru. The ACC in that was a bit janky, though it never hit anyone so it definitely worked. Most of the time. It complained about lack of sight fairly often, since it was a camera based system unlike the radar or lidar systems most seem to use.