This is reminding me of a talk I had with a mechanic friend in the early 1990s, when integrated electronics started showing up in basic functions of a lot of new cars. People like him, who didn't know crap about computers but were really good at the mechanical concerns when cars were pretty much mechanical devices - fuel goes in here, controlled explosions in that box there turn other things which make wheels go, and a bunch of cords and plumbing to connect it all up and levers and gears to direct the mechanical energy - were having to confront what to do when that mysterious circuit board began to need work.

This talk happened when I was visiting to set up a new cassette-based telephone answering machine for him and tutor him in its use, because he was that hopeless with electronics.

I love the spirit! I think about open sourcing vehicles all the time, but unfortunately I think the biggest hurdle might be in what constitutes a street-legal vehicle.

Even though there's lots of dangerous problems with closed source cars, I'm pretty sure there's some litany of safety / engineering standards that manufacturers have to meet, as well as passing "smog tests" in many places. (EVs still on the table tho...?)

So, an open source vehicle would be more transparent, which would be a huge win! But also if it was a community initiative like say, RepRap, I imagine there'd be a lot of red tape with user-designed or hypothetically 3D printed cars or somesuch, especially when it comes to safety standards.

The biggest worries I'd have would be how much interest such projects would get from safety engineers and other pros who know how to make the thing not kill the user.

Am I way off? I'd love to hear I'm wrong and there's plenty of hope for this to be a thing. I really hate modern car manufacturers. They all suck. Their proprietary lock-in and user-hostile attitude sucks. We need better. :)

Something to consider, how does that law apply in the US making it illegal to break any digital lock, passed in the late 90s to protect CD companies? It's our property, we should be able to program it how we want, just curious if a company could lean on (pay off) the feds to persecute someone wiping their programming and putting in their own?

I would assume an open source e-bike would probably be the place to start.

Someone elsewhere in the thread linked https://www.openmotors.co/product/tabbyevo/, which I had never heard of before and which is actually pretty fascinating.

I'd obviously say the best open source vehicles are bikes and scooters, but I understand that currently isn't an option for everyone and that even in the ideal scenario there's going to need to be a small number of cars, trucks and vans. IDK how practical something like this will really be, but it's at least pretty neat.

Some cars used 3G cellular connections, which is no longer active in most countries.

The only countries with active networks are Croatia, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Slovenia, and South Korea.

Via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3G#Phase-out

If it doesn't have ANY online or cellular features AND the model never had them as an option, it probably doesn't have a sim card and won't track you. Sim cards cost the manufacturer money.

But if the same model as your car was available with such features and yours was just configured without them, it's entirely possible yours has a sim card too.

With no cellular connection, no data will go out as GPS is one-way by nature. I suppose it's possible someone with physical access can retrieve some metrics if relevant but that's not really a factor IMHO.