Should You Buy a Connected Car? - Comments Page 1

Maybe I'm lucky that I lost my livelihood during the recent recession and am now living on less than $1,000 a month Social Security. The "Internet of Things" as well as self-driving and Wi-Fi ready cars are way beyond my reach. Is it simply sour grapes to say that I don't get the thrill of such things? I have driven my own cars since I was 15; I am not about to stop anytime soon.
In my humble opinion, if the tech companies (or any companies that make consumer items) want to keep on increasing profits, then they had best lobby Congress to get cracking on things like rebuilding the nation's infrastructure - doing something that is vitally necessary and at the same time providing jobs to people willing to work with their hands as well as their heads. Because many of the people that I know, college educated or not, don't have 2 dimes to rub together!

Thanks for the information regarding the "connected car"! Things like this are not good in my opinion. It makes me wonder what made the inventors even think about what they were doing. We already have hundreds of things that are not essential or needed for a good life; they are a waste of peoples money that could otherwise be used for better purposes. Safety is a big issue with this car and I believe it ultimately would bring on more stress to a lot of people.

Once security is beefed up, I would love to have a connected car! My car now is a bluetooth and has built-in GPS. It's frustrating, however, that the GPS requires me to know exactly how the data entry people entered a particular location in order for my GPS to find it. It would be nice to have Siri or some other computer entity available to locate places the GPS cannot.

For instance, The Houston Museum of Natural Science now has a second location, in Sugar Land. I needed to meet my daughter and grandsons there last week. My GPS would not pull up that location by name. The address took me to a CostCo. My daughter found it using her Siri on her cell phone. It would have saved me a lot of frustration if my car could have looked it up for me. I can no longer see small things well enough to use my cell phone for maps.

Hello Bob,
very interesting topic. Yes, i agree with you. Get connected does not mean that you need to connect every worldly thing with internet! and risk your life, sacrifice your leisure time.Connected cars will definitely jeopardise life.

I have worked with computers since the late 70's and have experienced all types of unintentional glitches, let alone hackers.

I found it a bit unnerving to take my new Honda Odyssey in because it was not shifting properly and have them say they needed to download a software update for the fix. I'd rather not have to worry about software glitches causing driving problems! And that is not even dealing with intentionally caused issues. I don't think we are there yet.

I don't even like automatic transmissions.

No way, Jose!

It would be good for people to realize that the more complex a system is, the more things there are to go wrong. And, I think it is called Murphy's Law that holds: "If something can go wrong, it will."

If most cars get connected, kiss your privacy good-by. The NSA will demand (and get) the power to locate anyone and find out anything by asking your car. You don't have to be doing something illegal, immoral or fattening to prevent other people from knowing all your business.

Is there a "law" that says if somebody has the power to do something, ethics won't stop them? Who do I go to for it to be named after me?

I like "dumb" cars, the ones with a carburetor and no microprocessors. The ones that do what you tell them to do, software be damned. I admit some of my cars have microprocessors (fuel injection) but it's not worth what it gives you. And when I say I prefer manual transmission I mean the kind controlled by my soft and squishy drive.

And for GPS, I use maps. I'll never forget the time I was driving several people from a convention we all attended last year and one passenger had portable GPS. To get to our first stop it directed us wrong (the map was right). The only positive of the GPS was the voice that misdirected us belonged to what sounded like a very pleasant young woman. If GPS were her initials I fantasize it may stand for Gertie P. Screwup. I wonder what the P may mean.

What would the equivalent of 'denial of service' attacks using thousands of cars instead of computers look like?...especially in the hands of terrorists! All major roads blocked in many or all major cities during a 9-11 type of attack? Using these vehicles to attack whomever/whatever...

I saw a prophetic movie released by the Disney Channel (of all places)named WALL-E. The movie is about a space ship loaded with extremely fat humans who depend upon robotos for eveything from moving from point A to point B to robots simulating physical exercise while the human sat idle on a chair/table. A "throw-back" botor got loose on the spaceship, made friends with one of the modern robots and lead a revolt against the master controlling robot leading to the human landing back on an environmentally disasterous Earth. While the "thro-bots" theme is good in the movie, can you imagine a group of thugs like the drug cartels or a street gang getting control of your car with you/family in it, killing your phone servcie, locking your car's doors and steering your vehicle to a location where they can do whatever their evil hearts desire without fear of being seen or interfered with? I'll pass on AI cars.

No, absolutely not. There are enough sloppy drivers on the road, and boggles the mind to think that when you buy and venture out in one of those vehicles/robots that you are then trusting your life to the all-knowing-idiogeeks who probably have never driven in snow, on ice, in white out rainstorms or winds that can blow you off the road and do not know how to make the necessary corrections to continue on safely or have never paid real attention to the idiot opposition on the road. No, absolutely not.

I want to drive the car myself. If I buy it its mine isn't it? Can we decrapify a new car similar to the way we decrapify a new computer? If I want tech I'll go to the Apple store not a car dealer.

Truth is, people are not safe drivers. Nor are they efficient drivers. Even the best will be bettered in the foreseeable future by "dumb" machines. Sorry folks - you're on the wrong side of history, and science, and economics, and progress, and ...

I won't be buying a connected car and I can sum it up in 3 words: HACK, HACK, & HACK.

WALL-E, the movie, was a great film, though animated, but although I saw it maybe 8 years ago, my recollection of the plot line differs from Roy Adams' recollection.
I will copy an imdb plot summary below.
WALL-E is a garbage robot who has developed many endearing human characteristics. To amuse himself he starts building a house out of all the cubes of garbage he has compressed. And he cares about his insect friend.
He did fall in love with Eva, the cute and deceptively powerful robot there to see if any life has re-emerged on Earth. Eva flips over a weed WALL-E shows her as a curiosity.
Here's the summary:
"In the distant future, humans abandon Earth because there is too much trash on it. WALL-E, with habit of picking up everything he finds interesting, lives alone on the planet with a pet cockroach. He has quite a collection of things, from lighters to a working iPod and even a small ring box (without the ring). He even has the last living plant. When a spaceship comes to earth and drops a sleek and dangerous probe EVE to look for a living plant, WALL-E falls in love with her. WALL-E gives her the plant, which makes EVE go into sleep mode. When a spaceship comes to take EVE back, WALL-E too goes with her. What follows is an adventure onboard the Axiom, where people move on hovering chairs and get liquid food which they suck up through a straw. Due to laziness, they have become so fat that they are unable to move. Due to hastily given instructions given to it, auto, the autopilot it tries to get rid of the plant which compels WALL-E, EVE, the pilot and some malfunctioning robots to find a way to retrieve the plant and save the earth."

If you haven't seen it try and download it; it's fun. And no Disney flick will have an ending that has viewers go away depressed that goodness lost. WALL-E's a very endearing character who by the human characteristics he has developed, implies no matter how garbagey things are programmed to be, the best of humanity, like weeds, keeps popping up.

This was the only time in memory that I have had no desire to read your article.

I know the answer like it was tattooed on my forehead.

Besides, I have my phone so Google will always know the address I am trying to find so that they can send me some ADS!!!!!!

Maybe I will reconsider after they outlaw cash.

EMP, anyone?

Anyone remember Kitt from the Knight Rider series? At the time, everyone who saw or heard about the series wanted one. Some bought expensive remote systems that controlled the locks, windows, and even started/stopped the engine. One car I saw had a sequential red light bar installed in the grill.

It would really be nice to have a car that would drop you off at a store's entrance, find its own parking space, and come back when your were finished shopping. Kitt became so sophisticated that it could even carry on a conversation with the driver.

At the time, the greatest threat to the Internet was unwanted p**no. Then someone found a way to hack into systems and ruined everything.

Yes, a car like that would be really nice - if someone could find a way to make it hack-proof. Until then, I'll pass. It's enough hassle just trying to protect my home computer without having to worry about a bunch of other Internet-connected items [oven go to self-clean when you are making a casserole, refrigerator shut down spoiling everything inside, microwave start when there is nothing in it, toaster being changed from light to charred, heater kick in when it's 90 or the air conditioner run when it's below zero, ... No Thank You].

BobM, some people don't drive to "efficiently" get to a specific locale, they drive for the sheer pleasure of it, and on a sunny day might spend hours meandering about. My younger brother is exactly like that. Since he starts off without a known destination he can't make use of any computerized program that wants to plot his course. Is he to be denied this pleasure because Google or Tesla want to give him their idea of a better ride?
I'm getting to the point where I can foresee a motorized golf cart parked in front of a small senior citizen apartment. Hopefully that is still a decade away but you never know... I do believe that if the day comes when "they" take the keys to the golf cart away from me, then at that point I probably should not be outdoors without supervision. Until then, I drive!

Having been a coder (with you, Bob!) I know that despite the most scrupulous review, no code will be perfect. Hence I am highly skeptical of the safety of self-driving cars or the wisdom of having everything connected. I can't bring myself to trust in it totally.