Your best bet is to find a car where its easiest to disable the antenna/cellular modem for, so look for a car that has a fuse for the DCM(digital communications module) you can pull, as having it be a fuse means you can readily reconnect it should you need to, try to find its schematic online, or find the repair manual for the car or use a car maintenance program,
Apparently its also possible to call the car company and ask for an opt out when serviced,
I vaguely remember some people experimenting with replacing the head unit with aftermarket ones, but no idea how well that would actually go in practice
I vaguely remember some people experimenting with replacing the head unit with aftermarket ones, but no idea how well that would actually go in practice
This varies wildly from manufacturer to manufacturer and even year to year. For example, GM cars used to route damn near everything through the entertainment unit, so that was your central computer. Cell antenna, on star control panel, every that phoned home. That was as recently as mid 2010s. It also led to hilarious problems where a relatively simple issue like an OnStar button not working well required a complete replacement of the stereo unit (which was $8k or so in parts and labor). Now that instrument clusters are doing more while also getting more diagnostic and digital, things are transitioning to a more centralized computing system somewhere else. This can make it easier OR more difficult to get around, depends on design.
For other brands it’s borderline impossible to even use an aftermarket system. Mazdas for example the entire infotainment system relies on itself. There’s nowhere to even put a traditional aftermarket. I’m sure it’s possible, but the design of the interior is completely based around the infotainment unit.
If you plan to get a GM vehicle, from what I’ve seen. Most OnStar modules are right behind the infotainment screen. However, if you remove that, you lose your microphone.
I imagine you could do this by creating a Faraday Cage of some sort around the antenna that would phone home.
In my old car, the BMW i3, I was part of the Reddit sub there and many of us were upset because we had 3G radios in the car that were getting disconnected which meant our smart features would no longer work. But someone was able to replace the 3G modem for a 4G modem somehow. So it may be possible if you can find that component and rip it out or find a way to replace it with a defective part instead, for example.
It’s entirely dependent on what car you buy, they’re all different. On some cars it’s integral to the ECU or some other component. On other cars like my Subaru it’s a box you just remove, then you’ll need a custom harness to make the speaker audio work again.
Without saying what car it is nobody can help you without saying “just unplug it”.
I know nothing about the i20 since we don’t get it here, but looks like on Hyundais you’ll most likely have to pull the entire factory radio and replace it with an aftermarket one. I believe on my friends Veloster it was a distinct module, but that one was 2g only and since 2g is dead it’s not really doing much.
Maybe if you’re lucky and it’s like my Subaru you can pull the radio, find that BlueLink is it’s own distinct module and just remove it. You’ll most likely have the same issue as me where your speakers and mic won’t work unless you build a custom adapter. I didn’t build my own adapter I found a guy online who does radio harnesses for aftermarket radios and he made a basic adapter for like $20, and a fancy one that lets my mic work for like $100.
I have a strong suspicion that Sirius XM is some form of government mandated mass surveillance hardware. There’s absolutely no other explanation that every car manufacturer just includes that garbage as a standard equipment that you just can not opt out of.
These auto manufacturers will nickel and dime you for smallest things like rubber mats they expect us to believe that piece of shit like Sirius XM is included out of kindness of their heart.
Your comment makes me wonder if one could get around AT by installing faraday cages around where the chips are.
I block telemetry on my IoT devices and they still work. I’m curious if cars would be bricked if they couldn’t call home, or if you could selectively allow certain messages through.
I’m curious if cars would be bricked if they couldn’t call home, or if you could selectively allow certain messages through.
I can’t speak for every car but at least Teslas do not mind being offline. You cannot control which messages they send because they connect via a VPN to the mothership. So it’s an all or nothing kinda deal.
You can also pretty easily remove the SIM card on older models with just a few screws. Newer ones use eSIMs, never looked into how to get rid of that one but I assume it is more complicated.
Your comment makes me wonder if one could get around AT by installing faraday cages around where the chips are.
The antennas are usually external, mounted somewhere else in the car and can be unplugged. Never checked if it can still get a signal without the antenna though.
edit: Also, the PCB itself is mounted inside a faraday cage because the entire thing sits inside of RF shielding.
I am never buying a new car again. It will be hard, but I’m only buying old cars and repairing them. Not sure what to do about fuel when that stops. I Not sure about how to deal with a lot in the future, but I’m going to keep trying.
Speaking as someone who worked for a corporate auto maker, it won’t be an easy task since they try to make it as difficult as possible to disable online activation if even providing the ability at all.
The only real solution is pulling the head unit and trying to find any modem and desolder it, which who knows if it would function as it had before hand since everything is integrated.
When I worked on auto-maker on the head units, they were integrated on the chip, the ones that had a sim slot where you can insert and extract it were the ones for development. Recent cars, their GPS and screen media menus uses the Linux inside the modem chip.
Sounds a lot like a smartphone where one SoC chip does pretty much everything… CPU, cell modem, WiFi, USB host/device switching, quick charge, the whole lot 😢
Unless you get an expensive car, I think they do that to reduce expenses. Expensive cars have dedicated CPU for that, but they still communicate with the head unit for online data.
Or just put a power test attentuator on the antenna output.
It essentially absorbs the RF from the antenna and radiates it as heat. Since cell is pretty low power (1/2 watt max, IIRC), and a cell radio will stop trying to transmit after a while (though it will try again), I don’t think it would cause any problems.
The newer cars from the company I worked for were always trying to phone home, not sure about other companies but this one was trying to lock you into the online ecosystem.
While this seems like a great plan; I wouldn’t put it past manufacturers to throw an error message and disable the vehicle for ‘safety’ when it detects a missing network connection for an extended period and/or disabled hardware during self-test.
When I was last working in the automotive industry about two decades ago, a lot of effort was being put into protecting BIOS on diagnostic laptops, so that only “authentic” manufacturer diagnostic tools could be used to service the vehicles.
The car would likely inform the owner to visit a service center and disable features that rely on network connection, but would not disable the car. The warning would be crying wolf, so a warning of actual concern may be ignored as part of the known connectivity error; which may lead to bigger problems.
Probably, but exactly what you do would depend on your exact model. I would get the technical service manual for your vehicle, find the part about replacing that module, and follow the directions to remove it.
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