When cloud computing first became a thing, the benefits seemed obvious, in that you could access your data wherever you were as long as you had wifi. But as with all things involving big tech companies, they used that to draw people in before they started using it turning the screws on the customers. Cory Doctorow writes about this phenomenon is his excellent book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (that I have read and will publish a review of later) and which I have written about a few times before.
This article in arstechnica looks at one particular aspect of this phenomenon as it relates to modern cars, when purchasers find that they are no longer in full control of the product.
Imagine turning the key or pressing the start button of your car—and nothing happens. Not because the battery is dead or the engine is broken but because a server no longer answers. For a growing number of cars, that scenario isn’t hypothetical.
As vehicles become platforms for software and subscriptions, their longevity is increasingly tied to the survival of the companies behind their code. When those companies fail, the consequences ripple far beyond a bad app update and into the basic question of whether a car still functions as a car.
Over the years, automotive software has expanded from performing rudimentary engine management and onboard diagnostics to powering today’s interconnected, software-defined vehicles. Smartphone apps can now handle tasks like unlocking doors, flashing headlights, and preconditioning cabins—and some models won’t unlock at all unless a phone running the manufacturer’s app is within range.
However, for all the promised convenience of modern vehicle software, there’s a growing nostalgia for an era when a phone call to a mechanic could resolve most problems. Mechanical failures were often diagnosable and fixable, and cars typically returned to the road quickly. Software-defined vehicles complicate that model: When something goes wrong, a car can be rendered inoperable in a driveway—or stranded at the side of the road—waiting not for parts but a software technician.