Which Ride?

[taxi1]

There is no privacy anymore and attempts to "do research, turn off / opt out" are useless. Repeat, useless. You might as well just enjoy the targeted ads/messages as a feature.

 

[Swanee]

All the luxury car brands have adopted a business model of coupling always-on car connectivity with fee based feature access (using your phone as a key for example) along with serving up personalized in-car advertising to the vehicle infotainment system. BMW, Lexus, Audi, etc. Wall street loves loves loves recurring revenue models. The car companies are shameless about it.

There is no privacy anymore and attempts to "do research, turn off / opt out" are useless. Repeat, useless. You might as well just enjoy the targeted ads/messages as a feature.

I have YouTube TV and just watching normal television channels I am getting targeted ads all of the sudden in my living room. It's weird but that's the way it is. Resistance is futile.

You have no control over what you believe is "privacy". It's a feature, not a bug.

Hyundai is hardly luxury, but with the IONIQ5 they've made it pretty tough to manage stuff like charging and what not without a Bluelink subscription. Interesting that from 2026 model years and on people don't have to pay for it. Which means we're the commodity (well, our driving and car data is) that is being sold.

 

[sevenhelmet]

...people don't have to pay for it. Which means we're the commodity (well, our driving and car data is) that is being sold.

And that's the takeaway, folks. Remember the good old days of the internet when we hadn't caught on to that fact yet? Pepperidge Farms remembers...

 

[Randy Daytona]

Fuuuuck that. It's bad enough I have to click "OK" on an Onstar error message every time I start my truck. I also actively avoid gas stations that blast you with ads asking whether you've found Jesus yet while pumping gas.

One more reason not to buy a modern BMW, in my opinion.

Today's quaint idea: If I buy something, I should own it. Unfortunately, that's not the way the world is headed.

Certainly quaint. A number of states are making it more and more difficult legally to drive an older car ( defined as somewhere around 2006-2010) and force you into something new. More payments, more subscriptions, more insurance, more data… My 12 year old Hemi Ram has 238,000 miles with 2 knobs for the radio and 3 for the a/c. Quite reliable, but when either the engine or transmission eventually dies, it will be a decision: rebuild and keep going, or a similar but newer Ram. Hope the government still allows a big V-8.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Certainly quaint. A number of states are making it more and more difficult legally to drive an older car ( defined as somewhere around 2006-2010) and force you into something new. More payments, more subscriptions, more insurance, more data… My 12 year old Hemi Ram has 238,000 miles with 2 knobs for the radio and 3 for the a/c. Quite reliable, but when either the engine or transmission eventually dies, it will be a decision: rebuild and keep going, or a similar but newer Ram. Hope the government still allows a big V-8.

I had the same dilemma with my 2010 Mercedes GLK. 300,000 MI and engine and transmission wear was beginning to accelerate. I still managed to sell it for $3500.

Replaced it with my 2023 Tesla model 3 base. Which now has 65,000 mi on it

I would love to see a Toyota Land cruiser in a battery electric vehicle configuration. I would buy that vehicle in a heartbeat.
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[Randy Daytona]

I had the same dilemma with my 2010 Mercedes GLK. 300,000 MI and engine and transmission wear was beginning to accelerate. I still managed to sell it for $3500.

Replaced it with my 2023 Tesla model 3 base. Which now has 65,000 mi on it

I would love to see a Toyota Land cruiser in a battery electric vehicle configuration. I would buy that vehicle in a heartbeat.
.

Toyota has recently brought to market an electric Hilux. Not sure if you can get it here in the US.

Toyota reveals prices for its first electric pickup

The Hilux BEV arrives as Toyota’s first fully electric pickup and body-on-frame EV. Is it worth the price? Toyota launches...

electrek.co

Always wondered if the flexibility of an electric platform would make resto- mods more affordable. Although not as a daily driver for me (still prefer a V-8 Ram), some of the elegant cars of yesterday might be a good fit if you could put their body over a generic electric chassis. My personal favorite would be a 1949 Buick Roadmaster sedanette (fastback)

 

[Gatordev]

There is no privacy anymore and attempts to "do research, turn off / opt out" are useless. Repeat, useless. You might as well just enjoy the targeted ads/messages as a feature.

It's not useless, you just have to have the knowledge. When Amazon started putting ads into my ad-free subscription, I started watching Amazon content via other means that have zero ads.

For Youtube (or even Youtube TV), I get it...that's part of the contract. You get an absurd amount of free content for the price of watching 15-30 second ads. And I'd argue A LOT of the YT content is so much better than most streaming content, on average.

What I do find interesting is that if you watch YT on a computer, the ads are very short, but if you watch it on a TV app like Roku or others, the ads go on for 2-3 minutes.

I would love to see a Toyota Land cruiser in a battery electric vehicle configuration. I would buy that vehicle in a heartbeat.

Why though? Because of the sheet metal? A Land Cruiser is a very specific and focused vehicle for a very specific kind of use...one that an electric vehicle isn't particularly suited for with current technology. I get the LC is also a designer brand of car for many, so people would buy an electric one so they can mall-crawl, but I don't think the price would make sense to sell for Toyota.

I can totally see a hybrid version make sense, but even then... For off-roading, it seems like you'd switch to gas pretty quick to recharge after a couple of high-torque uses.