this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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Well, most cars don't REQUIRE it, but most cars lose features if it doesn't have network connectivity.
Good luck finding a car made after 2020 that doesn't have at least one or two features that require the Internet to function.
I've never seen a car like this. Mine was made in 2021 though so I must have caught the last ~~ship~~ car out lol. What kind of things do cars even use the internet for? I'm struggling to imagine it
Remote start, lock/unlock doors, HVAC, windows, and alarm for basics.
All things that have worked just fine on cars for like at least a decade before the internet was ever invented. You are describing the exact functions of a key fob. They can even open the truck without the Internet!
They make it go through an app and a cloud service on purpose these days so they have an excuse to upsell you on a subscription.
I've never seen a fob be able to set climate controls. Either way, I'd rather control my own cloud for the car through home assistant
That's exactly what I use remote start for. Just leave your car set to 68 or whatever and then when you remote start it will come up or down to temp. Even on my cheapass Chevy that's 10 years old I can remote start it (including the HVAC) and also hold the "unlock" to start the defroster. Now I can't actually change the temp the system is set at without getting in the car, thats true, but that's a real edge case for me when I can just leave it set at room temp pretty much year round. Even the seats and steering wheel will heat up if I left that on beforehand. But maybe you do have a real need to tweak the temp and A/C values on the daily where you live, rather than just have the car resume where you left it at, I wouldn't know.
The closest I know of is some VWs and Hondas allow certain click patterns to do things like roll down all the windows or open sunroofs maybe.
Accords and Passats I think maybe Jettas have done it for decades.
Same for remote start. Which my 10 y/o Subaru does with a fob and as long as I set the heat to the right settings before getting out, works a treat on subzero mornings.
Off topic, but I noticed your username....China Mieville fan by chance?
Beetle fan hahaha. Maybe I had just watched The Mummy or something before picking that one years and years ago
The 1999 cinematic masterpiece starring Rachel Weisz and Brendan Fraser?
Good flick.
That doesn't need the internet though right? Like a button on your key fob would achieve the same effect?
I have two cars made after 2020. Both have a phone app where you can set the internal climate settings in the car. You wouldn't practically be able to do that from a keyfob.
Both also allow remote starting from the phone, with a setting for how long to let the car run before it turns off again. From a keyfob it's normally set to 5 minutes with no option to change it.
Both are quality of life features that aren't really required, but I do use them pretty regularly. If the internet stopped working on either car, they'd act just like any older car that didn't have those features.
Wow a whole app just for your car? That's pretty fancy. I don't see the appeal personally, but going by the vote ratio I must be in the minority. I like my stuff to be simple
nah, pretty simple. set the preferred settings in the menu in the vehicle, then have a fob button to activate it. flash the lights to signal acknowledgement, just like locking and unlocking.
although maybe don't actually flash the lights, since everything is stupidly over bright LED now and it's rude af to be using those unnecessarily
My car has a timer to set the cabin at a given temperature by a given time, do you know if your car has a function like that?
None of that shit needs the Internet.
You’re getting downvoted, but I’m in the exact same position. Car made in 2021, no connectivity at all. I cannot start it remotely - why would you do that? Is it really more convenient than turning a key or pressing a button once seated? I guess people really do like it, I just find it hard to imagine.
Starting the climate control from a distance sounds comfortable, the first few moments of driving can be too hot or cold.
I don’t have a built-in GPS, but if there was one I don’t see a benefit of using my phone to control it.
Windows? What?
You start it remotely if you don't have a preheater. Not that idling is great for a car engine, but at least you'll have clear windows by the time you get in the car.
In the summer you can use it to have a cold car to sit into.
Remote climate control doesn't work on ICE vehicles without Remote start or auxiliary preheater.
To add, my vehicle (2011) has its date display (as in the date & time) no longer accurate because it's somehow integrated with the GPS, which has since stopped updating the date, and cannot be set manually. I now keep a little clock in my car that has the date on it to make up for the loss. It's not that big of a deal compared to what others have mentioned, but it was still a shock to me when I found it.
Not to rub salt in the wound, but the GPS signals are hitting the car's GPS antenna unless you've disconnected that wire, pulled the fuse to the receiver, or only drive inside hardened RF shielded bunkers. When I was futzing with a little GPS breadboard module the time is what I looked for first, because if you've got that time signal from GPS then you know the thing is working. (PEDANTIC EDIT: The signals will hit the antenna if you're outside unless you've shielded them somehow, even if you disconnect the wire.)
You could use GPS signals to synchronize clocks across the entire planet to within a microsecond while your car could be used to prop a stick up to make a sundial.
I'm going to wager there's something else going on there. If you have a working GPS receiver, a working display (you said you did), a working "clock" that counts seconds and can give something time-like to the display to show (seems like you do), then a switch might be flipped in software and you have a data point about why GNU does what they do.
Thank you for your input. That might be a bit beyond me at this point, but I'll keep it in mind.
I was told it has something to do with Microsoft SYNC / GPS. There were some forum posts, too, about it but nothing that lead to a fix. I may try to update the system again in the future (it's been several years since the last), but my understanding is that it's not a fix on my end or one that can be done at all.
The date actually reset back to probably the earliest date it had and is continuing on from there. Fun... Lol. Again, thanks for your concern!
No problem. Hope I helped.
I do have a followup question. Will the car's navigation/display work? As in does it know your position? If you're able to have it give your directions then that's enough for a "yes." The reason why I ask is if that's the case, then the GPS system is working, handing data off to the infotainment system saying "here's your position and the time of day," and your infotainment system is saying "thanks for that position but the time is for suckers."
Yep. Nav works just fine (though the maps are a little out of date in some areas). It's just the date that won't set itself anymore. The date and time display are separate from the nav screen, for what that's worth.
Then here's the bright side: in any emergency you wouldn't have to cut up your car and fashion it into a sextant to know where you are!
Joking aside, I don't understand why they wouldn't fix something like that. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that it's working fine for them for data gathering purposes:
I guess I don't understand what design decisions led to a clock that can't be adjusted manually by a user, and won't update from a working GPS receiver. They're the experts.
Other sources like wikipedia/youtube have GPS covered better than I can explain it, but here's something maybe a little different:
Thanks for following up. I appreciate all your interest (and the links)!! I've put it on the back burner for now, but I hope to look at it again sometime.
keeping the navigation database up to date is one. no way to update maps in my Taycan without paying $27 a month for Porsche Connect, which I have never paid.
and I dislike relying on Android Auto given the surveillance inherent in enabling it. it'd be nice to not have fucking subscription navigation maintenance
Not sure why you think Google would exploit your navigation data but Porsche wouldn't. I guarantee both are finding ways to make a profit by bundling and selling the enormous amounts of data users are feeding back to them by using their systems.
I'm not saying I trust Porsche at ALL with my data. Far from it. In fact I at least trust Google to have better software engineering standards, even if their software is inherently surveillance evil bullshit.
But I haven't been able to confirm that Porsche actually DOES log and exfiltrate location or navigation data. Certainly not in my Lexis Nexus report, and there's been nothing I've seen reported about them when a bunch of other automakers have been called out for selling surveillance access.
What I do know is that Google is confirmed to be doing so. Unless I've missed some reporting or leak, I can't confirm that Porsche is collecting, exfiltrating from my car without an active data plan, and selling GPS and nav routing data from it.
Oh for sure, I just meant for those people that do subscribe to Porsche Connect, Porsche is very probably finding some way to monetize all that sweet sweet location and navigation data. I feel like any car that generates telemetry data and has a data connection to the manufacturer, those companies are packaging up and selling off that data to someone. But that's really just speculation on my part.
GPS, telematics(the driving data your car collects and sends back to the automotive company who built it), over the air updates, some SOS style features like OnStar, maybe satellite radio.
Edit: Maybe apps, and stuff like updates to the onboard owners manual (because some cars don't come with a paper one anymore). Oh. And using your phone as a key.
Sounds like I'm not missing much lol. I just use my phone for that stuff
I was mentioning this issue with my weird little car in another thread.
My car is old enough that it uses a 3g radio to connect to the internet so that things like the NissanConnect app will work. I don't know how many 3g towers there are, but the app functionality definitely doesn't work. The rest of the car works fine, all the accessories work, but the app doesn't.
The car is a 2018, which i think is before the push for subscription heated seats.
Like the person I responded to who thought needing an app to find a charging station was an improvement over just having them all over like gas stations.