Technology

Why they do this:

After the first three years, Volkswagen is charging ev customers €150/year to see the charge level on the app, remotely start the air conditioning, schedule charge and so on.

Any tinkerer is thinking "well, if I am paying this extortion just to see the charge level on the app, then I want to exfiltrate my data in home assistant or similar, getting better stats and so on"

So they blocked the API with Google play integrity signatures

Now, instead of spending money on engineering ways to block uncertified devices, they could have simply introduced an official API with rate limits and stuff.

The fact that they noticed all those "unauthorized accesses" it's prove that people just want to pay for a lightweight API access, not a 250mb app that takes 4 minutes to remotely start the air conditioning

After all, we're talking for €150/year for accessing the data of a €1 iot sim card using 0.0001€ of compute time. There should be enough margin for that.

All of this leads back to an old rhetorical question I've often asked. Why the fuck isn't the whole entertainment system and car connection just a standard touchscreen and communication protocol?

The fact that I need these proprietary patent-gated apps to use parts of my car, instead of just a driver that could work on any device with the right port, is overtly user-hostile.

When XavDub contacted the German car maker, the company responded that GrapheneOS “is not an official Volkswagen offering” and advised them to contact their OS provider instead.

This is the only official word from Volkswagen in the whole article. To me, this reads less as "We are blocking GrapheneOS users" and instead "GrapheneOS is not something we give any official support" which I think is a key distinction.

It's not clear what's different in the update that doesn't work with GrapheneOS, whether it's an API call that doesn't work or if they've implemented the Play Integrity API - but I think this article is a bit sensationalist and everyone's reacted only to the headline.

Cars didn't need apps in the 1900's and they sure as hell don't need them now.

Hopefully this doesn't affect me

Ty ,for info , next car will be no VW.

Change it from they block GOS to they spy on you. Get it in front of as many people as possible. If they get huge negative press they’re more likely to change.

This is highly misleading. Hopefully there's a link in the article to the original report on the GrapheneOS forums, where they talk about the app update breaking it on multiple platforms, not just GrapheneOS. It does not appear to be a block.

Class action for unilaterally modifying the agreement about feature access after the fact and to the detriment of the consumer.

How are all these governments and companies managing to enshitify everything? Yet, when it comes to real problems like world hunger, child poverty, and exploitation, no one even blinks an eye.

Why does a car need an android app?

Just another shitty company.