Edit: Just asked because of curiosity. I’m not actually looking for such vehicles.
Edit 2: So for context, my parents new Toyota has this feature that allows the GPS location of the car to be sent to toyota, then you can see the location via an app on android/ios (it’s supposed to be an anti-theft feature). The data is sent via an antenna that connects to cell towers, which then connects to the internet, and to the toyota servers. “Diagnostic” and “maintenance” information is also sent via those same antennas.
The dealer said it could be turned off, but who knows if they are really off. There’s not a hard switch on the car.
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Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
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In most legacy manufacturers (e.g, not Tesla) vehicles you can disable/remove the communication module, which is a cell phone modem that interfaces with the car.
For Toyota specifically this is called the DCM (data communication module). It’s a little black box. In Fords/Hondas it’s called a TCU (telematics control module).
In some cases, you can just pull the fuse for the telematics box.
In general, when you research whether you can physically remove this tracking stuff from modern cars, the key word is to use is “telematics”.
I’m afraid it’s going to get much worse. Right now you can at least disable/take out the little box out of most cars without losing functionality for the most part. Soon it’ll be crippling to do so.
Yeah I can’t wait for the day that securing my privacy on my car cripples it to the same extent that disabling bloatware cripples my phones functionality (literally couldn’t send/recoeve calls or texts or use any browser)
Doesn’t seem far off with that Mozilla study honestly