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A comment on Stranded after driving out of cellphone range in app-powered smart car. Parent comment

Re:Stranded after driving out of cellphone range in app-powe... by spuz on Thursday February 20, 2020 @07:46AM (#22374672)
The point is, how does the car know to connect to your wifi hotspot when it's normally configured to use a 3g/4g connection? I have never used a smart car so it sounds like a reasonable question to ask.
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Re:Stranded after driving out of cellphone range in app-powe... by montenegrohugo on Thursday February 20, 2020 @07:54AM (#22374713)
Actually you're right. It's been a while (almost ~2years) so I didn't fully remember.

The car did NOT connect to the phone Hotspot, iirc, and that was one of the things that irked me. If a phone can connect to both wifi and 3G/LTE/whatever, why shouldn't a 50.000$ car? Especially if that car necessitates being online for its function.

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Re:Stranded after driving out of cellphone range in app-powe... by moooo99 on Thursday February 20, 2020 @10:35AM (#22375755)
Because your phone is designed to do that, a car is not. Besides, iirc the most car services don't even use the car hardware itself to enable their service. They usually install secondary systems for communication with their servers somewhere inside the car and then communicate with the cars controllers. So its not even a matter of how expensive the car is, its a matter of how well designed the rental companies hardware is.
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