Its generally the same industry wide.
I have the lowest spec, cheapest car Ford had available and it still has the cellular antenna. I checked, and at leadt on an ecosport the cell antenna is very easy to remove and doesn't impact functionality of the car. That being said, I did reconnect the cellular antenna since app-enabled remote start is a genuinely useful feature. I can warm the car up from my desk without having to walk within range of the keyfob, so I am accepting that bit of privacy loss.
[0] https://www.ford.com/support/category/fordpass/fordpass-conn...
I can't help but chuckle at the use of the word "just" here. Sure, if we are now into reverse engineering hardware module interfaces and potentially desolder jobs on a (at a minimum) ~$20k vehicle, of which many features will stop working once you remove the module as well as triggering how many warning and service lights...
Source: my car.
The idea of a vehicle repossessing itself does bother me. In the early 2000s I bought a vehicle from Mitsubishi, financed through them. At the time, setting up an automatic payment through them cost a monthly fee, so I set it up through my bank instead.
About 3 years later I got a call from them threatening repossession because I was three months behind on payments. I checked and every payment had been sent.
It turned out that Mitsubishi Motors East had transferred my loan to Mitsubishi Motors West, or something like that, and I had missed that. It was probably in one of the statements I never bothered opening.
The repo man can just use the 5G connection to locate the car, drive to it, unlock the car start the ignition and drive it away.
This would work today just using the APIs all modern Fords already have.
There are rumours this already happens for some car models:
> https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotel...
Also yeah, the Toyota 86 family is still too expensive to be a project car for most.
This is the world we're going to see soon.
Thats not the problem - the problem is you are / will not be the owner, you can never become the owner because the firmware is not for sale.
You are just a peasant that pays for the hardware and tne repair bill and is allowed to drive it unless you break one of the clauses in 900 page EULA
Eventually some hacker will decide crashing cars is fun, and I don't expect real security to happen before that. The same goes for medical equipment.
$5 says the hacker will be a nation state, and the "fun" will be an assassination that's hard to prove wasn't a glitch.
As for security, while the automotive manufacturers are aware of dangers, and standards like ISO21434 https://www.iso.org/standard/70918.html are driving them towards better security engineering practices, there is a huge gulf between process/compliance/governance, and truly secure engineering practices as a core part of engineering culture.
Many/most of the people working on the on-board systems come from an embedded development background that doesn't include pervasive connectivity. That's a problem. They might check the boxes to appear secure, but they aren't necessarily invested in the process.
My prediction; there _is_ going to be a severe and widespread automotive security event which cannot be ignored, before that culture shifts.
Yeah that's a big Definitely.
I wish developers and consumers alike exercised a higher standard for software quality and weren't becoming increasingly tolerant of crap.
Hackers have been able to compromise cars for at least a couple of decades, and while car manufacturers are getting better at securing their products, they are all pushing hard for further connectivity. This means apps and subscriptions for your car, new protocols that lets cars exchange information, and a huge reliance on cloud.
Source: first hand sources working in well known automotive corporations.