LoJack-alike and accident alerting features do make some sense to be offered directly by the car maker. The latter is obviously difficult to retrofit, and the former would likely be easier to defeat if retrofitted.

I don't buy the music and navigation arguments in a smartphone-equipped world, but I think a good case can be made for those two.

Fine. Still, those two could be made as optional features that could be turned on or off at purchase, and/or during visit to a dealership or authorized repair shop. And neither of these should be sending telemetry during normal operation of the vehicle.

In-car Wifi, Spotify on the car radio, OEM maps with traffic.... you see zero?

Yes. In-car WiFi should obviously work even if the network connection break (remember, we're talking about working without Internet, not disallowing Internet at all) - WiFi is a local wireless network protocol, not magic Internet summoner. With actual Internet connection down, it should still maintain the local network for connected devices.

As for the rest, none of those look like they should be first-party features. "Spotify on the car radio" is a third-party integration to a system that should also work off-line, e.g. for playing music off removable storage, casting from your phone (via WiFi, without Internet), or, you know, working as an actual radio. OEM maps with traffic is something hardly anyone wants anyway, because they universally suck relative to some TomTom screen, or even Google Maps.

Colloquially speaking, "In-car Wifi" has come to mean "in-car internet connectivity". I presume this is what the parent meant.

https://www.verizon.com/support/connected-car-wi-fi/

https://www.att.com/plans/in-car-wifi/

https://www.caranddriver.com/research/a32814112/cars-with-wi...

It's fine for those functions to be a casualty of the owners choice to turn off the network, just like with a phone. If automakers want to use a cellular connection in your car for non-critical functions, it should come with a legitimate user-uncontrollable off switch, just like airplane mode on a phone.

Right. We're trying to stop the world of heated seat subscriptions with a remote license verification at startup before it gets a foothold.

Right - but as the parent said, the proposed language of "all car features must keep working" isn't compatible with that.

Defining a law that allows those features to be turned off and yet disallows "data is broken, heated seats are disabled" is very difficult. After all, heated seats aren't an essential safety feature.

CarPlay integration is a feature bundled into the infotainment in many cars that requires an "external network connection". It will not work if you disable the "external network connection".

Why on Earth would it need that? It's supposed to enable integrating your car and your phone. Surely that should mean local network connection.

Wifi is a network external to the vehicle. An internal network would be something like CAN.

Whatever the case, my point is that a good solution is probably not quite as simple as phrased above.

A WiFi router built into the car is something I'd classify as internal networking for the purpose of this thread.

Isn't CarPlay only over USB?

And either way -- just keep supporting connection over USB and it's not a problem?

CarPlay supports connection over WiFi, and I think if a law prohibited it, it would be problematic.

> Isn't CarPlay only over USB?

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205634

>If your car supports only wireless CarPlay ...

I'd argue in-car LAN is an internal network connection. And garage door control etc. are "local area" networks.

Fair. I'm saying that if these features are 'arguably' legal under a proposed law, that law needs to be refined.

> And garage door control etc. are "local area" networks

What if I want to control (e.g. close) the garage door when I am out of Wifi range?

A lot of it exists to sell your lat/lng and trip information to organizations like Wejo, who then goes on to sell it to gov organizations.

I would definitely want my car to be able to call an ambulance if I run off the road and hit a tree for instance and there are no other people around.

Of course perceived privacy is more important than something like that for many people here which is understandable.