Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
Halfway through he describes this as malicious compliance with the “right to repair” law. Apple and others are making a mockery of the law.
What you want to look into is body kits. It’s taking a car, removing parts, and putting on replacements that have fittings that attach the same, but look completely different on the outside. There are many types of cars that have become the most popular to customize and have the most options, but tons of cars can be changed significantly. There are even some body kits that change everyday cards into looking like completely different cards (“kit cars”, I think they’re called), and lawsuits around some similarities of body kits. There’s also tons of YouTubers that do videos on this, and a whole culture about it. Usually they go for more flashy, and more tech, but you can probably go the other way pretty easily too depending on your taste.
It’s completely possible to do as a hobby if you have time and money, and more possible to GET done if you have lots of money. Honestly I have no idea about it. But my cousin is a car guy and I stayed with him for a few months earlier this year. Damned interesting stuff out there.
They don’t want body kits they want a kit car. There are a bunch on option but they are usually servicing a very specific niche in the market. Sports cars or rally fighters or the like.
I actually am looking this stuff up. So far I just asked an LLM about it (worst way to start I know), but I am interested in an extremely basic car. I am an elder Millennial and if I ever had to talk like an old man, this is the moment. When I was a kid I envisioned the car I want. A simple, basic hunk of metal that gets me from point A to point B. This was the car my parents and grandparents drove. As I grew up the only two major innovations that I found useful were A: RF keys that allowed you to wirelessly open your car (and I can forgo that, but they are most useful in that I don’t need to remember where I parked my car since I could just press the button and have it light up), B: Rear view cameras, which make backing up and parallel parking much easier (and Parallel parking is my ultimate weakness), and C: Blind spot sensors which I found great (but don’t need connectivity), and those can be replaced by additional small round mirrors that I have found, meaning a non-electronic option is available.
Shit like automatic window opening/closing was great, but I CAN live without it (if you haven’t been in a pre-2000 car, back before button press window opening/clothing you had to manually turn a crank to open/close a window, and you could only do it if you were next to it. there was no master crank for the driver). I also don’t care for a radio. If I want to listen to radio a simple battery operated pocket radio will suffice… and I do listen to shit on my phone, but if I do things old school like using paper maps (and thus keep my phone in a Faraday bag. BTW, I have driven in an old-school non-GPS world before and I was able to do just fine), a non-connected MP3 player will be all the music I ever need. Mildly pricey, but it is a buy-once affair.
I need to mention that a car built to those specifications is 100% legal. There is no law requiring telemetry in any country that I know. There are lots of people who drive hotrods and custom cars and older cars made prior to any of this nonsense all don’t have those things. To make a long story short, you don’t have to sacrifice privacy for all the modern conveniences. Music and movies can be done on portable non-connected devices… and if you can afford a car, you can afford those.