Well folks, it finally happened. The screen in your pickup truck… your last bastion of peace from the chaos of unskippable advertisements… now plays popup ads. Not even subtle ones. We’re talking full-dash, head-unit-commandeering infomercial panels in your RAM 1500, like you’re driving a Times Square billboard on wheels.
Scammy ads for scammy people driving scammy cars.
This is just terrible. Every aspect of life doesn’t need ads. I don’t care if it makes a company money or not.
GM was talking pretty publicly about doing this a couple years ago and there was a mild dust up over it. They also mentioned enthusiasm over the potential revenue to come from mining and selling driver data (which got them sued) . Last I heard about it was late 2023 or early 2024, so it seems their new data team.has been busy.
Don kid yourselves though, if GM is doing it, everyone else is or will be.
I would raise such hell at the dealership if anything like this happened to me.
But I prefer my cars with NO INTERNET, no touch screens, and very low tech (easier to fix).
Everyday, I wanna ram my car into a building and hope I run over the CEO in their office.
Now the hardest part isn’t ditching and risking my way of life, but choosing which CEO to ram 🤬
Never buy a new car
OH. And espn thought of this in 2011
2022 model and about every three months I’ll get one for Sirius XM or something related to that. It’s only when the vehicle starts up and initializes. Its annoying but Ive been on the Internet since the late 90’s, my ability to practice the 5 D’s: dip, dodge, duck, dive and dodge for popups is muscle memory.
You dodge twice?
For reference, for anyone who isn’t familiar with the 2004 movie Dodgeball.
If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.
Are you kidding? Always dodge twice!
How is this street legal? Can’t use your phone but can have popup ads?
It’s okay cuz it makes some rich guy money
Oh no don’t worry it’s fine cause it’s only at start up. If we just keep moving the bar of what is acceptable everything is fine.
Driver distraction is a leading cause of accidents, including fatal ones. This is a total dealbreaker, should be illegal, and should result in Chrysler getting sued into nonexistence.
Apart from how insane it is to put obtrusive ads on a car dashboard, having to link your phone to your car and then call a phone number to opt out of touchscreen display ads is 🤯
There is going to be a reason that they’ve set it up like that.
Someday in a few years there will be an accident in the opt out service that routes 95% of attempts into a 500 error screen. All they have to do is underpay and never check on the server admin for that service for years until they don’t care.
It wasn’t asking them to pair their phone to call the number to opt out, it was asking them to pair their phone so they could call the number to buy parts for their truck. You’d have to manually dial the number to opt out.
When calling that number, the caller will need somekind of proof that they are in control of the car that they are trying to opt out of ads. Afaik, the easiest way to accomplish that when requiring a phonecall, would be pairing phone and car. But obviously Stellantis is not going for easy with this setup, so this is purely speculation on my part.
At that point, I would opt out with a hammer.
My 2025 ram has never done this… not saying it won’t ever but… we’ve heard the same stories about all the manufacturers.
2024 Ford, you can disable all the remote connectivity in the head unit. If you don’t trust that disable it in firmware with an ODB cable and some pirated software.
Modern problems require modern solutions
This is why I’m not going to buy RAM / Dodge / Chrysler/ Jeep / anything Stellantis owns, and this is why I’m not buying any new car with “smart” / “built-in” junk.
I don’t know of any car that has an actually good head unit. Its either garbage because its a giant touch screen, making it super difficult to navigate without looking (that’s why all the controls in an airplane are different shapes and sizes), or its just a hub for you to run Android Auto / apples equivalent.
Now ads? Ffs…
I’ve just been thoroughly unimpressed by all of the American car brands. Crap vehicles with lousy interiors the lot of them.
My Honda civic 2012’s head unit firmware isn’t that bad.
It tells your input source, volume, if your trunk is open, if your tires are fucked, and includes a hookup for a backup camera that only made it into other models, making it ezpz to retrofit.
Could be a lot worse. Wouldn’t touch a modern one with a ten foot pole lmao.
“Front left tyre is fucked.” “Your fucking trunk is open.”
Now that I would not mind having shown when starting the car.
Actually the bastard won’t tell you what specific tire. Just that one of them has low air pressure.
Kind of a dick move since there’s no way the computer can’t tell which tire it is when they’re four separate sensors.
Wake up sheeple!
Feel like ads in cars should be illegal, but the US doesn’t have a government that believes in good things.
That’s not true. Our government cares about something. They care about ads.
If it’s like the other cars with this same shit then it only plays when fully stopped.
And that somehow makes it better?
Better, as in less bad, but not good.
I never said it was an improvement.
Absolutely?
Absolutely fucking not.
My attention is not free and they have no fucking right to my attention.
And second, fuck them for thinking they do.
Have you ever seen a smart person driving a DUI1500?
Imagine getting a bud light ad while you’re blowing into your ignition interlock device
That’s perfect timing, since in a moment the car will be started, and they can resume drinking…
The Ram 1500 is the official car of “more than one, but not so many they take your license away” – both DUIs and beers before going to work.
