Nothing quite says “high-performance muscle car” like a popup ad for a Mopar Extended Warranty covering your whole center console. That’s right, Dodge Charger owners are now experiencing an exciting new feature: pop-up ads that appear every time the vehicle stops at a light. This absolute garbage feature was spotted in the wild, take a look here.
I’ll accept this when the car comes for free.
They’d be showing ads on the windshield and windows for that
An ad that appears at the top of the steering wheel, that always stays at the top since they embedded a circular screen into the wheel so the ads can always be shown.
I know right? I would totally get an ad supported free car. Who knows, someone might make an ad block for it.
So, here’s a solution that will likely work but I’m just extrapolating based on auto industry stuffs. If the ads are driven by SiriusXM, they’re likely coming over the satellite radio. The shark fin on top has several antennae in it, including the XM antenna, which is on a specific frequency band and antenna type. Find the wiring harness for the shark fin, trace the SiriusXM cable, unplug or snip it. You’ll lose XM, but, honestly, based on the garbage I hear on a lifetime subscription radio these days, I don’t understand why anyone pays for it, except for living in or traveling through remote areas with frequency and wanting live background noise.
Chances are it’s possible they’d also try and load the ads via a paired Bluetooth phone for Internet, (maybe) if that’s the case it’s a little more difficult. Probably impossible on iPhone, but on Android may allow one to disable the act of shuttling data to the car stereo via Bluetooth. If Stellantis uses an app to proxy data to the car stereo, deleting the app on the phone would break it.
I believe you need to actively turn on internet through Bluetooth, at least on android phones.
Correct, Bluetooth pairing and Bluetooth tethering are two separate functions. First is for playback, second for internet sharing.
So while you are allowed to use a cars dash for car functions, you should not be drawing someones attention away from the road while at a red light.
How could this be anything but distracted driving.
What happens when this ad pops up, you look at it and read its quite lengthy text, and then get rear ended because you weren’t keeping an eye on the rear mirror?
I’d love to see that lawsuit (although it’d suck for the hurt person)
As an unfortunate owner of a Chrysler and having owned and driven a ton of other cars I can confidently say Stellantis makes the shittiest cars you can buy in US. On screen ads are just a small piece of an immense garbage island that is this shitty company.
I want to really know how often this works. Has there ever been a single instance where someone says…“let me read this popular. Oh my! I really should get am extended warranty. Let me just click accept.”
And even if they do accept it, what then? Does Dodge expect the person to continue reading the terms of service and enter their credit card info…in their car?
I forget where I heard or read it, but there was an anecdote about a guy that worked for Toyota engineering in a department that would purchase competitor vehicles to disassemble them and see what they were up to, like what kind of innovations they were adding. They didn’t bother with chryslers because the most they’d gain was new ways to design a car to be difficult to maintain or repair.
My friend had an early 00s intrepid and would always bring up needing to remove the passenger tire and wheel well to replace the battery any time car maintenance was brought up.
My wife’s first car was a Dodge Stratus. It was the worse. It had a battery leech and I couldn’t find what was leeching power. She was stuck on the side of the road and I bought a battery to try and save her and didn’t realize I was also needed to remove the front passenger tire.
Why on EARTH would you need to remove a TIRE to replace a BATTERY…!?
Because you shouldn’t trust dodge Chrysler to plan a birthday party, let alone a damn car.
What made things even harder was that the plastic wheel well used steel wood screws, which is exposed to salt. So the screws were completely rusted out. I ended up having to breaking the screws and zip tying the plastic wheel wells in place.
Never ever again.
I fucking hated that car.
Fuck NO
This offends me to the core. Stellantis has made my shit list, and I will never purchase any product they are involved in. EVER !
Their cars are trash anyways so you’re better off.
I will not buy or watch anything with ads. I can’t stand ads. Ads represent everything wrong with the US and capitalism. Just not stop shit shoveled into our faces.
I saw this on Lenny about Jeeps. I asked someone sitting in a new Jeep if she got ads when she came to a stop and she said no. So now I wonder if there is something about the trim level or something. She said it was 1 year old. Maybe this just started.
They could also just be A/B testing shit to see how much backlash they get.
I chose the right decade to give up driving.
I chose the right decade to get a car without any options whatsoever
My 2007 just clicked over to 271K miles and I’m going to keep it running as long as possible. It has all normal bells and whistles of a limited version, but was built before all this madness began. It’s a CAR.
We were rocking an 08 Mazda without even power windows up until a few years ago. Even that is too much these days. I’m happier on buses and trains.
They’re just testing to see what people are willing to accept.
Every time you see a useful idiot saying “it’s not that bad” or “they’re a business and they need to make money”, you know who to blame for why things are they way they are.
Any minute now one of those brave-browser idiots will be along to tell us all how great ads are because they can make us aware of products that we had not yet discovered or remind us of products we didn’t know were near by.
What does this have to do with brave-browser users?
I’ve noticed brave users are some of the biggest useful idiots on the internet.
I genuinely think there are 2 classes of brave users: people who are invested in the company trying to viral market it, and the morons who fall for it.
I use it on my mobile devices to avoid youtube ads. Because i’ve yet to find a better way to avoid them on a tablet or phone.
If you have a better option for iphone/ipad, i’m willing to try it.
What about users who don’t use it for the crypto stuff, vpn or any other shady features? I just use it to browse without ads. What’s the downside?
I think many people don’t like it conceptually because the advertising for Brave is:
Built in Privacy + Crypto + Ad Blocking
Firefox + uBlock Origin suffices well enough for most people. It’s stable, suits the purpose, and separates them from a company entangled with crypto.
Everyone is just trying to do their best to balance convenience with the social impacts of their actions. People make change because they care, either altruistically or personally, but it always comes with some sort of personal cost. Putting your neck out there and trying to make a change is more important than any specific browser choice
Brave derives revenue from advertising.
Brave devotees are the only people I’ve ever seen defending advertising as a user friendly revenue model.
I had no idea lol I use brave just to avoid ads which is why I’m confused.
Brave is involved in a crypto scam and is backed by conservative evil fuck Peter thiel
Thanks for the heads up.
I’d suggest you change to Firefox, but they have made some… troubling changes to their privacy policy recently, so it may be a good idea to use a debranded port of it instead.
Afaik that’s mostly FUD and was debunked.
I’m still not happy with Mozilla throwing money down the AI toilet.
you have 48 hours to uninstall brave or you will be thoroughly cancelled.
on lemmy, using the browser you are currently using is tantamount to getting a maga tattoo
you may delay the cancellation by 24 hours by promoting your affinity for linux installs, or swearing that you will switch to a non USA produced kind of ketchup
also, no nicole for you until you reform from your evil ways
Downvoters don’t get the joke!
Brave is a series scam company.
Just make a list of advertisers who actually advertise in these, and actively avoid & shame them. It is fair that they try new things out, but the problem is, when the consumers accept them.
Hey so I’m getting this thing on my new Charger, I think it’s a check engine light?
I think I know who’s responsible.
I laughed pretty hard, thanks for that
This literally happened to Jeeps a month ago.
“It should also be noted that ads are part of your contractual agreement with SiriusXM, but we are working on the frequency,” replied a Jeep Cares representative. “Thank you for your patience.”
A Stellantis spokesperson told Fortune in a statement that “a temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”
Fool me once, Stellantis…
Companies sure so have a lot of “glitches” and “technical difficulties” when they’re introducing controversial features that forces it on a group of people, only to be nearly immediately removed with all kinds of excuses… And then the feature is forced for everyone within a few months.
Almost like it’s NOT unintentional, they’re NOT experiencing technical difficulties, and they’re actually just testing the waters before diving in, with neatly 0 intent to pull back unless the consumers put upenoigh of a fuss the company execs get scared.
Why? Well, probably because Dodge badly needs the money. The brand’s U.S. sales plummeted 29% in 2024
This’ll help sales, I’m sure.
Capitalism is an ouroborus
They’re solid vehicles. My 08 caliber died last year with nearly 300k miles. Their interiors are just so old looking. I had an 97 Contour that doesn’t look much different than their current interiors.
Should we make better cars that don’t have the interior of 2002? No. Better add ads!
The american dream right here.
It’s why american cars suck. Nobody buys dodge overseas.
You have to be stupid enough to buy something just to support your ruling class in order to buy american cars.
I saw my first one the other day (outside of America).
The guy clearly is an American living here. It’s hard to put into words just how out of place it all looked, it’s like you picked up a palm tree, cocunuts and all, and plopped it down in the middle of Antarctica.
Stellantis looking at all that blank ad space on your infotainment console: “It’s free real estate!”