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I was reading a PJMedia article about how much your car spies on you and wondered if the reluctance of insurance companies to cover former police vehicles has anything to do with the lack of the gear used to spy on the car.
The Beast has no OnStar, for example.
Despite being irritatingly controlled by the BCM, there aren't really any systems on the thing that weren't in my 1991 Biscayne*.
This lack of nannyware might be something to think about.
I'll have to ask some friends with pre-electronics cars if they're having any trouble finding insurance. A '72 Chevelle sure as fuck won't have any of that crap on it.
*The Biscayne started as a Caprice Classic, but I stripped out so much of the luxury appointments that I jokingly said that I was making a Biscayne cop car out of it... the title stuck.
Fwiw, my '01 Toyota MR2 only has an ECU and a BCM and I had no problem getting it covered. I am about 99% sure it doesn't store any data about me, but I could be wrong.
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ReplyDeleteI have two vehicles that are old enough they don't have any of that stuff on them. My 1980 Corvette was the last model that had no computer at all. In 1981 they had the "computer controlled Quadrajet". It was dumber than a rock though, it didn't even control the ignition. Even the OBD-I in my 1989 Corvette has little to no smarts. At most it has a very limited amount of data about operating conditions immediately prior. It has no real long term storage or communications.
ReplyDeleteHowever, both of those cars I have on "Collector's Insurance", which is a lot different than conventional auto insurance.
My 2005 Colorado is such a plain-jane bae model (manual transmission) that even though it has OBD-II, it doesn't have On-Star or any of that other stuff. I has a bit more memory and records a few more data points about operating conditions... but not really enough to be a very effective spy... It's probably not a terribly different level of system as older LE vehicles.
My 2012 Corvette's On-Star is now deprecated. They no longer support the old 3G service it has. I wonder how much of the spying capabilities that compromises. I've seem some information in hacker circles about how to disable On-Star and a lot of those other systems.
I haven't had the conventional insurance carrier I use balk at either of those two, at least not yet.
-swj
if all these companies were required to pay us for access to all our personal info they would stop doing this crap...I would charge them 10 million a year... panzer guy
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot to mention that there are a number of things in the BCM and some of the other systems on newer GM vehicles that you can only manipulate/access with something like a Tech2 scanner. The aftermarket ones, even the high dollar ones from Snap-On and MAC Tools don't have the ability to see or change a lot of things. I had to get a Tech2 in order to disable the F55 (ride control) system. But there are a lot of other things it can do, especially with the extra CANN bus adapter connectors and other stuff it came with. Interesting that you can get these out of China. They appear to be identical to the ones GM dealers have with the exception of missing the "GM" sticker plate. The software CDs that come with it are labeled BOSCH. I suspect that GM co-developed a lot of their computer software and tools with Bosch.
ReplyDelete-swj