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’ve been saying this for a long time. We need to recognize it for what it is, attention rape, and reject it completely.
The junk mail you get in your mailbox should be illegal. I’ve tried contacting people to have them stop, but low and behold it’s USPS that’s responsible and there is no mechanism in place to stop it.
So many platforms now make you pay for their service and then show you ads with it. You pay to be advertised to. I mean the car is exactly what I’m talking about.
I honestly believe it’s a detriment to US culture, how saturated every environment is with advertising, people don’t even see it anymore, it’s “normal”, invisible.
Do not pay for a service that show you ads, I wouldn’t even use a service that relied on advertising. Use only paid services that do not advertise. Do not buy products that advertise to you.
Hear this person. I pray thee.
Welp. Never buying a new Dodge vehicle or from a Dodge lot.
0 tolerance for this.
BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, Toyota, Jeep, Dodge have all tried to add subscriptions to their vehicles basic functions or otherwise monetize owned property.
Hit their mommies and daddies, while Im at it.
BMW Group: BMW, Mini, Rolls-Royce
Mercedes-Benz Group: Mercedes-Benz, Smart
Tesla, Inc.: Tesla
Toyota Motor Corporation: Toyota, Lexus, Daihatsu, Hino
Stellantis (Owner of Jeep & Dodge): Jeep, Dodge, Chrysler, Ram, Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Lancia, Maserati, Opel, Peugeot, Citroën, Vauxhall.
Welp every manufacturer that shows this should go down immediately upon first offense.
Not even kidding, this should be corporate suicide.
Dodge and Jeep are (well Jeep already was tbh) both firmly on the “actively speak out against” list. If I was in a place of hugely inflated power, I would dismantle the entire company, and sell it to whoever that company likes the least.
This should honestly be a brand ending scenario in less than 5 seconds after the first ad. CEO should be in the bread line TODAY from getting hit with this.
ABSOLUTE zero tolerance. There are no valid arguments against this and I will die on this hill.
Jeep and Dodge are both owned by Stellantis :) It’s one shit-circus out of
Francethe Netherlands (corrected because apparently I don’t know geography).On the good news front, the market is beating them like a rented mule. Dodge alone is down 29% in sales year-over-year.
I had never heard of Stellantis until the comments on this post.
That’s at least a little good news, but I want day-after total zero existence for stunts like this.
As in executed the day after murder kind of immediate punishment. In this case, total, irrevocable punishment.
C suite people literally living in shelters fighting for leftovers at a food bank after paying out years of employee salaries and benefits kind of punishment.
You can’t just fine people like this for crimes. You have to actually take away money and the ability to accrue more than enough to live on.
Wow, if you’re this fired up about car dashboard ads, wait until you hear what Google’s been doing with your data.
Yeah I’m not exactly happy about that either.
I was trying to stay on topic about this. That’s a whole different rant.
Plus, things spread before they get worse. This is a line that shouldn’t be crossed by anything in any way. The inside of my car is a nice little island. It should stay that way.
I feel pretty much everybody would agree with that. Even the ones open to it probably just want to make the money from it without having to deal with it themselves.
I dunno about anyone else but you can slide into my DMs with that rant since i ain’t getting visited by the fediverse chic anyways
Dodge alone is down 29% in sales year-over-year.
“Clearly we need to add more AI, internet of shit, microtransactions and advertising on the cars to compensate!” - Stellantis CEO
Actually, Stellantis has their global HQ in Hoofddorp, Netherlands.
You are… very correct about that!
I somehow got my wires crossed and assumed that the PSA Group (who got rolled up into Stellantis) was still the home base. Thanks for the correction.
I wonder why they can’t get it right
This should be punishable by firing squad.
Or better yet, the masterminds behind this will lose someone due to distracted driving over an ad.
I would take that car back immediately. Fuck that.
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.
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!”
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.
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But I’m still not allowed to touch my cellphone while behind the wheel because the screen is too distracting, right?
This what I don’t get, those huge “infotainment” screens are perfectly acceptable, but you can’t answer a phone.
Edit; missed the letter “a”.
You are typically allowed to have limited interaction with a mounted phone.
You can’t pick your phone up or anything like that, but you are allowed some very limited usage if it’s mounted. It’s no different than a built in car dash at that point.
However, fuck this, this is beyond expected use, and is definitely going to cause distracted driving.
You’re usually not supposed to interact with the screen either when driving, and it’s easier to put your hand back on the wheel when the screen is mounded instead of dropping your phone… but I get what you mean.
If you do you must buy something
As long as your purchase is over $10,000, you have immunity from prosecution for vehicular manslaughter during the transaction.
This law brought to you by Carls Jr.
C O N S U M E
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.
Not really. You cant tether unless paired first. And pairing is definitely not only for playback.
Hard no on that shit
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.
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 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.
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?
Stop buying new cars until they remove this bullshit. We can go 40 years with existing cars without buying a single new one.
I have a Renault master from 2016. I’m pretty sure I can squeeze another 50 years out of this diesel bitch with adequate maintenance and care. Plus my other car is an e-bike.
That’s awesome ! My dad had a Renault back in the 70s air cooled…which is super weird for living in middle of nowhere. He overheated it eventually haha
The cost of used cars isn’t much better assuming you don’t want a piece of crap. After almost being killed by 2 used cars I’d prefer to not risk it anymore.
I was very lucky in that I can repair most cars. It’s a lot harder now. Before I had a real job, all my vehicles cost less than 3k. If you learn what to look for and to stay safe (brakes, tires) you shouldn’t really be in danger with a used car. Now in an accident, some ass in a 30 foot tall dodge truck will kill you, but that’s kind of unavoidable even if you’re on the sidewalk
Subaru has great safety ratings and the “used Subaru tax” (as in, a used Subaru tends to be more expensive) is because they are very good cars. They have some of the best safety ratings on the market.
Skill issue. Used cars are dangerous if maintenance is neglected.
I just want a car that drives and doesn’t collect any tiny bit of data about me
Electrify a classic. It’s cheaper than a midrange new car these days.
Did you know John Deere tractors have a dedicated piracy scene? Because the tractors require authorized technicians to service them and doesn’t allow farmers to service them themselves, spoofed firmware has appeared and is fairly frequently used to bypass this.
My point is, if you can jailbreak a tractor you can jailbreak a car. Just a matter of time.
Hell yes I do.
When that old antipiracy ad was like “you wouldn’t download a car,” turns out they were vastly overestimating your average American tractor owner or car driver’s respect for the corporate arcology.
Arcology: architectural ecology, a city intended to be contained in a single structure.
Thanks boss, I used the word and I’m like “I’m maybe 10% sure this is a word and most that confidence is coming from SimCity 2000” but then I went full send, I might not be the best journalist.
You know, I meant the corporate hierarchy. They’re increasingly living in Spacex company towns or other arcologies and such. The gated communities, whatever the corpo version of the Ivory Tower is. In a word, that one building from SimCity 2000.
Encrypted ECM? Build a new foss one and sell them online, you’ll make bank.
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)
Hey so I’m getting this thing on my new Charger, I think it’s a check engine light?
I laughed pretty hard, thanks for that
I think I know who’s responsible.
