Back in late February Nissan Leaf owners began to receive messages from Nissan informing them that the remote features in their cars would cease operation as the NissanConnect app would drop support for Leaf EVs produced before 2020 as well as eNV200 vehicles that were produced until 2022. The indicated cut-off date was March 30, giving affected users about a month to come to terms with the fact that their vehicle would soon to losing any and all remote control features.
What this highlights is an increasingly pertinent question when it comes to ‘connected cars’, which feature a built-in wireless modem to provide a range of additional features. These require access to a remote server for even simple remote features like controlling the charging process or turning on the heating. This has left many Leaf users rather dissatisfied.
While for such basic remote features you could make the argument that they’re just silly convenience features that do not affect the car’s functionality, modern cars are increasingly becoming reliant on such remote features, including for things like navigation and checking subscriptions for features like heated seats.
Increasingly it would seem that we’re looking at the Car-as-a-Service (CaaS) model being implemented.
The cloud giveth and the cloud taketh away. Cursed be the cloud.
The real question is, why do they do this? Are the server hosting costs really such a massive financial burden? Could they not have a workstation pc in a closet somewhere handling all the requests? Surely they can’t be too processing or bandwidth heavy?
Did they not account for this in the selling price of the car?
If Lewis Rossman’s video is correct then the actual reason is security, or lack of. In that anybody can go to a URL, plug in a VIN (publicly available in many countries) and send commands to car. Apparently a VIN is as good as a password. Rather than fix their embarrassing security they decided the best solution for shareholders is to simply disable the service. 0 cost to the company with potential extra revenue from gullible car owners that then decide to by a new Nissan.
Sadly somebody seems to have curtailed this issue and re-enabled remote functionality but then to do that would violating the DMCA so actually they haven’t done it wink wink.
given all the agreements that the United States has recently abandoned (for some reason), I would imagine global adherence to the DMCA even in places like Canada and Greenland is not long for this world
But even if they shutdown service the vehicle themselves are still receiving so in theory they still be able to access with vin pass?
Not necessarily the backend costs but supporting an old app or platform on thousands or millions of cars they don’t have a revenue stream to cover the costs of. There is an opportunity for 3rd parties to come in here and provide a service if the canbus is accessible on these vehicles and they know the magic commands to send. Of course how much functionality would you want from this service and what are you willing to pay for it.
Because then they can sell you a new one…
They want you to buy their newer EV thats why, same thing the cell phone companies do with their networks
Why it needs a cloud is beyond me, it can host its own webpage with the functionality and have an SSL link and password.
If Nissan grants access or one can hack a way into the system.
Companies that do this should really untether rather than just switch services off.
Just roll out a final update and hand over the keys to make functionality fully local or at the very least open source.
I think that should be mandatory under right-to-repair laws (go EU!)
Would probably sue Nissan to pay back part of the purchase price plus interest, if it were my car that retroactively gets some features removed.
Probably also the reason I would never pay additional money for “connected features” on a car. Not that I will ever have enough money to pay for a new car.
Sue Nissan and lose. You agreed to allow Nissan to make any changes they want to your car when you clicked through the EULA.
Agreed.
(A) Seller promotes product on the basis of features x, y, and z
(B) I select and purchase that product over competing products based on those features x, y, and z
(C) Seller then arbitrarily denies me access to the features I paid for
How does that NOT meet the legal definition of “bait and switch?”
its not bait and switch because you were offered a thing and received a thing. You were not guaranteed that thing in perpetuity.
Usually if something doesn’t last you are told about it, like your monthly phone contract or rental agreements. Nissan probably didn’t.
This is an ongoing issue in video games because it’s becoming common practice to sell you a license with an agreement that says “we can terminate your license at any time” and then they do. They don’t return your money, they can do it the day after your purchased the game and get away with it. It’s illegal in a lot of places but unenforced.
In that case, I have an idea:
You come over and mow my lawn, and I promise to pay you $500 bucks. When you’re done, I’ll even write you a check, but after you drive off, I’ll call the bank and cancel it.
To cite your argument: “…You were not guaranteed that thing in perpetuity….”
that would be breech of contract. Totally different situation as the check you cancel is not payment but rather the promise of payment. Until it clears you have not actually paid.
This situation is more like I agree to cut your lawn for $500. You pay me, I mow your lawn. Then 5 years down the road you start crying that your grass is no longer trimmed.
These features are tied to a service. They do not function without that service. There was no agreement that the service would be available in perpetuity. Its shitty business that they are cutting off vehicles that are only a few years old, but this doesnt meet the definition of bait and switch.
Bait and switch is a fraudulent, deceptive sales tactic where a seller lures customers with an unrealistically low-priced item (the “bait”) only to disparage that item and “switch” them to a higher-priced, more profitable product.
Planned Obsolescence, or perhaps a lemon law violation would be far more applicable than calling it bait and switch.
A few years ago Nissan stopped the app for my 2018 Nissan, but bluetooth audio and even the Aux 3.5mm audio in requires the app to work (Yes, the audio in jack requires the app, with the phone connected, otherwise no audio)… They replaced it with a monthly subscription based app, which I am unwilling to purchase.
I don’t believe the vehicle requires a Cloud server, just app. So perhaps it can be reverse engineered. I’m still considering replacing the entire infotainment system with a nicer aftermarker one to replace the lost functionality.
What model do you have? I have a 2019 Nissan, which never was connected (we specifically avoided the package that had all that), and Bluetooth and Aux in both work solely through the in-car infotainment screen (or physical buttons to change source).
2018 Nissan Titan XD Diesel. I wonder if there is some way to ‘undo’ the connect package.
Cars are history! Nowadays, we have motorised surveillance phone booths on wheels logging everything they can get inside and outside of the car. Poland banned Chinese cars in and around military locations and sure the same should be done with Teslas and others! It definitely is not better when “the good ones” are spying on you! Nobody should! Not your government, church, spouse or parents! NOBODY!
Back to cars: I really hope my current car which probably isn’t compromised beyond having an OBD2 interface will live for many more years. It definitely is from before eCall has become mandatory in Europe. Knock on wood!
I really miss the simplicity of the VW-Beetle and Renault-R4 era! The Beetle’s motor was a bit too tight packed into the rear for my taste, but boy it was robust! The R4’s motor … hey … and I should mention my sis’s 2CV here too … were easier to handle. Sigh!
Can eCars be as simple as that generation? Electric cars existed even before the mineral oil addicts on wheels (ask WikiPeter!), so quite a while even before the transistor was invented. So my question boils down to: Can we have clean, robust, safe (not spying) and simple at once?
Technically yes, we did 100 years ago. Practically no, due to social/governmental malfunctioning.
If you have to prominently attach a unique ID to your car (a number plate), it might be a sign that the state doesn’t want people to travel in an untrackable manner. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely no moves to undo this unnecessary evil
Yes…but not in a new car. However, depending on local laws, there’s little to stop you from daily driving an old Beetle or R4 (or even a 2CV). You’ll have to come to grips with the missing features you may have grown accustomed to, but I bet the aftermarket has you well taken care of in most respects.
Except low/no emission zones and the MOT. You have to pay indulgences to be allowed in the city, or a fine if you accidentally find yourself in the area.
What if Juicero but it was a car? Cool. This is ultimately our fault as much as theirs, because we didn’t set an example by stringing up the first morons to propose such things as subscription-based cars.
It’s a foot-gun. They’ve basically just labeled themselves as a company to avoid. If you DON’T want to sell EVs, this is the perfect way and timing to do it. SMH. What is wrong with Japanese car makers these days? They all seem hell bent on ensuring they do not survive the transition to EVs. Toyota especially; there are more EVs made by Toyota in the US market than in the Japanese market.
The Japanese market has Kei cars and EV’s simply can’t compete.
I lived there for a few years and the wife and I paid $6,000 total for two kei cars. The miles per gallon is amazing, granted my diahatsu mira gino was ~13seconds to hit 60mph. I really liked that car though.
If you’re in the US, you can import one. It’ll cost you nearly $10k to get it home, but you can do it.
That’s a pretty slick looking Kei car, honestly. I’d probably do that before I bought a new car.
If youre in the US, you can import one, if its one of the first couple of years models. If an import isnt at least 25 years old, from the specific vehicles date of manufacture, you have to jump through 10000000 hoops to get it imported.
Quite a few available, and pretty cheap even with shipping https://tinyurl.com/3s9beuth
Youll end up paying another $1-3k to get it out of the port and on the road. I bought my daughter a Toyota Sera a few years ago, it was a bit of a hassle but well worth it.
Or you can simply drive an old Toyota Echo (Yaris). My 2001 Echo got nearly 44 mpg on the highway, and in the upper 20s in town.
To be fair, Nissan already shot themselves in the foot by claiming the Leaf’s batteries should last the life of the car and delivering batteries that only lasted 10-12 years. The Leafs isn’t something you want to buy if you want to keep it long term unless you want to do some creative hacks to swap in later battery packs, so what’s needing one more hack?
They didn’t lie. They just consider 10-12 years to be the life of the car.
My 2015 Nissan Leaf still gets ~75mi from the battery and we charge it perhaps once a week. It’s a great little roundabout.
I love our leaf, its a great car; but these practices makes me seriously consider older cars more and more.
My wife uses the remote climate start almost daily in the winter, checking the charge status is also really convenient (even though the nissan app sucks a lot!)
I’ve looked into openvehicles, we have a Z01, so we need to tap/splice into the CAN bus sadly since in this version nissan disconnects the ODB plug once driving (I’m still a bit hesitant, probably a lot of vital control is also done over this bus):
https://docs.openvehicles.com/en/latest/components/vehicle_nissanleaf/docs/index.html
There is also a home assistant plugin, if you like that sort of thing.
I’ll probably just glue a fingerbot to the dashboard:
https://www.adaprox.io/products/adaprox-fingerbot-plus
Shut down? Not been able to register to the app for nearly a decade now, so closing the app is just another slap in the face. :(
Everything proceeds neatly if you just assume that any functionality relying on an app will be dead 10 years after the date of purchase. This happens so much now that I can’t even really consider it an outrage. Even if they don’t warn you about it, it’s essentially a known fact.
I’ll just pop out to my 1988 Ford, start it up, push some buttons, toggle some switches and giggle.
Yep, same with my ’97 Dodge RAM.
I have no interest in the electronic ‘features’ of new vehicles, nor the cloud ‘services’ they try to push on you. Just more to go wrong. No thanks. Unfortunately, some you can’t get around, like stupid eye-sight tech on my Subaru Forester. You can’t buy without it now :( . If it is disabled, cruise control is disabled. How stupid is that? Or if your seat belt is unlatched, you can’t enable cruise control. Then those interlocks are horrible, but your stuck with them… Or that ‘screen’ in the middle of console which we rarely use (usually just a blank space in the dash)…. Give me simplicity any day … and I bet it would ‘SELL’.
Yes, simplicity might sell. And for those who want that it should be available.
Not all of us want simplicity however.
Give me features that work locally, offline and without subscription. Parts can be smart but they shouldn’t be VIN locked or require an expensive proprietary computer to activate. And that screen in the middle console… give me a hole there where I can mount my own choice of carputer. Or at least make it removable and all the features it might communicate with the car for accessible via a documented bus.
We CAN have our tech and our freedom too. We need a LOT more people demanding it however…
Yuck.
I am eager to test-drive a Slate truck.
That’s about the only commercially produced ev I have any interest in due to all the locked software features and cloud dependant features. If I don’t end up liking the Slate then I will have to seriously consider building one myself.
But… the only way I would have time to do that is to retire. And the main thing I want an EV for is the daily commute to work and back!
I don’t think I could possibly despise the corporate world and the way they r4pe tech for cash any more than I currently do. We need some pro-consumer, pro-repair, pro-hacker politicians passing regulations on this crap and we need it now! Not that I see much hope for that…
Encourage everyone you know to be a “maker” or “hacker”. We need numbers voting with our dollars to fix this market problem. Not that I see much hope there either…
Some things don’t need to be a “thing” in the “Internet of Things”. Appliances. Vehicles. Houses.
I wonder whether this is really a Nissan problem, or is caused by an embedded GSM modem that suddenly has no towers to talk to?
Ours lost connectivity years ago due to the 3G shutdown in the UK (UMTS).
The OVMS aftermarket unit did a much better job, including GPS tracking, and I get to keep control of my data! Win win.
I have a 2015 Nissan Leaf and with-in the last year the charging schedule stopped working. The reason is hilariously stupid. The car has 3 on-board clocks, one for the charger, one for the dash, and one for the infotainment. The first gets it’s time from the onboard modem and the later from GPS. My car was upgraded to 3G and the last remnants were pulled down in our area by AT&T in the last couple years. So with no new updated time, the charger’s time has slowly drifted out of sync with the other clocks and the car refuses to charge if they’re not in sync.
Hey Jarvis, my car is no longer supported by the maker, so you’re free to hack your way and reverse engineer it. ;)
One DIY solution to gain control through the leaf TCU can bus from simple web interface through local WIFI connection:
https://github.com/fkorhone/simppeliTCU
I have been using it in my 2018 ZE1 leaf for couple of days.
Alwesome, that is a nice solution. Thank you for sharing.
I’m in Canada, and in 2018 I bought a used 2015 Leaf at my Nissan dealership, which at the time was bringing Leafs up from the U.S. The remote features never worked in Canada for any of these US sourced cars, and so I never used its features, and thus never missed them. Not a huge deal from what I can see. Shitty that Nissan did this, but it could have been worse. Car still runs great otherwise.
Would have been nice if the Hackaday summary had mentioned some of the open source replacements for this.
There is OpenCarWings (https://github.com/developerfromjokela/opencarwings) which can use the existing equipment from Nissan with a new SIM card that you provide, does a small modification to the server settings in the EEPROM and talks to a server that you can either self host or use a public instance.
Or there’s OVMS (https://www.openvehicles.com/) which replaces the whole unit with one based on an ESP32, an open source software stack.