[stonedartist]

Several modern cars are actually moving in the direction of gaining more and more central control competitively. Last year we had to remove the fuse in the car battery for maintenance, and also because the battery needed a little cleaning - while we were in a remote village with no access to proper internet connection. Little did we know that after re-inserting the same fuse back to the battery, the media system would stop working. The media LCD screen started showing a "Enter the pin to unlock the media system" screen! And we do not have the pin, we were never given a pin. Hence we lost access to the car GPS and media system altogether in an unknown territory. We somehow got back to home and had to book an appointment with the car dealership for the technician to unlock our car media system! He plugged his device and generated the pin that's signed/paired with our specific car and then used it to unlock the media system.

It is indeed scary that even car manufacturers are moving towards central control of every little thing in your car.

The last thing I want to see with all these tech companies following Apple's footsteps in a lot of things, is to see the auto industry becoming like Apple.

[gambiting]

I'm sorry, but that's really funny to me - not because I'm laughing at your misfortunes of course, but because of how easily people forget history or are simply unaware of it.

Media systems locking due to the lack of power is not a new problem. I do remember having the exact same problem on my 1994 Passat, where the radio would lock itself and you had to go to the dealer to have it unlocked.

>>And we do not have the pin, we were never given a pin

Literally the same problem, except 25 years later :P Manufacturers almost never issued these special pins to unlock radios.

And like, disconnecting the battery has always been a problem in cars, BMWs, Mercs, Opels, Peugeots, Fiats - I've had them all and they all did something weird if you disconnected the battery - more often than not, a check engine light would pop up and you had to bring it to the dealer to clear it. This is not new.

[stonedartist]

We were not aware of that and that was definitely a new experience for us. My father owns a car bought a decade ago and we can easily fix and swap any parts we wish without having to worry about getting sign-off from the car "owners" :D I don't see why that would happen, and seeing that as a common practice among other car manufacturers does not make it any less annoying.