Hello people, my family recently bought a Renault 5 e-tech. The car itself is great, but there are some aspects that creep me out, especially the driver-facing camera. We didn’t actually know that such a camera existed before we bought the car, it was only mentioned as the car was given to us.
The cameras official purpose is to see, if you are tired and paying attention to the road, by some “AI magic”, I suppose. You can also let it scan your face, so that you automatically get logged into your profile.
I personally think, that that is kinda creepy, especially as there is no visual indication if the camera is currently recording and no official way to disable the camera hardware-wise. When it is being coverd, the car immediately complains about it.
When talking to friends or family about it, I got one of two reactions: equal concern, or “nice feature actually”, “what about the camera on your laptop?”, “you are way too paranoid”, “I have noting to hide; it is only me driving being recorded”.
I have also seen such cameras in other cars, BYD for example.
What do you think, is this creepy or am I too paranoid? Does anyone know where the actual data is processed, on device or on some cloud server? Do you have any experience with such cameras? I couldn’t really find any information about it on the internet.
You must log in or # to comment.
I’d love to buy an electric car, but I want one with no electronics, if that makes sense. Electric power train, but no screens, “driver aids” or other nonsense
You want the Slate then
The Bezos-mobile
Bezos has done a lot of horrible things, but making a $20k electric truck is not one of them.
I avoid shopping on Amazon unless absolutely necessary, maybe 2-3 times in the last ten years. I think his financial existence is an abomination. But if his truck company is the only manufacturer offering a $20k base vehicle then people have good reason to hand him money. Hopefully undercutting every other manufacturer by $10k+ will result in there being more cheap cars, and alternatives within that price range
I’ll believe it’s not $40k when they actually sell them.
It’s now “under $30k” since the tax break was nixed by Trump.
That and it used older, less safe battery tech.
They are going to be required to have the spyware cameras in 2027 as well. It’s federal law in the U.S. unfortunately. Hopefully there will be some published guides on tampering with and disabling them though.
Icepick or, less permanently, spray paint I suppose
Are you saying to use those tools on the car or the people forcing these fascist laws? Either way I’m for it.
I actually want a 90s Civic hatchback with an EV swap
Would love it if they were making a sedan or a subcompact. Not everyone needs or wants a truck.
Already out of production, but the original fiat 500e is very much one of these barebones electric vehicles. I love mine
Yes! I just heard of this recently. I hope it catches on.
No radio ability to connect to cell towers or WiFi would be nice. I think there’s a brand doing this, but I forgot to read that article I saw about it just a day or two ago.
Edit: here it is: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/06/slate-says-its-electric-pickup-will-never-track-you/
That’s an Amazon owned company, their EVs won’t track you because they are already getting that data from your phones.
Yep, I’ll never buy electric, becuase we aren’t allowed to have an analog one.
ELECTRIC IS SO FUCKING SIMPLE. motor. Battery. Voltage regulator. Gearbox. Thats it. That is all it fucking needs. But we can’t have that.
I think things need to start happening at dealerships. All those new cars just sitting outside unprotected. Hmm. Sure hope nothing happens to them. Do what it takes until we get what we want.
Why are people convinced this is just in EVs? All new vehicles will have this, even brodozers.
I know, and it sucks.
Its becuase the old evs that didnt have this have awful range and generally suck. New evs would be god, but all new cars have this shit so I will never buy one.
Thats it. That is all it fucking needs. But we can’t have that.
I share your pain.
I want an elec car. That is, if I could ahve one without spyware. Which I cannot, because enshittification.
Combustion cars are problematic in so many ways. But an older one is the only way I can avoid surveilance on wheels.
Think about what the mfg can glean from your car GPS! Or what they can infer and sell. You can figure some real intimate things about ppl that way. Give me your car GPS info. I will tell you where your kids go to school. I will tell you your economic class. Whether you just got cancer, b/c all the sudden your car is going to an oncologist office a lot. Whether you went to an abortion clinic last month. Whether you’re having an affair with a co-worker. It’s almost endless.
I’ve read claims that some car co’s now make more money from your data than from selling you the entire ass car.
This should scare the shit out of everybody. But it does not seem to.
What is scary is how many lemmings don’t realize all that data is tracked on your phones. So driving some 30 year old shit box doesn’t prevent anything.
YES! If you don’t need much range, maybe look the Renault Zoe from 2012. As its older it doesn’t seem to have that much tech in it.
Be very much aware that these old Renault Zoe use chademo for fast charging, a connector that literally isn’t used anywhere anymore so you’re relegated to AC charging. Oh, and a funny little quirk with them; they cannot charge with less that 6KW AC because of how they use the motor inverter. sometimes with public AC chargers this is an issue due to load distribution between multiple chargers.
buy an old car and convert it. It aint gonna be cheap but probably cheaper than a new EV.
Converting an ICE car to an electric is insanely expensive. Far more expensive than buying a new electric car, even without factoring in the cost of buying the old car
where did you read that?
Look up the cost of conversion, then double that. It is very expensive to convert and then you get a car no one will touch for repairs. EV conversion companies are quite scammy.
Renault has some models with almost no gimmicks, only a typical navigation system, for example the Kangoo at least our older model, no idea if that changed)
You can probably do an hybrid conversion of a popular ICE vehicle.
The newest kits replace the transmission and adds a battery in the trunk. The engine is then converted to run at a fixed RPM for max efficiency. You can also plug them in to charge at home and on short trips they never even start the engine.
Aside form the lost Trunk space, there are very few downsides.
There really should be more investment in this area so it becomes available dor mor cars.
I like the electronics, I just want anything that connects to the internet to be disabled. I’m close to needing to buy a new car, I plan on specifying at the dealership if they will stop me from disconnecting the GPS and other connections.
- Camera
- Internet connectivity
- Proprietary software
No device should have more than two of these things.
No device should have the third, ever.
I have an offline dashcam and it’s fine. It does everything I need it to, and does nothing I don’t want it to. It can’t connect to the internet so it can’t spy on me if it wanted to.
Maybe there’s room for compromise, but there is absolutely zero reason to concede such things in advance. The baseline expectation is that every device should be running Free Software and fully respect its owner’s property rights, full stop.
If you instead approach the issue with the casual attitude that “oh, proprietary isn’t so bad if it doesn’t connect to the internet” the compromise after negotiations ends up favoring proprietary tyrants way more than you would’ve been okay with.
I don’t see why a vehicle needs to connect to the internet at all. Or have a screen whatsoever. I don’t understand why a car can’t just be a thing with a gear shift and a fucking steering wheel that drives from point A to point B
wherever there’s money to be made, capitalism will inevitably enshitify it and there’s A LOT of money to be had by cars with cameras and sensors that record your habits to report them to insurance industry to charge the maximum possible fees and to the police to keep track of your whereabouts.
making cars comfy and convenient (as well has making it the only viable means for travel) is the way people get lured into this mobile panopticon by choice and they pay for the privilege to do so.
Can’t steal a Tesla. Once stolen, it cannot be used.
I mean, that’s great and all but I’ve never really had a problem with my cars being stolen more so with them becoming more expensive and less efficient not to mention ugly as sin, Tesla is a perfect example. Those cars look like corporate sanitation personified.
I don’t see why a vehicle needs to connect to the internet at all.
Remote start (ICE) or remote starting heater (EV, ICE with Webasto) is a nice feature. Ability to check the status of your doors (are they locked), windows (maybe you left them open because it was hot and then the rain sensor didn’t close them), etc. All great features. Ability to track it is great if you have kids and let them drive, I guess - mine isn’t that old yet.
It would be much nicer if you could route all of that to your HA server instead of the manufacturer’s server though.
But the thing is, cars before 2015-ish were actually kinda comfy.
Is why I keep driving utterly depreciated formerly executive/luxury shitboxes! Okay, I had one 2019 Mercedes, best car I’ve ever owned, other than the privacy issues. But you can get 90% of the actual physical car features that car offered in a car manufactured before they started connecting 'em to the internet. Would only be missing the 9G-Tronic transmission and the super efficient engine that made it feel like I was driving for free.
Now my dream car is a 2010-2012 Range Rover (L322). First of the ones with the good 4.4 diesel engine and the extremely good ZF 8 speed transmission. Last of the ones with the sexy boxy body shape. Connectivity? GPS, radio, bluetooth (only for calls). No internet. Price? About 10-15k EUR for a decent one. Good luck finding a brand new car for less than 100k with the same comfort level and towing capacity. Maintenance costs? OK if you know how to wrench, literal bankruptcy material if you don’t.
Remote start (ICE) or remote starting heater (EV, ICE with Webasto) is a nice feature. Ability to check the status of your doors (are they locked), windows (maybe you left them open because it was hot and then the rain sensor didn’t close them), etc.
I can do all of this myself with my eyes and my hands, I live in a place where I don’t lock my car really ever unless I go to the big cities. Like I detest the idea of having an app for my car to tell me the automatic window thing you’re talking about didn’t do it. I am perfectly capable of doing that myself with my own 2 hands, I’ve forgotten before in the rain and it hasn’t ever been so big of a deal that I’d opt for a feature to do that for me, it’s the definition of unnecessary. Remote start seems nice especially in the brutal winters but I’ve never had it before and I’ve never had any problems waking up before sunrise in below 0 weather to start my car other than battery issues. I also don’t see why remote start and heated seats would require internet or an app whatsoever.
It would be much nicer if you could route all of that to your HA server instead of the manufacturer’s server though.
I literally have no idea what this means and zero interest in learning anything more about software or hardware, I do admit that’s probably kindof ignorant of me but I also do not like “computer stuff” like that, I have an iPhone because I want it to 100% simple as possible like I’m a boomer.
I just want a god damn car I can start with my hands and drive where I need to go safely and efficiently. That’s it. I don’t understand why people enjoy having so many more unnecessary bells and whistles.
Good for you then. Where I live, it can be 35 degrees and sunshine and then suddenly torrential rain half an hour later. You’d want to be able to make sure the window is closed when it starts raining. How do you do that if you can’t get to the car at the moment?
0 degree weather doesn’t really warrant pre-heating your car either. Try running out the moment you wake up in nothing but a t-shirt and maybe pants when it’s -30 or colder to get the car. Bonus points if you live on the 5th floor and have to run down, then up to go have breakfast and then back down. Then tell me you see no value in being able to do this remotely.
Though if you use an iPhone, I don’t really see why you care about having a non-connected car anyway. Your phone already reports where you are at all times.
Try running out the moment you wake up in nothing but a t-shirt and maybe pants when it’s -30 or colder to get the car.
lol. I own winter coats for a reason… You throw that on instead of a t shirt in -30 mornings. We get those here too. Just going out in a t shirt is your own fault. I would also never work somewhere I couldn’t run outside quick to roll up my windows. I always work labor so I’ve never ever been told I’d have to just sit inside if I knew my car was being rained on. These problems aren’t real problems being solved they’re laziness. Telling me you don’t take the time to put a coat on in the winter is fucking insane no wonder you need your car to connect to WiFi and track you!
I don’t care about my phone tracking me tbh.
I care about it being easy and efficient to use, that’s my whole point about cars.
I’m not going to bother getting dressed just to go start the car lol. I own a winter coat too, I rarely use it because I don’t need it when it’s warmer than about -30. I go out in my shorts and t-shirt and then get dressed when it’s actually time to leave.
Anyway, all of these things make using your car easier and more efficient. Not having to spend extra time doing things manually. But like I said, if you don’t care about your phone tracking you, why give a shit about the car? It has far less data, it can’t even access your bank accounts or email.
I bet you don’t drive a car with manually adjustable valves either. Why? Are you lazy? Or is it that technology takes care of things you don’t want to spend time doing? Matter of fact, why not walk or cycle to work? It’s all laziness in the end.
There’s a certain level of laziness that I am willing to sacrifice for comfort/efficency, and then there’s the level of work that I enjoy putting in to my daily routine. Now I’m just worried for you as a fellow winter enjoyer… put on a coat and some gloves dude! You can get frostbite! It is 100% worth it, you already have to put on atleast underwear (you owe that to your neighbors if they can see you like mine could) and shoes! Please don’t tell me you skip putting on shoes too…
As far as the data thing goes I would be willfully ignorant if the cars actually reflected what I wanted to do with them, if that makes sense. I don’t need it to connect to an app on my phone because that personally annoys me, that’s kinda it. Same with driver facing cameras, fancy screens that are distracting, etc, it’s mostly that they personally annoy me and I don’t personally like the features and I wish there were options to have a simple car with a simple, physical interface.
Check the privacy laws in your country. If in Europe, you can have the services disconnected. Looks like a Renault so sometimes cars manufactured in the EU will come built in with the ability to turn off the feature.
Car data privacy is the worst there is today and will get much worse with timd. Mozilla foundation put out a report recently
Thank you, I’ll look into that :)
Fatigue detection is a real thing that doesn’t use the type of AI that people think of when they hear that word today most often. It’s not language based but instead it’s able to recognize faces and posture, tell where your attention is focused, and recognize signs of fatigue like head drop, eyes closing, and attention drifting from the road.
It, along with other attention based driver safety features, are real and effective and can be done on device with a computer with less power than a modern cellphone.It is, however, at least a little creepy. It’s made a lot more so by it not being disclosed upfront with disclosures and full user awareness. It should be explained by both the website, the car manual, the salesperson and the car itself exactly what it’s doing and where any video data is being sent. It’s probably processing the video locally and at most sending telemetry about which driver just sat down and such, but 1) you might not want that 2) unless they actually tell you that you don’t know.
It’s not paranoia to want an explanation and appropriate assurances, or for it to be in your control. You don’t need to assume it’s the worst case for that to be true. It’s probably a real safety feature with a couple of quality of life features taped on so people can see it do something, since you don’t really see a passive safety feature. But without actual communication you don’t actually know that.
Thank you for the excellent response!
don’t need to assume it’s the worst case
We are all assuming the worst case because it’s most likely based on historical data. There is no way to justify this while ignoring other actual safety issues like headlights. Pretty sure not being blind while driving is an actual issue, but since it doesn’t rape privacy and civil rights, they’ll just ignore that.
You’re literally quoting a part of a sentence to seemingly disagree with. Specifically a sentence that’s saying that you don’t need to believe it’s nefarious for it to be reasonable to want privacy and assurances of privacy.
They seemed on the fence about if they were being paranoid or if they were justified in feeling concerned and it was as bad as it seemed.
I’m saying it doesn’t matter what you believe their intentions are, it’s not paranoid to have concerns about the camera in your face. You can short circuit questions about the technology or their reputation and go directly to resolving that discomfort however is most suitable to you.
I see the safety benefits of having this, and I would appreciate knowing that the car would blast a loud sound every time my eyes shut off from sleepiness so it will never happen, but this must be 100% open source no exceptions so it can be verified that it doesn’t spy on you.
Yeah, I can see the safety benefits but I’m honestly not sure how I would feel about it. My current car has a variant but the camera is mounted on the outside, and it notices lane drift and changes in responsiveness to curves. It’s basically an extension of the collision/lane centering/automatic windshield wiper (weirdly) systems.
I’m okay with that because it’s not looking at me, but at the road, which I expect the car to do. Even if it was verified to not be sending anything anywhere I can honestly say I’m still very unsure about just being passively on camera like that.
I always bring up the magic of Scotch’s Magic Tape.
This tape lets most of the light through (useful for dynamic light features) while blurring the image as if out of focus or behind frosted glass. It is also mostly discrete unlike opaque tapes.
The car potentially can refuse to run because can validate that the driver is not impaired to drive.
That’s not the car’s responsibility
I think the US government thinks it is, IIRC there’s an upcoming regulation in 2027 for that
The libertarians are finally starting to make sense.
Want the good bits of “libertarianism” with internal consistency and a liberatory framework? Have I got the ideology for you!
Anarchism might be a bit too extreme for my taste
Its not that extreme when you look into it, but I get it. Anarchism has a lot of negative connotations, but It’s fundamentally an acknowledgement that hierarchy is the common thread that connects all oppressive structures (capitalism, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, the state, etc). As such, if we want to be free from oppression we should be dismantling hierarchies by whatever means necessary, so long as those means are compatible with our ends. This could look like the anarchist of days past, sabotaging factories, killing union busters, and assassinating kings. But it also looks like starting community gardens, running food shares, setting up free stores, tool libraries, and time banks. There’s a million ways to be an anarchist, and very few of them involve bombs
Drinking and driving is about freedom. My body, my choice, etc.
Libertarians would only care if the industry said they didn’t want it. But manufacturers are all lock step in favor of these regulations.
Exactly. The big manufacturers love stuff like this. The more mandatory features, the harder it is for new car manufacturers to enter the market. Back in the day, guys like Ford started out by selling cars they built out of their garages. Ford was built by starting in a garage and plowing the profits back into the business over decades. But modern cars are just too complex to build that way.
You have no idea how the industry works. Everything like this is modular from suppliers and adding gadgets is trivial, which is why they all do it.
the locations of the cameras are no published and you’re likely to miss at least one.
For that we still have the Internet. Better nerds than I will find out for each car model where each last camera is located
Wasn’t there some news a while ago that talked about how bad car companies handle user data?
Mozilla’s latest edition of *Privacy Not Included reveals how 25 major car brands collect and share deeply personal data, including sexual activity, facial expressions, and genetic and health information
[…]Says Jen Caltrider, *PNI Program Director: “Many people think of their car as a private space — somewhere to call your doctor, have a personal conversation with your kid on the way to school, cry your eyes out over a break-up, or drive places you might not want the world to know about. But that perception no longer matches reality. All new cars today are privacy nightmares on wheels that collect huge amounts of personal information."[…] (source)
Not sure if this was the one I was thinking about. There was also this revelation made by the German CCC (Chaos computer club, pretty famous) about Volkswagen and some leaked GPS data. Here is an English article about it. (There is also the German CCC video, but the English didn’t seem very good.)
Criminals or spies could potentially use such data to create a detailed movement profile of the car owners. For foreign intelligence agencies, for example, it may be of interest to see whose cars are parked daily between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. near buildings belonging to the Bundesnachrichtendienst, Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Or those which are driven regularly to the U.S. Air Force base in Ramstein. The Cariad data provided such information.
Btw. Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with “I have nothing to hide” is a certified moron and shouldn’t be trusted with anything. They also have so little imagination that it should make everyone sad.
Also, police can get your car data without a warrant in the US as I understand it, and if you link your car to your phone, they can get into your phone without one, with no indication to you that they accessed it. Basically everything, phone calls, messages, contacts, etc.
That may mean hackers could get into that backdoor they left open for the police too I would think.
The enshitified search is not giving me the article despite finding it multiple times just this year, but I read it in the Intercept a couple of years ago or something.
I don’t think it is fair to call them morons, ignorant definitely though. I imagine that so many of these people don’t understand or know, how invasive a modern car is. And it is probably something they have never thought about or looked into.
Ignorance is bad, but can be fixed. Morons I don’t think can really be taught, and would probably ignore the evidence of how bad it is.
Any person who in the year 2026 response to privacy concerns with “I have nothing to hide” is a certified moron
the response to “i have nothing to hide” should be “… because there’s nothing inside”
You’re not being paranoid - that would be a hard “no” for me. I’d keep a clunker from the 70’s alive and drive that forever.
They will stop making parts… it is already happening. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
It’s creepy even if it has a legitimate purpose. There’s a move to make this kind of tech mandatory in all cars, with the purported aim of stopping drunk driving. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/federal-surveillance-tech-becomes-mandatory-161321992.html
Cars collect data about you to sell them to insurance companies. There was a study by the mozilla foundation about this and they said that there is basicly no modern car that does not do that.
The only thing you can do to avoid them is buy an old car.
Many models can disable data sharing in options. Kia is one example.
Many models require the owner to fit a SIM card if they want OTA.
The amount of paranoid misinformation in this thread is annoying.
Y’all don’t want a nanny state? Then stop driving drunk, stoned, texting or otherwise distracted and killing over 30,000 people a year like children. We need this shit because we give morons licences to drive, and we refuse to force telcos to disable data IO on phones while driving.
or use electrical tape on the cameras…
and if they realise that and disable the car until you remove it?
🔥
It’s a lot more than just video. It’s all your audio while you’re in the car. Your driving habits, your location, your devices, who is in the car with you so on and so forth.
There’s a ton of data that can be gathered and associated without having to have a camera.
If you ever talk in your car and it’s a modern car. Congratulations! That’s being recorded cataloged and sold off to the highest bidder.
I hope they like me talking to myself in funny voices and belting out songs at the top of my lungs, because that’s all the audio they’ll get out of me.
I read out my world domination manifesto when I go out for a loaf of bread. Because I know a group of people in a room in China know how important I am.
One doesn’t have to be internationally important to not want their audio recorded in their own private space.
Oh yes, because you are so critical there are committees in China listening to your every conversation, or aliens, or those lizard democrats.
… What?
Are you drinking your grandma’s bath water again?
Additional data about your driving behavior is also collected, completely unrelated to cameras. In fact, this data is the majority.
Maybe people who drive like cunts endangering the public need to be watched.
There was an article about removing the modem (or other essential piece of that data path) from a specific model of car (prius I think?), hoping to see more of those.
Find the antenna, wrap in foil. It’s not rocket appliances, Ricky.
Yeah I want an entire ass web database with how to do that for every car. Spin up the hw hacker community on that shit.
I haven’t found a centralized place for it though. Just some piecemeal info. Moz has a good centralized db for what info different cars collect. But nobody seem to have one for how to disable it, per make and model.
It is very creepy. Especially if there is no official way to disable the camera, so that it does not complain about the camera being disabled.
This is creepy as hell. I liked the Renault 5 - until now. Fuck this shit. I wont pay a small fortune, just to enslave myself to a 1984-style digital panopticon. I am getting angry just by reading your story. Corporate greed is once again crossing the line, slowly shifting the overtone window. Everyone who is not concerned about this, is simply ignorant and/or borderline stupid.
If it was my car, I’d probably cover it. And if it then starts beeping, I’d maybe even locate the speaker and deactivate that one, too.
I wonder if it is even legal to sell you something like this without informing you prior to your purchase.
Calm down. If you can afford a new car, you can afford a roll of electrical tape.
JFC lemmings love their drama. If only you showed this much passion at elections.
To me your comment brings to mind the underlying problem, which is: your action won’t matter because of the overwhelming behavior of the herd. The masses can’t comprehend/don’t care and profitability is absolutely not tied to consumer satisfaction anymore.
The only winning move is not to play. Buy older models before this idiocy started. My vehicle is 2011 my SO’s is 2007.
This is all just to increase the profit margins for insurance.
This is being touted for safety reasons, yet there are still no guidelines and headlight brightness, headlight height, hood height of pickup trucks, etc. Regulate the vehicle exterior for actual and immediate safety benefits before trying to float this privacy infringing shit.
Car regulations are so much fun. Atere you crazy? Your car can’t be that loud, there are several reasons for it, obviously. Oh wait, you mean a rich people car? Nevermind, those can be the loudest cars imaginable, because they need 900 hp
All this would be fine if, and only if you actually owned your car and all the data in it. If you could assume no cell phone somewhere hidden away in the computer. If the data was encrypted with a key you had, not the dealer, not the police, just you.
But we all know that isn’t the case. You might have a title to your car, and own almost nothing inside it. Everything is connected these days, which means someone is looking at that data and seeing dollar signs.
Destroy the camera bro
it’s forbidden the camera is part of the new eu security regulation
They can forbid deez nutz
