The car industry is driving into the ditch in a way I never could have guessed even just a few years ago!

So many cars have "ASS" now, that I'm already half-way through the intersection and in second gear by the time I hear their engines fully crank up. It's hilarious! Now car manufacturers are starting to build "features" which will shut off people's cars altogether, or even call the police, if it "decides" it doesn't like their driving somehow!

Then you get stuff like this, where "cars" are essentially iPhones; chips fail, behavior randomly changes due to "OTA" updates, web services go down and people can't unlock their doors, and so forth. Imagine once the batteries on these things start failing en masse.

If I do need to replace the Z down the road, I think I'll try to find a refurbished car from the 1970s or so, with no electronics, a carburetor, and so on. That is, if the State hasn't made owning or driving one a gun-point enforced crime by that point.