I think car privacy isn’t talked about amongst any privacy enthusiasts online ever, and it apparently is one of the biggest data collectors out there. For someone like me who values electric cars for there affordability and environmental reasons, but still want physical car buttons and control over my data, how would I go about this?


Electric cars are not that great for the environment if you look into it deeply. Purchasing an old car and having things rebuilt like the engine are much more sustainable. You could also swap the engine out for an electric motor.
The largest block to having modern private cars is that laws require cars to have driver monitoring systems and kill switches installed. Cars also have microphones in them for hands free calling, emergency calls, and active noise cancellation.
Connecting your phone to your car is also a huge privacy invasion as now your phone that knows everything about you is tied to an invasive vehicle that takes you everywhere. A data aggregators wet dream.
You would need to remove the sim card at the minimum but it’s impossible to know ahead of time if that will detrimentally affect it’s functions and throw codes.
I have read about work being done on Linux operating systems for cars that I assume would be more open to modification but I don’t think we can expect anything reasonably private anytime soon from that.
You can purchase used electric cars too.
There are no electric cars that don’t track you except for the really old NiMH Rangers and Rav4s and whatnot that they leased to fleets in California back in the day. Even the very first mass-market Nissan Leaf had unacceptable telemetry from day 1.
My 2015 Leaf asks me every month on the car screen whether I want to opt in or out. I believe the old-timers on mynissanleaf.com, who say that when you tell it to opt out, it does. Sure, it would be better if it only asked once.
I also removed the SIM card.
Just because your phone is connected to your car. Doesn’t mean the car gets all the info. Apple and Google made the integration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIryvRwxp9A&t=670
Timestamp 11min10sec