I own a car which is now more than a century old. It's not a thing you would want to drive every day in terms of safety and reliability (fuel economy is not great, not terrible). But it's a thing which could probably be usable for another century.

In a century from now all modern cars will be bricks, because the electronics (not the software, the components) they rely on will be dead and there will be no replacements available.

... On the other hand they will start in the winter and you don't have to remember to pressurize the fuel tank.

Squint your eyes, and these new features are manufacturer designed unreliability.

I bought a new 3-series BMW in 2018. Two (?) years in, the GPS still worked, but it stopped receiving traffic info, and so the GPS was hobbled. It worked, but didn't have the information required to avoid traffic. I finally realized that the new car came with two (?) years of a traffic info subscription, and the subscription ran out. I didn't receive any notice about this (I think, I tend to discard most snail mail unopened), it just stopped working. I get this, from BMWs point of view. But from my point of view, something in the car broke, and would cost money to fix.

Since then, I hear that more auto manufacturers are becoming enamored of this subscription model for more features -- seat heaters, infotainment systems. And why not horsepower? It's easy enough to limit engine output through software.

I *hate* the subscription model, renting things that have traditionally been owned. I hate renting software, renting music, and so on. Even renting books. You may think you own the books on your Kindle, but you don't. Amazon can yank them off your device (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/jul/17/amazon-kindle-1984). I pay video streaming service for access to Seinfeld, for example, but I'm at their mercy. Not only can they decide to stop streaming Seinfeld, but they can also do what they want with it, like changing the aspect ratio (so that a few scenes no longer make sense due to chopped off visuals at the edge of the screen).

I've been removing tech giants from my life as much as possible. I'm relying on Bittorrent more and more. And while I like getting a new car every decade or so, I'll probably not do that any longer to avoid the built-in unreliability that comes with subscription-based features.

I hope that the Slate pick-up gets off the ground for this exact reason. I maybe be wrong but a good chunk of the tech on that vehicle seems to be tied to your cell phone which you'll need to update anyway.

As for me, 2015 GX460, until the wheels fall off. 150k miles and I'm banking on it going to at least 300k with out much issue. Bulletproof engine and the tech was so antiquated even in the 2015 model that there's no software to update.