Users of early Nissan Leaf and e-NV200 vehicles in the UK will no longer be able to remotely set off-peak charging routines or climate control schedules
Cars needing internet for functionality. What a great idea.
I mean, how are you supposed to accurately measure off peak times, and not sudden start charging millions of EVs all at once without some sort of connection?
You could easily make it modular, that would’ve cost a dollar more, so that won’t happen.
Through the WiFi-equipped EVSE. Or heck, give the car WiFi. Pretty much everyone has WiFi these days, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
Once again a misleading headline: No, Nissan isn’t evil trying to force people to buy a new car (Edit: well maybe a bit, see replies). Those older cars rely on 2G connectivity, which is soon to be shut down in the UK, so they are sunsetting support for the features relying on it…
TL;DR: The 2G network they rely on is shutting down.
Maybe not evil but not exactly good either. It’s a computer in a car, they could offer the owners to buy a replacement part that works on (n+1)G.
True, but maybe not physically possible. I doubt that the 2G module is a separate piece of hardware
Modularity costs money and they’d rather you pay for a whole new car, especially modern smart cars that have subscriptions to use hardware in the car you paid for (e.g. heated seats).
What you say about the subscription model is true, but I don’t think this is the case. They simply went with the network that at the time had the biggest area covered, which would probably was 2G. (and it seems that they also used more recent modems in later models)
They simply, correctly, decide that having the widest area possible covered now is better than to have to maybe shutdown some services at a not yet known future time.
I don’t know what you mean.
I guarantee it’s a separate piece of hardware. The leaf is sold all over the world and needs different hardware to work on all the different radio frequencies. There would be at least four or five different cell radio modules for the leaf.
Well, I said maybe is not physically possible, not that this is the cause.
But still, even being a separate piece of hardware does not make automatically possible to change it with a newer one.
soon to be shut down in the UK,
In 5+ years. Seems a bit premature.
I think we already shut down most of the 2G and 3G in the USA, so those would already be offline here. It happened to my (gas) car already that was using the 3g network for its OnStar type service. But I had already disconnected it myself so it didn’t matter
I hope when I next buy a car someone can’t later decide I’m not allowed to use my windscreen wipers, or the seat position controls or whatever.
I honestly had been hearing great things about the Leaf as an affordable electric and was seriously considering a used one as my next car when I am going to be ready financially around august.
Key features about to make like that license plate and leaf.
They really should make a easy path to update the 2g modem module to a 5g, but you know… Sales. Next thing you know car manufactures will be sunsetting support for an entire car because they no longer support updates to people with an out of date phone. So lazy and short sighted.
Does it vibrate when you plug it in tho
