For many cars it's relatively straight-forward to disable the cellular modem, and sometimes it won't impact the other functionality of the car at all.
Chances are someone in a forum somewhere has done the legwork for you. Do a google search and realize how easy (or hard) it is to do for your vehicle. Most of the time it won't even impact your warranty, apart from the modem you've purposefully disabled and no longer care about.
Ok, but what about when you take it in for service and the first step in the service manual is to verify connectivity, which they do. There car then uploads it's backlog of data.
To each their own, but my recommendation is to not go to the dealer after buying the car (unless it's to fix something expensive covered under warranty). I recommend finding a good mechanic.
That said, I'm not pretending this is a perfect solution. But it's good enough for me and it can probably help other people as well.
FYI, you can get the user manual of the car and find where the fuses are. One of the fuses will likely control the cellular system. Pull the fuse, no more data.
It’s not ‘when’ it’s ‘if’. And let’s be honest here, if you get into an accident, someone else is already calling 911 as well.
So in exchange for being spied, your data sold to third parties (likely), and knowing every place you visit at every time and know your movement patterns better than anyone, you get the protection of someone calling you, (if it’s a serious accident you’re probably not answering and if you’re answering, you can probably dial a cellphone. At least 9/10 of the 1/100000 chances of a serious accident).
Just curious if the trade off is still worth it for you? I don’t know, I know I don’t.
I don't think this is true. In theory you could embed the cellular modem into the mainboard, or even into the processor, but I would bet for ease of service that the modem will always be on a separate board somewhere that can be cut off.
They would never make the car reliant on cellular service or it would just stop working whenever you didn't have a signal - or the modem died.
How would the manufacturer enforce this? The first time someone gets stranded somewhere because the cellular hardware died and the car refused to start... well, sounds like a huge lawsuit to me.
Chances are someone in a forum somewhere has done the legwork for you. Do a google search and realize how easy (or hard) it is to do for your vehicle. Most of the time it won't even impact your warranty, apart from the modem you've purposefully disabled and no longer care about.