Give me a break. I have never owned a vehicle with this type of connectivity, and I sure don’t want to. If higher levels of road noise should necessitate increasing the volume on the stereo, I can accomplish that on my own with minimal effort.
Like I said before, the optimal level of technology is what you would find in an early 90’s Dodge Shadow or Dodge Spirit, or a mid to late 90’s Caravan in entry-level trim. Not what you’d find in anything sold during the past 16 years.
As I explain to my elderly mother every time she complains about a feature she doesn’t want on her luxury vehicle, the vehicle manufacturers are not making bespoke cars for you. People overall like speed-sensitive volume, so whether you like it or not, new vehicles will be made with it.
I understand that you said that, but the overwhelming majority of the car-buying public does not agree with your opinion. There will always be some small minority of people who want to drive old vehicles - some of whom believe fervently that your new-fangled 90’s K-cars are entirely too modern and ostentatious. Those Amish people won’t drive any vehicle that isn’t pulled by a horse.
But just as Ford does not make buggies because there aren’t enough Amish people to make it worth their while, Ford is also not going to make relics to suit your taste, because very few people would want them.
Wait a minute, Ford is in it for the money?
A 2003 Honda Nighthawk 750 would be a lot newer, and has standard controls. 
…and you only have to go back about 15 years to find motorcycles without electronic fuel injection. I think they all have it now
Ford has gone down that route, in the late 1980s when they released a modernized version of the Model A. I don’t think it worked out for them, because they didn’t do it again.
In order to make money, Ford can’t just make one or a few vehicles. There is a specific sweet spot of volume where they maximize profit, where the marginal cost curve crosses the marginal revenue curve.
A few years back I went through the Helm manual on my somewhat aged 1996 Lincoln to see how many computers it had. Thirty one all told. Seems a bit excessive to me.
Current systems…but not necessary. They can be built without one.
I know they can be built, I had one in '83. But I’m curious - point me to an aftermarket fuel injection system without any electronics.
It NEEDS that access because it’s designed to NEED that access. It should have been designed differently.
READ access and WRITE access are completely different. I’ve designed and built Web applications with this kind of protection in place. General users connect to a front-end server that is there to access read-only data from our back-end server. This front-end server talks to the back-end servers via API’s. Those API’s we write and only allow read requests. There’s another front-end server that’s behind a firewall that has WRITE access. General public has no access to this front-end server. And the back-end server will only accept WRITE access from this server that’s behind the firewall. This is very very tight controls and works very well. A similar type of design can be done here. This isn’t a very secure design.
Yeah, it’s just like the smart home landscape. A bunch of people thinking it’d be cool to sell this interconnected stuff and somehow managing to not think about the security side of it despite the fact that cracking has been in the public consciousness since the movie War Games came out. And so now people’s thermostats have been coopted by botnets and it’s (sort of) possible to take over a car with some hacking tools.
The power company servicing my area has been pushing businesses and homeowners to install “smart” thermostats that can be controlled by the power company to “maximize energy savings.” No thank you. The 42 year old simple manual button control, battery powered thermostat in my house works just fine.
I’m no Luddite but I pick and choose when, where, and how to utilize tech upgrades. I don’t need a fridge connected to an app on my cell phone to tell me what is in the fridge. But I do like having the 12 year fridge that is far more energy efficient than its predecessor from 1979.
Same with my cars. I like the enhanced safety features, better gas mileage, better reliability and other things about my seven year old Camry over previous cars. But I deliberately bought an LE trim to avoid some additional features I don’t need or particulary want, to lessen potential hassles and costs of those features having problems.
Just because something can be modernized into all things touchscreen, voice activated control, and remote controlled doesn’t mean everything needs to be. That said, I mostly embrace computer driven advancements. After all, I’m viewing the forum and commenting from my handy dandy cell phone.
Saw a battery operated toothbrush that connects to your smartphone, what next?
To borrow a quote from elsewhere, ye gods and little fishes! 
To design security into these systems at the start is trivial. Retrofitting security into an existing system could be a royal pain. I know - I’ve done it. In some cases it’s just easier to start from scratch.
My nephew uses one of those. He’s 10 and isn’t very conscientious about brushing his teeth. But the app gives him a clear goal to achieve. Sometimes gamifying activities can get kids to do them when they’d otherwise resist.
I did that. It’s actually kind of neat. On the hottest day they’ll send a request to the thermostat to pre-cool the house, then shut the system down during high load for a couple of hours. It never gets too hot during the shutdown, and saves me money each month on my electric bill. But then I’m pretty high on the nerd scale, so I tend to be a sucker for gadgetry.
I just assume all smart devices are insecure, so I pick and choose what goes in my house. Nothing with a camera on it. My exterior security cameras are “dumb,” and connected to my own internal video server, not the cloud. And my smart devices are limited to things like switches and the thermostat. I figure if someone does manage to get into my network and take over a switch, the worst they can do to the switch itself is blink the lights.
And all my smart devices are on a separate network from my computers, so the hacker would have a difficult time getting into the real network via a switch.
@Marnet I don’t think I need a thermostat for my house controlled by the power company. We don’t even have a programmable thermostat. I know when to turn the heat up and when to turn it down.
I do understand why businesses have the thermostat controlled by the power companies. I attend a breakfast every spring sponsored by our power company. The reason I am invited is that I got the church I attend involved in an incentive program where we received $6 for each 4’ fluorescent tube with a LED tube. I was able to purchase the LED tubes for $6.95. I rewired 36 fixtures with 4 tubes in each fixture. Now to the power company, the energy savings by our church is negligible. However, we were presented figures at the breakfast about the savings big box stores and other businesses saved by the thermostats controlled by the power companies. There were figures presented on how much is saved using energy efficient electric motors. The rebates allowed by the power company is amazing. The power company wins because it doesn’t have to do extensive upgrades.
I have my own ways of saving energy without computer controls. In our last two houses, I installed a whole house ventilating fan. On many nights I run the fan instead of the air conditioning. The fan pulls the air in through the windows and exhausts it out the vents in the attic. There is a shutter in the living area that opens when the fan is switched on and closes when the fan is turned off.
I am intrigued by the new Toyota minivans that are hybrids. If they seem to work out, I may go this route next time. These minivans I am sure have plenty of onboard computers.
+1, Marnet!
I didn’t bother to copy your entire post, but you precisely stated my feelings on the topic.
Perhaps we were separated at birth.
Now that I’m retired, I certainly don’t need a “smart thermostat”, but even during my working years I never even used the automated functions of my old thermostat. I didn’t really need the thermostat to start the A/C or the heat before I got up in the morning or before I got home in the evening. If it took 10 minutes for the house to get comfortably warm, or if it took 20-25 minutes for the house to get comfortably cool, so be it. If my ancestors were capable of surviving w/o A/C, and with a coal stove that heated only one room, I think I am capable of surviving 30 minutes (or less) of less-than-optimal temperatures.
And, internet-linked fridges? IMHO, that is an example of bizarre technical overkill-- over and above the Big Brother possibilities.
I resisted getting a smartphone for several years, but the advantages of having one became obvious, and I succumbed. My current smartphone is ~6 years old, and I will upgrade to a newer one later this month. Additionally, my home surveillance cameras are not linked to the cloud, and I don’t intend to upgrade them to a system that is linked to the cloud.
Ford didn’t do that. Ford couldn’t do that. The car wouldn’t pass safety standards of the day as long as sales were kept below 10,000 cars. Shay Motors built the cars and sold them through a deal with Ford and their dealers.