Idk who needs to hear it, but stop buying this shit. If it has a computer inside, but you can't flash your own software onto it, just pass. If you're unsure, look around, find the nearest Linux user and ask for help.

These fuckers disabled car mode in the android app to make you buy one of those and now they're killing it. I used car mode in my car and the moment it stopped working was when I cancelled my subscription.

Everybody buy your music. These streaming platforms are trash.

They should at least release data sheets and any bootloader signing keys, allowing people to reuse the devices for other purposes. If you could replace the firmware, I’m sure you could use it for controlling your home automation setup or displaying the weather/news/train times/other info (or possibly other tasks depending on what’s in the SoC). Now, alas, it’s just e-waste.

Even Google products have a longer lifespan 😖

I've since moved on to Tidal. Bought it at $30 when root mods started to be developed, but never really went anywhere.

Image alt:

• 2021-04-13: Interested in car thing
• 2022-10-18: order placed after discounted to $30
• 2022-10-21: shipped
• 2024-05-23: Discontinue notice
• 2024-12-09: Service discontinued

The bastards barely started selling it a few years ago. I feel like some responsibility should exist. It isn't a company that is going under, so it shouldn't be able to just casually kill the devices tied-service it only recently sold.

Holy shit: "The company is recommending that customers do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware."

So they're not offering to dispose of it, or even giving any advice on how to dispose of it responsibly. Just suggesting people should probably do that.

If companies are allowed to behave this way we're all screwed. Any efforts by the average person to avert the environmental damage caused by the waste they produce is completely futile and any politician who claims that they're doing their best to try to hold companies accountable is a liar.

We need new laws y’all. All these companies should be forced to collect all their e-waste as part of their products lifecycle.

If a company produces any product and the company has a market cap over $1billion, then they should be responsible for collecting and recycling all their trash.

Remember kids, never place buttons for a service on a remote if you don't know if the remote will last longer than said service :)

This was predictable. Everyone has a phone. Phones have CarPlay and Android Auto.

The fact that they named it “Car Thing” made it clear that it didn’t have much of a valid use and that they didn’t really have a lot of confidence in it.

It’s annoying that they even created it in the first place. It’s more annoying that they now predictably are not supporting it anymore. It should be illegal.

It's a little annoying how the article only gives much of a hint as to what exactly a Car Thing is, beyond a "dashboard accessory", in the last paragraph of the article:

the product was more of a remote control for Spotify on your mobile phone than any kind of standalone player

I bought this for my old Cadillac that only had a tape deck and it was amazing (with a Bluetooth cassette). I haven't used it since I got rid of that old Cadillac about two years ago now. Pretty limited use case but it still sucks to kill shit for no reason.

Stop feeding these parasites.

Either buy physical or self host!

I'm waiting for some FOSS developers to hack this thing and run custom firmware on it. Or someone who creates their own "Car Thing" using an Arduino or Raspberry Pi.

imo they should refund everyone who bought one and collect all the devices to recycle.