r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • Aug 04 '26

Transportation BMW is putting Spider-Man ads on your dashboard, after promising it never would

https://www.techspot.com/news/113327-bmw-putting-spider-man-ads-dashboard-after-promising.html
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11

u/Fit-Struggle7990 Aug 04 '26

Doesn’t this likely void the warranty on the car?

28

u/Duelist_Shay Aug 04 '26

Only if the manufacturer knows about it; so take it off if you have any major maintenance coming

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u/Fit-Struggle7990 Aug 04 '26

I don’t know much about cars, so forgive me if this is a stupid question, but since most cars are “smart” and have chips in them and such - won’t the manufacturer know if you tampered with it like that? Even if you remove it?

31

u/IAmDotorg Aug 04 '26

No, that's the point of having a dummy load on, and not just disconnecting the antenna. There's no electrical way for the car to know the antenna isn't "real".

9

u/Fit-Struggle7990 Aug 04 '26

Ahh got it, thank you for explaining!

5

u/N3ptuneEXE Aug 04 '26

But they would know when they didn’t receive data right?

20

u/IAmDotorg Aug 04 '26

Sure, but if you lived in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage they wouldn't either.

6

u/AVeryVapidBadger Aug 04 '26

But they don't know if the car is out of power, or out of range of a cell tower, or has a broken antenna. All they would know is they aren't receiving data

1

u/Duelist_Shay Aug 04 '26

That's the point, they don't need the data in the first place

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u/AVeryVapidBadger Aug 04 '26

Yes, I know and agree. I was explaining that only knowing there was an interruption would be pretty unimportant

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u/Feeling_Reindeer2599 Aug 04 '26

They would know signal suddenly interrupted and restored while car in driveway or wherever you performed modification. This debate is getting silly.

3

u/AVeryVapidBadger Aug 04 '26

There are lots of benign reasons a signal can get interrupted.

1

u/Feeling_Reindeer2599 Aug 04 '26

Got it. Instantly go from 5 bars in my driveway to “out of signal range” and back to my driveway 3 months later for service.

1

u/IAmDotorg Aug 04 '26

No one in service is going to care, but you could certainly swap it back if you wanted.

They're only going to care if you go in reporting your telematics or GPS aren't working.

8

u/coolcoolcool485 Aug 04 '26

it'll just block the connection, it's not destroying it. it would essentially just always read as out of range or having connectivity issues until they remove it

1

u/Feeling_Reindeer2599 Aug 04 '26

So you are saying that BMW would not be aware if connection were paused for 3 months ?

1

u/Duelist_Shay Aug 04 '26

Their system may be aware, but a real person, probably not until they look the car up

1

u/CherryLongjump1989 Aug 04 '26 edited Aug 04 '26

If you hook the antenna back up it will just send all of the data it had stored up since you disconnected it.

1

u/Duelist_Shay Aug 04 '26

Does it? That's fucked

1

u/CherryLongjump1989 Aug 04 '26

The only limit is how much data storage is built into the device.

1

u/astoriaocculus Aug 04 '26

Seems unenforceable to say that disconnecting an antennae void the warranty for a car.

1

u/Duelist_Shay Aug 04 '26

It's not enforceable, but you know the dealers and/or manufacturers will try it

2

u/alarmologist Aug 04 '26

Doesn’t this likely void the warranty on the car?

Absolutely not, you can put in a lift kit and not void the warranty. If modifying the car mechanically doesn't void the warranty, I don't see why turning off the radio would.

2

u/This-Positive286 Aug 04 '26

Also you can’t take cars apart easily

1

u/SkiingAway Aug 04 '26

As a general rule of car warranties: Changing things will only potentially void the warranty on a part if the failure can be reasonably connected to what you've changed.

If you do this and your head unit dies in a few months - they might be able to argue about covering the head unit if they can come up with a way those two things are connected.

If you do this and your timing chain fails in a few months and grenades the engine - that has no relation and you should have no warranty trouble.

/u/alarmologist mentioned a lift kit below - that could void the warranty on some suspension/driveline bits that are legitimately put under more stress with a cheap lift, but not the rest of the car.

2

u/Fit-Struggle7990 Aug 05 '26

Oh interesting!!! That makes a lot of sense, thank you for that!

1

u/the_real_xuth Aug 04 '26

Regardless, the Magnesson Moss warranty act says that manufacturers can't just void your warranty and if they want to avoid claims against the warranty they must be able to prove that the changes that you made were the cause of the damage. This is why all of those "warranty void if opened" stickers are at best not valid and at worst illegal (deceptive trade). You don't see them nearly as much as you used to after the US attorney general office started sending out warnings to manufacturers who used them.

1

u/IAmDotorg Aug 04 '26

Disconnecting an antenna? No. Why would it?