Nothing quite says “high-performance muscle car” like a popup ad for a Mopar Extended Warranty covering your whole center console. That’s right, Dodge Charger owners are now experiencing an exciting new feature: pop-up ads that appear every time the vehicle stops at a light. This absolute garbage feature was spotted in the wild, take a look here.
Did you know John Deere tractors have a dedicated piracy scene? Because the tractors require authorized technicians to service them and doesn’t allow farmers to service them themselves, spoofed firmware has appeared and is fairly frequently used to bypass this.
My point is, if you can jailbreak a tractor you can jailbreak a car. Just a matter of time.
This literally happened to Jeeps a month ago.
“It should also be noted that ads are part of your contractual agreement with SiriusXM, but we are working on the frequency,” replied a Jeep Cares representative. “Thank you for your patience.”
A Stellantis spokesperson told Fortune in a statement that “a temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”
Fool me once, Stellantis…
Why? Well, probably because Dodge badly needs the money. The brand’s U.S. sales plummeted 29% in 2024
This’ll help sales, I’m sure.
So, here’s a solution that will likely work but I’m just extrapolating based on auto industry stuffs. If the ads are driven by SiriusXM, they’re likely coming over the satellite radio. The shark fin on top has several antennae in it, including the XM antenna, which is on a specific frequency band and antenna type. Find the wiring harness for the shark fin, trace the SiriusXM cable, unplug or snip it. You’ll lose XM, but, honestly, based on the garbage I hear on a lifetime subscription radio these days, I don’t understand why anyone pays for it, except for living in or traveling through remote areas with frequency and wanting live background noise.
Chances are it’s possible they’d also try and load the ads via a paired Bluetooth phone for Internet, (maybe) if that’s the case it’s a little more difficult. Probably impossible on iPhone, but on Android may allow one to disable the act of shuttling data to the car stereo via Bluetooth. If Stellantis uses an app to proxy data to the car stereo, deleting the app on the phone would break it.
I believe you need to actively turn on internet through Bluetooth, at least on android phones.
It’s a weird thing in apps when you accept permissions. The app is allowed to ostensibly tether over the Bluetooth link enabled in the app.
Welp every manufacturer that shows this should go down immediately upon first offense.
Not even kidding, this should be corporate suicide.
Dodge and Jeep are (well Jeep already was tbh) both firmly on the “actively speak out against” list. If I was in a place of hugely inflated power, I would dismantle the entire company, and sell it to whoever that company likes the least.
This should honestly be a brand ending scenario in less than 5 seconds after the first ad. CEO should be in the bread line TODAY from getting hit with this.
ABSOLUTE zero tolerance. There are no valid arguments against this and I will die on this hill.
This should be punishable by firing squad.
If this happened to me and assuming I had physical knobs/buttons for AC, etc, and those wouldn’t be affected, I would take a hammer to it, mount an iPad Mini or something for GPS, and just listen to music/podcasts/audiobooks on my phone via a Bluetooth speaker.
I already have bad road rage (I’m not proud of this & am actively working on it) and this would send me over the edge.
Good on you for working on yourself.
I can only respect that. Dodge ought to be afraid of you.