this post was submitted on 12 Mar 2025
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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.

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[–] skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Threeme2189@sh.itjust.works 1 points 22 minutes ago

I believe you need to actively turn on internet through Bluetooth, at least on android phones.

[–] daq@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

As an unfortunate owner of a Chrysler and having owned and driven a ton of other cars I can confidently say Stellantis makes the shittiest cars you can buy in US. On screen ads are just a small piece of an immense garbage island that is this shitty company.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 8 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I forget where I heard or read it, but there was an anecdote about a guy that worked for Toyota engineering in a department that would purchase competitor vehicles to disassemble them and see what they were up to, like what kind of innovations they were adding. They didn't bother with chryslers because the most they'd gain was new ways to design a car to be difficult to maintain or repair.

My friend had an early 00s intrepid and would always bring up needing to remove the passenger tire and wheel well to replace the battery any time car maintenance was brought up.

[–] jaschen@lemm.ee 1 points 31 minutes ago (1 children)

My wife's first car was a Dodge Stratus. It was the worse. It had a battery leech and I couldn't find what was leeching power. She was stuck on the side of the road and I bought a battery to try and save her and didn't realize I was also needed to remove the front passenger tire.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 1 points 22 minutes ago

Why on EARTH would you need to remove a TIRE to replace a BATTERY...!?

[–] prembil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 2 hours ago

Well let's just wait for the next "hacarthon" and see who can play DOOM on the pop-up first.

[–] Tungsten5@lemm.ee 12 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

I open this article up about pop up ads in chargers. Meanwhile there are 4 pop up ads on the website. Fuck this shit dude.

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[–] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago (2 children)

Why can't I find a single image of this?

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 2 points 1 hour ago

... Have you tried looking at the image in the linked article? :,)

I'm real good with hand tools. Not real good with humans. It's this.

https://preview.redd.it/ads-on-the-center-screen-now-thats-wild-v0-wk2i5ihf8n0e1.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=9dbd8a0ac3d2d2fbabf1bf035fb9a6e864d9a93c

Or what Astro_Plane describes... which is also linked... in the article.

[–] astro_plane@lemm.ee 3 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

I saw it on reddit a month ago but it was on some dudes jeep right after his warranty expired. Same car manufacture FYI.

[–] ErinCrush@lemm.ee 22 points 6 hours ago

I will not buy or watch anything with ads. I can't stand ads. Ads represent everything wrong with the US and capitalism. Just not stop shit shoveled into our faces.

[–] tehn00bi@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

That’s one way to increase running red lights.

Like that sounds like it should be banned by the ntsb or dot… oh wait they don’t exist anymore, or soon to be cut.

[–] peaceful_world_view@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago
[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 23 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

So while you are allowed to use a cars dash for car functions, you should not be drawing someones attention away from the road while at a red light.

How could this be anything but distracted driving.

What happens when this ad pops up, you look at it and read its quite lengthy text, and then get rear ended because you weren't keeping an eye on the rear mirror?

I'd love to see that lawsuit (although it'd suck for the hurt person)

[–] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 90 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] KayLeadfoot@fedia.io 16 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

Jeep and Dodge are both owned by Stellantis :) It's one shit-circus out of France.

On the good news front, the market is beating them like a rented mule. Dodge alone is down 29% in sales year-over-year.

[–] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I had never heard of Stellantis until the comments on this post.

That's at least a little good news, but I want day-after total zero existence for stunts like this.

As in executed the day after murder kind of immediate punishment. In this case, total, irrevocable punishment.

C suite people literally living in shelters fighting for leftovers at a food bank after paying out years of employee salaries and benefits kind of punishment.

You can't just fine people like this for crimes. You have to actually take away money and the ability to accrue more than enough to live on.

[–] Pandantic@midwest.social 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Wow, if you’re this fired up about car dashboard ads, wait until you hear what Google’s bee doing with your data.

[–] wheeldawg@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

Yeah I'm not exactly happy about that either.

I was trying to stay on topic about this. That's a whole different rant.

Plus, things spread before they get worse. This is a line that shouldn't be crossed by anything in any way. The inside of my car is a nice little island. It should stay that way.

I feel pretty much everybody would agree with that. Even the ones open to it probably just want to make the money from it without having to deal with it themselves.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 8 hours ago

Dodge alone is down 29% in sales year-over-year.

"Clearly we need to add more AI, internet of shit, microtransactions and advertising on the cars to compensate!" - Stellantis CEO

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[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 19 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

This should be punishable by firing squad.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 points 9 hours ago

Or better yet, the masterminds behind this will lose someone due to distracted driving over an ad.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I saw this on Lenny about Jeeps. I asked someone sitting in a new Jeep if she got ads when she came to a stop and she said no. So now I wonder if there is something about the trim level or something. She said it was 1 year old. Maybe this just started.

[–] spooky2092@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 hours ago

They could also just be A/B testing shit to see how much backlash they get.

[–] drhodl@lemmy.world 6 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

This offends me to the core. Stellantis has made my shit list, and I will never purchase any product they are involved in. EVER !

[–] Bdtrngl@lemmy.world 8 points 6 hours ago

Their cars are trash anyways so you're better off.

[–] Zzyzx@lemmy.blahaj.zone 45 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

But I'm still not allowed to touch my cellphone while behind the wheel because the screen is too distracting, right?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 8 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

If you do you must buy something

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 10 points 8 hours ago

As long as your purchase is over $10,000, you have immunity from prosecution for vehicular manslaughter during the transaction.

This law brought to you by Carls Jr.

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[–] ThomasCrappersGhost@feddit.uk 11 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (2 children)

This what I don’t get, those huge “infotainment” screens are perfectly acceptable, but you can’t answer a phone.

Edit; missed the letter “a”.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

You are typically allowed to have limited interaction with a mounted phone.

You can't pick your phone up or anything like that, but you are allowed some very limited usage if it's mounted. It's no different than a built in car dash at that point.

However, fuck this, this is beyond expected use, and is definitely going to cause distracted driving.

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[–] sylver_dragon@lemmy.world 27 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

We dun fucked up when we made tarring and feathering CEOs illegal.

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago
[–] alxmg@slrpnk.net 33 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

I’ll accept this when the car comes for free.

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[–] applemao@lemmy.world 45 points 12 hours ago (5 children)

Stop buying new cars until they remove this bullshit. We can go 40 years with existing cars without buying a single new one.

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