I don’t know about you, but the one thing I’ve always though was missing from the driving experience was having a car I paid tens of thousands of dollars for start blasting me with ads now that it’s always connected to the internet. It wasn’t enough that there are billboards littered all around the roads we drive on for companies to try to capture our attention. I’ve always wanted them plastered on the increasingly large screen in my center console.
I am, of course, being sarcastic. But we recently saw one of the inevitable developments from the “connected car” that automakers (and tech companies) have been pushing us toward for more than a decade. Starting on July 27, when BMW owners turned on their vehicles they were met with a special surprise: an exclusive ad for the new Spider-Man: Brand New Day movie.
I found it kind of funny when I started seeing these stories. I saw the movie with a friend of mine, and there’s a scene where a BMW billboard is prominently featured for several seconds. When it appeared onscreen, I leaned over to my friend to comment on how the company had clearly paid to stick its ad in the movie. What I didn’t realize was that the movie also got its own ad beamed onto the center screen of every modern BMW vehicle.
BMW owners were rightfully furious about the company’s decision to put an ad in their cars — and not just because they drive luxury vehicles. “BMW should stop with this shit,” wrote one user on the r/BMW subreddit. “I can't wait for the day that when you start the car, you have to watch a minute long advertisement,” said another. I think the drivers of pretty much any vehicles would be annoyed to start seeing ads playing in their cars. Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous.
The first thing it brought to mind to me was when Apple put U2’s Songs of Innocence album in every iTunes user’s library back in 2014. People weren’t thankfully to get free music; many were pissed off that the company had abused its power to force a U2 album on them. Bono subsequently apologized, and Apple released a one-click tool for people to remove the album. It became a scandal, just as this decision has for BMW. I wouldn’t be surprised if the company promises never to do it again.
Paris Marx
But once again, this seemed inevitable. As digital technology started rolling out and finding new data-driven, ad-based revenue models in places where they weren’t previously as common, it was only a matter of time before automakers tried to get in on the party. Modern vehicles collect reams of data on drivers, people in the car, and sometimes even those outside it. Often, that data isn’t just used by the automakers themselves, but sold to third parties so they can make some extra profit beyond selling cars, warranties, and maintenance packages.
Since the generative AI moment, I’ve often brought up the last AI hype cycle: in the 2010s, when companies and supposed experts told us up to half of all jobs could be wiped out by AI and robotics like self-driving cars, only for that narrative to distract us from how companies were really using that new tech to roll out algorithmic management and crack down on workers’ rights. It’s hard for me not to see something similar in the transportation space.
Executives like Elon Musk, Google’s Sergey Brin, and leaders at Uber spent the 2010s talking about how self-driving cars were going to transform everything and how new digital technologies were going to end road deaths, traffic, and transport inequality. I described it in great depth in my first book, Road to Nowhere. Over a decade later, none of those problems have been solved; some even kept getting worse for many years. But as they were distracting us with big promises, they were sticking screens and sensors throughout people’s vehicles, promising unparalleled convenience as they extracted data from their driving habits.
The modern vehicle is infused with digital technology at every point. The features present in vehicles available in the United States pale in comparison to what a driver can buy in China today, and those features are quickly going global. Increasingly, cars are getting compared to smartphones, prompting fears they’ll also be upgraded much more regularly than people currently replace their vehicles. If electric vehicles are supposed to be an environmental savior, such rapid refreshing would further erode any climate benefit.
Paris Marx
This is what all the big promises have amounted to for most people: cars that are more and more expensive, devoid of physical controls which makes vehicles less safe, and constantly monitoring everything you do with the option for manufacturers to change whatever they want in your vehicle, including sticking a Spider-Man ad in front of you and presenting it as a fun “surprise.”
I’m sure Western automakers need to face some competitive pressure from their Chinese competitors, but I’m not sure their even more digitized vehicles are really the goal we should be pursuing. This whole story of BMW’s in-car ad makes me not just desire a day before all this digital tech was crammed into cars, but for better transit and cycling infrastructure so people can more easily ditch their cars altogether. This industry has so many people held captive, and it’s clear they plan to use it enrich themselves at our collective expense.
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