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.
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.
Stellantis looking at all that blank ad space on your infotainment console: “It’s free real estate!”
Capitalism is an ouroborus
They’re solid vehicles. My 08 caliber died last year with nearly 300k miles. Their interiors are just so old looking. I had an 97 Contour that doesn’t look much different than their current interiors.
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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.
Or better yet, the masterminds behind this will lose someone due to distracted driving over an ad.
Jeep and Dodge are both owned by Stellantis :) It’s one shit-circus out of
Francethe Netherlands (corrected because apparently I don’t know geography).On the good news front, the market is beating them like a rented mule. Dodge alone is down 29% in sales year-over-year.
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.
Wow, if you’re this fired up about car dashboard ads, wait until you hear what Google’s been doing with your data.
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.
I dunno about anyone else but you can slide into my DMs with that rant since i ain’t getting visited by the fediverse chic anyways
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
Actually, Stellantis has their global HQ in Hoofddorp, Netherlands.
You are… very correct about that!
I somehow got my wires crossed and assumed that the PSA Group (who got rolled up into Stellantis) was still the home base. Thanks for the correction.
I wonder why they can’t get it right
I’ve been saying this for a long time. We need to recognize it for what it is, attention rape, and reject it completely.
The junk mail you get in your mailbox should be illegal. I’ve tried contacting people to have them stop, but low and behold it’s USPS that’s responsible and there is no mechanism in place to stop it.
So many platforms now make you pay for their service and then show you ads with it. You pay to be advertised to. I mean the car is exactly what I’m talking about.
I honestly believe it’s a detriment to US culture, how saturated every environment is with advertising, people don’t even see it anymore, it’s “normal”, invisible.
Do not pay for a service that show you ads, I wouldn’t even use a service that relied on advertising. Use only paid services that do not advertise. Do not buy products that advertise to you.
Hear this person. I pray thee.
Hey so I’m getting this thing on my new Charger, I think it’s a check engine light?
I laughed pretty hard, thanks for that
I think I know who’s responsible.
But I’m still not allowed to touch my cellphone while behind the wheel because the screen is too distracting, right?
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”.
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.
If you do you must buy something
C O N S U M E
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.
Hell yes I do.
When that old antipiracy ad was like “you wouldn’t download a car,” turns out they were vastly overestimating your average American tractor owner or car driver’s respect for the corporate arcology.
Encrypted ECM? Build a new foss one and sell them online, you’ll make bank.
2026 will be the year of the Linux car
Aptera, what I’m waiting for. They claim they will have all parts available online for easy repairs, and IMO it’s just a really cool car concept.
The linux dashboard
car assistant
OMG, Car AI…
You seem to be hungry, maybe hangry, you haven’t eaten in a while. Sheets is open and has fresh hot food! You know that coffee you got 2 hours ago should be wearing off, don’t you want to stop for a bathroom break? Their restrooms are cleaned hourly!
nabu el carro
4 updates since this morning
I drive an ‘03 Lexus SC430. No dealer locked bs, never has issues, documentation easily obtainable, new OEM parts still sold.
Basically a Linux car.
Stop buying new cars until they remove this bullshit. We can go 40 years with existing cars without buying a single new one.
I have a Renault master from 2016. I’m pretty sure I can squeeze another 50 years out of this diesel bitch with adequate maintenance and care. Plus my other car is an e-bike.
That’s awesome ! My dad had a Renault back in the 70s air cooled…which is super weird for living in middle of nowhere. He overheated it eventually haha
Any minute now one of those brave-browser idiots will be along to tell us all how great ads are because they can make us aware of products that we had not yet discovered or remind us of products we didn’t know were near by.
What does this have to do with brave-browser users?
Brave derives revenue from advertising.
Brave devotees are the only people I’ve ever seen defending advertising as a user friendly revenue model.
I had no idea lol I use brave just to avoid ads which is why I’m confused.
Brave is involved in a crypto scam and is backed by conservative evil fuck Peter thiel
Thanks for the heads up.
I’d suggest you change to Firefox, but they have made some… troubling changes to their privacy policy recently, so it may be a good idea to use a debranded port of it instead.
Afaik that’s mostly FUD and was debunked.
I’m still not happy with Mozilla throwing money down the AI toilet.
you have 48 hours to uninstall brave or you will be thoroughly cancelled.
on lemmy, using the browser you are currently using is tantamount to getting a maga tattoo
you may delay the cancellation by 24 hours by promoting your affinity for linux installs, or swearing that you will switch to a non USA produced kind of ketchup
also, no nicole for you until you reform from your evil ways
Downvoters don’t get the joke!
Brave is a series scam company.
I’ll accept this when the car comes for free.
I know right? I would totally get an ad supported free car. Who knows, someone might make an ad block for it.
They’d be showing ads on the windshield and windows for that
An ad that appears at the top of the steering wheel, that always stays at the top since they embedded a circular screen into the wheel so the ads can always be shown.
Starting price is now $58,000.
They ditched selling the accessible models for the luxury market and they do the most cheap and trashy thing possible.
It’s incredible how stupid millionaire CEOs can be.
It does appear… pretty bootleg.
Starting price on a new Dodge Charger is $61,590, get on that inflation train, boss!
What? That’s about double the price of a Camry which is probably a better car all around
It seems like every US brand under Stellantis has completely lost their minds.
Jeep has become all around terrible while becoming more expensive at the same time and it looks like the same thing is happening to Dodge.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why on EARTH would you need to remove a TIRE to replace a BATTERY…!?
Because you shouldn’t trust dodge Chrysler to plan a birthday party, let alone a damn car.
What made things even harder was that the plastic wheel well used steel wood screws, which is exposed to salt. So the screws were completely rusted out. I ended up having to breaking the screws and zip tying the plastic wheel wells in place.
Never ever again.
I fucking hated that car.
I want to really know how often this works. Has there ever been a single instance where someone says…“let me read this popular. Oh my! I really should get am extended warranty. Let me just click accept.”
And even if they do accept it, what then? Does Dodge expect the person to continue reading the terms of service and enter their credit card info…in their car?
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)
Pretty much everyone asked for this with their actions and choices as consumers. Lucky us, we can still choose not to buy a Dodge Charger or a Swasticar.
It’s def gonna spread tho. This is just one model one make. For now. In 2, 5, 10 years? CP77 without any of the fun shit.
Unless everybody now says “I’ll never buy anything from dodge”. If it doesn’t impact sales it really will become the new norm.
You’d really need to boycott anything made by the Stellantis group, which includes
- Abarth
- Alfa Romeo
- Chrysler
- Citroen
- Dodge
- DS
- Fiat
- Jeep
- Lancia
- Maserati
- Opel
- Peugot
- RAM Trucks
- Vauxhall
Because the exact same thing was reported by Jeep drivers a few weeks ago. Maybe the behavior stays contained to just the American brands under the Stellantis umbrella, but better to be safe than sorry.
Lancia
Sad to see that name here, but they’re nothing like they were in the Group B days. At least my ultimate dream car will never have ads, even if I’ll never be able to afford the car itself 🥲
Lancia is as good as dead. They only make (made?) one car, and only in the Italian market, and it was a slightly larger Fiat 500. Stellantis is struggling enough with the brands that are still making cars. I’d be shocked if Lancia comes back.
I have a Kia, likely going Toyota or Honda when it’s time. So help me if they do this shit…
This
That’s exactly the attitude that makes shit like this possible.
