When I was younger I loved having an 84 Chevy Scottsdale. It was a cool looking truck and was easy to work on. I used to love getting under the hood to chase down problems and find solutions.

Now my knees hurt when it's cold outside, so crawling around on the ground to fix the fucking u-joint AGAIN isn't that fun, and I also like knowing that my children might survive if we get in a crash; something that's genuinely up for question in old vehicles.

I would pay a premium for a new car without an "infotainment" system, cameras (except backup camera), gps, or any form of touchscreen.

I was really hoping to see am EV startup go after the niche of barebones vehicles. I would absolutely have an EV if it was a safe chassis with good range, a powerful enough motor, and none of the infotainment bells and whistles.

I want to be able to diagnose my car if it has issues, but I don't want a system complex enough that it requires over the air updates.

My bet is, once the car companies fully understand the lifetime value of the data, there will be an option to opt out by paying that monetary value up front. My guess is it’ll be an expensive “executive” model used mostly by governments and criminals.

Unless some serious privacy examples get reported and it scares the politicians in California and California puts in place special laws to force “non tracking” to be a legal option.

One final weird option would be. I wonder if you could put children in your car and sue the car company in California because the car company is collecting data on minors without your consent? Do the car terms and condition handle data associated with minors correctly?

I had a Honda that I loved with a backup camera but no infotainment- it showed a little picture-in-picture on the left hand side of the backup mirror. It was pretty slick.

I wonder if the Franework model will ever apply to cars with modern safety. Probably not but one can dream.

I want an electric car. I also wish it was feasible to work on it.

An electric vehicle and "feasible to work on" (presumably in a home garage and/or driveway) do seem mutually exclusive.

The Volvo 940 had all of those modern safety features, but was still more or less the same car as the older RWD 740.

Mercedes also had that stuff early- I had a 1987 Mercedes diesel that had front air bags, ABS, and was basically modern car reliable.

I do have one newer Toyota Tacoma for the purpose of "just working" and it does a great job of fulfilling that role, but includes a host of features and such that I really have no interest in. But if you have project cars, you really just need a very stable "normal" vehicle for day to day.

For Volvo, I know that the 850s were the first to have airbags built into the seats for side impact, and I think they had anti lock brakes in those as well.