Fully Local Rivian (avoiding all cloud connectivity)?

[curioso]

Is there any way to own and drive a rivian, practically speaking, without connecting it to the cloud? I am *one of those* who isn't eager to have yet another company tracking me. I wonder, can you really have an EV today without cloud connectivity?

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[Polar]

To put it simply, no.

 

[shrink]

Here are your controllable Data and Privacy Options. You’ll have to review and decide if these are acceptable to you:

 

[RivAW]

Is there any way to own and drive a rivian, practically speaking, without connecting it to the cloud? I am *one of those* who isn't eager to have yet another company tracking me. I wonder, can you really have an EV today without cloud connectivity?

Then you shouldn’t be looking at EVs…or any vehicle with modern microchips or connectivity. Maybe look at classic cars….

 

[moosetags]

Tracking us is the way of the world, so we need to get used to it. Big business absolutely has to know what brand of disposable diapers we prefer. I have come to accept it. There is no real alternative.

Brian

 

[Electrified Outdoors]

I don't judge. If you want zero connection then not possible as far as I know. On any EV made today really.

With that said, you can turn off certain data like location, telemetry data, etc.

Most modern vehicles, especially vehicles like Rivian and Tesla are designed to be always connected.

Depending on time/budget I suppose it might be possible to disable the Telematics control module but then you wouldn't get updates, GPS, or Bluetooth either.

You would still have to have NFC in order to gain access to the vehicle with key cards.

 

[Supratachophobia]

There's are a couple things you could try:

A hotspot that you drive around with that runs pihole and just drops any packets from the vehicle. But this could cause the vehicle to fail over to cellular.

You could pull the sim card if there is one. Unlikely in this day and age as esims have gained popularity.

You could simply unplug the cellular antennas. That would severely limit the ability for the vehicle to dial out.

There are also cellular jammers you could purchase that pretend to be a cell tower and either funnel traffic elsewhere or drop it entirely, but the device still thinks it's on the cellular network.

Lastly, you could gain access to some of the service menus and make adjustments through there or find a way through software/firmware means to adjust the network interfaces to use a static loopback IP address or empty IP gateway.

Edit: Oh, and it's ok to be "that guy". A lot of people shutting you because you are paranoid. Everyone's at least a little paranoid though. That being said, you may be asking for a tall order on this one. Devices tend to misbehave when you tell them they can't have Internet. Looking at you Roomba.....

 

[sunrogue]

Your concerns are reasonable, curioso. I wouldn't call you paranoid. You're thinking ahead.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/26/unplanned-obsolescence/

Lots of concern on this forum about rivian being around in 5 years. Having an offline mode would help avoid our expensive vehicles turning into bricks if rivian goes under.

I hope that doesn't happen, but it's good to prepare for as well. It would be nice if, in such a case, rivian open sourced their tech, or at least the APIs so we could mock up the cloud side.

I agree with the pihole idea.

Also, I spend a lot of time outside cell coverage areas, and the truck works fine, so you may be better off blocking all network traffic. The truck expects that. If you only block some, you might hit an edge case that rivian's software engineers didn't anticipate.

 

[R.I.P.]

Is there any way to own and drive a rivian, practically speaking, without connecting it to the cloud? I am *one of those* who isn't eager to have yet another company tracking me. I wonder, can you really have an EV today without cloud connectivity?

If you are "one of those", Rivian is a poor choice for you.

A 1992 XJ may be a better fit.

 

[WFR1S]

It’s very simple, you unplug the antennas for LTE and GPS.

 

[ndmiller]

Is there any way to own and drive a rivian, practically speaking, without connecting it to the cloud? I am *one of those* who isn't eager to have yet another company tracking me. I wonder, can you really have an EV today without cloud connectivity?

No and that's 100% contrary to buying a rolling computer. Yes it will always track the vehicle, nothing can be done about that. Even if you unplug everything, the act of driving is the act of being tracked....Cameras everywhere.

Buy a pre computer ICE car and keep your sanity. And stay out of view of the sky at any angle as tracking people from space has been going on for decades.

 

[LNL_HUTZ]

Lots of concern on this forum about rivian being around in 5 years. Having an offline mode would help avoid our expensive vehicles turning into bricks if rivian goes under.

I was just thinking that maybe OP should get a Fisker Ocean, since the company may no longer have the need or the means to track every driver’s grocery runs.

 

[SwampNut]

 

[Kidentist]

Sadly a fact of modern "technology". I "looked" for kayak trailers on FB market and now I'm getting all these ads on my page. It's just the way it is.

 

[ThumprMN]

Possibly a classic car to EV conversion where they just swap in batteries to fit the ICE system might work.

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