camelot-forum.co.uk

I'm surprised nobody else has flagged this up: Nissan accused of dumping its electric car pioneers" It was on the R4 news earlier, I noticed it but am not personally affected...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68426263

Owners of Nissan Leaf electric cars have accused the firm of "dumping its pioneers" after it announced its app would stop working for older vehicles.

The firm says the app - which allows remote control of functions such as heating - is stopping because the UK's 2G network is being switched off.
But customers have reacted with anger, telling the BBC they did not expect it to be withdrawn.

Experts expect the issue to affect more electric vehicles as the market grows.

Around 3,000 Nissan Leaf and e-NV200 cars made before 2016 are affected by the app being withdrawn.
These older vehicles are fitted with 2G control units which communicate with the app.

Are they really on 2G, or 3G?

Either way this sort of thing is going to become increasingly problematic as more and more things become Internet Connected, either with hardware obsolescence (e.g. very old 2G modem and no spare parts when it breaks), or infrastructure obsolescence (switching off an entire network to free-up bandwidth elsewhere.

You see it with the early Teslas too - they've only got 3G connectivity, the PC that drives the media control unit is too slow or have enough RAM to run the current Tesla OS/features etc. But Tesla does have an upgrade path for those vehicles that still want them.

Used to be an issue only for computers at home. Now it's everything.

The leaf also stopped reporting its location due to gdpr!!. A great antitheft (until they work out how to disable it) feature removed for no reason. I wasn't very impressed with that and they never gave me a satisfactory answer. I moved on from Nissan with a view not to go back. If I pay for something I expect it to be there for the lifetime of the car.