No, it's not. Carplay works nicely without the car's own WiFi plan.

I purchased my 90S without it. First, what's the car's (or LR's) own WiFi for, even? Could not think of any good reason. Second, I didn't want yet another service, especially yet another one that can track me wherever I go.

It's bad enough without the WiFi plan. At every start-up, my car insists that I sign up for LR's app. There's no way to decline or skip past it without agreeing. Luckily, CarPlay takes over quickly. It's maps and voice control are much better anyway, so I just ignore LR's own stuff.

 

That's a relief. The reason I didn't want the Wi-Fi enabled Data Plan was the same reason, just one more subscription based service. I already have way too many. Thank you for the clarification.

 

I hate to say "you're doing it wrong" but... well,... you're doing it wrong

There is a check box to save the passcode so that you don't have to enter it every time you start the car.

 

The car is new to me, so maybe I am "doing it wrong." Or we might be talking about different things. But my point is that I don't want to sign up! But the car doesn't give me the option to skip it or decline. So every time I turn it on, the truck wants me to accept the "terms of service" (I have to agree to terms of service to use the truck I own!?) and sign up. No thanks!

 

what if you fake sign up. Make up an email address that’s fake and use that to sign up. And input all fake info it asks for like name, birthday, or whatever…

I do this sometimes for certain apps or services I need to use one offs of.

The hide my email relay that Apple provides now is awesome for this. I use that too and just move the emails from that service I don’t really want into my junk folder so I never see them again.

 

Exactly what the prior poster said. Just sign up with a burner email address etc etc... To use the remote start and other functionalities there has to be some sort of user and device authentication tied to an account -- they're not doing it to sell your data to the Chinese govt. Or maybe they are but then you're safe by using a burner account.

Also - I would fully agree that car companies (and especially car companies owned by other larger entities) have in no way earned our trust. In fact -- the data they sell is probably egregious and a complete and total privacy violation. But I don't think it's risky enough to refuse to create an account to authenticate a device to enable features of the car.