15h ago

Dodge Chargers Now Have Pop-Up Ads at Every Stoplight

fuelarc.com Dodge Chargers Now Have Pop-Up Ads at Every Stoplight... Just What Nobody Asked For - FuelArc News

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 garbage feature was...

Not The Onion @lemmy.world

KayLeadfoot @fedia.io

1d ago

Dodge Chargers Now Have Pop-Up Ads at Every Stoplight... Just What Nobody Asked For

fuelarc.com /cars/dodge-chargers-now-have-pop-up-ads-at-every-stop/

1074 209

BrainWorms @lemm.ee

DeadWorld @lemm.ee

1d ago

Dodge Chargers Now Have Pop-Up Ads at Every Stoplight... Just What Nobody Asked For

fuelarc.com /cars/dodge-chargers-now-have-pop-up-ads-at-every-stop/

86 4

107 comments

We need root on our car computers.

I am so happy that my car doesn’t update itself automatically

You'd may as well run the red light
- That was my idea as well. You are providing a negative feedback for following the rules.

Forget about just the web. Modern tech is about to become unusable due to ads.

Next thing you know they'll find a way to advertise in our dreams
- Having a bad dream? Why don't you dream about RAID SHADOW LEGENDS instead! DIVE INTO A DARK FANTASY...
- Now I want Lightspeed® Briefs.
  
  https://youtu.be/XPGgTy5YJ-g
- DON'T GIVE THEM IDEAS!

There was an article about this few months ago and the exact same reddit post was used there as evidence of this being true. This was most likely a bug and it probably has been fixed since. If what the headline claims here was true there would be tons of videos of it happening to different people on YouTube.
- Reported by drivers as recently as Tuesday.
  One of dozens of such reports, confirming make, model, and frequency of the ads (at every stop): https://www.reddit.com/r/Dodge/comments/1j838k8/why_tf_am_i_getting_ads_in_my_car/
  I'm the world's worst journalist, but I do try! When possible, I confirm facts with multiple sources. The "news" aspect here is that they were previously on a different Stellantis brand (Jeep), and now they have expanded to another Stellantis brand (Dodge).
  If you have evidence that contradicts, feel free to share.
  
  From your link:
  this crap started popping up every time I stoped,
  This should absolutely be illegal, as it blocks the use of the panel until the message is closed. This is an unnecessary traffic distraction, that is bound to statistically cause issues and even accidents.
- 2nd paragraph of the article:
  Update: the above image is older, which has some folks on social media wondering
  Stelantis was reported doing this with Jeep, and now they are doing it with Dodge too. You are confusing the issue because you are misremembering the facts.
  3rd paragraph:
  This isn’t the first time Stellantis has pulled this sort of stunt with popup ads, either. They already tried adding pop-up ads to Jeeps
  This is just another example of the shitshow Stellantis has become! It's an unnecessary distraction that blocks the use of the screen until you close the message. This is bound to cause issues and probably even accidents.

Two weeks ago it was Jeep. Now it's Dodge. This is how it creeps. Are both those companies owned by Crystler?
- Yeah, zero surprise seeing this happen to Chrysler/Stellantis cars first.
- It's called Stellantis now.
- Yes, along with Ram pickup trucks and IIRC Fiat, somehow.

Welp, my days of not buying Dodge cars seem to be coming to a middle.
- Be careful, it might be illegal to not buy one.
- Fuck this made me giggle
  
  For that rhyme you deserve a nickel!

Barf

Been doing this with Jeeps already. They claimed it was a mistake.
https://fortune.com/2025/02/13/jeep-in-car-ads-popup-stellantis-software-revenue/
- "Oops! We accidentally incorporates ads into our software! It was an honest mistake..."
  I've never wanted to go smashing car windows in a lot until now

You know, I always expected Tesla to be the first to do this kind of shit, but never underestimate Stellantis's commitment to be at the bottom.

I thought GM foregoing CarPlay in favor of their own proprietary UI was a great way to kill sales, this is absolutely genius. Way to ensure I would never purchase your products!

Damn, I would be pissed if my car started showing ads. I hope this enshitification doesn't spread.
- Narrator: "It spread. A lot. Like, a lot a lot. Really you wouldn't believe how much it spread. It spread like Domino's™ all new creamy red sauce on only the freshest of dough seasoned wi---"
  car crashes*
- Dodge dropped 29% in sales in the USA last year, and something tells me, this isn't going to have folks lining up to buy Chargers in 2025. Watch the free market* take care of this one.
  *Unless you're Tesla, in which case the market costs $277 million to purchase.
  
  Free market doesn’t work if all car brands are owned by like 5 companies and all of them agreeing to add ads.
  That is why we need to regulate cooperations as well as enforce them properly.
  
  Their new $85k Charger will surely save them...
  
  I think that has more to do with ending production on the LX Platform Challenger / Charger tbh. They haven't quite managed to gather the same hype among domestic car nerds with their replacements as those old boats had.
  
  Hornet, Journey, Charger. That’s it. Hornet is a piece of cheap, charger has ads. Journey…?

I'd get rid of that car so fast it would make your head spin. There is no car I'd put up having this garbage to keep
- Well I'd put up with an ad-driven free version of a Nissan GTR or so. Easily. But not if I paid for it properly.

Took my Dodge vehicle in for service. They wanted my email address "so they can get in touch with me if I don't answer the phone." I gave it to them.
It took less than half a day for the first spam mail to hit my inbox.
- DuckDuckGo offers a nice relay service; you get a duck.com email address that mails through to your regular email, but it strips out all the trackers and other bullshit. It's good for situations like that.
  
  Mozilla has one too. And Fastmail. You can invent a different email address for every site, then block the ones that get spammed.
- .........do you not have a fake email you can log into?
  I bet someone has "anyoneemailingmeisacunt@gmail.com"

They really don't make them like they used to.
adds Dodge to the no buy list
- Which one is NOT on that list?
  
  For me right now? Mazda. They have always been enjoyable to drive, and if you look at their interiors in everything from the MX-5 and Mazda3 up to their big family SUVs, you see physical controls in the foreground and a moderately sized infotainment screen up and back. Good location for glancing at it, and not for using a touch screen for everything in the car.
  I’ve been commuting in a 2012 mazda3 for several years and it’s been fun to drive and mechanically reliable. Also very fuel efficient with one of the early Skyactiv branded drivetrains.

If this ever happens to any car I buy, it'd be going right back to the dealer.
- I would drive it straight back into the dealership through their display room window.
  
  No you wouldn't.
- I bet you might have a court case if you could prove that the dealer had disabled this advertising “feature” during your test drive.

This is old and they’ve already said it’s a bug. Stellantis sucks for sure though.
- Be less gullible
- "It's just a bug, trust me bro"
  Yeah OK huge corporation. The followup question is why this mechanism exists at all if it was never intended to be used in this fashion.
  
  The ad was most likely supposed to be shown once. Not literally every single time the car stops at traffic lights. Car companies may be stupid, but not this stupid.

This is like shooting a hole in the bottom of the boat so the leaking water has somewhere to go out.

They'll see the sales of the Charger tank and will conclude that people just don't want muscle cars, which is sad because in the next few years I was thinking about getting one.
Oh well, what can you do.

I get that this is the point of the article, but wow seeing an ad in your car makes it look cheap as fuck.
There’s a chance I might tolerate it on a rental, but not on something I own. Absolutely not.

Oh, look...!!
Yet another good reason I'll not buy a new car. 🙄
Perfectly happy with my current 03 model thank you...
- I said that about my older reliable car. Until I was rear ended at a stop light and it was totaled. During a time that used cars were more expensive than new. (I did find an 8 year old Corolla with high miles and lots of body damage for $18k though!)
  I went without a car for nearly a year. Had to buy one when my partner was forced back to work in the office.
  Peeking at the used market, it's still not great where I am. Better than 2022-23 at least.
- Seriously! My 2003 has a CD player and a tape deck
  
  😂 🤣
  Yeah, mine did too...
  I updated the "entertainment deck" to a unit with aux, usb, sd card, and Android Auto (which is what I really wanted).
  All good!!
  
  Is that an 8-track tape deck? 😉
  
  My ‘15 car is amazing except for the fact that it only has slow-ass laggy Bluetooth and NO AUX JACK
- Narrator: And that's when he hit a speed bump, and the whole engine just fell out.

You do realize this is based on a almost half-a-year old reddit post? What has happens in the meantime?
Note to self, never buy a Stelantis car. Not that I have ever considered that anyway!
- 4 months is "almost" half a year, I guess.
  Point of the post is that this popup ad thing has expanded from Jeep (small brand) into Dodge (large brand) from the parent company (Stellantis). What has happened in the meantime is that a bunch of other Dodge drivers has confirmed the issue is widespread and difficult to disable.
  (Ope: I got fact-checked, turns out Jeep sells more vehicles per year than Dodge. I'm old, and apparently Dodge has lost a ton of market share since last I checked!
  If y'all are concerned about recency, I updated the article to include more images of the popup ads, including one from as recently as 3 days ago.)
  
  That is even worse. So it has been ongoing for at least 4 months now.
  
  Jeep sells more than twice as many vehicles per year as Dodge. They are not the "small brand."
  
  Where are others confirming this? Not in the article.
  Im in a challenger every week and have never seen an ad on the screen ever.
  
  I'm glad people are made aware of it!
  My point was, if the ads are still pushed to cars, I'm surprised FuelArc used a 4 month old reddit post as reference. Someone most have contacted Dogde, Jeep, or Stelantis for a comment on this.
  
  Thanks for the extremely helpful analogy

Also known as how to ensure a robust used car market until they pull their head out of their ass.

I’ve been debating getting a new car after paying a ton to fix up my old one but now I think I’ll keep her forever.
Anybody got a lead on a rebuilt turbo for a 2.0L TSI?
- Same boat, big bill this time though. Weighing my options. Not really liking the price, quality, or connectivity of newer vehicles...

Speed run to bankruptcy.

Weren't they going to discontinue both the charger and challenger?
- I thought they discontinued the challenger in 1986. The whole brand kinda blew up.
  
  Theres a core memory! Those 80s challengers were real pieces of shit. Ignoring that, challenger space craft have about the same longevity. Too soon?

If you disconnect the car’s cellular network, do the ads go away?
- Yes, but now the car can't pull data to operate the gas tank.
  
  Operate the gas tank? What new feature did they add that requires a container of liquid to be networked?
- If you can find an antenna it can be blocked or disabled. Basic instructions for a faraday cage can be found very easy.

Welp. That sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Of the class action variety.
- Don’t worry, on the mountain of paperwork you sign when you buy a car there’s probably an arbitration clause somewhere.
- Oh, I thought you meant a lawsuit from me. When I, a pedestrian am crossing the street with my walk signal, when suddenly, the guy at the opposite side of the intersection just starts driving at a red light because he was distracted by McDonalds. Didn't even realize his foot was on the pedal, and now I got run over.
  
  I'm pretty sure the point of showing the ads only at intersections is, that the car needs to be in a standstill
  So they kinda give you "entertainment", while you're waiting
  Obviously a completely shit move, but I'm afraid, we can't hit them for safety issues here
  Maybe more relevant would be, that people will miss the green light or produce more traffic jams, because that they're clear to move on
  (Or did I miss something how/when they show their stupid ads?)

Excited to see what they'll do with Revanced for cars.

@KayLeadfoot
Maybe try uBlock Origin on that "muscle" car?

Next update: play Ozempic commercials every time you stop at a light.

107 comments