Dodge Chargers Now Have Pop-Up Ads at Every Stoplight

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

Damn, I would be pissed if my car started showing ads. I hope this enshitification doesn't spread.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Their new $85k Charger will surely save them...
  
  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.
  
  Hornet, Journey, Charger. That’s it. Hornet is a piece of cheap, charger has ads. Journey…?
- 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*

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!

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"
  
  anyoneemailingmeisacunt@gmail.com
  Actually tried it, seems like gmail doesnt like swear words
- They wanted my email address "so they can get in touch with me if I don't answer the phone."
  "Lol no"
  Then walk out.

If we had actual regulation here this would be illegal for distracting driving.
Illegal to look at phone (I know everyone does it and isn't enforced, but still illegal on paper) but not illegal to watch this short message from our sponsors?
I hate living through a bad joke. Much rather read about this shit and laugh then wondering what the next stupid thing is.

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.
  
  Public transportation subscription.

We need root on our car computers.
- We need more dead ceos
- And smart TVs, doorbell cameras, robo-vacuums, etc etc.

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.

It seems like displaying an ad at a stop light would be a safety issue since it makes it so you can onky look at the screen while moving.
- Not to mention it has the potential to completely distract the driver when the light turns green and other traffic starts moving again.

Two weeks ago it was Jeep. Now it's Dodge. This is how it creeps. Are both those companies owned by Crystler?
- It's called Stellantis now.
  
  Ask your doctor if Stellantis is right for you...
  
  Oh yeah I did hear that name recently
- Yeah, zero surprise seeing this happen to Chrysler/Stellantis cars first.
- Yes, along with Ram pickup trucks and IIRC Fiat, somehow.
  
  Plus Peugeot, Citroën and Opel.
  
  Chrysler Corporation (Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram) was owned by Daimler (which also owned Mercedes-Benz) from 1998-2007, then operated on their own again (and spun off Ram from Dodge) until 2014 when they were acquired by Fiat, forming Fiat Chrysler Automotive (aka FCA). FCA and PSA (Peugeot) merged in 2021 to form Stellantis.
  There you go.

Oh, look...!!
Yet another good reason I'll not buy a new car. 🙄
Perfectly happy with my current 03 model thank you...
- 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
- 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.
  
  A wreck like that is my one fear...
  Doesn't take much of a hit to "total" an older vehicle like that. 🤷‍♂️
  
  That happened to me, too. During covid pricing, I had a 1992 Ford Taurus that I absolutely loved (and hated, but that's a different story), and got rear-ended on the freeway at the tail end of 2021. Wasn't severe and the car was drivable, but insurance still totaled it. The kicker is that even though I only paid $1000 for the car, insurance gave me a whopping $4700.
  I managed to snag my current 2008 Toyota Sienna for $4500 when most were going for $6-8k. It needed some work at first, but it's a solid car and serves as our family hauler and handles multiple roadtrips a year like a boss (split custody, yay 🙄).
- Narrator: And that's when he hit a speed bump, and the whole engine just fell out.

Blows my mind that this kind of stuff isn’t a safety issue… I guess as long as it’s “touch-free” it’s not considered distracted driving lol
- The Muse's cleavage knows what's up.

I am so happy that my car doesn’t update itself automatically
- You know, I was annoyed by that when I had to pay for an out-of-warranty update but now I'm pretty happy that my car is one year too old for automatic updates.
  
  How is a software update a warranty claim? They should be free, like a recall. Maybe a DIY option with a USB or SD card. Either that or whatever they're adding probably isn't worth the update to me.

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

I mean like I need another reason to NOT buy a Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Ram

“Glitch”
More like
“Let’s see how people react”
- Didn't another car manufacturer have a similar "glitch" with in-car ads fairly recently? This story feels so familiar.
  
  Yes, Jeep, owned by Stellantis who also owns Dodge.

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.)
  
  Jeep sells more than twice as many vehicles per year as Dodge. They are not the "small brand."
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  Thanks for the extremely helpful analogy
  
  That is even worse. So it has been ongoing for at least 4 months 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.

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!
- This is part of the plot of the movie Dream Scenario

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

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.

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

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
  
  Yeah, happened to me last week. I wanted to do a simple bugfix and next thing I knew I had implemented, configured and released an ad solution to our software...

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.
- This is the company that saw their North American sales dipping and responded, "let's discontinue the Challenger and Charger, our 2 recognizable nameplates that give the rest of our lineup a halo effect with our largest buying segment, that'll fix it!"
  Then they brought back the Charger as an EV, which is exactly what that particular fanbase did not want to buy, at a starting price that'll make your eyes water. Now they've announced that they're doubling back and releasing a gasoline Charger, but by surprise and with no specs available in advance, as though they're panic-releasing it. It's a perfect shit show. Corporate idiocy on parade.
  
  An EV with a fake exhaust sound, no less.
  My god how lame.

It's so insane how seemingly every company wants to fuck over all their customers these days. Their obsession with fucking infinite growth.

"Please subscribe to continue operating your vehicle"

If you just do a standing burnout at every light will it not pop up?
- The folk with the random alphanumeric username, asking the real questions
- They'll start using the traction control sensors to circumvent this life hack

I'm surprised Dodge is trying this considering the thousands of memes of BMW implementing pay to use features on their vehicle ever since they added subscription heated seats.
- Memes only matter if they effect revenue. If profit climbed then the stupid stays.
- Memes don't matter if revenue climbed

This is just asking to get rickroll’d.

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?)

Barf

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.

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

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?

Whenever I upgrade my car, if it has this “feature “ I will immediately change out the system.

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.
- This was most likely a bug and it probably has been fixed since
  You have a source for any of your assumptions?
  
  The source of my assumptions is my mind, but sure, here you go.
  A Stellantis spokesperson told Fortune in a statement that “a temporary software glitch affected the ability to instantly opt out in a few isolated cases, though instant opt-out is the standard for all our in-vehicle messages. Our team had already identified and corrected the error, and we are following up directly with the customer to ensure the matter is fully resolved.”
  Source

This is old and they’ve already said it’s a bug. Stellantis sucks for sure though.
- "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.
- Be less gullible

Speed run to bankruptcy.

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.
  
  Absolutely not. The "I'd deal with it if I get [nice thing] for less" mindset is the entire reason we're in this situation to begin with. Companies see that people will put up with it, realize data collection from that is where the real money is made, then it leaches into everything else.
  Fuck ads entirely.

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...