Considering turning off all data sharing
Because of the NYT story and the insurance post on this thread yesterday, I'm considering turning off all data sharing on my Lightning. I tried only turning off sharing for the driving data, and already lost the charge banner and scheduled departure. So now I'm considering turning all data sharing off. The truck is an XLT, so no Blue Cruise.
TL;DR -- if I turn off all data sharing, what do I do about software updates?
Charging -- My basic thinking is that this is our around-town vehicle, so we rarely DC fast charge. I plug it in slow chargers around town, which are usually free, and I can usually tell from truck itself and the charger whether it's working. If I want to make sure it keeps working, the app still shows the percent charge and I can check that it is increasing. If I go on a road trip and want to use Plug & Charge and/or use my remaining complimentary EA charging, I can just turn data sharing back on briefly.
Scheduled Departure -- Our schedule is unpredictable enough that we don't do a lot of scheduled departures. And I have a suspicion that feature will still work, but I just have to set it in the truck screen itself. I will try to determine tomorrow. Spouse said it didn't work this morning, but I can't remember whether I had it set, or whether it might need to be reset after I toggled the data sharing.
Trip planning -- I don't do a lot of long trips, and those that I do, I usually plan on my phone using better apps (ABRP and PlugShare). Then I put my route in Google Maps to use Android on the truck.
Software -- The biggest issue I see is software updates. In an ideal world, I'd like to think that I could turn on connectivity features once a month at home, get the truck on the wifi, and check for updates. Checking for updates is something that is easy to do for your computer, phone, etc. It should be the same for the vehicle. But it's not. I've only had the truck a month, and have had one update -- 4.2.3.1, which just allows me to connect to public wifi easier (and therefore probably SHARE MORE DATA!). It's annoying to not be able to tell whether your software is up to date... Even with these issues, I think I'm going to go for it, and just set myself a calendar reminder to connect the truck one Sunday afternoon a month to check for updates.
What else am I not thinking about? Is the intelligent cruise going to refuse to work?
Also, I'm going to take my 2020 "dumb" Transit off connectivity too. It does not break up the options into "driving data" and other categories, it's just one checkbox. As far as I can tell, having the van connected does literally nothing.