Ever heard of General Motor’s Onstar, combination snooping / vehicle control system? Not only does it have the ability to track your movements, but can remotely shut down the car. This is same. Every new car apparently has some remote control and tracking built in. Needs only a slightly modified cell phone to send and receive digital data. — I guess you surely know this, but to write as if not, HMM. NOW is the dystopia that science-fiction writers have been warning you about for decades, when “smart” gadgets watch you constantly. — Anyway, this is just one small way the gadgets are going to be used for spying and control from now on, kids, unless we get The Rich and their spying mega-corporations back under control first. We’re moving beyond all previous totalitarian states to the total technocratic state where The Rich control armies of gadgets against We The People.

I guess it is by this definition, after all you don’t buy or own the infrastructure, or maintain it or install it, and if you don’t pay them a “rent” you remotely cut you off !!!
But you are also not liable if a cell tower falls over and kills someone, or if a cell breaks down you don’t have to pay to fix it.

so every cell phone in the world is DRM’d, so is every rented house or unit, and every hotel, every rental car, every bus ride, every airline, every restaurant, every pub, almost EVERYTHING !!!! Oh and the road system, every car registration, drivers license, you could go on forever, would be easier to list what is NOT DRM’s by this broad TD “definition”.

I take a rather detached view of automobiles in general, and electric automobiles in particular. I don’t drive. I hire a taxicab when I need to go somewhere by automobile, and in practice, if I have time on my hands, and the weather isn’t too nasty, I prefer to walk for the benefit of my health. Even at the times when my life was most physically chaotic, I didn’t feel the need to take more than one taxi ride a day, on average, and in more normal times, the figure would sink to once a week or less.

I _think_, with a lot of caveats (*), that I could just possibly convince a taxi driver of the merits of a primal hybrid car (non-plug-in, probably with capacitors instead of batteries). I do not think I could make such a case for an electric car. If a vehicle (a) costs much more than the standard chariot, and (b) you cannot make a case for it to someone who makes his living as a driver, there doesn’t seem to much to say for such a vehicle. So, what about the taxi driver test?

(*) Specifically, the police department would have to buy the car first, so that the cab company could buy the car used at the police auction. Under pressure from the state licensing board, and the threat to grant a license to a competitor and break the local taxi company’s monopoly, the cab company agreed to buy some mini-vans to handle peak load (commuter rush, and when the bars close). However, it is not happy with them, and finds them mechanically unreliable. The company’s preference is the Ford Crown Victoria (Long Wheelbase or Police Interceptor models), bought cheap at the auction.