Almost any device you buy today is a connected device that is essentially bricked without servers and the Internet. I’ve mentioned the pain this can cause when businesses fail and instantly your speakers, home automation, or other products just stop working.

As our toys get bigger, the stakes of what this means get higher. Take the recent bankruptcy of EV car maker Fisker. Some of the car’s features need access to online services to work, and some features require OTA (over-the-air) updates to get enabled. While cars from old, non-existent brands like Saturn can run today with no issues, a Fisker and other connected cars have much more complex software that stands to limit what’s possible when and if the company shuts down its services.

It’s not uncommon for today’s cars to respond to recalls by releasing software updates that fix issues. Fisker has made it clear that it can and will not provide any updates beyond its recently released version 2.1 update. That has to be a hard pill to swallow after spending $70k on a car that is now valued for 14k.

Fisker asks bankruptcy court to sell its EVs at average of $14,000 each | TechCrunch

Fisker has a willing buyer for its remaining inventory of all-electric Ocean SUVs, and has asked the Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge overseeing its