I have a $15 a month AT&T plan for my car. I canceled my $85 a month data plan on my smartphone, and now use it just as a tablet on wireless. Then I got a flip phone to use because I don't want to be addicted to the smartphone, on a $25 voice and text plan. So that's $45 a month in savings to experiment with less tech. I wasn't sure how it would go, but very interesting.

I'm sure most of you know this, or don't know it because you don't want to and don't need to. But for posterity...

your car is a Wi-Fi hotspot to the extent that not only could you listen to a podcast while driving and not having downloaded it... You can also apparently turn off the car and sit 15 to 20 feet away for a bit and still use it as a hotspot. I am at a tire shop and posting this right now on that Jaguar car network. It's somewhere in the settings under connectivity, and there is a wireless signal to log into with a password.I'm not sure if it goes away after systems shut down, but it is still working after 10 minutes at least.

of course all of this experimentation is to distract me *less*, I just found it curious. It will be good in a pinch if I need to see a work email or something. however, the entire point is trying to manifest professionalism by having all work done at my work desk and not having distractions or doing bad work on a cell phone.

 

$15? I have a $20 AT&T plan for my ‘18 XE. I mostly use it to stream my favorite local classical station (via TuneIn on ICTP) when I’m out of range of their FM/HD signal. Thought $20/mo was their cheapest.

 

Interesting. AIUI, there are two SIMs in the F-Type (certainly in MY18) - the embedded Jaguar SIM and a user SIM that you plug in under the centre armrest. My understanding is that it's the user SIM that runs the hotspot - I can't imagine Jaguar subsidising lots of people using their network capacity to stream movies, etc, at their expense! Welcome to be proved wrong, of course.

 

Double checking--- my plan is 2GB AT&T, I am in California, and yes $15.
However, I did just notice that my car has a phone number I've been ignoring, and it won't allow voicemails, so it's literally an old school car phone number. Ha.

I wish I had this to accompany it.

 

LOL "Hello Jaguar Headquarters, your internet bill for July is $24,546,409 because you went over your data cap. Would you like to pay my check or credit card?"

 

2013? I last saw a phone like that in 1990.

 

I had a hard-wired phone in my 2001 XK8 - I just had to supply a SIM. I think I still have the handbook that accompanied the phone.

 

Indeed there are two sims in the car - one for Jaguar's use and one for the customer. The car hotspot uses the customer one. You actually can go either way - using the car's hotspot for your phone, or vice versa. The car's connection has a small technical advantage in having the antenna built into the car. However, the car's hotspot will cut off after the system shuts down. Unless you're streaming, the car's data usage is quite modest for real time traffic, etc - maybe 200mb/month. We've used a Freedom Pop sim in our F-Pace with a small, free data plan. However, the MY17's are only 3G, so they'll become useless next year. Plan "B" will be to just use CarPlay with a phone. Presumably the same is true on the F-Type.

 

There's some REALLY odd behavior with this hot spot....
I have a 3 hour drive from Marin to Mendocino coast for a hotel we're opening, and there's a lot of dead zones.
It seems that when the car hits a cellular signal deadzone, and my hot spot dies... the hot spot never comes back even when back in service.

Killing the car for seconds doesn't fix it. If you let it sit for a half hour or more it seems to resolve it, but I've had times where the hot spot is fully out for days, with no seeming sensible reason, and no sure reasoning as to when/why it works again.

Also, the behavior of the hot spot working when you shut off the car isn't consistent. Sometimes I can use the hot spot after the car is off for +/-10mins. Sometimes it doesn't work immediately upon shutdown.

I assume there's nowhere to go to figure that first issue out, right? If that's a possibility, I'll have to get a new proper smartphone, because going back to the 1980s for a few hours doesn't work for my business partners and wifey. LOL I love being off grid, tho. I do it so much more often than I used to. =)

 

In my '18 XE, the 4G connection sometime doesn't reconnect after I stop briefly. For me, ejecting the SIM card and plugging it back in does the trick. On my latest 1000-mile drive (MA to MI), I think I had to do it twice. The SIM card doesn't have to come out - press it in to eject part way, then push it all the way back in.

Unfortunately, I installed the most recent over-the-air-update (in Dec?), and the system works much worse. Sometimes takes a minute to boot after starting - no backup camera, parking sensors, etc meanwhile.

 

My 2021 still won't connect to the internet. It is going back into the shop later this week. I have tried everything including about a dozen phone calls with Jaguar Technical Support. My Samsung Android phone will connect to the Wi-Fi network at my home while sitting in my car and connects easily at known Wi-Fi hotspots in town or in other cities but the infotainment system in my car just shows that it is searching for a signal and then eventually times out and gives a no signal available error icon.

I don't know that I will bother making the car a Wi-Fi hotspot if they can ever correct the problem but unless it will connect in the first place I can't download map updates and use any of the advanced navigation features.

 

Wow, I didn't know that the 17s only have 3G. Really odd because it's not like 4G was cutting edge tech back in 2016.

I use a 4G sim with a tiny data plan and have to agree that the car really doesn't use much data for SOTA updates and navigation data, although I mostly drive around with the navigation displaying the live satellite imagery so it should be downloading satellite data most of the time.

Regarding getting the signal back after a dead zone... try switching the mobile data connectivity off/on in the settings. My garage has zero cell reception so when I start the car up it tries in vain to get connected. Usually it picks up the 4G signal as soon as I've driven out, but sometimes it somehow gets stuck trying and gives up after a while. I suspect that it's because there's no reception on startup. What helps then is to just flick the connectivity off/on in the settings. No removal of the SIM card needed.

I also installed S21B over the air as soon as it was released last year and didn't notice any problems after that. Everything just works at least as good as before - touch wood!

 

LOL I was rebooting "the computer" by turning the car on and off. Your solution makes more sense, is simpler, and more elegant. I am psyched. If that works, I can keep my flip phone lifestyle, while still not dying in the middle of a redwood forest that is flooding. Superb! =) Thank you!!