I want to buy a 2023ish CX-5 but I can’t find where the TCU is located exactly (“telematics” isn’t even found in the digital car manual) and whether the car still runs and the odometer works correctly if I physically remove it.
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What would be the purpose of removing it?
What do you hope to accomplish?
As far as removing the TCU, probably not the best idea. As someone else stated it’s connected to the CAN bus along with almost every other ecu in the vehicle. Each of those ECUs need to see a signal from the other ones in order to work properly. Removing that TCU will give you a network malfunction issue and will likely disable other things like the keyless entry, push to start, smart braking, LKA, and basically anything else running in that part of the CAN bus. Not sure if it would work but perhaps just wrapping the TCU in a emf shield or something (think tin foil hat) could keep you from receiving a slew of network codes and hindering the TCU from communicating to the network. Will it give you an error message because it can’t communicate? No clue.
You can call and they’ll disable the data collection. They use the phrase “deactivate the TCU”, so whether they mean it is off completely or just doesn’t send the data to them OTA (but is still readable, say, at the dealer) I don’t know.
If you’re looking for a car without telematics consider a Honda, all of their models with the smaller infotainment screen have no cellular modem.
You might just want to avoid buying a car with telematics or an LTE connection then. Chevy and Subaru should be off your list too. Probably others.
Overly worried. I mean I get it especially if you work in the field. But come on, if you’re that worried this shouldn’t even be a thing.
You should be driving an older car with no over the air connection, no gps, no smartphone, a tin foil hat.
And if you were that worried, they are listening now and will mess with your cars systems so that when you do disable it you are forced to bring it in. Oh crap I said it, they know
4th gen. Mazda 3s (which firstly had the 7th gen Mazda infotainment) didn’t have a TCU unit in them up in EU models up until 2022. There’s a debug menu of the infotainment which shows if the TCU is present or not.
As it implies, there’s no functionality in the MyMazda app which depends on the TCU unit (remote start, remote lock/unlock, door state, tire pressure, etc.).
There’s no codes thrown on the dashboard of course as these cars came out of the factory like this, but firmwares differ for the infotainment system based on model, region, VIN ranges for facelifts, etc., so not sure how a car which should be having a TCU would handle the removal of it.
In Mazda 3s I believe it should be behind the dash, but not sure if the whole dashboard should be removed to access it and that would definitely introduce some rattles.
Personally I wouldn’t remove it if my car had it (have a 2019 gen 4 Mazda 3), there’s much common privacy destroying things which are more general than having a TCU in your car (like posting to reddit).
Hey, u/CPhyloGenesis!
Is it possible this was installed aftermarket? I wonder what kind of telematics unit it is. That might help us to narrow down what’s up.
Best,
Joy B (Telematics 411 Consulting)
Do not rip out the TCU. Just disconnect the antenna, and connect dummy load instead. The car will just think it’s out of signal and hopefully won’t throw any errors.
You are going to make more problem than you are going to solve.