Vanishing from Hyundai’s data network(techno-fandom.org)
techno-fandom.org
Vanishing from Hyundai’s data network
http://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/ev/offnet.html
271 comments
We need judges to start growing a backbone and declaring these one-sided "agreements" unconscionable. The company has outsized power over the purchaser, the terms tend to be one-sided, and there is no meaningful choice to the purchaser. These things should be clear cut cases of unconscionability, and judges should be throwing them out left and right and penalizing the companies who try to push them.
It's arguably a violation of the CFAA.
It wouldn't be a very solid argument. Telematics are universally disclaimed in owners manuals. A good chunk of modern owners manuals are legally-required disclaimers of various sorts which are all deemed valid for those reasons.
And a ruling that it doesn't matter because "nobody reads that" wouldn't be a good thing either -- basically that would make most SaaS engineer into criminals.
And a ruling that it doesn't matter because "nobody reads that" wouldn't be a good thing either -- basically that would make most SaaS engineer into criminals.
So I can put a disclaimer in remote shell malware I distribute on the internet and get out of a CFAA violation? I don't think that's quite right. A lot of this software is very clearly malware, that it's shipped by the manufacturer and includes documentation doesn't change that IMO.
Yes, a lot of software has remote access capability and it is legal when intended. The CFAA doesn’t care about how it works or why. It entirely hinges on whether the access was authorized. Your opinion about whether the software is good or bad is legally irrelevant.
Good to know, I guess I'll write an .ssh/id_rsa harvesting worm and chuck it in a pip package tonight with a license that includes a clause requiring surrender of any machine its installed on.
The intent and the totality of what you are doing matters. And worms, by definition, run on computers without authorization.
Further:
Safer roads and more convenient travel comport with public policy; and,
No one in 2025 has a reasonable expectation they are not being surveilled by their new car.
(FWIW, I’m against surveillance transport but there is no reasonable way to say these contracts of adhesion are unconscionable under US law).
Safer roads and more convenient travel comport with public policy; and,
No one in 2025 has a reasonable expectation they are not being surveilled by their new car.
(FWIW, I’m against surveillance transport but there is no reasonable way to say these contracts of adhesion are unconscionable under US law).
> No one in 2025 has a reasonable expectation they are not being surveilled by their new car.
This is not even slightly true. People are barely aware of the fact their car has any connectivity in the first place, let alone that it tracks everything you do in a way that's tied to your real life identity.
You're probably, talking mostly to us "techies". Anyone else probably wouldn't be too surprised if you told them, but they definitely wouldn't expect it to be like that.
This is not even slightly true. People are barely aware of the fact their car has any connectivity in the first place, let alone that it tracks everything you do in a way that's tied to your real life identity.
You're probably, talking mostly to us "techies". Anyone else probably wouldn't be too surprised if you told them, but they definitely wouldn't expect it to be like that.
They don’t have a reasonable expectation of buying a surveillance-safe new car because one does not exist.
Other than that I hear you. You’re talking about the reasonable expectation in someone’s head but I’m talking about the possibility even existing in the marketplace. I guess you could argue maybe the reality of the market is trumped by the opinion of a person as to the reality of the market. I’m not sure that makes sense (or that ut doesn’t).
I guess you’re saying “they do have that expectation” while I’m saying “regardless of anyone’s expectation, car manufacturers have all addressed the market in a way that makes the expectation false and therefore unreasonable.”
Other than that I hear you. You’re talking about the reasonable expectation in someone’s head but I’m talking about the possibility even existing in the marketplace. I guess you could argue maybe the reality of the market is trumped by the opinion of a person as to the reality of the market. I’m not sure that makes sense (or that ut doesn’t).
I guess you’re saying “they do have that expectation” while I’m saying “regardless of anyone’s expectation, car manufacturers have all addressed the market in a way that makes the expectation false and therefore unreasonable.”
> You’re talking about the reasonable expectation in someone’s head
The legal concept of a person's "reasonable expectation" is literally this. But it doesn't really matter legally, because these systems are explicitly disclosed in the documentation that automakers provide.
The legal concept of a person's "reasonable expectation" is literally this. But it doesn't really matter legally, because these systems are explicitly disclosed in the documentation that automakers provide.
That’s not correct: both the objective and subjective reasonable expectation are implicated. If the objective standard was not relevant, why would it matter if the manufacturer made the disclosure you mentioned?
> If the objective standard was not relevant, why would it matter if the manufacturer made the disclosure you mentioned?
We’re talking about it because you brought it up, but it generally does not apply to data privacy in the US.
Courts recognize that peeping toms can’t look into your window, but ad tech absolutely can track data about you, in your car, or even your home.
We’re talking about it because you brought it up, but it generally does not apply to data privacy in the US.
Courts recognize that peeping toms can’t look into your window, but ad tech absolutely can track data about you, in your car, or even your home.
The status quo is, as long as clickthroughs don't hurt the consumer then and there, they are valid. Can you imagine if this status quo were upended? Chaos. The end result would be a uniform agreement, kind of like the GDPR, but more expansive, and guess what: the scope of what clickthroughs will permit would be expanded, not constrained.
This thing about judges... if you brought a complaint to court that doesn't show any harm, you'll get the opposite result that you want: judges will expand the legality of clickthroughs. This is what happens, without a doubt.
Privacy advocates have numerous strategic failures. One is failure to show meaningful harm of specifically the data gathering permissions in these clickthroughs, in any legal venue, anywhere. The harms have always been of other issues, like a data breach, and even then, the harms amount to ones of dollars per person, in places where judges have approved data breach settlements. Another failure is of leadership/education: they cannot communicate the very simple idea to the public that there is privacy in the sense of limiting government overreaching versus privacy in the sense of limiting dissemination of embarrassing personal information. There are so many steps in this privacy mission before the judges.
This thing about judges... if you brought a complaint to court that doesn't show any harm, you'll get the opposite result that you want: judges will expand the legality of clickthroughs. This is what happens, without a doubt.
Privacy advocates have numerous strategic failures. One is failure to show meaningful harm of specifically the data gathering permissions in these clickthroughs, in any legal venue, anywhere. The harms have always been of other issues, like a data breach, and even then, the harms amount to ones of dollars per person, in places where judges have approved data breach settlements. Another failure is of leadership/education: they cannot communicate the very simple idea to the public that there is privacy in the sense of limiting government overreaching versus privacy in the sense of limiting dissemination of embarrassing personal information. There are so many steps in this privacy mission before the judges.
Absent something like a component of the GDPR, I'd highly doubt the judiciary in any country is going to originate a major civil right.
The correct place ELA / T&A consent should be defined is in something like the GDPR -- along with strict requirements as to what standard of consumer free choice is required for it to be enforceable.
The correct place ELA / T&A consent should be defined is in something like the GDPR -- along with strict requirements as to what standard of consumer free choice is required for it to be enforceable.
I would prefer to take it broader and codify it in law that:
1. The terms and conditions of a product, service, etc. "primarily" aimed at a consumer have simple, human readable terms. Like a food label or similar to the broadband label.
2. The terms are presented and acknowledged PRIOR to purchasing (not after opening the package, driving off the lot, putting the DVD into the player). The company needs to find a way to deliver the T&C's before purchase. If you need me to agree to 50 pages things before I can use your product, I didn't really purchase it, I am receiving a license to use it....
3. If these terms and conditions will be changed retroactively (for existing customers) that must be optional, opt-in and not required to continue to use the product.
I think this would stop a lot of the shenanigans companies pull on end users, that they DON'T pull in B2B environments.
1. The terms and conditions of a product, service, etc. "primarily" aimed at a consumer have simple, human readable terms. Like a food label or similar to the broadband label.
2. The terms are presented and acknowledged PRIOR to purchasing (not after opening the package, driving off the lot, putting the DVD into the player). The company needs to find a way to deliver the T&C's before purchase. If you need me to agree to 50 pages things before I can use your product, I didn't really purchase it, I am receiving a license to use it....
3. If these terms and conditions will be changed retroactively (for existing customers) that must be optional, opt-in and not required to continue to use the product.
I think this would stop a lot of the shenanigans companies pull on end users, that they DON'T pull in B2B environments.
This still puts the company too much in the driver's seat. An actual "contract" or "agreement" is supposed to be a meeting of the minds between two parties. It's not simply one-sided terms dictated by one party without opportunity for the other party to negotiate. And each party should have negotiating power and choice beyond "take it or leave it".
And, before you dismiss this idea with "Ha ha imagine if every cell phone provider had a custom, bespoke, negotiated contract with each customer! It can't be done!"
If providing real negotiating power and choice to your customer is too much of an overhead burden, then maybe the company should not be allowed to make the "agreement" a condition for buying/using the product.
And, before you dismiss this idea with "Ha ha imagine if every cell phone provider had a custom, bespoke, negotiated contract with each customer! It can't be done!"
If providing real negotiating power and choice to your customer is too much of an overhead burden, then maybe the company should not be allowed to make the "agreement" a condition for buying/using the product.
> And, before you dismiss this idea with "Ha ha imagine if every cell phone provider had a custom, bespoke, negotiated contract with each customer! It can't be done!"
This actually already happens to some extend. Nor a different contract for every individual user but my mobile phone plan is not one you can currently purchase from the provider but just available to existing customers who have been upgraded (more data for the same price as the original contract).
This actually already happens to some extend. Nor a different contract for every individual user but my mobile phone plan is not one you can currently purchase from the provider but just available to existing customers who have been upgraded (more data for the same price as the original contract).
It's not the judges job to bring a case before the court.
What we actually need is a Consumer Protection Alliance that is made by and funded by people who want protection from this and are willing to pay for the lawyers needed to run all of the cases and bring these cases before a judge over and over and over again until they win.
This would mean people like you and me and a million others of us paying $20-$50/month out of pocket to hire people to sue companies that do this shit.
What we actually need is a Consumer Protection Alliance that is made by and funded by people who want protection from this and are willing to pay for the lawyers needed to run all of the cases and bring these cases before a judge over and over and over again until they win.
This would mean people like you and me and a million others of us paying $20-$50/month out of pocket to hire people to sue companies that do this shit.
Nullifying the agreement isn't enough because companies will still try to trick people into believing they are bound to it. There need to be actual consequences for even trying such bs - essentially this needs to be recognized as a type of fraud.
This is the kinda of thing that was preventing me from seriously considering Tesla. I accept that there is a lot more tech involved so some updates are necessary, but turning cars into cells on wheels made everyone way too eager to not ship finished product.
>> but turning cars into cells on wheels made everyone way too eager to not ship finished product.
I knew a former manager of OTA (over the air updates) at one manufacturer. I said that needed to be used for emergency updates only and not so people could be late with features or QA. She totally agreed and said it was becoming a battle with all the software teams thinking it meant they could be late and it'd be OK. They think it makes the deadline fuzzy or non-existant.
I knew a former manager of OTA (over the air updates) at one manufacturer. I said that needed to be used for emergency updates only and not so people could be late with features or QA. She totally agreed and said it was becoming a battle with all the software teams thinking it meant they could be late and it'd be OK. They think it makes the deadline fuzzy or non-existant.
I looked at a company that did this stuff with a box that could remotely power up/down and unlock / lock a vehicle. They never even thought to check whether the vehicle was in motion or not, that's how confident they were that they'd never ever make a mistake.
If there's one device/product in my life that I do not want to have reliant on CI/CD, that I want delivered to me in a fully finished and ready to go condition where I can trust that absent material breakdown will stay exactly the same, it's my car.
Update your apps all you want. Change the layout. Betray your users and sell their data to AI, whatever, the consequences are on you.
Update my car, change its performance or range or the layouts of the buttons in the infotainment system so that I might be distracted or expecting an outcome that is suddenly no longer possible and I or the people I injure in the accident have to live with the consequences for the rest of our lives.
Update your apps all you want. Change the layout. Betray your users and sell their data to AI, whatever, the consequences are on you.
Update my car, change its performance or range or the layouts of the buttons in the infotainment system so that I might be distracted or expecting an outcome that is suddenly no longer possible and I or the people I injure in the accident have to live with the consequences for the rest of our lives.
I would love for there to be a robust jailbreak community for tesla cars.
I've also heard that the defunct fisker cars might have this sort of hacking community - you might be able to get the source code for the car.
I've also heard that the defunct fisker cars might have this sort of hacking community - you might be able to get the source code for the car.
I've been told T&A after you bought a product is actually not legal in the EU. The popups still appear, and everyone clicks thorugh. It can't be legal. Whatever they want me to agree with, they have to force me at checkout time. Everything beyond that is plain ransomeware.
It kind of depends; there's a difference between Europe and the EU, for one. But there are also things you can hide away in the T&C and privacy statements, while other stuff (usually involving PII) needs explicit consent and opt-outs.
The EU mandates the presence of an emergency cellular radio on board of new vehicles in case of crashes. It took some convincing, but that radio is now supposed to be off by default.
You can demand a refund for Windows keys that came along with your computer if you disagree with the ToS (which has been tested by a French court IIRC), and that ability is actually included in the Windows EULA these days, but getting that kind of thing enforced will be draining. Repeated calls and repeated emails at the very least, filing complaints and threatening legal action if the vendor doesn't want to comply.
The EU mandates the presence of an emergency cellular radio on board of new vehicles in case of crashes. It took some convincing, but that radio is now supposed to be off by default.
You can demand a refund for Windows keys that came along with your computer if you disagree with the ToS (which has been tested by a French court IIRC), and that ability is actually included in the Windows EULA these days, but getting that kind of thing enforced will be draining. Repeated calls and repeated emails at the very least, filing complaints and threatening legal action if the vendor doesn't want to comply.
I recently had a similarly unfriendly experience in my inlaws' new Lexus, which has an accompanying mobile app for vehicle management and some advanced setup features. How did we learn about this almost completely required app & mobile setup process? If you start driving with Google Maps via Android Auto it will terminate the AA interface after a few minute and replace it with a nag screen about setting up the Lexus mobile software. There is no alternative but to comply.
> There is no alternative but to comply.
Maybe not within the confines of the head unit but you can still stick your phone onto the dash like I do in my (dumb) cars.
Maybe not within the confines of the head unit but you can still stick your phone onto the dash like I do in my (dumb) cars.
I bought a 2020 car recently. It comes with Android Auto, whereas previously I'd just mount my phone to the dashboard. But with Android Auto, every time the voice gives out a navigation instruction, music playing from the infotainment is paused; in my previous car the voice would play from my phone, on top of the music coming out of the car's sound system.
So I've ordered a mount so I can mount my phone to the car again...
So I've ordered a mount so I can mount my phone to the car again...
Android auto also prevents you from typing in a new destination while driving. Because no one ever has a passenger that can do that for you, right?
The story is still infuriating. You can't use what you paid for, unless you comply with what the manufacturer wants.
Oh, I agree that it's infuriating, frustrating and disappointing. My US-based stance is that, while there have been some encouraging developments on the right-to-repair front, more generally the rollback/demonization of regulations, de-fanging of CFPB et al all project a future where this sort of behavior is the norm for an ever increasing number of "critical" devices and we have no recourse. So, I think we have to be ready to vote with our dollars and reject these options, bend these devices to our will when it's possible and work around them when it's not.
Is there truly no way to disable the nag screen for those that don’t care about the advanced features?
Thanks for the heads-up ... I've been drooling over an ioniq 5 (ideally N) for quite some time as an excellent alternative to the Douche-la.
But this kind of thing really puts me off ...
I've been maintaining a 2005 Toyota and a 1969 Vw Beetle ... no worries about fucking T&C's or T&A's ... looks like I'll continue the maintenance regime, which I kind of enjoy anyway.
But this kind of thing really puts me off ...
I've been maintaining a 2005 Toyota and a 1969 Vw Beetle ... no worries about fucking T&C's or T&A's ... looks like I'll continue the maintenance regime, which I kind of enjoy anyway.
Nissan Leafs are I think the most DIY friendly EVs, certainly 1st generation, and also 2nd, but 3rd generation that is coming soon … not so much. Anyway 1st and 2nd can definitely be completely offline and there are significant online communities of tinkerers and even open source tools to interact with them.
I'm fearing the day when my quite old ICE car dies and I end up in a situation where the best option is a newer car that is a computer on wheels running software that I know will stop getting updates very quickly.
Of all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
Of all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
I'm hopeful that stuff like Android Auto or Apple CarPlay will continue moving some of the risky obsolete-able complexity away of the giant expensive machine I plan to keep for over a decade (the car) and into smaller easier-to-replace ones (my smartphone.)
A quick outline for those who haven't used them: The car's head-display becomes mostly-controlled by your phone, which is what supplies any navigation, music, podcasts, address-book, GPS, cellular data-connection, etc. Meanwhile the car focuses on providing the display/touchpad hardware, inputs from steering-wheel controls, and maybe AM/FM radio modes.
With the right vehicles/adapters I don't even need to take my phone out of my pocket, which is great because then I can't forget it in the car.
A quick outline for those who haven't used them: The car's head-display becomes mostly-controlled by your phone, which is what supplies any navigation, music, podcasts, address-book, GPS, cellular data-connection, etc. Meanwhile the car focuses on providing the display/touchpad hardware, inputs from steering-wheel controls, and maybe AM/FM radio modes.
With the right vehicles/adapters I don't even need to take my phone out of my pocket, which is great because then I can't forget it in the car.
I posted this above, but in new Lexus RX models at least, the Lexus vehicle management software trumps the AA interface so you're forced to setup their mobile app if you want to use AA (for things like navigation).
On a related note, the Bluetooth stack in my F150 doesn't work very well with phone calls. I can place calls fine, but receiving calls will not route them through vehicle audio. I have to turn on speaker phone to participate. It's a known problem "won't fix" from Ford, regardless of the fact that they've sold millions of these trucks (mine is a 2017 and has never worked).
On a related note, the Bluetooth stack in my F150 doesn't work very well with phone calls. I can place calls fine, but receiving calls will not route them through vehicle audio. I have to turn on speaker phone to participate. It's a known problem "won't fix" from Ford, regardless of the fact that they've sold millions of these trucks (mine is a 2017 and has never worked).
That sounds like sync 3.. there was a known problem with Bluetooth connectivity but there was a fairly easy way to fix it. I cannot remember but I will look at my ford vehicle tonight for what I did
They want their hands on that juicy data that Google and apple are getting. It's why GMC opted to make their own instead, and why you have to jump through their hoops first.
GM, at least on their new Equinox EV, no longer supports either Apple CarPlay or Android Auto electing instead to provide only the Google built-in infotainment system and apps.
I discovered this just yesterday while researching the Equinox for a friend.
She is no longer interested in the Equinox despite her loving its looks.
I discovered this just yesterday while researching the Equinox for a friend.
She is no longer interested in the Equinox despite her loving its looks.
For some reason, they still get CarPlay outside of US.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/gm-evs-will-get-apple-carplay-...
https://www.thedrive.com/news/gm-evs-will-get-apple-carplay-...
I can't figure out why car manufacturers insist on building whole parallel universes of UIs, media apps, nav apps et cetera. Doesn't it cost a ton? Do people actually use/want this stuff?
The why is pretty simple: they want recurring revenue. What the customer wants is secondary.
I think what they want is long term dominance, not necessarily revenues. Allowing Apple/Google run their code by default on all cars would be near out of question to them.
A lot of people also need robust offline navigation. The freebie included infotainment offer that.
A lot of people also need robust offline navigation. The freebie included infotainment offer that.
And insisting on building their own mediocre ui helps them achieve that how exactly?
Maybe I'm just super out of touch on how people use their cars, but my cars infotainment system has not made its manufacturer any additional money as far as I can tell.
Maybe I'm just super out of touch on how people use their cars, but my cars infotainment system has not made its manufacturer any additional money as far as I can tell.
Once you have the data the money can be figured out later.
You can figure out how people use the car and what features matter to them and upsell or upcharge for those features in the next line.
You can cross-advertise (oh you listen to music when driving here's Spotify deal through us and behind-the-scenes we get a cut for lead generation to Spotify).
You can use the information to defend in lawsuits. Oh our car is faulty leading to accidents? But all these people were fiddling with the unit before crashing.
Also if you control the platform you can sell integration spots to companies. I know my old BMW had a specific separate path to connect Spotify on your phone to car, no other audio app.
There's surely other ways I haven't thought of. The investment pays off later IF you get the data, but CarPlay and Android Auto have really mucked that gambit up for the car makers
You can figure out how people use the car and what features matter to them and upsell or upcharge for those features in the next line.
You can cross-advertise (oh you listen to music when driving here's Spotify deal through us and behind-the-scenes we get a cut for lead generation to Spotify).
You can use the information to defend in lawsuits. Oh our car is faulty leading to accidents? But all these people were fiddling with the unit before crashing.
Also if you control the platform you can sell integration spots to companies. I know my old BMW had a specific separate path to connect Spotify on your phone to car, no other audio app.
There's surely other ways I haven't thought of. The investment pays off later IF you get the data, but CarPlay and Android Auto have really mucked that gambit up for the car makers
Don't forget selling the driving data to insurance companies, private investigators, law enforcement, etc.
It's very simple. They want to "own" the experience.
If their HU was 100% Apple or 100% Android, then e.g. a BMW and a Honda would feel the same.
If their HU was 100% Apple or 100% Android, then e.g. a BMW and a Honda would feel the same.
Same with TV manufacturers, or early phones (Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola, LG, Samsung.. had all different OSes and UIs.)
Except most phone manufacturers jumped onto Android when that became an option.
Android TV is also pretty widespread these days although some big players still have their own firmware.
Android TV is also pretty widespread these days although some big players still have their own firmware.
This is not the direction that the software is going in.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ultra-the-nex...
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ultra-the-nex...
CarPlay Ultra sounds like it's extending it further? That is, it's still essentially VNC† with some data fed from the car and rendered by the phone, but now with multi-monitor support.
† it's more complicated than that, but still a dumb framebuffer.
† it's more complicated than that, but still a dumb framebuffer.
> CarPlay Ultra provides content for all the driver’s screens, including the instrument cluster, with dynamic and beautiful options for the speedometer, tachometer, fuel gauge, temperature gauge, and more, bringing a consistent look and feel to the entire driving experience.
There is no way that’s running on the phone.
There is no way that’s running on the phone.
This is what I hoped for but based on the Ultra implementation in the Astons is not at all what we’re getting
It seems to require pretty deep integration with the automaker (Aston provides a lot of custom visuals), and based on the available third party reviews it doesn’t work as well as you’d suspect for a flagship integration
It seems to require pretty deep integration with the automaker (Aston provides a lot of custom visuals), and based on the available third party reviews it doesn’t work as well as you’d suspect for a flagship integration
I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
I thought the main image would be rendered on the car using local data and only the entertainment stuff is transferred from the phone.
And also, how would you drive your car without the phone if everything is rendered on the phone? Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this? I thought it would always show the CarPlay Ultra interface, even when no phone is connected.
I thought the main image would be rendered on the car using local data and only the entertainment stuff is transferred from the phone.
And also, how would you drive your car without the phone if everything is rendered on the phone? Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this? I thought it would always show the CarPlay Ultra interface, even when no phone is connected.
> I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
I have some understanding of this being someone who has installed way too many aftermarket head units, and as best I can tell, all the rendering indeed occurs on the phone. The CarPlay experience is virtually identical across all the units I've tested on, from my stock '18 Corvette unit, through 4 or 5 ones I've shuffled through in my F-150, and through 2 or 3 through my Chrysler 300. Apart from display size and density, there is no difference at all in all these CarPlay units. They function identically.
The phone also gets notably warm even just playing music which is part of why I strongly suspect all of that is phone-side activity at play with the dash just providing a resolution/density combo and touch inputs.
> Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this?
Correct, if my research is to be believed. There's a stock OEM OS look to everything in line with each brand's visual designs, which is then swapped out to whatever degree they feel like exposing to CarPlay Ultra, at which point it's reskinned in Apple's look.
I don't own any vehicles new enough for this, but it's pretty cool if it works. That said I'm less a fan of everything being a display. For gauges and such I do prefer physical gauges.
I have some understanding of this being someone who has installed way too many aftermarket head units, and as best I can tell, all the rendering indeed occurs on the phone. The CarPlay experience is virtually identical across all the units I've tested on, from my stock '18 Corvette unit, through 4 or 5 ones I've shuffled through in my F-150, and through 2 or 3 through my Chrysler 300. Apart from display size and density, there is no difference at all in all these CarPlay units. They function identically.
The phone also gets notably warm even just playing music which is part of why I strongly suspect all of that is phone-side activity at play with the dash just providing a resolution/density combo and touch inputs.
> Would they implement an entire backup dashboard for this?
Correct, if my research is to be believed. There's a stock OEM OS look to everything in line with each brand's visual designs, which is then swapped out to whatever degree they feel like exposing to CarPlay Ultra, at which point it's reskinned in Apple's look.
I don't own any vehicles new enough for this, but it's pretty cool if it works. That said I'm less a fan of everything being a display. For gauges and such I do prefer physical gauges.
I know that regular CarPlay works like this, but I thought they would change it for CarPlay Ultra. Normal CarPlay isn't really safety critical currently.
[deleted]
Do you have any recommendations on vendors for aftermarket CarPlay?
Honestly it's like TVs? They're all broadly the same thing, usually Android tablets stuffed into whatever form factor. All have quirks, many have things to troubleshoot in terms of getting them to play nice with your vehicle's CAN system. That said the one I just installed this month in my truck is great. Wireless CarPlay, all the time, quick bootup, good quality reverse camera image, and it was a fairly cheap amazon-sourced unit.
If you want a name brand, you're probably looking at Pioneer, though they only make double-din units which make for less transformative upgrades than my truck's which is an entire replacement center console. To each their own though.
If you want a name brand, you're probably looking at Pioneer, though they only make double-din units which make for less transformative upgrades than my truck's which is an entire replacement center console. To each their own though.
> I can't imagine that the image shown in CarPlay Ultra is still rendered on the phone. It's used to show all driving relevant things (speed etc.). Is a wireless connection to the phone reliable enough so this would be allowed by regulators?
For efficiency's sake, I hope it's like a theme (in the style of Winamp, or well, Windows XP), so you can pick some theme on your phone, and the phone tells the car to use that theme while rendering the car's instruments. For UI elements needing data from the phone (like album cover image), the theme would tell the car computer to fetch it from the phone. Considering the state of the tech industry, it's probably HTML and CSS too. And Javascript. Goatse anyone?
By the way... who the hell thinks it's important that someone operating a 800+ horsepower car should be able to be distracted by what the album cover of the music currently playing looks like..?
For efficiency's sake, I hope it's like a theme (in the style of Winamp, or well, Windows XP), so you can pick some theme on your phone, and the phone tells the car to use that theme while rendering the car's instruments. For UI elements needing data from the phone (like album cover image), the theme would tell the car computer to fetch it from the phone. Considering the state of the tech industry, it's probably HTML and CSS too. And Javascript. Goatse anyone?
By the way... who the hell thinks it's important that someone operating a 800+ horsepower car should be able to be distracted by what the album cover of the music currently playing looks like..?
> but still a dumb framebuffer.
Nope. Your car and phone exchanges some info, too. Like serial numbers, some real time telemetry data, etc.
Nope. Your car and phone exchanges some info, too. Like serial numbers, some real time telemetry data, etc.
fascinating idea, but no mention of android. Would one (like me!) simply be unable to use this car to its full extent?
This is a bit of a two-edged sword. I kind of doubt that Carplay and Android Auto will keep working with new phones as long as a car can. At which point you will end up with an old smartphone in your car or some workaround like that.
This isn’t something I have actively thought about… but now that you bring it up, I am definitely concerned. If the APIs were deprecated, CarPlay would be useless as the auto manufacturers would not update their head unit.
The thread about an F150 with a known Bluetooth issue is a great example. Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently
The thread about an F150 with a known Bluetooth issue is a great example. Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently
It's not like car manufacturers have any more incentive to update the built in navigation and multimedia applications either.
Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out. You could expect cassettes to be around in cars for a good solid ~20 years, but that was about it. At some point technology moves on.
> Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently
Yeah, there's no incentive to fix problems when people buy the product anyway.
> Number one vehicle sold in the US for a LONG time, and yet no incentive to keep it working apparently
Yeah, there's no incentive to fix problems when people buy the product anyway.
> Automakers didn't update the cassette decks in their cars when CDs came out.
And reasonably enough: few people even in the early 90s had CD changers in cars, and people didn't want to scratch their discs, and in any case everyone pretty much still had a tape deck at home - it wasn't too hard to copy your CD to tape, which was cheap, small, rerecordable, and more durable, and sound quality in cars wasn't great anyway.
And reasonably enough: few people even in the early 90s had CD changers in cars, and people didn't want to scratch their discs, and in any case everyone pretty much still had a tape deck at home - it wasn't too hard to copy your CD to tape, which was cheap, small, rerecordable, and more durable, and sound quality in cars wasn't great anyway.
HDMI should have had a multitouch-over-EDID extension. An I2C HID controller with a spec-agreed address should be able to be just wired in parallel to EDID ROM line and it would just work. Lack of such standard must have strongly justified existence of CP/AA.
Has this ever happened with CarPlay? As far as I know, even if your car was made in 2013 when CarPlay was first released it should continue to work just fine with the newest iPhones. If you plug the latest iPhone into your 2013 car, you would see the latest version of CarPlay pop up on the screen. I know there's a new version of CarPlay which requires support from the car maker, but I think CarPlay support is a binary matter of if the car supports CarPlay at all. I'd hope they'd design the system such that it wouldn't become obsolete over the average lifespan of the vehicle.
I would hope so, but I don't trust computer makers.
There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). Most parts are still available, and if not you can make them in your garage with affordable tools (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop).
Apple switch to OSX, m68k to PPC to x86 (ARM is in progress). I had the first android phone - the apps I bought for it back then are not on installable on my current phone (most haven't very modified from what I ran back then). If I had a copy I could still run Office 97 on a modern windows 11 machine - or so I'm told - but nobody will know how to inter change files with me. My company has had to redesign perfectly good embedded controllers just because the chips are not made anymore.
There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US). Most parts are still available, and if not you can make them in your garage with affordable tools (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop).
Apple switch to OSX, m68k to PPC to x86 (ARM is in progress). I had the first android phone - the apps I bought for it back then are not on installable on my current phone (most haven't very modified from what I ran back then). If I had a copy I could still run Office 97 on a modern windows 11 machine - or so I'm told - but nobody will know how to inter change files with me. My company has had to redesign perfectly good embedded controllers just because the chips are not made anymore.
On the other hand, Apple is quick to get rid of old APIs in their software, but they consider features sacrosanct. Only this Fall will macOS lose support for Firewire, which finally means that we have a version of macOS that doesn't support the first iPod. Which came out in 2001. All the USB iPods will still connect and sync.
> I don't trust computer makers
Nor should you!
> There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US).
I do like resisting the disposable economy, though I hope keeping ICE cars that old wouldn't be normal enough to be a factor in designing a product if for no other reason than emissions and safety features.
> (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop).
Indeed. I grew up with a >1 ton metal lathe in ours, as well as a milling machine. My siblings and I would use the lathe as a climbing gym.
Nor should you!
> There are people who still use cars made in the 1960s as their daily driver (probably only a handful in the US).
I do like resisting the disposable economy, though I hope keeping ICE cars that old wouldn't be normal enough to be a factor in designing a product if for no other reason than emissions and safety features.
> (metal lathes are rare but not unheard of in a home shop).
Indeed. I grew up with a >1 ton metal lathe in ours, as well as a milling machine. My siblings and I would use the lathe as a climbing gym.
CarPlay is essentially a conditional pair of video inputs. Any system that supports on-screen rear-view camera and that has a wheel speed sensor can support CarPlay.
Is wheel sppeed really the only car sensor exposed to the app? That is kind of sad.
What do you really need? Is the car moving forward or backward is the only one you can't figure out from GPS on the phone (this is possibly what they are getting from wheel speed - GPS speed is more accurate if you have a signal).
There are a lot of nice to haves of course. GPS does eat phone battery so better if the car can give you that. There is a lot of other car data that is interesting, why force plugging a OBDII dongle in to get DTCs, RPM, O2 sensor values, or whatever. However for car play to work at all it doesn't need anything more.
There are a lot of nice to haves of course. GPS does eat phone battery so better if the car can give you that. There is a lot of other car data that is interesting, why force plugging a OBDII dongle in to get DTCs, RPM, O2 sensor values, or whatever. However for car play to work at all it doesn't need anything more.
Nav apps on phones will use dead-reckoning if they don't have a GPS signal, so they don't really even need the wheel-speed sensor, but I'd guess they use it just to increase accuracy.. e.g. in a long tunnel.
Increasing accuracy is a wild understatement. Dead reckoning with mobile phone hardware won't give you a usable result for long. Maybe your experiences are from tunnels with dedicated beacons to tell the phone where you are.
Most vehicular tunnels aren't too terribly long, if you're stuck in one in traffic, yeah dead reckoning drifts quite a bit. But if you're driving through one for a minute or two, it's sufficient.
On a side note I've personally had bad experience with beacons in train tunnels telling me I'm miles away from where I'm actually at.
On a side note I've personally had bad experience with beacons in train tunnels telling me I'm miles away from where I'm actually at.
This was vehicles made in 2018.
I’m trying to keep mine alive as long as possible.
I’m trying to keep mine alive as long as possible.
I'm not really worried about a lack of updates to an embedded device provided that it isn't network connected. To me the root of the issue, and also a far more concerning problem in and of itself, is that from what I understand modern vehicles are connected to the mobile network and phone home.
Yeah, security is not a liquid. It won't diminish over time, and can't be added by updating. Updates replace something with something else, in this day and age likely third world outsourced code with vibecoded burning dumpster. Disconnecting the device from networks is basically always a better alternative. I don't understand why that much isn't so obvious to HN readers.
If you are not connected to the internet and installing the latest patches, you will be vulnerable to the next RCE!
Another option is converting an ICE car to EV:
https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43898280 https://youtube.com/@evbmw
https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43898280 https://youtube.com/@evbmw
I really wish these options would become more common, maybe even similar to the whole ecosystem around old American muscle cars. Pick and choose a (mostly) standardized drive train, standardized battery packs of different capacities and and your electronics to connect everything together.
I thought the issue is more the batteries and weight distribution. That is, EVs usually have the batteries along the length of the chassis to spread the load out, which is not practical to retrofit onto an ICE car.
And if you fill the engine bay on an ICE car with battery packs during the conversion, the weight distribution will be extremely uneven and cause trouble with the suspension and related components, poor handling, etc.
And if you fill the engine bay on an ICE car with battery packs during the conversion, the weight distribution will be extremely uneven and cause trouble with the suspension and related components, poor handling, etc.
> etc.
That "etc." hides "moving the heaviest, most flammable and non-extinguishable part of the drivetrain into a primary crumple zone in front of you" pretty neatly. :D
That "etc." hides "moving the heaviest, most flammable and non-extinguishable part of the drivetrain into a primary crumple zone in front of you" pretty neatly. :D
On the opposite side of something that's long been called a "Firewall" for a reason.
However, lithium fires burn hotter and can't be contained as easily. So, that firewall may need an update, too.
Plus, as I noted in the weight part, an engine in a compartment is designed to detach and slide down to protect the cell. Can every retrofitter guarantee the same thing for their battery packs?
Plus, as I noted in the weight part, an engine in a compartment is designed to detach and slide down to protect the cell. Can every retrofitter guarantee the same thing for their battery packs?
>I thought the issue is more the batteries and weight distribution
That's something spewed by people who don't know enough about cars to know they're chasing the wrong criteria. Battery placement is like a 2nd/3rd/4th order problem. You could fit a very respectably battery in the space where the fuel tank and exhaust go and if not there then the floor might just have to get a couple inches taller in the rear row. Not a big deal. Making battery cases to fit those locations is hard, but also not crazy. Just scan it like Weathertech and Uhaul do for mats and hitches.
The first order thing that's keeping all this from happening is that there's no money in it after all the expensive re-engineering and low volume manufacturing you'd need to do to integrate it into the vehicles you want to support.
This is why the industry is kind of stalled at the "supporting DIYers" level. It just don't work without free labor doing the vehicle specific bits.
That's something spewed by people who don't know enough about cars to know they're chasing the wrong criteria. Battery placement is like a 2nd/3rd/4th order problem. You could fit a very respectably battery in the space where the fuel tank and exhaust go and if not there then the floor might just have to get a couple inches taller in the rear row. Not a big deal. Making battery cases to fit those locations is hard, but also not crazy. Just scan it like Weathertech and Uhaul do for mats and hitches.
The first order thing that's keeping all this from happening is that there's no money in it after all the expensive re-engineering and low volume manufacturing you'd need to do to integrate it into the vehicles you want to support.
This is why the industry is kind of stalled at the "supporting DIYers" level. It just don't work without free labor doing the vehicle specific bits.
> You could fit a very respectably battery in the space where the fuel tank and exhaust go
You can fit some battery there, but liquid fuels have a much higher energy density and so I wouldn't call it respectable. I have know people who converted a car to electric, and finding places to stuff batteries was the major challenge, they did the fuel tank of course, but then went looking for any other unused empty space. In the 1980s old trucks were favored because under the bed there was a lot of empty space to work with (even then those old lead-acid batteries didn't give much range)
You can fit some battery there, but liquid fuels have a much higher energy density and so I wouldn't call it respectable. I have know people who converted a car to electric, and finding places to stuff batteries was the major challenge, they did the fuel tank of course, but then went looking for any other unused empty space. In the 1980s old trucks were favored because under the bed there was a lot of empty space to work with (even then those old lead-acid batteries didn't give much range)
Yeah, I don't believe even OEMs ever managed to make a very liked electric car on an ICE platform.
At least in the UK the Kia Niro comes in petrol, plug-in hybrid, and full EV versions of the same chassis. It seems like most Uber drivers in London have replaced their hybrid Prius with an EV Niro.
I think the latest Niro is kinda the opposite, an EV platform retrofitted for ICE for some models. I would say it is well liked (for its size and price point)
Live somewhere with snow or near an ocean. Your frame now has a very short life span. Swapping engines isn't the actual problem.
I live in a place with very harsh winters, and our used cars usually command a premium, simply because we get cold enough that road salt is no longer effective, so the municipalities generally don't bother in the first place.
I really, really wish my area had that mindset. Even on the -25 and lower days, the trucks will be out salting. Thick enough that it basically creates a layer of grit on top of the snow/ice. I end up undercoating my cars 2-3 times per season, and washing them as frequently as possible (every day sometimes). Every aspect of which is horrible for the environment, but letting the car disintegrate is even worse, so it’s a “lesser of two evils” situation.
Electric Citroen DS, finally the Gattaca dream come true.
They've done it, actually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyyHqhAeuF4
They've done it, actually:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyyHqhAeuF4
If my car's engine dies (which at some point it probably will do, after all, these things don't live forever) I'll just rebuild it again. It's got 200K on it and a relatively fresh engine (40K) so I think I'm good for a long time to come but buying a modern vehicle isn't even on the menu for me. If I really want malware I'll disable my adblocker, I really don't need it in my car.
Same, early 2010s IMO seems to be the point where the industry really started to shift. There are some good cars from before this time, but keep them running past the 2030s will be a challenge.
What happened in the early 2010s?
1980s widespread adoption of electronic fuel injection - this is generally a good thing, cars become more complex but run better more of the time
1990s widespread adoption of more advanced emissions control systems - for reliability i'd say this is only a backwards step - none of these systems are required to propel the car down the road but many of them can stop a car from driving. They are additional complexity, weight and cost for limited functional benefit (in this generation, fuel economy improvements were fairly small compared to the leap from carbs to EFI in the previous gen).
2000s widespread adoption of on-car networks, the emissions diagnostics technology introduced in the previous decade was now no longer the primary use of on-car networks. Now your car stereo knew how to increase its volume as your road speed increased etc. screens became larger and colourful. Onboard software (typically bug ridden) became a security risk.
2010s widespread adoption of telematics maybe? That was more mid-late 2010s though
1980s widespread adoption of electronic fuel injection - this is generally a good thing, cars become more complex but run better more of the time
1990s widespread adoption of more advanced emissions control systems - for reliability i'd say this is only a backwards step - none of these systems are required to propel the car down the road but many of them can stop a car from driving. They are additional complexity, weight and cost for limited functional benefit (in this generation, fuel economy improvements were fairly small compared to the leap from carbs to EFI in the previous gen).
2000s widespread adoption of on-car networks, the emissions diagnostics technology introduced in the previous decade was now no longer the primary use of on-car networks. Now your car stereo knew how to increase its volume as your road speed increased etc. screens became larger and colourful. Onboard software (typically bug ridden) became a security risk.
2010s widespread adoption of telematics maybe? That was more mid-late 2010s though
> What happened in the early 2010s?
According to the industry people stopped doing maintenance and were more likely to trade in their vehicle for a new one. So they stopped optimizing for that segment of the audience and started making disposable cars.
Truthfully, industry watched the government bail out the banks, require next to nothing in return, and demanded no prosecutions for illegal behavior. The writing was pretty much on the wall. Industry realized it no longer needed happy customers.
According to the industry people stopped doing maintenance and were more likely to trade in their vehicle for a new one. So they stopped optimizing for that segment of the audience and started making disposable cars.
Truthfully, industry watched the government bail out the banks, require next to nothing in return, and demanded no prosecutions for illegal behavior. The writing was pretty much on the wall. Industry realized it no longer needed happy customers.
>> According to the industry people stopped doing maintenance
Nah the motoring industry has been saying that forever. Just to back that up, I inherited a ton of the "Car Mechanics" magazine here in the UK. Just for fun I've just pulled a random 1960s one - November 1965, 2 shillings it cost. Flicking through, firstly i'm struck by just how many adverts there are, there's 1.5 pages of advert per 0.5 page of content and the adverts are commonly absolute tat like antifreeze additives that surely do nothing useful. Anyway, by page 35 we've found our first nobody maintains anything anymore story: "Transport Tests", top right hand side - a column railing against "defective lorries on the road", "49% of trucks stopped were defective" - i knew no matter which magazine i pulled, there'd be something in there decrying a lack of maintenance these days (in 1965...).
>> So they stopped optimizing for that segment
Again, i don't think you're accurate here. There's nothing a mechanic loves more than to gripe about the engineers who foolishly designed a car to be harder to service. It's a time-tested complaint of the mechanic. Today with all the tight packaging of various systems i think there's often a point to be made about ease of repairability but even when engine bays were gaping empty holes in the 50s and 60s that you could literally stand in (in some cases) with plenty of access space while you worked, there were models of cars derided as "hard to work on" because of lack of optimisation for maintenance. Packaging is hard. If the decision is between optimising for sale (aesthetics, packaging etc) or for maintenance, the design engineer is going to lose that battle in the drawing room.
I think market forces have changed how manufacturers view servicing over time though. If you're doing fleet sales, and your product requires an oil change every 8k miles and the other manufacturer is every 20k miles, then the company purchaser who cares not a jot about mechanical sympathy and a whole lot about a bonus for saving the firm money, applies a pressure to the market to reduce maintenance costs over the first 3-4 years that a vehicle is leased for. And so today i own a van with an absolutely absurd oil change interval of 25k miles.
Nah the motoring industry has been saying that forever. Just to back that up, I inherited a ton of the "Car Mechanics" magazine here in the UK. Just for fun I've just pulled a random 1960s one - November 1965, 2 shillings it cost. Flicking through, firstly i'm struck by just how many adverts there are, there's 1.5 pages of advert per 0.5 page of content and the adverts are commonly absolute tat like antifreeze additives that surely do nothing useful. Anyway, by page 35 we've found our first nobody maintains anything anymore story: "Transport Tests", top right hand side - a column railing against "defective lorries on the road", "49% of trucks stopped were defective" - i knew no matter which magazine i pulled, there'd be something in there decrying a lack of maintenance these days (in 1965...).
>> So they stopped optimizing for that segment
Again, i don't think you're accurate here. There's nothing a mechanic loves more than to gripe about the engineers who foolishly designed a car to be harder to service. It's a time-tested complaint of the mechanic. Today with all the tight packaging of various systems i think there's often a point to be made about ease of repairability but even when engine bays were gaping empty holes in the 50s and 60s that you could literally stand in (in some cases) with plenty of access space while you worked, there were models of cars derided as "hard to work on" because of lack of optimisation for maintenance. Packaging is hard. If the decision is between optimising for sale (aesthetics, packaging etc) or for maintenance, the design engineer is going to lose that battle in the drawing room.
I think market forces have changed how manufacturers view servicing over time though. If you're doing fleet sales, and your product requires an oil change every 8k miles and the other manufacturer is every 20k miles, then the company purchaser who cares not a jot about mechanical sympathy and a whole lot about a bonus for saving the firm money, applies a pressure to the market to reduce maintenance costs over the first 3-4 years that a vehicle is leased for. And so today i own a van with an absolutely absurd oil change interval of 25k miles.
> i don't think you're accurate here.
You're approaching this as if it would be a binary across an entire industry. That's obviously not the correct level of analysis. The question is, "are more and more manufacturers doing this?" You've made no case to this point.
> And so today i own a van with an absolutely absurd oil change interval of 25k miles.
Would you share the Year, Make and Model please? I want to see this and I want to see precisely which oil products they recommend. The part you may have missed is that specialty oils have come a long way in the last 2 decades.
You're approaching this as if it would be a binary across an entire industry. That's obviously not the correct level of analysis. The question is, "are more and more manufacturers doing this?" You've made no case to this point.
> And so today i own a van with an absolutely absurd oil change interval of 25k miles.
Would you share the Year, Make and Model please? I want to see this and I want to see precisely which oil products they recommend. The part you may have missed is that specialty oils have come a long way in the last 2 decades.
Software updates and data collection. Eg, my mums Toyota Corolla 2018 already has a disabled infotainment button because of dropped support. If it was a 2019 it would have been eligible for an update, but not for 2018.
Lots of cars from the same period are collecting and sharing data to various different companies from weather to insurance.
Personally I don’t want monitoring or software updates, and definitely don’t want any cloud dependencies.
Lots of cars from the same period are collecting and sharing data to various different companies from weather to insurance.
Personally I don’t want monitoring or software updates, and definitely don’t want any cloud dependencies.
Lots of cars from the 90s and 2000s have obsolete tech that doesn't work like certain vintages of car phones
Car phones weren't common place and were typically only available in some higher end luxury cars. I wouldn't exactly call that lots of cars.
A minority of cars yes, but so many cars - even luxury cars were made that it still amounts to a lot of cars.
> What happened in the early 2010s?
I'd say Tesla built a futuristic computer on wheels, with huge screens, always-on internet connectivity, smarter remote features than most other cars, etc. The car itself was exotic enough by being an EV and that drew attention to these other features too. Everyone else started to emulate them for better or worse.
For now these things are modular because it was the cheapest way to build them. If manufacturers get over the hurdle of cost and find a way to have everything more vertically integrated (think Apple) then we'll lose all access to tinker with the hardware which might be a couple of black-box chips, or the software.
This is probably what Apple was trying to sell as a smart car to car manufacturers. They might have dropped those plans to focus in CarPlay and have the phone be that "smart car". Hopefully some brands go the other way and make a dumb car where the brain is entirely the phone but that's handing out a lot of their agency to the phone manufacturer.
I'd say Tesla built a futuristic computer on wheels, with huge screens, always-on internet connectivity, smarter remote features than most other cars, etc. The car itself was exotic enough by being an EV and that drew attention to these other features too. Everyone else started to emulate them for better or worse.
For now these things are modular because it was the cheapest way to build them. If manufacturers get over the hurdle of cost and find a way to have everything more vertically integrated (think Apple) then we'll lose all access to tinker with the hardware which might be a couple of black-box chips, or the software.
This is probably what Apple was trying to sell as a smart car to car manufacturers. They might have dropped those plans to focus in CarPlay and have the phone be that "smart car". Hopefully some brands go the other way and make a dumb car where the brain is entirely the phone but that's handing out a lot of their agency to the phone manufacturer.
> 2010s widespread adoption of telematics maybe? That was more mid-late 2010s though
I haven't done it yet, but maybe looking into the EU mandatory regulations would make sense. eCall, for instance (a feature that will call for help if you crashed by contacting an operator), was made mandatory in new cars in 2018. The initiative gained traction at around 2013.
I haven't done it yet, but maybe looking into the EU mandatory regulations would make sense. eCall, for instance (a feature that will call for help if you crashed by contacting an operator), was made mandatory in new cars in 2018. The initiative gained traction at around 2013.
2010s, in software, vertical integration, and digital feudalism? iPhone?
Hmmm, but I think that was already happening in the early 2000s. It definitely accelerated in the late 2000s.
I worked for a deutsche telekom subsidiary in 2004 and they had a brand new BMW e65 7 Series all liveried up in corporate branding, advertising internet connectivity on the move. At the time i thought that was the ultimate car but i never managed to borrow it...
£10 per megabyte as i recall.
I worked for a deutsche telekom subsidiary in 2004 and they had a brand new BMW e65 7 Series all liveried up in corporate branding, advertising internet connectivity on the move. At the time i thought that was the ultimate car but i never managed to borrow it...
£10 per megabyte as i recall.
This problem solved itself on my car because it only has a 3G modem.
On an adjacent theme there has been a large debate in Sweden if a car that has mandated automatic eCall over 2G or 3G is faulty and thus not roadworthy if the 2G and 3G networks are turned off. The eCall feature was introduced broadly in 2018. It still uses modem sounds over a voice phone call to relay car emergency status and position. New solutions for packet only networks (4g and 5G) have been standardised but are not retrofitted to older cars.
I had thought most of europe was keeping 2G service online. Too many deployed devices that are low traffic but expensive to replace modules on. Even if they had a 3g module, they'll fall back to 2g, so there's no sense in using spectrum for 2g and spectrum for 3g.
There's, broadly speaking, two ways this can go.
The first way this can go is that the people with a stake in selling cars (dealers, OEMs, etc) get their lobbyists leaning on the politicians and get it rammed through.
The second is that the issue gets delayed long enough that the number of older vehicles it applies to goes down out of attrition and it's not worth fighting over.
Considering the cultural disposition of the nordics when it comes to matters like this I expect the first option to be chosen. There will enough people hand wringing about safety and whatnot to provide the political lubricant to ensure the first outcome.
The first way this can go is that the people with a stake in selling cars (dealers, OEMs, etc) get their lobbyists leaning on the politicians and get it rammed through.
The second is that the issue gets delayed long enough that the number of older vehicles it applies to goes down out of attrition and it's not worth fighting over.
Considering the cultural disposition of the nordics when it comes to matters like this I expect the first option to be chosen. There will enough people hand wringing about safety and whatnot to provide the political lubricant to ensure the first outcome.
There are some good cars from before this time, but keep them running past the 2030s will be a challenge.
If it's a pre-computer car, all you need is a machine shop or access to one.
If it's a pre-computer car, all you need is a machine shop or access to one.
Consider an electric cargo bike if you're life will suite it.
> Consider an electric cargo bike if you're life will suite it.
Don't they have proprietary batteries? So you're out of luck at end-of-life if that company still isn't in business. And if a part fails are there replacements?
I'll give you the price is cheap. But if we're just looking for cheap then OP has nothing to worry about. There's cheap transportation in a variety of forms if you buy used.
Don't they have proprietary batteries? So you're out of luck at end-of-life if that company still isn't in business. And if a part fails are there replacements?
I'll give you the price is cheap. But if we're just looking for cheap then OP has nothing to worry about. There's cheap transportation in a variety of forms if you buy used.
I ride such a bike, and I would no longer call it cheap - the range/speed is limited enough that I feel compelled to have a car anyway that just sits. I still have to pay taxes and insurance on that car, plus the yearly oil change (at least it is paid for). What with replacing the bike tires, chain, and cassette a lot more often than I expected I end up spending as much on bike maintenance and I would on gas and the other costs of the car are paid either way. If I could get rid of the car it would be cheaper, but otherwise no.
don't get me wrong - I encourage everyone to ride a bike where they can. However it is for health reasons not saving money.
don't get me wrong - I encourage everyone to ride a bike where they can. However it is for health reasons not saving money.
It may be easy to get a simple(ish) one now, but there are already a lot of e-bikes out there with "smarts", apps, vendor-lock-ins up the wazoo, cellular connection and the like. If electric cargo bikes ever go mainstream, I expect the majority of them will be techifyed in the same vein as the Hyundai the author wrote about.
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> Of all the new cars ideas I've seen recently, only the Slate mini-truck seems to be taking a minimalist approach, with no fancy head unit or navigation system.
Agreed re: Slate, it looks interesting through this lens for sure.
But I also think there's probably a business opportunity here, and wonder why a bunch of thinkpad enthusiasts don't get together and start a classic tech business delivering simple EVs with knobs+levers, and computers that don't suck.
Agreed re: Slate, it looks interesting through this lens for sure.
But I also think there's probably a business opportunity here, and wonder why a bunch of thinkpad enthusiasts don't get together and start a classic tech business delivering simple EVs with knobs+levers, and computers that don't suck.
Reminds me of old Mercedes and BWMs with built-in NMT phones in their console. The cars lasted a lot longer than the NMT standard for mobile phones.
For what it's worth, the first Tesla model that ever got software upgrades is still getting them. That's the Model S from 2012.
You're driving an old car now; you could just drive a different old car when that time comes.
But if you're talking about new cars, I think the best way to mitigate that is to buy something that is ubiquitous. The popular cars are the most likely to have enthusiasts finding ways to keep them running until the wheels fall off.
But if you're talking about new cars, I think the best way to mitigate that is to buy something that is ubiquitous. The popular cars are the most likely to have enthusiasts finding ways to keep them running until the wheels fall off.
There are plenty of modern options. Most of my vehicles do not get over the wire updates ('12 honda civic, '15 base model Colorado, '17 Spark). Our tiguan does, sadly.
There's no way they're going to keep a modular car functioning for years without relying on frequent software updates.
Did it for 100 years. Nkthing changed. They don't need to make cars into surveillance systems. That's a choice.
This is the whole point: putting intermediaries between you and the things you think you own.
You think you own your car, phone, appliances, but actually, once this system is in place, you will effectively be on some sort of subscription contract with few traditional ownership rights, with many other parties (the car maker, government agencies) able to turn your car off remotely.
Nice and safe.
You think you own your car, phone, appliances, but actually, once this system is in place, you will effectively be on some sort of subscription contract with few traditional ownership rights, with many other parties (the car maker, government agencies) able to turn your car off remotely.
Nice and safe.
That's not entirely true. Most cars have revisions to software. Even ones from the 90s had ways to patch the ECU performed by dealers.
Not without the driver involved in the cycle, either directly or indirectly.
Now they are along for the ride no matter what.
Now they are along for the ride no matter what.
Concretely, why not? If you don't get updates, there's nothing to break the thing -- and if you don't have a network connection, you don't need the security updates.
I would be on board with this if the system was not touching the outside world, but it does every time you hook a smartphone to it or if you have an optional data network. Just like with our smartphones, there's nothing stopping a car company from pushing system-damaging updates when they want to steer us toward buying a new vehicle since that one is too outdated/no longer supported.
What you say can be true about a static isolated system, though. My employer has a Windows XP computer still running a machine in our factory. The PC was built built in 2006, connected to the Internet once upon deployment then disconnected thereafter. It has been running the software and machine more or less untouched since, receiving zero updates, performing it's duty as it was built to.
What you say can be true about a static isolated system, though. My employer has a Windows XP computer still running a machine in our factory. The PC was built built in 2006, connected to the Internet once upon deployment then disconnected thereafter. It has been running the software and machine more or less untouched since, receiving zero updates, performing it's duty as it was built to.
I'm not opposed to a player connected to a phone or other network, but that player doesn't need to be on the CAN bus, or any other car bus. Car speed for volume control, steering wheel buttons, lights, etc. can be communicated from the car to the player via dedicated wires (on/off, pwm, voltage ladder, etc.) like they did it in the early 2000s.
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That is, if it wasn't already broken. Part of the rationale for updates is to fix problems that shipped with the vehicle.
You might need security updates for security systems, like immobilisers, keyless entry etc.
I'm happy to manually apply updates for my immobilizer as necessary. Keyless entry is already broken (recent front page) and can't be fixed via update AFAIK at least without leaving behind all current fobs. Given that it's still using a proprietary encryption scheme from the mid 80s it doesn't seem the manufacturers were particularly concerned about security to begin with.
[deleted]
The only security update for those is removal. Immobilizers via RFID chip were never broken AFAIK.
Couldn't RFID relay work against those?
Not likely, because they're extremely short range (one centimeter or so). The attacker would need to turn the duplicate key in the ignition exactly at the time the other attacker bumps into the owner, exactly on the correct side where the pocket with the key is, and precisely match the position of the key in the pocket with the antenna in the attacker's pocket/bag/whatever. And if the key is in a handbag, then good luck trying to get a reader close to it.
But then, how would they get a duplicate of the ignition key?
But then, how would they get a duplicate of the ignition key?
Would a stronger signal from the attacker increase that distance? Or one of these:
https://blog.nuoplanet.com/en/long-range-rfid-readers
Since at least 2009 it has been possible to duplicate keys using photography, a hobbyist replicated the work in 2018. So take a photo when the keys are out somewhere; on a table, or when unlocking the car.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/reproducing_k... https://hackaday.com/2009/09/22/photographic-key-duplication... https://markhedleyjones.com/projects/duplicating-keys-from-p...
https://blog.nuoplanet.com/en/long-range-rfid-readers
Since at least 2009 it has been possible to duplicate keys using photography, a hobbyist replicated the work in 2018. So take a photo when the keys are out somewhere; on a table, or when unlocking the car.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/10/reproducing_k... https://hackaday.com/2009/09/22/photographic-key-duplication... https://markhedleyjones.com/projects/duplicating-keys-from-p...
You can just not connect to the internet and then it does not matter if software in your car is 1 month or 20 years old.
"Cannot communicate with battery, TLS certificate expired".
I think something like this happens to Macbooks if you set the date too far into the future: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251100942?sortBy=rank
I suppose then you can change the date on the car's computer so it's still 2014 or something, at least the car would remain a non-fascist place with Obama still president...
I think something like this happens to Macbooks if you set the date too far into the future: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251100942?sortBy=rank
I suppose then you can change the date on the car's computer so it's still 2014 or something, at least the car would remain a non-fascist place with Obama still president...
I know of some modern vehicles that will not start at all if you go about removing the telematics unit.
I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.
I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.
I am not sure how long will it take before you will not be able to buy a vehicle at all without having to consent to being monitored remotely 24x7, but it will happen sooner than later. And this coming from a developing country. Pretty sure it is much worse in the developed world.
I guess the market for second hand older vehicles might see an uptick because of this and might also see a boom in demand for expertise of maintaining and rejuvenating such vehicles.
I am actually fascinated by car electronics. I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.
The only module that was encrypted was the main module, but it if you knew the security PIN you could do what you wanted. It was determined by people that if you observed the jitter of the CAN line fast enough, you could leak the pin via a side channel attack.
But modern car electronics are encrypted, and some probably have security processors that might trigger some irreversible states if you tamper with them. Modern cars are basically as locked up as a PS5.
The only module that was encrypted was the main module, but it if you knew the security PIN you could do what you wanted. It was determined by people that if you observed the jitter of the CAN line fast enough, you could leak the pin via a side channel attack.
But modern car electronics are encrypted, and some probably have security processors that might trigger some irreversible states if you tamper with them. Modern cars are basically as locked up as a PS5.
I am fascinated by what you are saying and would love to read more about it. How did you go about modifying the software of some part of your car.
Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.
Having worked in this field, I can confirm that most such parts these days come with chip supported read/write protections for part of flash that contain the code. But even with no protections, I think that being able to modify embedded firmware is a feat in itself.
> I had heavily modified the software on mine, but it was easier than modern stuff, no encryption of the code, and even the checksum code only triggered a DTC with no consequences.
What's the vintage of the vehicle? When I was in the 'car enthusiast' phase of my life ECU "reflash/remaps/tunes" were very popular and still happen on more 'modern' cars.
What's the vintage of the vehicle? When I was in the 'car enthusiast' phase of my life ECU "reflash/remaps/tunes" were very popular and still happen on more 'modern' cars.
Mazda? Their entire infotainment is just HTML and JavaScript which was quite a shock to discover.
P2 Volvo?
You guessed correctly.
I’ve been following that thread very closely. Prepping myself to install cruise control but as I have a cem-b in my car, I have to solder to the board.
What changes have you made?
What changes have you made?
For the CEM, I have done no modifications, yet. I have however spent a fair amount of time, reverse engineering the AW55 firmware and have discovered virtually all the maps related to the shifting process, pressures, speeds etc. I have a completely understanding of how the firmware works.
To say I am the only one with such a complete understanding and tuning abilities for it, may not be an understatement.
To say I am the only one with such a complete understanding and tuning abilities for it, may not be an understatement.
It seems to be coming in multiple waves from multiple sides.
One of those is EUs ISA: First a display, now a warning and later actual interference with the driver.
And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car. But there will be some time where no alternatives exist.
One of those is EUs ISA: First a display, now a warning and later actual interference with the driver.
And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car. But there will be some time where no alternatives exist.
>>And with the experiences with the current status are enough for me to be against those systems. The car doing an emergency stop because it saw a 30 sign an an adjacent road makes me not wanna purchase such a car.
Just to be clear - I hate these systems. They are unnecessary, don't improve safety, and increase the cost of new cars for everyone.
But, no system in any car works the way you described it. Even if the car recognizes a speed limit sign from an adjecent street(which happens all the time and I have experienced it too) - the only thing that will happen is that it will bong at you, it won't do "an emergency stop". The more hardcore version of the EU laws around it will require cars to stop applying throttle when going faster than the limit, but literally no legislation proposed or implemented now or in the future requires the cars to actively slow down(ie - apply brakes without your input).
Just to be clear - I hate these systems. They are unnecessary, don't improve safety, and increase the cost of new cars for everyone.
But, no system in any car works the way you described it. Even if the car recognizes a speed limit sign from an adjecent street(which happens all the time and I have experienced it too) - the only thing that will happen is that it will bong at you, it won't do "an emergency stop". The more hardcore version of the EU laws around it will require cars to stop applying throttle when going faster than the limit, but literally no legislation proposed or implemented now or in the future requires the cars to actively slow down(ie - apply brakes without your input).
I'm sure you are overestimating what an average car buyer cares about when buying the car. From the world where people pay for listening devices to put into their homes, small tracking devices they can stick into everything and so forth. Maybe if it becomes 'fashionable' to worry about privacy, and even then it'll be because it is popular not because majority will become privacy conscious. Unfortunately.
I think stronger regulations, protections and security is the way forward. Not going against the flow, as that is unfortunately a lost battle.
I think stronger regulations, protections and security is the way forward. Not going against the flow, as that is unfortunately a lost battle.
I had looked into removing the OnStar unit in my first gen Chevy Volt when I bought it a few years ago. I had found the same information, if I removed it the car would have all kinds of weird behavior.
Unrelated to removing telematics, but I've also had it go completely insane when the 12V battery us even slightly low. Chevy puts their cars into a battery saver mode that disables a bunch of systems, then it throws error messages for all the disabled systems needing service.
Makes me really appreciate my 1980s pickup truck. The last owner had the dealership clean out the gas tank and their mechanic forgot to reattach the fuel pump's ground. It was happy, but even that didn't stop it from running.
Unrelated to removing telematics, but I've also had it go completely insane when the 12V battery us even slightly low. Chevy puts their cars into a battery saver mode that disables a bunch of systems, then it throws error messages for all the disabled systems needing service.
Makes me really appreciate my 1980s pickup truck. The last owner had the dealership clean out the gas tank and their mechanic forgot to reattach the fuel pump's ground. It was happy, but even that didn't stop it from running.
If you're thinking of OnStar, it's because removing the module breaks the MOST ring. Bypass the ring around the missing module and you'll get some DTCs but everything mostly works again.
Some developing countries such as India, are completely banning the ply of old vehicles on the road.
I'd imagine India has some pretty insane stuff driving around so that's not surprising. The US effectively did that (arguably even more extremely) 15 years ago with the "cash for clunkers" thing.
There's this bizarre alternative history around "cash for clunkers" where an incentive program has been rewritten as this great evil that forced older vehicles off the road. All participation was voluntary. While internet commentators bemoan the "classic" cars scrapped in the program, these were almost certainly in terrible condition - people with classic cars in good condition know their value (or at least the party taking it as a trade-in does).
In some dystopian future we may have to consent to the DMV to be tracked. They can make whatever rules they want to before they give us permission to use their roads.
Bicycles also count as vehicles and not all of them have electronics. There are some decent low tech ones at different price ranges:
https://www.rivbike.com/collections/current-models
https://velo-orange.com/collections/frames-1
https://shop.fairdalebikes.com/collections/fairdale-bikes
https://www.rivbike.com/collections/current-models
https://velo-orange.com/collections/frames-1
https://shop.fairdalebikes.com/collections/fairdale-bikes
I'm starting to think the short software support isn't a bug, it's a feature. They want the car to feel obsolete in 5 years so you're pushed into buying the next model. It's the smartphone sales model, but for a $50,000 purchase.
It's everywhere.
You design a new transmission to comply with federal regulations. The transmission is mostly an upgrade of previous designs and built in cooperation with multiple vendors. It's actually not a bad unit.
Which is a problem because it will be too reliable. So you take a small accessory component, like a valve body, and you undersize it and built it out of inappropriate materials. It now starves the transmission, causes it to run hot, and the nice transmission cooks itself to death under even the slightest load.
The hope is you won't even bother to buy and install a new $7000 part. Just scrap the car and get a new one!
If you're buying a new vehicle, find your favorite search engine, then search for "car model year reliability upgrade." You're almost certainly going to want to get a few of those done if you expect the car to be driving in more than 5 years.
You design a new transmission to comply with federal regulations. The transmission is mostly an upgrade of previous designs and built in cooperation with multiple vendors. It's actually not a bad unit.
Which is a problem because it will be too reliable. So you take a small accessory component, like a valve body, and you undersize it and built it out of inappropriate materials. It now starves the transmission, causes it to run hot, and the nice transmission cooks itself to death under even the slightest load.
The hope is you won't even bother to buy and install a new $7000 part. Just scrap the car and get a new one!
If you're buying a new vehicle, find your favorite search engine, then search for "car model year reliability upgrade." You're almost certainly going to want to get a few of those done if you expect the car to be driving in more than 5 years.
I know brand loyalty can be iffy, but if you become known for your trans blowing up after 70K miles you're repeat buyers run away and fill the car reviews with 1-star warnings.
That's the rep Nissan has with their CVT transmissions.
You could also face a recall if enough of them do it.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1805274/worst-transmission-recalls-...
That's the rep Nissan has with their CVT transmissions.
You could also face a recall if enough of them do it.
https://www.jalopnik.com/1805274/worst-transmission-recalls-...
> It's everywhere.
It's too bad that the dozens of old Prius models littering your grocery parking lot can't reply to you on HN.
It's too bad that the dozens of old Prius models littering your grocery parking lot can't reply to you on HN.
Maybe owning a Corolla for ten years as my first car and now a fairly old Highlander screwed up my baseline understanding of how car ownership should work. If I paid that much for a car and it lasted five years I would talk to a lawyer about a lawsuit. I've never done that before and never really think about doing that but that's completely unacceptable.
I certainly would never ever buy from that brand again. I don't know how they expect to have repeat customers. Judging from what I've heard though it sounds like they're struggling to get first customers and the new "cars" are just pilling up.
Between the car scams, the housing scams etc we could be facing a pretty steeply deflationary environment in the next couple years. I can't imagine the banks will continue financing this insanity for too much longer.
I certainly would never ever buy from that brand again. I don't know how they expect to have repeat customers. Judging from what I've heard though it sounds like they're struggling to get first customers and the new "cars" are just pilling up.
Between the car scams, the housing scams etc we could be facing a pretty steeply deflationary environment in the next couple years. I can't imagine the banks will continue financing this insanity for too much longer.
Planned obsolescence
Thought it isn't quite as bad as stated - manufactures need their cars to have value as used cars for a while because very few people could afford to pay $70k for a new car without trading in something else that is still work $35k. And those people buying the $35k car in turn expect it to hold value for a while (either so they can trade it in for $15k in 5 years, or they expect to keep running for 10 years).
Which is to say if they made cars that only lasted 3 years they could only charge $35k for the high end ones, and a lot of people would be looking to buy a base model without the optional heater. Or worse for them, if cars become too unaffordable people will start demanding good public transit.
Which is to say if they made cars that only lasted 3 years they could only charge $35k for the high end ones, and a lot of people would be looking to buy a base model without the optional heater. Or worse for them, if cars become too unaffordable people will start demanding good public transit.
Planned Obsolescence 2.0 - they can tell the system when it's time to die.
So maybe it should be called: "Remote Controlled Obsolescence" now?
My 5 year old hyundai has had two engines and three catalytic converters, so this checks out.
wait until there are expiring certificates or other nonsense.
The govt should fund $1,000,000 bug bounties on these vehicles. If anyone succeeds in remotely gaining access to the mic, car companies are fined $100,000,000.
All you will get out of the government being involved is automatic police access to your car's mic.
I think that's more likely to get companies to remove mics than to make them secure.
I'm genuinely struggling to think of downsides in that. Surely the most 'secure' microphone is the one that doesn't exist in the first place?
People like to make phone calls and use Carplay/AA in their car.
good?
Yes
Government aren’t exactly the privacy guys …
If you ask current EU Council, they might even pay for enabling it. For national safety, it also must be always on.
Car companies, including Hyundai, pay fines of that magnitude every few years for various issues. Yet the issues keep coming.
Isn't it quite the opposite right now?
Even attempting responsible disclosure on vulnerabilities when it comes to cars can quickly result in a gag order.
[Citation needed, but not hard to google, been discussed here before]
Even attempting responsible disclosure on vulnerabilities when it comes to cars can quickly result in a gag order.
[Citation needed, but not hard to google, been discussed here before]
Had to look up "yuppie button" to figure out what they were on about.
Sounds like a fun fellow. Lights up all of the lights on the back of the car for funsies. Oh they're all DOT-approved, so it's probably a good idea. Definitely a safety feature. Their manifesto makes them totally believe that everyone else on the road is the problem.
https://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/yb/
Sounds like a fun fellow. Lights up all of the lights on the back of the car for funsies. Oh they're all DOT-approved, so it's probably a good idea. Definitely a safety feature. Their manifesto makes them totally believe that everyone else on the road is the problem.
https://techno-fandom.org/~hobbit/cars/yb/
The techno fandom page is actually quite measured and reasonable. It's not a crazy idea to prevent dangerous behavior of those behind you.
30+ paragraphs is not “measured” or “reasonable” and I’m glad I’m not stuck behind this miserable guy on the highway as he huffs his jenkem going 56 in a 55 trying to blast all his rear lights at people.
If someone is tailgating me I just slow down gradually until they get mad and pass
To a degree this is sensible, if someone is tailgating you and you need to perform an emergency stop there's more likely to be a collision, so you need to increase the space in front of you for more gradual braking.
Same. I start driving at a speed that is safe for the distance they're keeping (in stead of what should be the other way around). That is usually quite effective.
That distance is also a function of their speed though.
You'll just have to lower it more if they start getting closer again. Eventually they'll get the courage to pass instead of hugging your rear bumper, and at safer speeds too
But it doesn't really matter; you just add a buffer in front of you that allows you to slow more gently so they don't rearend you.
71bw(1)
[deleted]
I found the "wave damping" link inside that article a very interesting description of why not only some traffic jams happen but how we can actually drive to prevent or fix them. Thanks for posting.
This is the wave damping articl http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
This is the wave damping articl http://amasci.com/amateur/traffic/traffic1.html
It's not a terrible idea, but not a great one either. The lights on the back of a vehicle don't simply serve as attention getting lights. They also exist as signals. Lighting all of them up might get attention, but at best it conveys no information, and at worst, it may confuse observers or obfuscate the signals that those lights are supposed to be conveying.
“immediate communication is needed to make any impression on our cellphone-addicted, TV-culture populace with zero attention span nowadays”
Dude sounds insufferable tbh
Dude sounds insufferable tbh
[...] pulling this wouldn't let handsfree Bluetooth phone stuff work either, but I've never had much need for that [...]
Why?
I also don't have any need for that, because I never answer or even use my phone while driving.
I also don't have any need for that, because I never answer or even use my phone while driving.
Well I guess it depends.
While I appreciate your purist take on driving and aspire to be such a disciplined driver one day, there is still a myriad of reasons why one could want to have a functional mic.
I find even the single line: "Hey, I'm driving, call you back later." much better than just ignoring incoming calls.
Also the ecall thing might come in very handy if an accident happens, but that is a very big IF.
While I appreciate your purist take on driving and aspire to be such a disciplined driver one day, there is still a myriad of reasons why one could want to have a functional mic.
I find even the single line: "Hey, I'm driving, call you back later." much better than just ignoring incoming calls.
Also the ecall thing might come in very handy if an accident happens, but that is a very big IF.
I am all for removing this needless communication the manufacturers are equipping cars with now, but between your cell phone associating with towers, the Flock cameras that every municipality has eagerly deployed, the repo bounty people driving parking lots with LPRs, and LEOs with on-car LPRs you're still being tracked.
Still, no reason to make it easier.
Still, no reason to make it easier.
It can all be fought. https://deflock.me/
I keep my phone in Airplane Mode. Can't do a ton about private ALPRs except put peanut butter on them or whatever when you see em
I keep my phone in Airplane Mode. Can't do a ton about private ALPRs except put peanut butter on them or whatever when you see em
I remember reading that (some?) phones in airplane mode can still be pinged by the network to request their location and the call is answered directly by the blackbox modem rather than by Android/iOS bypassing most privacy features.
Airplane mode also usually keeps Bluetooth and WiFi enabled so that's one thing to look for.
Airplane mode also usually keeps Bluetooth and WiFi enabled so that's one thing to look for.
Airplane mode usually turns off the power to that chip.
I found this for GrapheneOS / Pixel devices which seems to support this claim: https://grapheneos.org/faq
> Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities
I am very interested if you have more information on this or specification on whether airplane mode has to disable power to the chip.
> Activating airplane mode will fully disable the cellular radio transmit and receive capabilities
I am very interested if you have more information on this or specification on whether airplane mode has to disable power to the chip.
There’s always Faraday cage bags for cell phones
Yeah, they don't work though. They're about as effective as those signal-boosting stickers you could get at truck stops in the 00s.
Really? I used to have one and it always killed my battery looking for signal. It also prevented me from making calls to the phone.
> Somewhat related, an easy early fix was to disable the car's microphone in the headliner light assembly.
This (and maybe the things he does further on) would probably interfer with the eCall system that is mandatory for cars in Europe. The author seems to be in the US so that might be fine, but if you're in Europe, please don't do stuff like this.
This (and maybe the things he does further on) would probably interfer with the eCall system that is mandatory for cars in Europe. The author seems to be in the US so that might be fine, but if you're in Europe, please don't do stuff like this.
I suppose such system is mandatory in a car when it's sold, such after sales changes would be fine as safety is not directly impacted.
Source: my daily drive is a car without a modem on European roads, no problem.
All modifications to the car (in most, if not all EU countries) need to be homologated (eg. approved) by the authorities. So yes, removing eCall from a modern vehicle is (legally speaking) a lot different than driving one that came without it.
Obviously, that's a nice theory but as we both know in practice there's a lot of modified cars on the roads in all kinds of way and they pass their annual inspections fine - even insurers cover them as long as you disclose the modification.
Well, safety is impacted, but it seems to be up to you. If you want to go down like _a real man_ because your car couldn't call emergency services that's your choice. Other people might (hopefully) make another choice.
Well thats a choice right? We dont NEED these systems, its just mandated by governments. Just like here in spain they changed from emergency triangles that you need to put on the street to a little crappy light you put ontop of the car. That light will do nothing in sunny spain or if your car happened to stop after a curve. Its stupid crap mandated by governments to make it look like they are actually doing something new, but they forget about basic stuff. Same thing with this call system, its my car so my choice. If they want to take my car apart to figure out that i disabled it, then go ahead. I'll just pull the plug the moment you force me to plug it back in.
> If they want to take my car apart to figure out that i disabled it, then go ahead. I'll just pull the plug the moment you force me to plug it back in.
Be that stupid if you want to. But rest assured that insurance companies will always try to get their money back or not pay at all if something has happened. If they find out that you tampered with your eCall system and if they can somehow link some damage to that, you will be held liable.
Be that stupid if you want to. But rest assured that insurance companies will always try to get their money back or not pay at all if something has happened. If they find out that you tampered with your eCall system and if they can somehow link some damage to that, you will be held liable.
It's mandatory for cars to be manufactured with it, but obviously not for all cars to have it since the are many older cars on the road without it.
It maybe mandatory for it to be deemed roadworthy for a newer vehicle, but not required on an older vehicle.
e.g.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-privat...
> You must inspect all reversing lamps fitted to vehicles first used from 1 September 2009 other than quadricycles and three-wheeled vehicles.
Older vehicles don't require a reverse light. My P-reg vehicle (1996?) didn't have a working reverse lamp, but passed the MOT. I have since fixed it.
e.g.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/mot-inspection-manual-for-privat...
> You must inspect all reversing lamps fitted to vehicles first used from 1 September 2009 other than quadricycles and three-wheeled vehicles.
Older vehicles don't require a reverse light. My P-reg vehicle (1996?) didn't have a working reverse lamp, but passed the MOT. I have since fixed it.
2009, that's wild. Were there common cars without it, or did they just forget to require it cause everything had one anyway?
That's true, only cars build after March 2018 need to have it. If you car is older you're fine.
eCall is sending GPS location after the crash, microphone is not necessary.
eCall is also opening up a two way communication with the emergency line, so they can gather more information. Might be helpful if your microphone does work in that case.
The law text might appear to allow other interpretation as laws always do, but I believe the actual implementation is a phone with power input, an electronic report trigger API, a mechanical 911 button, and optional SIM. They come with a mic and a speaker.
Off topic; really annoying to read. Please make the images just blocks between the text instead of this wrap around, it makes all text only two words wide in a single column on the right
So people are supposed to pay 10x the price of what they can get actually pretty decent used cars for and then not have control over the firmware?
These companies deserve bankruptcy.
These companies deserve bankruptcy.
On the less-technical side, Hyundai has a corporate-legal mechanism to request "Delete personal information" [0] that might be worth doing, just to round things out.
> one step of which involved removing this "garnish" panel behind the screen. Easier said than done
Different year/model, but same experience with the same task: I really hate situations where the secret is "a suspicious amount of force", especially if there's no sufficiently trustworthy/detailed information showing that things can be pulled or pried in a certain manner.
> Having a couple of non-marring plastic pry tools does help with this sort of thing
IMO these are worth buying, they're quite cheap and trying to make-do with metal tools will cause more scratches and scrapes than you'd expect, no matter how careful you're trying to be.
[0] https://owners.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/privacy/data-request/new...
> one step of which involved removing this "garnish" panel behind the screen. Easier said than done
Different year/model, but same experience with the same task: I really hate situations where the secret is "a suspicious amount of force", especially if there's no sufficiently trustworthy/detailed information showing that things can be pulled or pried in a certain manner.
> Having a couple of non-marring plastic pry tools does help with this sort of thing
IMO these are worth buying, they're quite cheap and trying to make-do with metal tools will cause more scratches and scrapes than you'd expect, no matter how careful you're trying to be.
[0] https://owners.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/privacy/data-request/new...
Having worked in a car factory, getting involved in the rectification side of things, I can say that "a suspicious amount of force" is pretty normal for this stuff. If you're working on a car you need to be able to get behind the panels, but they need to be held on well enough to never, ever rattle.
Looking for trustworthy information these days is much easier than it used to be, there are generally technician training videos on youtube that will show you where and how to pop panels off.
Looking for trustworthy information these days is much easier than it used to be, there are generally technician training videos on youtube that will show you where and how to pop panels off.
Plus they're fun to say. Spudger!
Spudger? I hardly know her!
It’s quite upsetting that if you want a modern car so that you utilise the newest advances in safety, you have to consent to constant tracking, enshitification, subscription services, etc. It would be really cool if you could get something like a ‘67 impala that doesn’t make ‘67 emissions and has actual seatbelts and airbags…
It's really a regulatory problem, where I live my 2025 toyota has a big display saying "the car is unable to send or receive any data if you don't press press accept", pressing decline gives the car that out of cell range symbol. Doesen't prevent targeted surveillance nor mass government surveillance, but those are more about regulations too.
Recent Toyotas can have the DCM physically bypassed fairly easily by unplugging it and/or unplugging a fuse. You lose the front passenger speaker and bluetooth microphone, but those can be re-enabled with a bypass cable or manually jumpering them and putting in an 8v supply IC for the mic.
If they had just clipped the antenna wires, how likely would that have disabled all outbound communication? Clearly not as good as disconnecting the modem (which removed some software checks), but more approachable without the multi hour disassembly.
If you install fully shielded resistors it can work, but shorting the antenna completely will have the added benefit of destroying the RF amplifier transistors. From then on the car will just think it’s out of cell range, and there’s not much chance of leaky signal. It’s not too hard to make shielded loads though.
I do prefer the option of removing the entire cellular module though.
Any non-disable-able connectivity will be an absolute deal breaker for me on any vehicle I own. I guess that probably means I’ll be buying used vehicles for the rest of my life, but it is what it is.
I do prefer the option of removing the entire cellular module though.
Any non-disable-able connectivity will be an absolute deal breaker for me on any vehicle I own. I guess that probably means I’ll be buying used vehicles for the rest of my life, but it is what it is.
A better way might be to install dummy loads on the antenna outputs.
You generally have to disassemble far more annoying things to get to the antenna than to remove the head unit.
Nice work. I'm honestly surprised that the head unit didn't complain about the missing modem. Although it's far from returning to a simpler less software heavy car, removing the cellular connectivity is a promising start that surely hugely reduces the attack surface of the vehicle
My biggest gripe with the modern cars (looking at you EV) is they’re now made to be like a mobile phone with wheels
Yes, including fingerprint authentication.
https://ownersmanual.hyundai.com/docview/webhelp/Hyundai/46a...
https://ownersmanual.hyundai.com/docview/webhelp/Hyundai/46a...
Proucts are made for the needs of the manufacturers nowadays (using borderline criminal practices like enforced mass surveillance), not for the needs of the paying customers. And apparently the cutomers are ok with it, most of the time, otherwise this practice was already dead.
How did we come to this?
How did we come to this?
If you want to see what Honda emits: https://gist.github.com/ryjones/73739f6a7e662b9ed9ba64d9141f...
Fun fact: a modern car takes up to 10 hours to flash at the factory. They have so many microcontrollers and CPUs, it's getting a huge cost to just load up the initial FW during production. Is it all necessary? Hell no.
I never thought that battling the corpos was going to look so mundane.
And this is why I drive a fleet of antiques.
I'll build myself a fucking horse and carriage and go live with the Amish before I accept a vehicle with telematics of any kind.
I'll build myself a fucking horse and carriage and go live with the Amish before I accept a vehicle with telematics of any kind.
I guess the next thing is to kill the black box and you are set.
We need a wiki of guides like this. I am dreading when my diesel golf dies.
(Of course, I can probably get away with buying low miles ICE cars for some decades after)
(Of course, I can probably get away with buying low miles ICE cars for some decades after)
I used to care about stuff like this. But then I stopped and life has been great!
I like this Techno Fandom page!
Fortunately, my BYD runs fine even though I removed the SIM card from the slot.
Has anyone successfully accomplished similar with a Tesla?
[deleted]
I suspect there might be on-board antennas in addition to offboard antennas.
I had a device with wifi, and I figured I could disable the wifi by just disconnecting the antenna.
Nope.
Then I connected the antenna to a dummy load
Nope.
there are onboard antennas that take over and continue to work.
I suspect the same thing for cellular (though I have no actual data about the system in question)
I had a device with wifi, and I figured I could disable the wifi by just disconnecting the antenna.
Nope.
Then I connected the antenna to a dummy load
Nope.
there are onboard antennas that take over and continue to work.
I suspect the same thing for cellular (though I have no actual data about the system in question)
>Finally I realized that it just took a little more force in the right places, and managed to work it loose one clip at a time.
I f-ing hate this crap. And it's only gonna get worse because "hurr durr snappy plastic" is one of those industry circle jerks that exists because academia indoctrinated a generation into it.
You can have snappy plastic that isn't subject to breaking if you remove it wrong if you a) design it simpler and less trick b) use a couple cents more material c) use better plastic. And before all the stupid professionals start screeching about cost and weight... there's usually no cost difference at the end of the day because doing what I suggested reduces tooling costs and makes your QC pass window wider.
I f-ing hate this crap. And it's only gonna get worse because "hurr durr snappy plastic" is one of those industry circle jerks that exists because academia indoctrinated a generation into it.
You can have snappy plastic that isn't subject to breaking if you remove it wrong if you a) design it simpler and less trick b) use a couple cents more material c) use better plastic. And before all the stupid professionals start screeching about cost and weight... there's usually no cost difference at the end of the day because doing what I suggested reduces tooling costs and makes your QC pass window wider.
Following.
Corporations have figured out that enshittification works .. it increases revenue and profit. Same with surveillance capitalism.
Some of this feels like fun stuff for us techies but it will bite us and the next gen.
The only way to fix it is to vote for decent regulations.
Some of this feels like fun stuff for us techies but it will bite us and the next gen.
The only way to fix it is to vote for decent regulations.
Whenever there is a major update, an insanely long T&A appears on the screen. No one is going to read it. The only options are "accept" or clicking it away. If you click it away, it comes back the next day. It cannot possibly be legal for them to basically force T&A - a one-sided contract change - on customers.