Modern vehicles have evolved from mechanical machines into complex networks of processors, sensors, and code.
My motorcycle, Harley Davidson Pan America, is a computer on two wheels. If I fire it up before the computer completes the start phase (~10 seconds), it will eventually throw error codes.
If you want an automobile that will survive an EMP blast, find an old manual transmission Mercedes-Benz W123 240D.
Can my mobile data center extract income for me somehow? How about a class action lawsuit from all vehicle owners to get a cut of that lucrative “selling your information to other predatory companies” gig?
Can’t believe they made my 2010 Scion XD a data center 16 years ago
Idk bud. 2008 I might have like 10.
So then, beyond safety standards, what’s stopping someone from developing an open source hardware vehicle at this point?
Time, money. The usual.
Not mine. My car was built in 1999. Going to drive it until they stopped offering fuel at gas stations and then just transplant a electric drivetrain.
My car has a cassette tape and no Bluetooth.
Well there’s still like 2 or 3 computers on it most likely if you go by the definition of computer automotive journalists like to use.
PCM for sure, but could also have TCM if auto, ABS if equipped might have a computer, potentially some kind of BCM…
When they say a modern car has 100 computers, most of those are actually fairly simple controllers and the reason there are so many is that you can just route canbus and power to them and then run the necessary wires to the sensors and actuators from the modules instead of running a bunch of wires from one single controller to everything. Keeps the harness simpler and lighter.
My own 20 year old car has 26 “computers”. 4 of them are door controllers that just actuate windows, locks and mirrors.
Thats right. The word “computer” in this article can mean anything with a microcontroller in it. Any car built after 1996 legally must have an OBD port, so it has a diagnostic computer at least. All cars with fuel injectors have an engine computer. All cars with air bags will have a computer that controls when they go off. Even some cars with cruise control in the 90s had a cruise computer that monitors and controls the speed.
I don’t know what my point is, just that I agree, having lots of microcontrollers in your car is not necessarily bad thing, they provide many facets of basic functionality and don’t collect your data. And journalists like sensational headlines and fear mongering.
You’re gonna save so much money not buying new cars, that your idea won’t be crazy. I like it.
Spending a lot of money on gas isn’t saving money.
While I can afford a newer car, I can’t bring myself to spend 700usd just to drive a new car when my old car is still running. Even if my entire engine explodes, a new engine replacement is like 5k, it’s still worth it. Maybe one day my engine won’t be available but for now, I’m happy with not paying a car payment.
He’d still come out ahead by driving his old car and then electrifying it when he can afford it. It’d beat taking on a new car loan or lease.
Let’s say you drive 10k miles per year and you’re getting 20mpg that’s 500gal of fuel per year. If gas is $5/ gal that’s $2500 per year. Let’s say I can get a car that gets 40 miles per gallon. Over ten years I’m saving $12k so I’d need to spend less than $12k on a car in order to save money. Idk what the cost of electric is over the cost of gas but I know that I can’t get an electric car for less than $12k that isn’t going to need an expensive battery replacement in the near future.
Sure, if you consider every tiny microcontroller to be a computer, it’s probably more than 100.
Your computer has dozens of computers in it!
Right? This article is kinda a ridiculous take. A musical greeting card has a computer in it.
Cars are going to have tons of computers in them, from engine to battery management systems to driver displays to the audio system.
The computers that should be of concern are the “black box” and telemetry, one can brick your car with an OTA update and the other is uploaded to data aggregators, bought by your insurance company, and used to raise your rates if they see driving their metrics say make you a risk.
but I’m a safe driver so that won’t effect me
-average consumer …
* data gathering center
The high tech in vehicles that I wanted:
The “high tech” we got:
Elite dangerous reference, i upvote
O7
there are 100 computers hiding in your car right now
Wow! I have a car?
I am as surprised as you are.
Given the fact that my wipers slow down whenever I indicate, I don’t think I’m being surveilled by my car. It’s one big electrical short circuit on wheels that somehow still operates.
It’s like a rather dysfunctional tank. Absolutely nothing that happens to it phases it or damages it in any way but it’s baseline functionality is pre-compromised. When I got rear-ended by an inattentive driver the front of his car was all smashed in, my bumper was a little loose and I gave it a tap and it snapped back into place.
There is definitely something to be said for mid-2010s manufacturing. They’ve gotten really good at building cars but haven’t quite got as far as putting chips in them yet. The dirt cheap on the second hand market and they just keep going forever.
Tbf it’s only been ten years since the mid 2010s so a bit early to know if they’ll keep going longer term
You’re riding a data center on wheels
Oh yeah? Where’s my tax break then? And my subsidized water usage?
My daily driver is a bicycle, checkmate.
Well, it doesn’t take much to add a GPS computer to the handlebar and heart rate monitor. If you are feeling spendy it could also mean 2 pressure monitors, real time suspension damping valves, power meter, wireless shifting and dropper post.
I’ll admit, I have been looking at a folding bike with wireless shifting.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go pair my bike with my phone so I can upgrade the derailleur’s firmware…
My bosses gears ran out of battery once so he couldn’t get up the hill. Wires are sometimes better than wireless.
shrugs in mechanical
All I need is a baseline open hardware EV. Fat chance, of course. So I guess I have to buy something used, today older than 8 years and counting.
this civic ev swap kit looks promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VFNb139Nlc
aftermarket ecu should give pretty good control of all the data.
Not quite open hardware, but it’s minimal compute - https://www.slate.auto/
SUV and US only, hard pass.
I tried so hard to hold on for the chance to purchase one but my old car began to reek of moist unwashed towels thanks to all the rain. Ended up getting a sweet deal on a '22 Bolt with 13k miles for $15k. There’s a way to reversibly terminate the data line with $15 worth of equipment and 10 minutes.
I have my prrorder but without a price still I am still unsure if I will get one.
Interesting, thanks.
I didn’t read the article but these days a turn signa,for instance, doesn’t just connect to a flasher and a bulb. It connects to the network in the car and requests that the computer initiate the turn signal. This means the turn signal switch itself has to have a chip in it to communicate with the network that I believe they are calling a sort of computer. Virtually every component in the car operates like this. It really isn’t the same thing as 100 computers…
Its not, but it does beg a lot of reliability questions. Cars today have many single points of failure in the electrical system, and have made things like the turn signal dependent on them, as well. The old turn signal had about as few components as an electrical circuit could have. Today’s has all of those but one, then like 20 more in the form of the computer and CAN bus. This can be said for many, many functions in a modern car. If there were material benefits to the end-user, maybe there’d be an argument for the added order of magnitude in complexity, but there are not. You get a token amount more diagnostic information, wheelbarrows full of privacy invasion, dramatically increased cost, and poorer reliability.
This, multiplied by every system in the car that has been subjected to this Rube Goldberg, is why even the new shitboxes cost a year’s pay.
