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I have to wonder if this is one of those somewhat "implanted" stories to get support for moving towards John Deere style DRM on some of their parts. That is, n

by tyingq 4y ago

I have to wonder if this is one of those somewhat "implanted" stories to get support for moving towards John Deere style DRM on some of their parts. That is, not that it's made up, but that perhaps the scale is being exaggerated a bit. Edit: Yes, I'm aware there's some DRM. So far, though, not as locked down as the example of John Deere, cryptographic control that requires phone-home, etc.

donw 4y ago
Didn't think of that angle, but perhaps! Pretty much everything in transportation is being pushed in the direction of centralized control; hence, the focus on EVs and the push against biofuels. The marketing is all "climate change", but the reality is that biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools, and the fuel can be grown locally as well. I'd bet money that they're better for the environment, too. And no, not interested in some "study" from Harvard funded by people that have a deeply-vested interest in EVs. Modern battery tech is complicated. Manufacturing has to be much more centralized. And has plenty of places to insert remotely-operated control mechanisms linking to cellular networks.
- DennisP 4y ago
  On the other hand, any electric car can be charged from solar panels on your roof. Then there's Aptera, which can charge itself from the sun if you're in a reasonably sunny area, and which has a strong commitment to right-to-repair: https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebuilds/ https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui... They also make their own battery packs, despite not exactly being a large operation. https://aptera.us/battery-update/ https://aptera.us/battery-update/
  - telchar 4y ago
    Color me surprised to see that name again! I thought Aptera was dead and gone. I hope they fare better this time. The solar car route could be an interesting niche.
    - DennisP 4y ago
      Yep. Car looks pretty much the same as the old version. Sandy Munro, the engineer famous for taking Teslas apart, has been advising them.
  - b112 4y ago
    Solar panels on my car roof might be good to charge my laptop. Or, keep a car from losing charge while idle. I think you'd have to leave the car in the sun for days, just to drive to the 5 minutes away store and back.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      It just doesn't make any sense if you know anything about physics. Sun provides about 1kW of power per square meter.....at noon, at the equator, with no clouds. Automotive solar panels like they use are about 20% efficient. Your average car roof is....let's be super forgiving and say 2sqm. So in the middle of the day, at the equator, you are generating about 400W of power. The average EV battery is 50kWh. So you'd need 125 hours in full sun to recharge it fully. During a regular sunny day you'd get maybe.....2-3kWh back into your battery? So yeah, about enough to cover ~10 miles in a regular EV. Sure it's better than nothing, but remember that this is in ideal conditions. In less than ideal conditions you are talking yeah, enough energy to cover a mile or two per day of charging. It's just silly.
      - prmoustache 4y ago
        You seem to forget that bar exceptions (people working on the road all day), most passenger cars are staying parked 99% of the time and use for small errands. The aptera is also built to provide up to 1000miles in its highest spec out of one complete charge.
        gambiting 4y ago
        Right and how long does it take to charge that 1000 mile range in an average British city? A full year? And I'm not forgetting it - I'm just saying that the overall gain doesn't seem to be worth it. The cost of solar panels integrated into the car would pay for a lot of electricity from the grid instead.
        DennisP 4y ago
        Right, if you need to fully charge then plug it in. You'll do that after a road trip. But if you live somewhere sunny and typically drive 20 miles a day, you can keep it topped up by just parking in the sun. Some will find this worthwhile, others won't. Apartment dwellers without convenient chargers might find it handy. The comment I replied to advocated doing your own energy production, and if that's what you care about, grid power doesn't really compete.
- tialaramex 4y ago
  > biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools The excellent thing about electricity is that it's fungible. Electricity from a wind farm in the North Sea, a nuclear plant in the South of France or a Texan solar panel is identical as far as the electric vehicle is concerned. In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion. There are immediate practical advantages (many EV owners never spend any time putting "fuel" into their vehicle, unlike with ICE, since just charging it whenever it's sat around doing nothing is easy with electricity) but there are also large strategic advantages in terms of energy independence. To get even the poor efficiency of modern internal combustion engines took a lot of careful engineering which would be undone by your "local machine tools" approach, so that makes the bargain even worse. In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years. To the extent the answer isn't EVs that's because the answer is less car culture.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion Something like biodiesel is almost entirely a drop-in replacement, and diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids. Gasoline engines can be fairly easily converted to burn a bunch of other fuels too.
    - tialaramex 4y ago
      > diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids Rudolf Diesel's engine will indeed burn lots of things to produce power. But the diesel engine in your 2022 car isn't just Mr Diesel's machine with nicer bodywork, it has been carefully fine-tuned for efficiency, ride, emissions and other considerations, including by using self-lubricating fuel injectors. If you use the wrong fuel on a good day you destroy those benefits and on a bad day you're also destroying the expensive engine itself.
  - cesarb 4y ago
KennyBlanken 4y ago
The article implies the control units are coded to the vehicle's VIN at least to some degree and mentions Freightliner asks people to look out for logged errors indicating someone attempted to use a control unit from a different VIN. There's also mention of a separate password function. However, if there's a market for these units, someone's likely developed a tool to "re code" the control units. But: "Moving toward" to DRM? At least in the passenger car market this started happening a long, long time ago. ECUs and dashes on most VAG (VW Audi Group) cars are coded to each other and have been for around two decades if not longer, though in a fair number of cases you can re-pair them with a non-VW scantool and don't need the dealer, but it's usually a complex and very specific process. Volvo Cars started DRM'ing the fuck out of every single component that sits on the vehicle's data bus in the mid-2000's after they got bought up by Ford. If you replaced any component that had a bus connection - which includes things like headlights - you would have to bring the car to a Volvo dealer, who might or might not humor you if they were not the source of the part and the ones to install it ("gosh, we're just fully booked up, going to be two weeks before we can get to it..." etc) The dealer would connect the car to their terminal, which would in turn request an encrypted firmware image for the component from Volvo servers in Sweden, specific to your car's VIN and that component's serial number. That encrypted image would then be sent back and written to the control module. When that server gets shut off, hundreds of millions of Volvo cars and parts will rapidly become useless save for their scrap value. This isn't a trivial matter; at least in the US, the average age of vehicles on the road is the oldest it's ever been, and given the country's worsening economic inequality, that trend is likely to continue.
- userbinator 4y ago
  When that server gets shut off If the vehicles are popular enough, the aftermarket will probably find a way around it, if it hasn't already done so.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  The average age of vehicles is trending up because cars are more reliable and just last longer. It used to be an event to roll over a 5-digit odometer. Now, 250K miles is just getting broken in.
maxerickson 4y ago
The article makes it sound like they are VIN locked already (the control software will in any case need to be for the actual powertrain components).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
UncleEntity 4y ago
They have to be mostly open because someone getting a truck repaired is pretty likely to be in the middle of bumfuck Kansas and needs the truck moving right now so they don’t take a claim on a multi-$100k load. I’m sitting in one of our terminals right now and there a lot more trucks than usual that are (maybe) waiting on parts to get back on the road. A lot of money tied up in those things not generating revenue parked in the yard.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

by tyingq 4y ago

donw 4y ago

Didn't think of that angle, but perhaps! Pretty much everything in transportation is being pushed in the direction of centralized control; hence, the focus on EVs and the push against biofuels. The marketing is all "climate change", but the reality is that biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools, and the fuel can be grown locally as well. I'd bet money that they're better for the environment, too. And no, not interested in some "study" from Harvard funded by people that have a deeply-vested interest in EVs. Modern battery tech is complicated. Manufacturing has to be much more centralized. And has plenty of places to insert remotely-operated control mechanisms linking to cellular networks.

DennisP 4y ago
On the other hand, any electric car can be charged from solar panels on your roof. Then there's Aptera, which can charge itself from the sun if you're in a reasonably sunny area, and which has a strong commitment to right-to-repair: https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebuilds/ https://aptera.us/right-to-repair-commitment-feat-rich-rebui... They also make their own battery packs, despite not exactly being a large operation. https://aptera.us/battery-update/ https://aptera.us/battery-update/
- telchar 4y ago
  Color me surprised to see that name again! I thought Aptera was dead and gone. I hope they fare better this time. The solar car route could be an interesting niche.
  - DennisP 4y ago
    Yep. Car looks pretty much the same as the old version. Sandy Munro, the engineer famous for taking Teslas apart, has been advising them.
- b112 4y ago
  Solar panels on my car roof might be good to charge my laptop. Or, keep a car from losing charge while idle. I think you'd have to leave the car in the sun for days, just to drive to the 5 minutes away store and back.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    It just doesn't make any sense if you know anything about physics. Sun provides about 1kW of power per square meter.....at noon, at the equator, with no clouds. Automotive solar panels like they use are about 20% efficient. Your average car roof is....let's be super forgiving and say 2sqm. So in the middle of the day, at the equator, you are generating about 400W of power. The average EV battery is 50kWh. So you'd need 125 hours in full sun to recharge it fully. During a regular sunny day you'd get maybe.....2-3kWh back into your battery? So yeah, about enough to cover ~10 miles in a regular EV. Sure it's better than nothing, but remember that this is in ideal conditions. In less than ideal conditions you are talking yeah, enough energy to cover a mile or two per day of charging. It's just silly.
    - prmoustache 4y ago
      You seem to forget that bar exceptions (people working on the road all day), most passenger cars are staying parked 99% of the time and use for small errands. The aptera is also built to provide up to 1000miles in its highest spec out of one complete charge.
      - gambiting 4y ago
        Right and how long does it take to charge that 1000 mile range in an average British city? A full year? And I'm not forgetting it - I'm just saying that the overall gain doesn't seem to be worth it. The cost of solar panels integrated into the car would pay for a lot of electricity from the grid instead.
        DennisP 4y ago
        Right, if you need to fully charge then plug it in. You'll do that after a road trip. But if you live somewhere sunny and typically drive 20 miles a day, you can keep it topped up by just parking in the sun. Some will find this worthwhile, others won't. Apartment dwellers without convenient chargers might find it handy. The comment I replied to advocated doing your own energy production, and if that's what you care about, grid power doesn't really compete.
tialaramex 4y ago
> biofuel-based vehicles can, in theory, be manufactured locally with machine tools The excellent thing about electricity is that it's fungible. Electricity from a wind farm in the North Sea, a nuclear plant in the South of France or a Texan solar panel is identical as far as the electric vehicle is concerned. In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion. There are immediate practical advantages (many EV owners never spend any time putting "fuel" into their vehicle, unlike with ICE, since just charging it whenever it's sat around doing nothing is easy with electricity) but there are also large strategic advantages in terms of energy independence. To get even the poor efficiency of modern internal combustion engines took a lot of careful engineering which would be undone by your "local machine tools" approach, so that makes the bargain even worse. In contrast it's easy to build high efficiency electric motors, and we've been doing that in many applications for years. To the extent the answer isn't EVs that's because the answer is less car culture.
- userbinator 4y ago
  In contrast with bio-fuels if you can't make the right chemical soup for this specific model of engine well too bad, buy a new engine or undertake expensive conversion Something like biodiesel is almost entirely a drop-in replacement, and diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids. Gasoline engines can be fairly easily converted to burn a bunch of other fuels too.
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    > diesel engines will burn a wide range of flammable liquids Rudolf Diesel's engine will indeed burn lots of things to produce power. But the diesel engine in your 2022 car isn't just Mr Diesel's machine with nicer bodywork, it has been carefully fine-tuned for efficiency, ride, emissions and other considerations, including by using self-lubricating fuel injectors. If you use the wrong fuel on a good day you destroy those benefits and on a bad day you're also destroying the expensive engine itself.
- cesarb 4y ago

KennyBlanken 4y ago

The article implies the control units are coded to the vehicle's VIN at least to some degree and mentions Freightliner asks people to look out for logged errors indicating someone attempted to use a control unit from a different VIN. There's also mention of a separate password function. However, if there's a market for these units, someone's likely developed a tool to "re code" the control units. But: "Moving toward" to DRM? At least in the passenger car market this started happening a long, long time ago. ECUs and dashes on most VAG (VW Audi Group) cars are coded to each other and have been for around two decades if not longer, though in a fair number of cases you can re-pair them with a non-VW scantool and don't need the dealer, but it's usually a complex and very specific process. Volvo Cars started DRM'ing the fuck out of every single component that sits on the vehicle's data bus in the mid-2000's after they got bought up by Ford. If you replaced any component that had a bus connection - which includes things like headlights - you would have to bring the car to a Volvo dealer, who might or might not humor you if they were not the source of the part and the ones to install it ("gosh, we're just fully booked up, going to be two weeks before we can get to it..." etc) The dealer would connect the car to their terminal, which would in turn request an encrypted firmware image for the component from Volvo servers in Sweden, specific to your car's VIN and that component's serial number. That encrypted image would then be sent back and written to the control module. When that server gets shut off, hundreds of millions of Volvo cars and parts will rapidly become useless save for their scrap value. This isn't a trivial matter; at least in the US, the average age of vehicles on the road is the oldest it's ever been, and given the country's worsening economic inequality, that trend is likely to continue.

userbinator 4y ago
When that server gets shut off If the vehicles are popular enough, the aftermarket will probably find a way around it, if it hasn't already done so.
sokoloff 4y ago
The average age of vehicles is trending up because cars are more reliable and just last longer. It used to be an event to roll over a 5-digit odometer. Now, 250K miles is just getting broken in.

maxerickson 4y ago

The article makes it sound like they are VIN locked already (the control software will in any case need to be for the actual powertrain components).

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

UncleEntity 4y ago

They have to be mostly open because someone getting a truck repaired is pretty likely to be in the middle of bumfuck Kansas and needs the truck moving right now so they don’t take a claim on a multi-$100k load. I’m sitting in one of our terminals right now and there a lot more trucks than usual that are (maybe) waiting on parts to get back on the road. A lot of money tied up in those things not generating revenue parked in the yard.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]