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Electric cars are essentially black boxes. When you take it apart, you have largely no idea what any of the chips do, even if you chase down what they're connec
by Etheryte 2y ago
Electric cars are essentially black boxes. When you take it apart, you have largely no idea what any of the chips do, even if you chase down what they're connected to. Is this the infotainment system or is it the infotainment system and a data gathering system that sends all my data off seas? There's no way to know. Old cars don't have that problem. Here's an engine, here's a gearbox, add a radio if you'd like, but by and large it's possible to grok what's in your car. With newer vehicles in general, and electric cars especially, it's near impossible to tell.
- josephcsible 2y agoBut that's not a gas vs. electric distinction, but rather an old vs. new one. Modern ICE cars have all of those problems too.
- snowwrestler 2y agoYes but the point is, this technology is a blocker for people who might otherwise be interested in an electric powertrain vehicle. If you want an old car without all this crap, you can get one. But it pretty much has to be an ICE.
- bluGill 2y agoYou can convert any ice car to an ev. I takes time but is straight forward
- asteroidburger 2y agoFor various definitions of "you." That's far beyond the reach of the average consumer.
- snozolli 2y agoSo pay someone to do it for you. The free market has a solution. It's odd how anti-hack Hacker News has become.
- jmb99 2y agoTime, money, and lots of knowledge and skill. Actually, lots of time and money too. It’s really not a practical thing for at least 99% of the population. Probably more like 4 or 5 nines.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoSure. Other than being extremely expensive unless you've got the skills and facilities to do all the work yourself, and have the time and money to get all the engineering certifications required to make it road legal. If you can do it all yourself, it's only moderately expensive.
- bluGill 2y agoIn the us at least homebuilt cars slide through a lot of loopholes. And since you are coverting a car you automatically get many things that made the car road legal.
- djbusby 2y agoBild your own electric in an old style body? Fun, if nothing else.
- nine_k 2y agoAlso time and expense.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoProbably not a good idea as the battery weight wouldn't have been figured into the original chassis/brakes design.
- codingdave 2y agoRight, you need to do that engineering yourself. And ICE engines are heavy, so it typically is reasonable to work out as the lighter engine compensates for the battery weight. It is a design task, not a project killer.
- ndsipa_pomu 2y agoIf modern EVs are anything to go by, the battery weight will be substantially more than the weight of an ICE engine plus gearbox etc. But yes, it'd be for the hobbyist to figure out the details and whether it is safe enough to drive.
- ninalanyon 2y agoThe EV version of the Hyundai Ioniq is only about 60 kg heavier than the hybrid version and at about 1 500 kg is not much over the average for cars of its class. EVs really are not a great deal heavier than the ICE versions of the same or similar vehicles. The Jaguar I-Pace EV is lighter than some variants of the F-Pace ICE.
- lawaaiig 2y agoHyundai offers an EV version of the Casper: it's 1335kg vs 985kg for the petrol variant. Surely that's a great deal heavier? The Aygo finds an all-electric competitor in the Renault Zoë whose battery pack alone weighs 300kg, a hefty increase compared to the 70kg engine of the aygo. Volkswagen's up! comes in at 929kg; the e-up! registers at 1229kg. Regarding the I-pace vs the F-pace I was unable to find more than a single version with a greater weight than the I-pace, though I admit I haven't analyzed the specs of all 108 editions. That single example weighing more was, of course, a hybrid. EV versions are, primarily due to the weight of their battery packs, significantly heavier than their ICE counterparts and that's fine.
- lostlogin 2y ago> this technology is a blocker for people who might otherwise be interested in an electric powertrain vehicle. This surely isn’t a large group.
- _ea1k 2y agoYeah, its the same stuff that I've been told for decades now. TBH, it is probably less true with a lot of EVs than it was with the gas cars. ECUs are pretty strict and sometimes hard to hack. Meanwhile, third party motor controllers for Tesla motors exist, and the batteries aren't exactly magic. There's really nothing about electric drivetrains that makes anything vastly more locked down.
- p1necone 2y agoYeah if the world went in the direction that prepper types seem to get wet dreams about petrol ICE cars would only be usable for a year or so - petrol has a shelf life, and you ain't running your own refinery. A lot of diesels can run off of any vaguely fuel-like liquid you decide to put in them, so I'm sure sufficiently knowledgable people would keep those running, machining parts for them etc. But electric vehicles are by far simpler than both of those, and generating electricity is easier than producing fuel you can shove in a diesel engine.
- snozolli 2y agopetrol ICE cars would only be usable for a year or so The Internet really overstates this. Fuel injected systems are sealed. Carbureted systems are open to outside air, so the fuel is constantly evaporating, leaving residue behind, and absorbing moisture from the atmosphere. Gasoline in a sealed container remains usable for far longer than people on the Internet say it will. Anyway, the final state of an apocalypse car would be running on wood gas. North Korea runs some or all of their military trucks on it (this may have changed as they've increased relations with Russia). An episode of Car Talk explained how it was used by German civilians during WWII: https://www.cartalk.com/radio/show/1201-20-miles-wood-chip https://www.cartalk.com/radio/show/1201-20-miles-wood-chip
- twobitshifter 2y agoYou can make an ICE run on wood gas which is arguably more apocalypse proof than electric.
- 2y ago
- 6SixTy 2y agoProblem with gathering data off cars is that it's really not that effective vs your phone. A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time, while a phone is with you 24/7, likely powered 24/7, and already has telemetry mechanisms built in. An old car with someone using a phone probably still collects the same data as you assert. And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.
- kelnos 2y agoIn theory I can disable most if not all of the telemetry coming out of my phone, though. I can also choose to leave my phone at home, knowing that it's likely there's still something on it that's collecting data on my movements, even if I've been careful about disabling and uninstalling things. But the car is largely a black box when it comes to its electronics, and if I need to drive the car somewhere, I can't leave the black boxes at home; they come with me wherever I go. > And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart. Sounds fine to me.
- brailsafe 2y ago> A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for me), but I/we pay for it all the time by allocating quite a lot of space and money to them. The tires, the insurance, taxes, fuel, charging stations, driveways, parking garages, natural resources, air quality, ambient noise, senseless deaths, it's crazy. Granted, some aren't a result of idle existence, but c'mon. Renting an arbitrary car periodically ends up being the most tolerable option. A small temporary expense when it's really needed or desired, and it's enough to remind me of the good and bad bits.
- jfim 2y agoDepends where you live, and how much of a hassle it is to get a rental car. If you live somewhere with decent public transportation and good car sharing infrastructure (eg. walk to a nearby car share and unlock the doors with an app or a card vs Uber to Hertz and wait for an hour to sign paperwork), then yes that's a viable option. For many places in the US and Canada, that's not viable unfortunately.
- quailfarmer 2y agoThey’re not black boxes, you’re just not an electrical engineer. They’re actually way simpler than ICE in a bunch of ways that really improve reliability. We just need to develop a collective understanding of how electric drivetrains work, the kind of understanding that we had developed in previous generations for ICE cars
- wrycoder 2y agoLOL, you should give it a try IRL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41970406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41970406
- quailfarmer 2y agoYeah I read that thread, it sounds like great progress! Really makes me think about the hardware I put out into the world professionally, and if I could realistically have reversed engineered it with no prior knowledge. Cryptography is probably the real game changer here, secure boot, attestation, message authentication. Can’t exactly blame automakers for wanting those features, given the stakes, but that would make reverse engineering fairly impossible.
- Etheryte 2y agoThis is a funny comment because that's almost exactly what I have a degree in. The point here isn't the engine though, even though those are also a separate beast, but rather that all of these vehicles are packed to the brim with a bunch of chips with internet access and you have no idea what's really running on them. With electric cars we're seeing even more of this than with ICEs.
- quailfarmer 2y agoSorry, a quip in bad faith. Collectively, _we_ (would-be car maintenance people) are not well enough versed in how these types of systems are designed. This is a collective failure, lack of documentation.
- glitchc 2y ago
- stavros 2y agoCut the antenna on the modem?
- PopePompus 2y agoI think the antenna(s) is in the little shark's fin on the car's roof. Could a Faraday cage be made to cover that?
- stavros 2y agoI'm fairly sure that yes, though you could also cut the cable. Access might be tricky.
- bigfatkitten 2y agoOn a modern Ford, just pull the fuse for the TCU. Everything else keeps working as it always did.