I always assumed that the ecu was cut off until the card was read and checked. Except it would cache in case of parking outside of 2g range.
A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
11–20 of 23 posts
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#12You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely.
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#13This was surprising to me! I always figured my Zipcar wasn't much of a target for thieves because: It has a big Zipcar logo emblazoned on it (slows down turnaround of the car if you're trying to sell it), it has the custom Zipcard locking mechanism, which is tied into the car's alarm system, and each car has GPS in it, which you'd think would lead the cops right to them. Wondering what use these cars are to thieves?…
I would guess they take it to a chop shop and sell it for parts, but I'm not sure how plausible that is since they have GPS (or maybe they all get caught). Perhaps the thieves know the cars have GPS and can disable it in some way before they get to the chop shop.
Maybe a chop-shop with a drive-in faraday cage?
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#14You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely.
Slowing down, without lights, unexpectedly in traffic while modern day humans pay no attention to driving by using their phone? Seems totally likely to cause an accident.
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#15You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely.
> Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely
Doesn't that just not let you start the car? I don't think it turns off the car.
edit: according to [1], OnStar "can limit the speed at which it can be driven, remotely lock the ignition so that it can’t be started, and track the car’s location".
[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/09/07/how-tech-mak...
(as for the original question, even ignoring situations where you need to have acceleration to get out of them, just cut the power steering on someone who has never driven without it and see how well they pull over to the side of a busy intersection or the like)
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#16You cant have a remote cutoff option due to lawsuits. What if a zipcar got turned off on the highway and caused an accident, they would be sued
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely.
Stopping the engine also means you'd loose power steering, and more importantly power brakes.
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
How could killing the engine cause an accident? I guess it could be a problem if you were stopped on a railroad crossing, but really?. Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely.
> Pretty much all cars on sale today come with an immobilizer built in, and services like lojack and onstar allow you to activate it remotely Doesn't that just not let you start the car? I don't think it turns off the car. edit: according to [1], OnStar "can limit the speed at which it can be driven, remotely lock the ignition so that it can’t be started, and track the car’s location". [1] https://www.bostonglobe.com…
> just cut the power steering on someone who has never driven without it and see how well they pull over to the side of a busy intersection or the like
Having had power steering (and power everything else) go out on me in an F250, it's pretty much kind of terrifying. Brakes? Sort of. Steering? Sure, if you put your back into it.
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would guess they take it to a chop shop and sell it for parts, but I'm not sure how plausible that is since they have GPS (or maybe they all get caught). Perhaps the thieves know the cars have GPS and can disable it in some way before they get to the chop shop.
Maybe a chop-shop with a drive-in faraday cage?
Maybe they wrap the whole car in chainmail on the side of the road
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#19I always assumed that the ecu was cut off until the card was read and checked. Except it would cache in case of parking outside of 2g range.
If whenever there was connectivity the reader pulled of a list of card allowed to unlock the car on that day, and with a lookahead of a few days in the future.
Then I think something like that would be fairly guaranteed to work.
Re: A Zipcar a day gets stolen in SF – here's how they stole mine
#20I'm a former Zipcar employee. There are some interesting things about Zipcars, one being that if the car can't get a phone signal, it will allow any Zipcard to unlock it (since the car can't know for sure if that card has a reservation).
Also, in the UK, there were instances of the more expensive cars being taken to garages and having some parts swapped out for cheaper parts and sold on the black market.