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Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

nytimes.com

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Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#221

Post by Shivetya »

205guy wrote: post #205

Another issue negated by electric cars. No burning fossil fuels, no carbon monoxide in my garage. Ironic that the only mention of EVs in this thread was about how Teslas turn themselves off and lock automatically. It's like everyone is complaining about having to do wiring at colos and some techs getting accidentally electrocuted, while I spin up another instance on AWS. BTW, my two Nissan Leaf EVs have the a keyless…

and here with GM (I own a Chevy Volt) they have decided the phone app provided to remote unlock/lock the car and start it will now be a paid service to the tune of 14.99 a month via Onstar.

Used to be free to use the phone app to do these things. Better yet GM now will collect data from usage and send it to affiliates.

Now I know other manufactures charge for navigation and such after a trial period but GM is going to charge just to use a phone app to unlock/lock/start your car. They have plans with data that go up to 60 a month

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#222

Post by refurb »

hangonhn wrote: post #48

I had a pretty scary run in with CO from my car once and it had nothing to do with the keyless fob. My car with gasoline direct injection had two bad injectors fail while I was driving home. It went into limp mode. When I got home I inserted the OBD2 scanner to diagnose the issue in the garage. Because it was in limp mode, the engine was running rich and I guess producing a lot of CO in my garage. In the roughly 5 mi…

I would say you took a pretty big risk running a car for 5 minutes in a closed space. I've started a car briefly in a closed garage, but we're talking for maybe 10-15 seconds (post oil-change in the winter). Even then I started to wonder if I was taking too big a risk.

5 minutes is a long time!

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#223

Post by justin66 »

zaarn wrote: post #165
justin66 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off. If you say so. I'm pretty sure just turning the car off if there's nobody sitting in any of the seats and the key is not in the car would be a good start.

Even simpler. If two of three conditions are met, switch engine off: * Rising Carbonmonoxide levels * No weight on driver seat for 3 minutes * No driving activity for 3 minutes The first factor alone should already prompt a shutdown though. It wouldn't even matter if the key was in the car, that might happen by accident and isn't a terribly good indicator.

I don't think this is actually simpler. I was deliberately trying to give an example that didn't require any new sensor tech. I don't think the cars have monoxide detectors right now.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#224

Post by justin66 »

kss238 wrote: post #162
justin66 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume implicit to this statement, is that some heuristic algorithm needs to be created to turn the car off. If you say so. I'm pretty sure just turning the car off if there's nobody sitting in any of the seats and the key is not in the car would be a good start.

Have you never turned your car on before you left to heat up the passenger compartment?

> Have you never turned your car on before you left to heat up the passenger compartment?

With the remote start system I have a passing familiarity with, if you remotely start the car and warm it up with no person and no key in the car, the car automatically shuts off fifteen minutes after it has started if someone doesn't get in with a key. Seems to be compatible the simple guidelines I mentioned.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#225

Post by organsnyder »

Shivetya wrote: post #221
205guy wrote: post #205

Another issue negated by electric cars. No burning fossil fuels, no carbon monoxide in my garage. Ironic that the only mention of EVs in this thread was about how Teslas turn themselves off and lock automatically. It's like everyone is complaining about having to do wiring at colos and some techs getting accidentally electrocuted, while I spin up another instance on AWS. BTW, my two Nissan Leaf EVs have the a keyless…

and here with GM (I own a Chevy Volt) they have decided the phone app provided to remote unlock/lock the car and start it will now be a paid service to the tune of 14.99 a month via Onstar. Used to be free to use the phone app to do these things. Better yet GM now will collect data from usage and send it to affiliates. Now I know other manufactures charge for navigation and such after a trial period but GM is going t…

Chrysler is the same way (we have a Pacifica PHEV). Our one-year free trial just ended, and there's no way I'm going to spend that much money for such a small amount of convenience.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#226

Post by kaybe »

ironash wrote: post #193
Angostura wrote: post #180

Not mentioned in the article, but I imagine that this could be exacerbated by the fuel-saving 'auto engine off' behaviour of newer cars... you arrive home, engage the brake and the engine turns off automatically. ... only to automatically restart 15 minutes later when the engine sensors detect the oil temp is dropping.

This happened to me with a hire car. I parked the car and pressed the button to stop the engine. The engine cut out so I got out of the car, locking the vehicle with the remote as I walked away. After some time I was contacted by the security team of the company I was visiting to tell me the engine was running on my vehicle. The auto engine off had kicked in as i pressed the engine stop button, but because the engine…

It just occurs to me that this is probably only an issue with automatic cars since any shift car will just have the engine die immediately if you start it with the shift pedal unpressed.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#227

Post by artmageddon »

aequitas wrote: post #170
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same, and exactly; the car should just shut down when it detects the key is not inside the car. Could someone just get in and drive off? I'm fairly sure this might be true for older models though.

The keyless car I owned would warn and beep like crazy about the key missing, but it would continue driving. Then when coming to a halt and shifting into neutral/park it would deny switching back to drive. So no danger while driving and no risk for stealing.

My Honda CR-V will periodically beep with "NO KEY" lighting on up on the dashboard(say I give my wife the key to get inside our home on a crappy day while I go park the car elsewhere), but doesn't make impose any restrictions on using the car while it's on, regardless of your current speed or gear. Once you shut the car off though, that's it.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#228

Post by organsnyder »

FeepingCreature wrote: post #206
tadfisher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, that's my rule even with properly-running engines: The car won't start until the garage door is open. If I could hack up some sort of ignition interlock such that an Arduino or Pi could broadcast a killswitch signal while the garage door is closed, I could more effectively enforce that rule.

CO sensor outside the car to force a shutoff?

I've thought about installing a CO sensor that would open the garage door.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#229

Post by peterwwillis »

rpcope1 wrote: post #122
peterwwillis wrote: post #91

Here's the thing: leaving a car running and unoccupied is, from an engineering perspective, completely stupid. Running a car on idle for a long time basically slowly degrades it. It's just sitting there getting hot and wasting gas. Without adequate cooling, the engine will overheat. And if you have multiple catalytic converters, the car can explode from built up gases. Many manuals explicitly state not to idle the ca…

> Running a car on idle for a long time basically slowly degrades it. It's just sitting there getting hot and wasting gas. Without adequate cooling, the engine will overheat. And if you have multiple catalytic converters, the car can explode from built up gases. Many manuals explicitly state not to idle the car for more than 10-20 minutes. Do you have a citation for any of this? I think letting an engine idle for ext…

A quick Google search has many different sources, none of which are scientific. One is all the manufacturers that warn against idling, for various reasons based on the particular model, probably. Two is the increased fuel mixture in cold weather, leading to increased wear on cylinder walls from running rich until the engine reaches temp. Three is that cars are designed to operate under median load, not idle: half of how a car cools its engine is air passing over radiator plates, and that doesn't happen when the car is stopped. The engine actually has to work harder to keep the fans going in hopes of keeping temps down (in hot environments it'll just run hard constantly). And in winter it's the opposite problem, with oil viscosity and antifreeze working at potentially the end of their design spec to both keep the engine lubricated and coolant circulating. If it had load it could keep itself warmer easier, rather than depend on all these extra factors to keep from damaging the engine. And all of this for gasoline cars; diesels have a much more difficult time, especially if they're supposed to be fuel efficient.

Now, obviously I'm not claiming idling your car is going to ruin your engine, cars idle all the time with no problem. It's just not at all what the car was designed to do most of the time, and it will cause undue wear in various conditions over time. At the very least an hour of idle is equivalent to driving 25 miles (according to Ford Fleet) and your gas mileage will be worse.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#230

Post by dpark »

twblalock wrote: post #90

If you're reading this and you don't have carbon monoxide detectors in your home, please go buy some. They are generally integrated in modern smoke detectors, and the standalone units are pretty cheap. I'd recommend having one in the garage if you have a gas water heater. But you should definitely have them in the house no matter what.

> They are generally integrated in modern smoke detectors

No they are not. Most smoke detectors do not have carbon monoxide detection built in. You can buy combination units but you should not assume a smoke detector has carbon monoxide detection just because it’s new. Verify that the unit you purchase provides detection of both of you want both in one.

And replace your detectors if they’re 10 years old (or don’t have a date, in which case they’re way older than 10 years).

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