241–250 of 317 posts
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The reason for all that telemetry is the legislation. How do you think they are going to implement the full “intelligent” speed assistant in 2027?
An onboard database and a GPS receiver?
Huge privacy violation. I would just close down this business. Unfortunately it's a state cartel, and even part owner. They'll change the constitution to save those criminals
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Revisit frequency and spatial resolution aren’t high enough to meaningfully and uniquely identify vehicles without additional data.
I doubt VW cares about real time locations of all their vehicles. Only government officials at the DMV care.
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To a large extent this depends on the car and depends what you mean by "old". Modern cars vs. 1970s cars? The older cars are completely hopeless. Modern cars vs. 15 year old cars? The older cars may have had things like ABS and side airbags as options rather than as standard, but you can find one that has them that doesn't have cellular telemetry.
Hmm yeah but anything over 15 years isn't really viable as a daily driver anyway. Then you're getting to the point where you start having serious issues every year at the mandatory mechanical check. Then you're getting into old-timer drive once on a sunny day territory. I always bought medium sized cars at 10 years when they're already only a grand or two. The smallest ones are made so cheaply that they're already to…
More like every couple months on the road, from my experience in having driven one. Just this year here are couple of things that have occurred:
>glowplugs burnt out
>air-mass sensor failure
>faulty abs-sensor
>fuel nozzle malfunction
>brake failure
>engine back support failure
>short circuit after worn-out manufacturer divider causing massive sparking, heating and a drained battery
Some additional fixes identified recently not yet fixed:
>faulty brake booster
>moisture buildup(?)in door mechanisms leading to it sometimes not opening from inside
>rust buildup in some parts, needs replacing before reaching important bits
>transient misfire/spray/clog on acceleration leading to computer shutting off engine power
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The Polestar 2 is pretty good in this regard. All the most important things are on the steering wheel stalks, steering wheel buttons, and a few buttons for things like demist, play/pause and volume control on the centre console. There's still a lot on the touchscreen, including climate control, but it seems to hit a pretty good balance for me (and I'm not a fan on car touchscreens).
I love my Polestar 2. But there's gotta be a better way to do touchscreen climate controls. I've had mine for 8 months now, and had to google in order to figure out that the car had dual-climate zones—it's really hard to tell from the swipe-up page, so I just assumed it didn't have that feature for a while. Plus, I don't feel comfortable changing the climate settings while driving, because I might hit the wrong touch…
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I once worked for a firm that had access to credit card transaction data and came across almost this exact scenario. Kindergarten transactions one day, escort payments on another. It was — and still is — creepy. An average Joe like me shouldn't be able to pry into someone's private life like that.
My theory is that most people think about data misuse, perhaps unconsciously, from the viewpoint of your average good person. E.g. "if I got a hold of a stranger's bank information, then I'd be tempted to steal from them." Instead they should think from the perspective of an evil person. E.g. "how can I proactively use whatever data that I can get to hurt someone." For example, at a previous job I went to my managers…
From experience, they usually come up with some variation of "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" [1]. And even those who buy the idea that private information could be used against them, most of them don't believe that someone would do this to them. What seems to be missing is understanding of how scalable and automated these attacks can be in the digital world.
[1] Amusingly enough, one of those "I have nothing to hide" people was pretty shaken when they asked me to take a look at a scam email that said "Hello , we have photos of you watching porn. Pay us or we'll post them on Facebook."
Has anyone had success with informing people about these types of abstract dangers? I find that people either get it almost immediately, or they never really get it until it happens to them.
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modern cars are unfortunately much safer
To a large extent this depends on the car and depends what you mean by "old". Modern cars vs. 1970s cars? The older cars are completely hopeless. Modern cars vs. 15 year old cars? The older cars may have had things like ABS and side airbags as options rather than as standard, but you can find one that has them that doesn't have cellular telemetry.
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Dangerous as hell. Imagine there’s a runaway truck behind you and you can’t speed up to avoid or at least soften the collision because of some government enforced handicap. It would also give local governments a power they never had before: To directly control your behavior in the moment, with no judicial control or oversight. No, thank you.
Interval cameras (checking your speed over a length of road, using ANPR) are very effective at slowing traffic in the UK. Although you still get people in expensive cars driving 20mph faster than others; maybe undeterred by fines, or using false plates. The system can tell you if there was a runaway truck (at your time and location), so an appeal should be easy for that uncommon situation.
- Speed of every car on the road is recorded continuously.
- If you stay within the limit, you pay nothing. For each second that you are faster than the limit, you incur some financial penalty, where the amount is calculated based on both the speed difference and the purpose of the limit (pedestrian safety vs. noise pollution, for example). In extreme cases, you can lose your drivers license.
- Speed data is also made available to your insurance. So drivers know they won’t get away with somebody else paying for any damage they may cause.
As a driver, I very much prefer this not to exist. But I think it would be the right thing from a “veil of ignorance” perspective of justice.
We need a way to disable vehicle telemetry. No, a software switch is not enough. We need to be able to physically unplug the cellular modem entirely and have the vehicle work with 100% functionality (barring features which inherently require cellular connectivity like turning the heating on remotely) Car manufacturers' features are mostly useless anyway thanks to Android Auto/Apple CarPlay
I'd rather focus on standardizing a transparent and privacy safe way to gather these metrics. Consumers would know what metrics are collected and there would be guarantees that privacy is kept. There are ways to accomplish this today.
Providing a way to disable metrics is never going to be sufficient for anyone other than a power user.
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And I'm skeptical that it is. Happy Friday.
I rode in a 1948 Oldsmobile three days ago. No app needed. At this point the ignition switch is so worn the key is actually optional.