Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll • Hacker News Board

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#251

Post by 3pt14159 » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

y4mi wrote: post #249

3pt14159 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically it is going to be easiest for places with the cleanest power (hydro, nuclear, geothermal, wind) because clean power tends to be non-burstable while fossil fuels are. So in places like France or Ontario what will happen is that the cars will automatically charge when rates are low (at night) and may even help the grid by acting as remote batteries. For example, you could keep your car at a 70% minimum charg…

while also depleting the battery's lifespan. sounds like a perfect opportunity to get careless car owners to destroy their own property for a company's revenue. especially hilarious if the car owner doesn't use an expensive UPS between the grid and the car. I'm sure the next lightning storm isn't too far off - and some of the plugged in cars won't survive it. I'm not against EV though. There'll however be a lot of gr…

This can be modelled with net present value accounting. If, at scale, it is financially worth it for Tesla to manufacture giant batteries for the electric grid then it will also be financially viable for the electric grid to use spare battery capacity.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#252

Post by [deleted] » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

13of40 wrote: post #75

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…

Huh - how about a CO detector on the air intake of the engine that shuts it off if the concentration is too high.

[deleted]

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#253

Post by Angostura » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:03 PM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #226

ironash wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. (I drive a manual shift car in the UK). If you stop the car, put it into neutral and press the foot brake, the engine will stop if conditions are correct.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#254

Post by Angostura » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

NLips wrote: post #189

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.

It won't be the same for all, but my car won't autorestart the engine if I've opened the door i.e. the behaviour changes from - pull up, shift to neutral, engine stops - wait - car worries about battery, restarts engine to - pull up, shift to neutral, engine stops - open door and get out - wait - get back in, engage clutch, car tells me I have to manually restart the car

> my car won't autorestart the engine if I've opened the door

Ah, interesting - I've never tested that, but it would make sense.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#255

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

rpeden wrote: post #215

dralley wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever seen a video of people having to drive through a wildfire to escape?

This video from the FortMcMurray fire is one of my favorite examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieTQvIdG-Vo The craziness starts about 30 seconds in.

I will never cease to be amazed how relatively orderly that evacuation was. Only two people died in that evacuation and that was due to a car crash. I think it's great evidence that, when the going gets really tough, people band together and try to do the right thing.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#256

Post by dsfyu404ed » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:16 PM UTC

schiffern wrote: post #56

joshvm wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, it's a legal requirement in some countries to having a working CO detector in the home, certainly for rented properties in the UK. Also in some (30+) states by the looks of it [1]. A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221133551...

>A $10 detector would have probably saved the gentleman's life. True, but making the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards requiring the $5 sensor in that $10 detector in every vehicle equipped with keyless start (or perhaps, every vehicle) would lead to nearly 100% deployment as the vehicle fleet is replaced. By comparison, despite decades of passing laws and funding public education campaigns, only 33% of househol…

>True, but making the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards requiring the $5 sensor in that $10 detector in every vehicle equipped with keyless start (or perhaps, every vehicle) would lead to nearly 100% deployment as the vehicle fleet is replaced.

It's a trade-off, like everything else.

That those $5/$10/$50/$100 components add 10x their cost to the vehicle in terms of R&D, testing, supply chain, warrenty claims, etc. All that gets passed down to consumers. Increasing cost increases replacement interval and increases the age of the average vehicle. The result is that incremental progress that improves safety takes longer to trickle down through the market.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#257

Post by amluto » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

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…

Tesla has it exactly right. Put the car in park and take the key out to turn it off.

This extends easily to ICE cars, especially newer ones that can auto-restart from 0 RPM idle. When the car is in Park for more than a few seconds, turn off the engine. When the key goes away, turn the rest of the way off. And get rid of the on/off button: it’s unnecessary and annoying.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#258

Post by monkeynotes » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

3pt14159 wrote: post #243

monkeynotes wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still unsure how a country could switch from gas to EV. Could a city keep up with the power demands when everyone plugs in their EVs at night? I am assuming we'd have to build more power generation capacity, and what is the source? How do you transmit all the high capacity power to quick charge stations on the highway when you have 200+ cars an hour needing to quick charge? It all sounds like an enormous infrastr…

Ironically it is going to be easiest for places with the cleanest power (hydro, nuclear, geothermal, wind) because clean power tends to be non-burstable while fossil fuels are. So in places like France or Ontario what will happen is that the cars will automatically charge when rates are low (at night) and may even help the grid by acting as remote batteries. For example, you could keep your car at a 70% minimum charg…

Distributed grid battery storage via EVs is an interesting idea and I'd think a 70% charge would be possible for commuters. However, when everyone gets home plugging in to get back what they supplied out during the day I am curious to see how the network would deal with that load. Imaging Toronto with 25% of households consuming an additional 20kwh a day, that's a considerable change. Apartments in Toronto probably use about 18-25kwh a day on average, you'd essentially be doubling that for a quarter of the city. I'd love to know if that's manageable / what industry experts are thinking. (My numbers are all backed by very crappy quick internet searches and guestimates)

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#259

Post by daveFNbuck » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:48 PM UTC

NegativeLatency wrote: post #44

kemitche wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah but what's the ownership rate of bathtubs compared to keyless start cars?

You’d also have to consider bathtub usage (I shower daily, but only take a bath every couple of months)

If you're considering bathtub usage, you'd also have to consider how many people park their cars in enclosed garages and how many of these cars lack safety features to prevent you from leaving it on.

Re: Keyless Cars and Their Carbon Monoxide Toll

#260

Post by daveFNbuck » Mon, May 14, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

microcolonel wrote: post #131

hedora wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the anti skid pad in my bathtub (which might prevent drownings) is slippery when damp, so I fell in the bath while taking a shower, and could have been killed. I guess that sort of death goes under the “drowning” category, since the bath mitigation can kill shower-takers.

> I guess that sort of death goes under the “drowning” category How could it be? Do you plug your drain when you shower? Are the investigators in your area too lazy to find head trauma?

In my shower/tub combo, I sometimes accidentally plug the drain by bumping the attached drain cover with my foot, causing it to slightly turn and fall into place. This could easily happen if I fell.

Sometimes I have a slow drain and I don't fix the until it becomes slow enough to fill up substantially during my shower. If I were unconscious in the sub with the shower running, it could have enough time to fill up. This would be especially true if my fall caused the water to switch to tub mode, which sends a lot more water into the tub.

I had a friend in college who liked to take showers while pass-out drunk. He flooded the adjoining rooms several times when his unconscious body blocked the drain. Luckily this shower was not a tub or he may not have survived these incidents.