I can imagine that a law could be made to mandate car manufacturers or dealers or rental companies to list all the possible failure scenarios that cars might not work properly, and present the drivers some warning labels or sort. It shouldn't take that much effort to list all the possible cases by hierarchically inspect smaller modules (just like checked exceptions in Java), and it doesn't have to be very precise. Like most drugs warn about possible death due to its use, there's no reason that we couldn't expect cars and other safety related industry to follow a similar standard. Just like drugs, scaring potential customers away is a part of its cost (and benefit).
When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
31–40 of 192 posts
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the battery is flat on the car then you are still pretty much out of luck even if you can get in. The only advantage to being able to open it is to use it as shelter in a emergency situation
> If the battery is flat on the car then you are still pretty much out of luck even if you can get in. With an EV yes, but not with an ICE. Just keep a jump box in your trunk.
These "jump boxes" are amazing! I used to keep big jumper cables and have AAA in case of a dead battery. Last time AAA came (after I waited hours...), they just pulled out a little "jump box" and instantly started my car. I found and bought a random one on Amazon (there are dozens -- https://www.amazon.com/s?k=car+jumpstart). It's very small, can also be used to charge a cell phone, as a flashlight, etc., and really works. Every ICE should have one of these in the trunk.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#33Friend in Seattle had this experience when trying to use a zipcar truck out of a garage while moving (i.e. Limited time window to get stuff out of one area to another). Ended up calling support, dealing with multiple hours of delays. Despite the issues which has led him to avoid Zipcar these days, he uses ReachNow (now defunct) and car2go (now called ShareNow) regularly and AFAIK ReachNow didn't have these limitations when on long out-of-range trips - they solved the problem by doing sortof a two-factor of having an RFID card (to unlock, on window) and a pin code (entered via the BMW iDrive system to start engine).
I could argue Zipcar has a deep integration problem needed to solve the out-of-comms scenario. They try to support several car vendors in order to have different car types (toyotas, mercedes, ford vans) which limits them to having this cellular-dependent setup. Whereas Reachnow (BMW), car2go / Sharenow (mercedes / smart), and limepod (fiat, for now) have limit the car type for better integration.
In a related front, a friend moved into an apartment building with some bluetooth-based laundry vending machines. The machine requires blootooth, and the payment is done via phone which requires a cellular connection. The laundry room (like any basement area) has a spotty cell connecition, so the friend does some weird positioning exercise to find the area where he can have a cellular connection while still being connected over bluetooth to the laundry machine. Strange future.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bit about the cell phone discharge seems pretty unlikely. A charged car battery has at least 2MJ of stored energy. GSM in its highest-power mobile station state draws 800mW. Add maybe another 150mW for the GPS, call it 1W total. The battery should power such a phone for weeks. You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20…
Your smell test is a bit misleading in that most car batteries have a drastically lower energy density than Lithium Ion cells. There’s still a lot more energy in the car battery, of course, but not by nearly as much as a naive comparison of the weights would suggest. If it had the energy density of your cell phone, the lead acid battery in your car would only weigh 5 or so kgs. Your cellphone will also last a lot les…
OK, here's another test. A common way to end up with a dead battery is to leave the lights on overnight. The lights on a car draw over 100W (standard halogen headlights and incandescent tail and marker lights). But you can leave your lights on for hours and still start the car. Therefore it stands to reason that the same battery could power a GSM radio for hundreds of hours.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#35I can imagine that a law could be made to mandate car manufacturers or dealers or rental companies to list all the possible failure scenarios that cars might not work properly, and present the drivers some warning labels or sort. It shouldn't take that much effort to list all the possible cases by hierarchically inspect smaller modules (just like checked exceptions in Java), and it doesn't have to be very precise. Li…
The car manufacturers probably already do a FMECA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failure_mode,_effects,_and_cri...) analysis.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bit about the cell phone discharge seems pretty unlikely. A charged car battery has at least 2MJ of stored energy. GSM in its highest-power mobile station state draws 800mW. Add maybe another 150mW for the GPS, call it 1W total. The battery should power such a phone for weeks. You should be able to smell-test this fact by considering that your mobile weighs nothing and runs all day whereas a car battery weighs 20…
Anecdotal, but if I leave a USB charger plugged into the cigarette socket, without even anything plugged into the usb, it drains my battery overnight.
getting your battery tested might be useful too.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That depends on the vehicle. If it's an ICE with a manual transmission, and you can get it moving fast enough, you can pop the clutch to start it. This depends on just how dead it is on newer cars. If it's able to run the electronics but just unable to crank enough to start, this can work. If it's dead enough that you can't unlock the doors it's probably also dead enough that the fuel pump, ECU, etc. aren't going t…
Good point. I should have noted that I've only done that with a 60s VW Bug. Just to see, I have turned off and restarted my ~10 year old Civic, going down a hill. But not with the battery disconnected. Maybe I'll try it. Not now, though. Edit: And upon reflection, maybe not. Because I'd have to pay someone to reset the computer. Edit: But wait a minute. If the vehicle is moving downhill, and you engage the clutch in…
Don’t do it with battery disconnected, it can cause the voltage to go too high and you may fry things. Back in the day only bulbs, nowadays who knows.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That depends on the vehicle. If it's an ICE with a manual transmission, and you can get it moving fast enough, you can pop the clutch to start it. This depends on just how dead it is on newer cars. If it's able to run the electronics but just unable to crank enough to start, this can work. If it's dead enough that you can't unlock the doors it's probably also dead enough that the fuel pump, ECU, etc. aren't going t…
Good point. I should have noted that I've only done that with a 60s VW Bug. Just to see, I have turned off and restarted my ~10 year old Civic, going down a hill. But not with the battery disconnected. Maybe I'll try it. Not now, though. Edit: And upon reflection, maybe not. Because I'd have to pay someone to reset the computer. Edit: But wait a minute. If the vehicle is moving downhill, and you engage the clutch in…
It wouldn’t surprise me if newer cars require a higher battery charge to start, which means you would need to roll the car for longer, or (worse) don’t effectively charge the battery at all at lower speed because the partially booted system takes too much power, so that you need a higher speed to start charging the battery enough to power the ignition system.
Also, are there cars where you need the electronics to disengage the brakes?
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#39I got banned from using Zipcar last year. I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked in the parking lot at my condo building. About 50% of the time, the car would not unlock. In all cases, I successfully contacted Zipcar who informed me the only thing they could do is tow the car (usually 24+ hours later). The parking lot had no cell service. O…
Honestly, the ban sounds justified to me. If you know that parking in the garage will lead to a 50% probability of them having to tow the car, repeating this is just unnecessary. It would obviously be better if they could handle such scenarios but ignoring a known limitation to incur cost to others (since you have no advantage as you also can't use the car in this scenario) sounds wrong to me.
Re: When I Took My Zipcar Into the Wilderness
#40I got banned from using Zipcar last year. I lived in a condo building with an under ground parking lot in SF. A few times I rented a Zipcar and left it parked in the parking lot at my condo building. About 50% of the time, the car would not unlock. In all cases, I successfully contacted Zipcar who informed me the only thing they could do is tow the car (usually 24+ hours later). The parking lot had no cell service. O…
Zipcar should get banned from such stupid practices and almost liquidating fine for customer deception.