41–50 of 115 posts
The CAN bus, the network interface vehicle components use to communicate was, at least as of a few years ago, the source of basically infinite vulnerabilities. Add in over the air updates or worse, updated bluetooth or radio firmware and you find things like stopping a vehicle remotely at highway speeds[1] [1] https://fractionalciso.com/the-groundbreaking-2015-jeep-hack...
The people behind that stunt were immediately hired by GM.
That's great, but the writing is still on the wall if Toyota doesn't get serious about electric cars. With their current trajectory Toyota is headed at 1000mph directly towards being the next Blackberry, Kodak, Nokia or Blockbuster. I say this as someone who owned a Prius for 10 years and loved it, and have also driven their hydrogen car. The BZ4X is badly named overpriced garbage, not enough and not good enough. The…
> That's great, but the writing is still on the wall if Toyota doesn't get serious about electric cars. It seems they know what they are doing. Toyota is a very profitable car manufacturer, with profit in 2024 more than Tesla and Volkswagen combined. Unlike Nissan, the maker of the best selling EV of all time, who is struggling very hard.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Toyota won't build BEVs in scale, nor will most of the Japanese brands. They can't. Japan can't build the batteries for BEV's at the necessary scale for global production. Yes China controls lithium but they also control some 95% of global battery grade graphite production, and anywhere from 60% to 90% production of manganese, cobalt, and nickle. Not to mention all of the components that those produce like the anodes…
China is in the process of crippling 10% of Japan's GDP in automotive, just by building EVs and EV components and selling them to other nearby countries where Toyota (and other Japanese brands) currently dominate and hae vchosen not to compete in this new format. So we don't need Tom Clancy to generate scenarios where this will be bad for Japan.
https://www.ft.com/content/e33a2cbf-9a7e-4964-8914-c129d2947...
The absolute numbers are still small, but as momentum shifts to EVs, Japan's market share will collapse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPhone did everything the Nokia 3310 did, better. Electric cars do not (yet) do better some things hybrids do, such as being able to be fuelled with 400+ miles of range in 5 minutes. I’m nowhere near the point of wanting an electric car to replace my hybrid. The convenience of petrol and the cost of electricity is too high. High electricity costs aren’t going to be fixed in my country any time soon so Toyota will…
Very little maintenance is one big feature. After 3 years I have only had to change the tires, air filter and windscreen wipers. For long road trips I’ve never had an issue stopping to rest/stretch while fast charging for between 15-30 mins.
My brother had his car (a sleek AUDI) stolen in front of his house. He left the key in the entry hall, and someone extended the range. Are current electronics (the consumer ones) good enough at scale to limit the time the round-trip car-key-car takes?
It seems to me that the security of Tesla cars is pretty good, compared to that of the legacy automakers. You can't hotwire a Tesla.
Securing one computer is relatively easy when compared to the challenge of securing a veritable forest of hardware, as made by numerous suppliers.
Regarding the way that general attacks on car security systems happen, something has gone wrong with how all of it has been implemented. RFID works fine in many other applications, but they are doing it 'back to front' with automotive and it is just too easy to hack. I am not even sure it has been for features people really want. Remotely opening the car before you get in it has convenience value but we got in trouble with that.
My brother had his car (a sleek AUDI) stolen in front of his house. He left the key in the entry hall, and someone extended the range. Are current electronics (the consumer ones) good enough at scale to limit the time the round-trip car-key-car takes?
The only solutions I can see are software based keying and a mobile app or legally enforced security guarantees.
But the car manufacturers don’t give a fuck if your 3 years and one day old car gets stolen. You move to the next competitor, only for the same to happen in just over three years time. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
That's great, but the writing is still on the wall if Toyota doesn't get serious about electric cars. With their current trajectory Toyota is headed at 1000mph directly towards being the next Blackberry, Kodak, Nokia or Blockbuster. I say this as someone who owned a Prius for 10 years and loved it, and have also driven their hydrogen car. The BZ4X is badly named overpriced garbage, not enough and not good enough. The…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really? I think Renault are on a roll at the moment. The Renault 4, Renault 5 and Megan seem really competitive. The new Nissan Leaf (made in UK) also looks pretty good. VAG seem to have lost the plot (“let’s replace all the controls with a small, janky touch system that leaks personal information to hackers”) but their ID.7 isn’t total crap. Comparing Renaults to the Chinese brands I’ve seen (MG and BYD) the Chinese…
ID.7 is the most sold EV model in EU so "not total crap" is an interesting definition. Other ID models are selling well too
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's great, but the writing is still on the wall if Toyota doesn't get serious about electric cars. It seems they know what they are doing. Toyota is a very profitable car manufacturer, with profit in 2024 more than Tesla and Volkswagen combined. Unlike Nissan, the maker of the best selling EV of all time, who is struggling very hard.
Tesla sells nearly as many cars in a quarter (497,099 in Q3 2025) as the Leaf managed in its entire lifetime (577,000 between 2010 and 2022).
That being said, you can’t really compare the sales of all of Teslas to the sales of one specific form factor/model with any kind of seriousness. Nor do I think it’s a fair comparison to compare Tesla that has parted on various hype patterns over the years to tap the zealots into even becoming their free advertisement and marketing departments not unlike how Apple fanboy cult people at least used to be. Toyota is a mature, reasonable enterprise whose sales are orders of magnitude larger than Tesla’s and there are many people’s lives dependent on being reasonable when shifting things, not “disrupt” in a typical tech bro narcissistic way.
For context Tesla has roughly 2 million sales with 125,000 employees, Toyota has 11 million sales with 385,000 employees. I assume I don’t need to do the math for you.
And that’s without going into the various battery issues and the now conflicting electricity interests between EV and AI.