Comment by cm3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cm3 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm counting the days until cars will be weaponized remotely via rich text message received on your onboard entertainment/computer system which isn't physically disconnected from the vehicle controller because it at the minimum accesses status info.

Some grave accident is the only way mandatory minimum standards and improvements will be had, unfortunately. It would be enough to disable breaks remotely for regulation to appear.

It's ironic that (semi-)autonomous driving will improve safety, while all the added software and network connectivity will accelerate the need for software quality requirement as used for airplanes, because software defects will be deemed lethal. I really hope it will happen before someone or something remotely causes a vehicle to cost lives. That said, I suppose a vehicle would turn off the motor if everything else (sensors, actuators, ...) fails.

> I'm counting the days until cars will be weaponized remotely via rich text message received on your onboard entertainment/computer system which isn't physically disconnected from the vehicle controller because it at the minimum accesses status info.

I still don't get why car companies don't just put a diode between the vehicle controller and the infotainment system, and make it physically into a one-way-push system.

On the other hand, once self-driving cars are a thing, that point is almost moot... you need an internet-connected device with incredibly complicated code to run one.

The infotainment system is the least of your worries, the telematics device which is little more than a cellular radio connected to the CANBUS present in most newer vehicles is.

And AUTOSAR (to someone unfamiliar with its details like myself) seems very complicated, although it's probably warranted.

Why isn't GPS plus lidar and friends enough, give that the map data is already available in detailed resolution on local storage? Internet isn't yet as pervasively, reliably, always available as it should be, so I wouldn't want to wait for a connection in my autonomous vehicle while I'm on probation and have no license.

Real time traffic information and ability to try to talk other vehicles more than few metres away are few use cases I think of autonomous vehicles can benefit from using the internet

Satellite internet is reliable enough for low bandwidth operations when cellular range is not available. It can also be a soft dependency , I.e. your car will still run when there is no connectivity, just not that efficiently.

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