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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Great article! Makes me wonder if in 40 years people will write about how to (not) get an old Tesla Roadster or BMW i3 going again? Although, rather than pumping the acceleration 4 times to get enough gas into the engine so it will start, that will probably begin with hacking the car's system so it allows you to start it...

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I've been saying for a while now, there will be no more 'classic cars' starting after the mid-1990's because of the failure of electronic parts that will not be able to be replaced. The best that will happen is people using the shells to 'restomod' them into new cars that look old. Even today, it's much easier for a beginner to buy a broken 1970's car and get it running than a broken 1990's car.

You underestimate the enthusiasts. I just recently bought a refurbished “distance system” computer (aka cruise control ecu) for my 89 325i. I have, on order, an original head unit with blue tooth retrofitted.

Electronics won’t be the Achilles heel of old cars. Gasoline will be. But make no mistake. Old electric vehicles with their max 10-year life span of battery banks won’t enjoy the life of a classic either.

The aftermarket for mid-century American cars is huge.

as a guess it would go something like this:

step 1. prepare a usb with files needed to jailbreak the car and be able to connect to your wifi

step 2. setup a home network with dns/ntp and a reverse engineered tesla server that will authorize the car to work

step 3 set date to reasonable values that the car will accept

step 4 do some button dances to start the car from the usb

…

ill leave the rest to your imagination

You will also need a Raspberry Pi 19 and a GSM transmit module to impersonate the old-timey cell towers they used to use. You can purchase one for about $3 or so and run this script...

After you have hand built a new battery that fits it, built a LCD shim to connect to whatever the latest standard is, etc.

Older cars are simpler, both in total, as in the requirements to retrofit replacement parts. Your average machine shop/etc will be able to keep that 914 running for the next hundred years. And when they stop selling gas, you can convert it to run on everclear.

Well, with the battery breakthrough of 2034 old Tesla's will run on two double-A's for 1000 miles.

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