Hacker News Reader

Comment by Etheryte | Hacker News Reader

Electric cars are essentially black boxes. When you take it apart, you have largely no idea what any of the chips do, even if you chase down what they're connected to. Is this the infotainment system or is it the infotainment system and a data gathering system that sends all my data off seas? There's no way to know. Old cars don't have that problem. Here's an engine, here's a gearbox, add a radio if you'd like, but by and large it's possible to grok what's in your car. With newer vehicles in general, and electric cars especially, it's near impossible to tell.

View on HN

But that's not a gas vs. electric distinction, but rather an old vs. new one. Modern ICE cars have all of those problems too.

Yes but the point is, this technology is a blocker for people who might otherwise be interested in an electric powertrain vehicle.

If you want an old car without all this crap, you can get one. But it pretty much has to be an ICE.

You can convert any ice car to an ev. I takes time but is straight forward

For various definitions of "you." That's far beyond the reach of the average consumer.

So pay someone to do it for you. The free market has a solution.

It's odd how anti-hack Hacker News has become.

Time, money, and lots of knowledge and skill. Actually, lots of time and money too.

It’s really not a practical thing for at least 99% of the population. Probably more like 4 or 5 nines.

Sure. Other than being extremely expensive unless you've got the skills and facilities to do all the work yourself, and have the time and money to get all the engineering certifications required to make it road legal.

If you can do it all yourself, it's only moderately expensive.

In the us at least homebuilt cars slide through a lot of loopholes. And since you are coverting a car you automatically get many things that made the car road legal.

Bild your own electric in an old style body? Fun, if nothing else.

Also time and expense.

Probably not a good idea as the battery weight wouldn't have been figured into the original chassis/brakes design.

Right, you need to do that engineering yourself. And ICE engines are heavy, so it typically is reasonable to work out as the lighter engine compensates for the battery weight. It is a design task, not a project killer.

If modern EVs are anything to go by, the battery weight will be substantially more than the weight of an ICE engine plus gearbox etc. But yes, it'd be for the hobbyist to figure out the details and whether it is safe enough to drive.

The EV version of the Hyundai Ioniq is only about 60 kg heavier than the hybrid version and at about 1 500 kg is not much over the average for cars of its class.

EVs really are not a great deal heavier than the ICE versions of the same or similar vehicles.

The Jaguar I-Pace EV is lighter than some variants of the F-Pace ICE.

Hyundai offers an EV version of the Casper: it's 1335kg vs 985kg for the petrol variant. Surely that's a great deal heavier? The Aygo finds an all-electric competitor in the Renault Zoë whose battery pack alone weighs 300kg, a hefty increase compared to the 70kg engine of the aygo. Volkswagen's up! comes in at 929kg; the e-up! registers at 1229kg.

Regarding the I-pace vs the F-pace I was unable to find more than a single version with a greater weight than the I-pace, though I admit I haven't analyzed the specs of all 108 editions. That single example weighing more was, of course, a hybrid.

EV versions are, primarily due to the weight of their battery packs, significantly heavier than their ICE counterparts and that's fine.

I'm not sure modern EVs are anything to go by. They are trying to meet the needs of a broad audience whereas you know exactly what you need out of a vehicle. For example, if you only need a 50 mile range, not 250, that is 80% of the weight down. No major manufacturer would put that out, but most drivers do less than 50 miles a day.

There are all kinds of design choices that can be made to fit completely within the original specs of the chassis.

I’m honestly amazed there are not more conversion kits. Pull the IC powertrain and gas tank, replace with battery and electric motor. It’s obviously way harder than it seems or I think a lot of folks would be doing it.

They actually even make cars exactly like that. They’re pretty compromised cars though. An E-Golf for instance is just what it sounds like: they took the existing Golf and made it an EV.

I think the main issue is that it takes a lot of engineering from the ground up to make an electric car with good range and performance. Maybe if batteries get significantly better, then conversions will get more popular.

> this technology is a blocker for people who might otherwise be interested in an electric powertrain vehicle.

This surely isn’t a large group.

Maybe in a decade or two, your assertion will evaluate closer to true.

I think legacy auto did a good job promoting this tho

Yeah, its the same stuff that I've been told for decades now. TBH, it is probably less true with a lot of EVs than it was with the gas cars. ECUs are pretty strict and sometimes hard to hack.

Meanwhile, third party motor controllers for Tesla motors exist, and the batteries aren't exactly magic.

There's really nothing about electric drivetrains that makes anything vastly more locked down.

Yeah if the world went in the direction that prepper types seem to get wet dreams about petrol ICE cars would only be usable for a year or so - petrol has a shelf life, and you ain't running your own refinery.

A lot of diesels can run off of any vaguely fuel-like liquid you decide to put in them, so I'm sure sufficiently knowledgable people would keep those running, machining parts for them etc.

But electric vehicles are by far simpler than both of those, and generating electricity is easier than producing fuel you can shove in a diesel engine.

petrol ICE cars would only be usable for a year or so

The Internet really overstates this. Fuel injected systems are sealed. Carbureted systems are open to outside air, so the fuel is constantly evaporating, leaving residue behind, and absorbing moisture from the atmosphere.

Gasoline in a sealed container remains usable for far longer than people on the Internet say it will.

Anyway, the final state of an apocalypse car would be running on wood gas. North Korea runs some or all of their military trucks on it (this may have changed as they've increased relations with Russia). An episode of Car Talk explained how it was used by German civilians during WWII:

https://www.cartalk.com/radio/show/1201-20-miles-wood-chip

You can make an ICE run on wood gas which is arguably more apocalypse proof than electric.

Generators can run on that to charge an ev that is also chargeable by solar panels, wind mills and water mills.

All combustion engines, generators included require maintenance. Having n+1 requirements doesen't sound like a benefit to an apocalypse. In general consumer cars really don't fare well without well-mainained roads though, so they'd not be that useful to begin with.

>But electric vehicles are by far simpler than both of those

Electric engines might be, but battery tech for sure isn't. Building a combustion engine + fuel vs. building an EV battery is a whole different game.

They’re not black boxes, you’re just not an electrical engineer. They’re actually way simpler than ICE in a bunch of ways that really improve reliability. We just need to develop a collective understanding of how electric drivetrains work, the kind of understanding that we had developed in previous generations for ICE cars

LOL, you should give it a try IRL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41970406

Yeah I read that thread, it sounds like great progress! Really makes me think about the hardware I put out into the world professionally, and if I could realistically have reversed engineered it with no prior knowledge.

Cryptography is probably the real game changer here, secure boot, attestation, message authentication. Can’t exactly blame automakers for wanting those features, given the stakes, but that would make reverse engineering fairly impossible.

This is a funny comment because that's almost exactly what I have a degree in. The point here isn't the engine though, even though those are also a separate beast, but rather that all of these vehicles are packed to the brim with a bunch of chips with internet access and you have no idea what's really running on them. With electric cars we're seeing even more of this than with ICEs.

Sorry, a quip in bad faith. Collectively, _we_ (would-be car maintenance people) are not well enough versed in how these types of systems are designed. This is a collective failure, lack of documentation.

Unless you have the complete source code available to you, this is a patently false statement.

Yes, reverse engineering is labor intensive.

Expensive too. Your test harness is likely the car!

Problem with gathering data off cars is that it's really not that effective vs your phone. A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time, while a phone is with you 24/7, likely powered 24/7, and already has telemetry mechanisms built in. An old car with someone using a phone probably still collects the same data as you assert.

And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.

In theory I can disable most if not all of the telemetry coming out of my phone, though. I can also choose to leave my phone at home, knowing that it's likely there's still something on it that's collecting data on my movements, even if I've been careful about disabling and uninstalling things.

But the car is largely a black box when it comes to its electronics, and if I need to drive the car somewhere, I can't leave the black boxes at home; they come with me wherever I go.

> And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.

Sounds fine to me.

> A car realistically just sits around doing nothing 80% of the time

A bit besides the point, but isn't it wild how inherently wasteful personal cars are? Every time the thought crosses my mind to get another one, if I don't stop at the cost, I stop at the fact that I'll have this giant chunk of metal sitting idle on the street or somewhere else nearly all the time. It'd be useful in an extreme minority of cases (for me), but I/we pay for it all the time by allocating quite a lot of space and money to them. The tires, the insurance, taxes, fuel, charging stations, driveways, parking garages, natural resources, air quality, ambient noise, senseless deaths, it's crazy. Granted, some aren't a result of idle existence, but c'mon.

Renting an arbitrary car periodically ends up being the most tolerable option. A small temporary expense when it's really needed or desired, and it's enough to remind me of the good and bad bits.

Depends where you live, and how much of a hassle it is to get a rental car.

If you live somewhere with decent public transportation and good car sharing infrastructure (eg. walk to a nearby car share and unlock the doors with an app or a card vs Uber to Hertz and wait for an hour to sign paperwork), then yes that's a viable option. For many places in the US and Canada, that's not viable unfortunately.

True, and that really does constrain where I'm willing to live these days. There's some threshold probably where I could deal with owning one in exchange for some hypothetical benefit of living in the boonies or something, but for the foreseeable future I get too much personal value out of living on the west coast.

It's not always suitable mind you. Extremely short random day trips are the trickiest, which might tip me at some point if I'm making decent money again, but it's so hard to get to a point where I could rationalize that as an occasional leisure luxury instead of a burden.

I wouldn't move to another city though for any reason that would require me to own a car just for getting around. If they ain't investing in viable transit, they won't get my income tax.

Selfdriving taxis solves much of the 98% unused car problem.

They also create problems in terms of extra journeys as a private car will go from A to B, whereas a taxi goes from C to A to B to C.

It's quite amusing as people try to come up with more efficient use of cars and typically end up reinventing public transport (e.g. buses, trains etc).

Bro just platoon the autonomous taxis into a convoy, give them separated lanes, and get rid of the rubber wheels and add steel wheels and steel lane guides for maximum efficiency. It's obviously new and revolutionary!

Those extra journeys can be minimized with decent routing software. Even if it's as simple as ending up at B, then going directly to the nearest customer waiting for a ride.

And fwiw, if Tesla gets their robotaxi stuff working, their 22-passenger "robovan" is basically a bus anyway, just without a driver.

Their demo event showed a 14-passenger vehicle, but anyway.

I doubt that's a big factor.

The big thing they do is to make a huge number of parking spots obsolete!

There will also be far fewer cars doing the same transportation work.

Sounds like maybe you don't need a car. That's good for you, and I truly mean that. But that doesn't mean it's the case for everyone. It's a big, diverse world out there.

Um the fact that some people in some (less developed?) places need cars is not an argument against cars being wasteful...

Unless your idea of "diverse world" is confined to (suburban) North America, the need to own a car is the exception, not the rule.

Rural southern England here. Public transport is non existant where I live. You need a car if you want a life.

I lost my driving license for medical reasons and have spent two years without driving. I am really conscious of what a car means in terms of having a social life, working, etc. If I was younger, I would have had to relocate

Tell that to the Amish.

Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.

> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.

Yes, it is not the natural state of things but for many people it is the actual state of things. I absolutely hate the fact that I live in a car focussed society but that is where I do actually live. And because of my investment in my house and garden I don't want to move

> Tell that to the Amish.

I had to count to 10 before responding here.

Perhaps you didn't notice the bit where I said I have spent two years without a car. It is something I have thought about a LOT. And have been impacted by. I don't have a convenient Amish community nearby to help me put up barns in my backyard, or even to lend me a horse to ride to the local B&Q when I need to buy a new tool of some sort. I deeply wish there was better public transport - I am not a petrolhead - but there isn't and won't be for the foreseeable future.

None of what you said here makes sense in the context of what you replied to.

> Tell that to the Amish.

The Amish have large populations in the northeast US, not rural southern England.

> Car dependency is something that we've learned, not the natural state of things.

What does this have to do with the fact someone was unable to drive due to medical reasons and learned first-hand how much society was set up to need a car?

Internet dependency is something we've learned, not the natural state of things.

So, try to go about your existence without Internet of any sort and please report back at any difficulties it may cause for you.

This is not about usage. I am not saying we should live without cars. I am saying that there is a very bad systemic issue if people simply can not live without owning a car.

If you want to make a comparison with utilities: The fact that people in Flint are getting bottled water delivered from distant cities (and the fact that some people prefer to drink bottled water anyway) does not mean that this is not a serious crisis.

I am not saying "other people can live without cars, so just suck it up". I am saying "if you are living in a place where you can not function without a car, this is a serious issue and you should be getting the pitchforks to hunt down the responsible authorities that brought this to you."

The Flint water crisis has been over for a very long time.

You understand this pedantry does not take anything away from the point being made, right?

I think a modern life is better than farming with draft animals and handiwork. Especially if I were a woman.

The Amish ride in horse-drawn buggies and hire private car drivers for longer trips.

I'd rather not go back to the days of horses as the primary means of transportation though.

That's not true. Most of the world (by land area) exists outside cities, and outside a city you will usually need to own a car.

80+% of people live in urban areas.

That depends doesn't it?

I keep my cars for a long time. 200k miles is the usual, and that has held true buying used a little ways north of 100k miles already on the board.

If we designed for very long car life, the waste equation would look different.

Toyota does, and there are a small number of people planning on half a million miles. Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?

> Recently there is evidence Toyota is either struggling on this metric. Quality problems or deliberate design intent change?

I'm hoping they fix this. There's almost no other reason to buy a Toyota other than this reliability reputation.

It seems like the way to go now is a naturally-aspirated Subaru, which I ended up after all the Toyota dealers near me treated me like a chump (which apparently is common; Toyota doesn't have as much "say" over their dealers as other similar companies afaik). Subies have basically been iterations on the same engine for a decade (the FB series), and the brand cannot afford to do much goofy R&D. They're also still dealing with the head gasket reputation despite that being >10 years old at this point (almost 20).

Yeah, a friend has a Suburu and we just had this same chat.

My most recent buy was a golden era Toyota and the difference is notable when I look at current models.

Subaru CVTs are not famous for their longevity.

I mean don't expect to beat on them, under-maintain them, etc, like one can a lot of older Toyota gear, but used within parameters, they have lasted my family (almost all of whom drive CVT Subies) well over 1m miles at this point without any big failure.

Key thing is to change the CVT fluid at least at the 60k interval (some countries say to do it every 30k, but that seems excessive). The "it's a lifetime fluid" thing is a total lie; it's the "lifetime of the CVT", so when it grenades itself, that's its lifetime ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Honda is similar without the Toyota attitude. I’d never buy a Toyota, ever.

All of the newer safety doo-dads are less reliable. Where I live, the road salt effectively caps effective lifespan of a car to 180-220k miles. The exhaust and suspension maintenance started to approach or exceed the cars value.

I recently did a Toyota to Honda and back to Toyota cycle.

I liked the overall performance of the Honda. Little things like slightly more aggressive gear ratios, steering and such were superior on the Honda. Economy was almost a push, but the edge goes to Toyota.

The Honda got my attention for service and repair more than the Toyota cars have. And Honda had the advantage overall. My Toyota was older than the Honda, both similar mileage, but the Honda failed earlier. Transmission. :(

I came back to Toyota, but wanting some of the creature comforts offered by Honda, I chose Camry this time. Excellent car. It's a serious, understated, very unassuming vehicle. It performs, feels better than a Corolla did, and still lacks the subtle things like gear ratios that are a bit more fun.

I live where one can put a half mil on a car, if it's up for it. Damn near did that on a Ford Expedition 2000's era vehicle. Guzzled gas, but man! I loved that one for a ton of reasons. Being an active family at the time, the Expy made sense.

For me having the thing just go when I do the maintenance properly matters more than the other aspects do. So, Toyota it is!

*I buy used, 10 to 20 years back, moderate to low mile cars, under $5k. No new vehicles for me. They simply do not make sense.

Now, current Toyota might be a turn-off for me too. The quality issues playing out right now seem worrisome. I hope they get past that.

I'm driving 2000 era vehicles because that was the sweet spot for people like me who will do their own work a majority of the time. I enjoy that, and I know it's done right. It's gone south a few times with shops and I really hate having to navigate that BS.

2000 to 2010, Toyota has me, but Honda is damn close.

So tell me about the Attitude please. Super curious about that. What's the big turn-off? And are you sensing a newer thing, or is this long term, basic?

No judgement or battle here. Just genuine curiosity.

The dealer thing varies by region. I’ve run into stuff with relatives like:

- Difficult basic activities. Like you can’t talk to anyone without an appointment. When you need to talk about something they aren’t interested in talking about, they get busy.

- Aggressive & deceptive upsell on service, as in service advisor demanding an unnecessary $750 repair as a condition to honor a battery warranty.

- Trying to steal deposits for unfilled car orders. “Sorry, we can’t get the car you put a $1000 deposit on, and we don’t do refunds.”

- Ridiculous up charges, scammy deal accessories, ripoff financing and market adjustments. My sister was trying to buy a Grand Highlander, which was a hot car. I think Toyota punishes dealers by putting on allocation for hot cars, so they try to pump every nickel possible.

In my sisters case, it was so insane I was able to find her a better deal for an equivalent Lexus. Whatever contract the Toyota dealers have, they don’t allow the manufacturer to effectively manage the brand.

My experience with Honda is you get the usual car dealer fluff, but they aren’t aggressive. There’s also more dealers, at least in places that I live in, so there’s more competitive juices at work on the sales side.

Ah, I see. It is the dealers attitude you were writing about.

Oh yeah. Some of those ring true for me too. Now, I basically quit buying new, and the shitty dealer experience is a significant part of why. The other part is a lot of cars are being made that I just don't want to buy!

The dealer here presented some of those items. So did a Ford dealer, for what that is worth.

Thanks for sharing. Appreciated

On a separate topic, is there anything to be done about the salt?

I feel for people living where they do that. I like long term car ownership and that seems like a curse right out the gate!

Can the car be treated, washed? Hmmm, our move to negative ground makes the salt worse. Positive ground cars would help a lot with corrosion, but we don't make those anymore. I never learned why that is.

I've been of a similar opinion for many years. I have public transport and my office commute is about two hours and half in each direction, but I only need to go to the office once per week, so it's somehow acceptable.

But I'm getting old. I've decided I want to use my remaining years of any strength to do more hiking, kayaking and camping, and for that I need a car every weekend. Rentals would be slightly more expensive than owning a second hand one. But I do wish car ownership were cheaper and more painless.

> likely powered 24/7,

This is a weird thing to call out. I'd suggest a car is powered as much as a phone. I'm trying to decide for people that have a car and a phone which is more infuriating to not have power.

Kill switches across the battery aren't terribly uncommon

That’s your retort? Do you have numbers of them being anything more than a rounding error? More and more cars need something reset when the battery is disconnected. I can only assume that this will become even more prevalent as a “security feature”. I had after market head unit that used that as an anti-theft deterrent.

On the other hand, cars are much less limited in terms of sensor size (allowing you to determine location and acceleration more precisely, for example), power and permissions. In theory, root permission on your phone would be better, but a normal app won't have this amount of far-reaching permissions, but the manufacturerers have full control over hardware and software on your car.

To me, that makes it their car.

> And an EV without smarts is legitimately just a golf cart.

Not really no.

There’s a gulf of difference between a car and a golf buggy.

And we can prove that by turning your argument the other way and saying: if that were true then ICE vehicles would just be petrol-powered golf carts.

Clearly that isn’t even a remotely accurate way of describing your average car

I mean, besides shape and speed, what is the difference that most people are concerned about. I wasn't aware that golf carts are all electric. I just thought of a golf cart as a car used specifically to traverse golf courses and resorts.

Shape, speed, comfort (better seating), body work, windscreen, lights, gears, radio, air conditioning… I could go on

If people just wanted to drive around in vehicles that were equivalent to golf carts then everyone would own a quad bike instead of a car.

Cars have been around for more than a hundreds years so it’s astonishing to me that some people cannot imagine what a car would look like without the “smart” features

And luddites been criticising cara for being too modern for hundreds of years too.

The Luddites haven't been criticizing cars for anything, given how they came and went 50 years before a first proper car was built.

And, if anything, the Luddites were not anti-technology, they were anti-being fucked over by capitalists. The problem they rose up against wasn't the automatic looms, it was the way they were deployed - to replace skilled workers instead of augmenting them, depressing salaries and eliminating jobs across the industry. The Luddites weren't fighting progress, they were fighting to keep themselves and their descendants from destitution.

Alas, since technology was involved and technology is magic, the misconception about the Luddites has spread wide and persists to date, conveniently distracting everyone from what the actual problem was. Compare with everyone today whining about "tech bros" and the supposed folly of "solving social problems with technology", which is both wrong and entirely missing the real problem, which is the same as the ones Luddites fought and lost to.

Yup, the parallel is the dream of a lot of the AI companies "Hey look, this LLM can maybe come in and do 80% of the work, so maybe you don't need 80% of your staff? Certainly you don't need the most expensive members".

That's effectively the scenario that Luddites found themselves in. Looms came in and decimated previously well paying jobs and the owners of the looms basically told the skilled workers to pound sand.

The luddites were smart.

I listen to the dev guys at work gush about how they are like 40% productive with LLMs, and look at their budget asks. Hmm.

Calling someone a Luddite doesn't mean you're saying they're a textile worker organized by Ned Ludd.

So it doesn't matter what the historic Luddites were or were not, because it's not a statement about them at all.

You know this perfectly well, and are merely pretending to misunderstand what's meant.

> I wasn't aware that golf carts are all electric.

They aren't. Many have gasoline engines.

But "glorified golf cart" was a common dismissal of early (generally pre-Tesla) EV efforts.

Not necessarily. Cars are a great proxy for human behavior.

Long term, cars will be leased based on driving behavior, and more critically, will be taxed based in driving distance and style.

Cut the antenna on the modem?

I think the antenna(s) is in the little shark's fin on the car's roof. Could a Faraday cage be made to cover that?

I'm fairly sure that yes, though you could also cut the cable. Access might be tricky.

On a modern Ford, just pull the fuse for the TCU. Everything else keeps working as it always did.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com