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Comment by wpearse | Hacker News Reader

I'd love to see my Tesla use Starlink LTE.

Whatever local provider my Tesla connects to doesn't have great reception. The onboard streaming music often cuts in and out.

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Starlink Direct-to-Cell isn't normal LTE service. It has low bandwidth, which limits it to messages, voice, and slow data. It is basically 2G or a satellite phone. It would not be enough for streaming music.

Starlink is only allowing text messaging for now. They are going to offer data but haven't announced how much.

It does, however, seem like the perfect medium for collecting telemetry on vehicles, so Tesla will now have a great means of tracking their vehicles locations at all times.

It already has good tracking because most people aren't living in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage. They're not worried about you going off the grid the 1 or 2 times a year you go camping in yellowstone or whatever. If you're punching in your destination using the built-in navigation (there's no carplay/android auto), they'll know where you're going even without cell coverage.

to be clear - it does have like up to 10megabit per satellite, you could totally stream low quality netflix off this service. the tricky part is having to share it with thousands of people (or around 50km area, to be specific), meaning you're metered to super slow 2g-like service.

this is also a noteworthy nuance because you can video call with emergency services using this satellite connection. that's a pretty rare and exceptional circumstance so they clearly allow you to saturate a lot of the bandwidth for that purpose

still super cool technology. 10mbit is like 9000 texts per second, so even in the most dense areas like Manhattan with 1.3 million people in 50 square km, if everyone texts 40 times a day, starlink still has 10x more bandwidth than that. granted people text more during the day, but it'd still be fine for text-only without media.

Cars are probably a pretty good application. Plenty of power available, good view of sky usually (or in a city with cell reception), and stable platform might help with directional antenna compared to handheld.

More power won't help you here, I think: Since this uses regular terrestrial LTE bands and modems, you wouldn't be allowed to use any more in the uplink than a regular phone (i.e. 250 or so mW EIRP).

I could see in-car based Starlink usage in the Ka band, though – the Starlink Mini terminal definitely fits the form factor and power envelope.

Okay maybe not more watts, but the same power can be made more directional with a phased array or something I'd assume? (I am not an EE)

EDIT: Oh, I see. EIRP already accounts for directionality and is measured where the antenna gain is highest. Never mind then!

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