Self driving 1993 Volvo with open pilot | Hacker News Reader

Self driving 1993 Volvo with open pilot

practicapp.com

Very cool! I love the Volvo 940- it stands out as one of the best quality, and best designed cars ever made. It's an incredibly mature design evolved slowly from the Volvo 140 in the 1960s through the 240 in the 70s and the 740 in the 80s, and by the 940 they worked out almost any possible issue. I only wish one could have gotten them with AWD and a fuel efficient diesel (they had the latter but it was not sold here in the USA).

The author seems to have a lot of electrical hacking knowledge, but didn't know some car stuff that could have made getting these controls installed much easier:

1) They could have just swapped in a newer BOSCH ABS pump, which can activate the brakes electrically without involving the brake booster. European cars started getting these when they got traction control in the late 90s, but I believe some would be virtually (or maybe even exactly) a direct swap into this vehicle. I was able to do this in a VW with about 10 minutes of work, which uses the same basic ABS systems as Volvo. This is assuming the car already had factory ABS which I think most (but possibly not all) 940s did.

2) They could fix the steering problem by swapping in an entire electric steering rack- they're fairly standard dimension wise, installing a fully manual rack from a Volvo 240, or adding an A/C compressor clutch to the hydraulic power steering pump to disable it above parking speeds (the only time torque would be high anyways). Moreover, these racks are strong enough to simply work with the hydraulic assist removed, because people in the Volvo racing/performance community do it all the time.

3) This car does not have a carburetor- it is electrically fuel injected. You can see the fuel injectors and rail above the throttle body. This could be just a mistranslation if the author is not a native english speaker. However, more importantly there was a factory system on this car to electrically control the throttle for the cruise control. They are missing those parts, but they are cheap and common, and would have just dropped in to a bracket and cam already on his engine. They consist of a vacuum servo on the throttle itself connected to a box that can actuate this with an electrical signal.

Author here! Super surprised this made hackernews

It does indeed not have a carburator (I wrote this while half asleep on a plane, I meant to say that it has a mechanical throttle/air valve which is cable operated).

It also doesn't have ABS (although I believe this was an option on the car starting this model year), so swapping out that pump wasn't an option. The iBooster is a great and easy retrofit, definitely recommend!

Haven't done it yet, but I'm just going to lower the pressure of the hydraulic steering by shimming the regulator, should be enough. It already steers somewhat ok without this mod too

Great to hear from you, and awesome project. I had an early 90s 240 that did have ABS so assumed incorrectly that yours would. Dropping the hydraulic pressure sounds like a really good idea, hope that works!

I am not sure about that particular car but some cars have a electrically switched valve on the power steering pump which lowers the pressure for higher speed travel (less responsive). You may be able to get "some" control just by disconnecting this (assuming it is there, my 93 Mazda 626 had one).

No, the power steering system on these is entirely hydraulic/mechanical. I’m surprised Mazda had such a feature so early.

I have a Xc70 now, from the year they stopped making these brutalistic work horses, and having owned a 740, v50 and a V70 before I believe this is peak "herrgårdsvagn". Nowadays the large Volvos like the v90 are stupid Chinese luxury cars that I will never buy.

They are masterpieces for people doing actual miles. Workhorses are for neglect and occasional cargo load. Completely different things.

I'm sure some of their later cars after the 2/7/9 series are quite good cars, but they just don't appeal to me.

As someone whose first car was a 740, I'd drive one again in a heartbeat.

Did everything you needed a reasonable car to do, well, and just kept on going.

>This is the only major actuator that I couldn’t easily find a suitable modern automotive solution for. This is mainly because newer cars don’t have carburators anymore, but rather use direct injection and advanced engine control units.

Actually injection system is largely independent from throttle control. Required amount of fuel is calculated based on manifold air pressure sensor, so there were cars with fuel injection and cable operated throttle plate. I suppose the problem was with plumbing in modern throttle body as carburetor needs to be upstream of throttle plate.

I'm kind of shocked Volvo was still making carbureted vehicles in 1993. That is very late to still be using carbs.

It wasn’t an american car. Did they have OBD I style regulation in Europe? I think that might have been the driver for electronic injection.

Europe didn’t have mandatory OBD until MY2001. The US (driven by CARB) was well ahead of Europe on emissions regulations in those days!

My buddies ‘96 Taurus had a distributor cap. I was floored.

It’s not, the author either does not know what they are talking about and/or is mistranslating to English. You can clearly see in the photos that this car has electronic fuel injection, but simply has a physical throttle body- something that most cars still had for about a decade after this vehicle was made.

80's and 90's Euro's were mostly using MAF sensors, a hot wire that detects how much air is passing, not MAP+Temp sensor. That came a little later but all the LH systems at the time had MAF sensors

would the distinction not be on wether the vehicle is turbocharged? or did they use map/maf regardless?

the turbos also used the MAF, its on the intake side so theres no pressure. They're not very reliable. It wasnt until I think saab came out with the trionic system that a single computer controlled boost, fuel, and timing all together. Prior to that you had a few independent brains. ECU setting fuel, timing sometimes with an EZK brain, etc.

Yup. T5 used a combination of MAP and temp sensors to do its fuel mappings. The system was able account for fuel quality by adjusting the spark timing and boost amount via controlling a solenoid valve down to whatever the actually physical waste gate spring was set to.

The later T7 system involved a MAF sensor behind the intake, while still retaining the temp sensors and MAP but changed the fuel mapping in the system to be a speed - density system for greater control and better boost handling with large temp and altitude changes. (T5 shot for a pressure value t7 shot for a target air mass).

There is software called t5suite / t7suite that allowed you to remap everything in the ECU, basically letting you modify the system in every possible way but not making you do all the setup that a complete stand alone unit would make you setup. It was and is, amazing. You could flash an ECU via BDM interface out of car, and in later T7 models actually make real time changes on a laptop that would immediately take effect. Later you could write them to the ECU flash (it requires more than 12v to flash, although some people rigged things up so they could also flash the memory in car).

Good times. I still have a t7 Saab on my lawn. My custom tune isn't the best, but it went damn good.

Interesting to note, the MAF in the t7 could be placed on the pressure side of the world and it would work perfectly fine minus the fact that they would die a lot quicker due to oils and such on the pressure side of the turbo. People sometimes did this as it was the only way to run a true blow off valve for cool effect. If the MAF is in the stick location and you do not recirculate that air, the car would be fueling for XYZ air density but you'd have dumped some out of the closed system and it ran rich as hell and like crap .

hello fellow saab.

T5 is awesome. I have a T5 setup in my 88. Works great!

Amazing story! I have been involved in openpilot development for the past 5 years, and I am always interested in the user stories of this project.

I drove my car 2500 miles on Openpilot this holiday and it was wonderful. I took over maybe 10% of the trip and let automation handle the rest. That said, there are many many many areas of improvement and I have devoted this year to creating an openpilot fork to bring it's ADAS functionality closer to modern vehicles (read: tesla).

I will Show HN the first release!

"I would like to subscribe to your newsletter"

But, in seriousness, if you don't mind pointing to your GH fork that'd be awesome, in case I miss the show hn

My wishlist, as soon as I work up the nerve to build and flash my own image, is:

- recognize lane change blinkers and decelerate (since currently it only decelerates once the car has intruded into the lane). I am aware of the innumerable edge cases about this, but it still seems like it should be a pretty safe (and polite!) change to make

- recognize multiple brakelights and lay off the accelerator; I believe it currently uses the radar from the car immediately ahead but if 75% of the other cars have their brakelights on and the car in front is just lazy or driving aggressively, there's no reason for the Comma to cause me to further that chain

really nice to haves:

- have it recognize speed limit signs and adjust the cruise accordingly

this change is related to my desire for it to decelerate on exit ramps versus screaming into them at 65mph and then whining because the curve is too sharp for its speed. If it recognized the "recommended speed limit" sign on the exit ramp then we'd all get what we wanted, and if the exit ramp was going into a new highway no driver action would be required (versus exiting into a stop sign intersection)

- have it recognize stop signs (and yellow or red lights would be awesome). I don't need it to detect traffic or whatever, but I also don't enjoy it screaming at stop signs and red lights at full velocity causing me to have to take further action

- I need to investigate whether the Comma is bright enough to know I have an electric car and to merely let off on the accelerator versus applying the brake. My car also has multiple levels of regenerative braking, so I'd be open to it taking that into consideration but for me personally I always run in the highest level of regen because that's how my BMW i3 drove and I got used to it

So a lot of this is already solved in open pilot forks. Take a look at sunnypilot as it uses open map data to provide speed limit control. SLC will automatically adjust your speed based on the speed limit (I do not use this on auto mode because of false positives). Sunny pilot also includes vision and map based curve speed control which will use map data (curvature of the road) to predict safe speeds and can backup that prediction with vision based estimate of the turn speed. In experimental mode, open pilot can detect stop signs and certain models will stop for stoplights (duck amigo).

If you take your fork to the next level, look at frogpilot. It uncovers all of the tweakable inputs to the driver model. This enables you to customize your driver model to your preferences including less aggressive braking and faster acceleration.

Open pilot at its core (and thus all forks) supports one pedal driving as far as it needs to maintain 1) speed, 2) distance, 3) acceleration velocity. The car will accelerate when it deems the desired speed is below the target speed. It does this as long as there is space and will do so at a certain acceleration profile. It does the same in reverse, except it will apply brakes if safe distance is violated. As such, it will reduce the amount of gas to maintain distance or stop applying gas entirely prior to brake application. This would be your one pedal driving.

That said, there are a few underlying problems that need some major revisions to fix. Like the model was trained with a majority of drivers coming from California. Thus open pilot models tend to prefer the California stop, which will slow to 5mph and continue through the stop.

While OP can handle curves with ease, it excludes certain inputs. such as the angle of the road and thus will approach and predict a slower speed than the car can actually take. It does not predict actions from cars in other lanes. And while the blinker is a good indicator of head fakes, the model could very well be extended to observe the direction and speed of adjacent cars and adjust itself accordingly. On that same topic OP models do not care about pedestrians and will happily pass them with 6” of clearance.

This and a few more things are on my feature list that the software needs, like the ability to avoid potholes and slow over speed bumps. Full disclosure: I do not think this is possible with the current generation of comma hardware but that’s why we clicked the fork button!

How aggressive is the driver monitoring with Openpilot? I don't personally see a lot of purpose to driver assistance systems that won't let you, for example, eat with both hands while it keeps the car centered in the lane.

Very cool. But is this allowed to drive on public roads in Sweden? I would have assumed that swedish laws are very restrictive to these kinds of DIY modifications. Amazing if it is allowed!

Definitely not allowed. The route they are taking requies the car to be road legal. These modifications make it definitely illegal on public roads on Sweden and Finland. It's often not enough to pass MOT (which this car wouldn't in the Netherlands, where it seems to be registered at), you need to get type approval to make it road legal. Dutch government has a nice English page about it: https://www.government.nl/topics/general-periodic-inspection...

I hope they don't require a crash test ...

Individual approval does not require destructive crash testing.

Great! :)

Individual approval, not type approval, at least in most of the EU. Type approval is for manufacturers.

The same approval used to get thousands of otherwise illegal huge American trucks like Dodge Rams on Dutch roads, incidentally.

I only understand this topic a bit because I write software for authorities that do vehicle registrations and in some cases individual approvals (type approvals are done by others) in an EU country. And my takeaway from contact with them is that they have a huge leeway in individual approvals, so I would put the blame squarely on them, and the solution would be to legislate that away (ban those ind. approvals that are obviously circumventing the usual road vehicle restrictions incl. size, noise, pedestrian safety etc).

my mistake. it's mentioned as individual approval in the link too.

To me it sounds extremely unlikely a car with such heavy modifications would be allowed on swedish (or finnish) public roads.

Very cool project though!

The simpel solution is to register in Poland, at least here in Germany that's the normal way for ICE to EV conversions.

Doesn't Germany have any EV conversion shops that has supplemental type approved kits?

Most countries in the EU are pretty fascist concerning vehicle modifications. So it probably falls on the Pulp fiction end of the spectrum "It's legal but it ain't 100% legal."

That's why it was mind blowing for me (Europoor) to see hot rods and things like that on public roads in the US.

There truly is more freedom in the US than there is in Europe in that context.

Land of the free, home of the noise pollution

And pedestrian fatalaities. Although to be fair the autobahn is more fun than the highway.

Hotrods are dissappearing quickly. They cost too much. They are a pain to insure and have very low resale potential. As the culture changes, cars are moving from personal expressions to comodified fashion statements. It is rare now to even see a repaint driving on the road, let alone major engine mods. Hotrods are now just expensive weekend toys alongside boats. The market for RV mods probably now double the north american market for car mods.

Not sure where you’re getting your information. There is a huge market for classic cars. Ever heard of Concours? Most of that crowd like to keep them stock, but there are tons of sub-genres like drift kids and Stance nation to name a few weird ones. Hotrodding is alive and well.

There are car shows in most major us cities featuring hundreds of tricked out, restored and modified cars.

The classic car market regularly appreciates. Just try to find an Alpha for a good price, or graph the price of a 1970 911 over the past 30 years. Also you can insure a classic for cheap since they see less road time, are garaged and generally well cared for. (see Hagerty)

As for getting hotrods and restored classics on the road. California has half a dozen classic car rallies where roadworthy classics get out on the road for a couple days.

I assure you the culture is alive and well.

A "hot rod" need not be a "classic car" and I'm sure that most Europeans don't know nor care about the nuance that we understand as Americans.

They mean "that 5.0 Mustang doing burnouts at 2am" not a '32 Ford coupe.

Correct. It has moved from a home hobby to an elite show. The number of young (ie poor) people doing tuning up their own cars is practically zero. The average young driver cannot change a tire, and I'd bet that half those under 30 have never even popped their hood let alone modded anything. Hotrodding is now all rich people "getting stuff done" by shops, always on their second or third car. The closest we see on the street is the occasional muffler mod, usually only installed as the cheaper option after the stock pipe has worn out.

There are many young people (myself included, though not nearly as skilled as most) that are modifying their cars in pretty substantial ways. Just in my own friend group there are multiple under 30 with their primary car being a heavily modified sports car. I myself own 2 relatively old sports cars (90s Acura, and 00's Audi), both obviously in manual, both of which have had significant work done in my driveway. The way that I would frame it instead is that the concentration of interest has increased. Nowadays with social media, etc, there are infinite ways to learn about, do, and compare various modifications to cars. People who do not care about cars are now in a position where essentially zero knowledge is required to use them as a method to get from A-B. However, those who are interested in it for process of building itself still exist, and the resources are better than ever. For the time that I've been around, I've been seeing increasing, not decreasing, interest in older car platforms primarily for the reason that they are easier to work on compared to new cars.

FWIW I haven't heard the word "hot rod" in a long time, so that could be some indicator.

It's not to say that "nice cars" are disappearing though. When I was a literal child in rural Appalachia, the standard fare Dream Car was a Dodge Viper or a Corvette and I did indeed admire those cars. But tastes certainly change as you get older and while I still have a "nice car", it's of a different breed than the All-American Dream Car.

I'd dare say that demographic died off and hasn't been replaced due to cultural and economic shifts. Also, the whirl of a turbo is a more appealing sound than the roar of a supercharged V8, to me anyways.

Edit: and yeah those types of guys just drive a lifted diesel truck with giant wheels now. At least they can do work with them.

There has also been a disheartening shift with supercars that, imho, has damaged the industry. In the 90s, if you won the lottery you could buy a Lambo or a Ferrari and have one of the best cars on the planet. Become a top lawyer/doctor and and you could buy one too. Today, the elite cars require one to win the lottery multiple times. The market for cars worth 10m+ and even 20m+ has exploded since the 90s. Something like a Zonda now cost more than the flyaway price of a Learjet. Kids don't dream about great cars anymore because, short of marrying a world leader, there really is no possibility of attaining such things. They instead dream of tictok fame and one day owning their own house in the burbs.

Vintage hotrods might be dropping off but off-roading culture has exploded where I live and you’ll see heavily modified Trucks, Jeeps, 4runners, and Broncos on a daily basis.

I think car culture just takes different forms (In the 70s and 80s it was American hot rods, the 90s and 00s JDM and Euro, 2010s and 20s it’s all about trucks and diesels).

There is freedom to run it in a track where the only person you can kill is yourself lol, definitely not on public roads where you can kill and maim other people (not to mention pollution, noise, etc).

If feel rules about cars are such an obvious example of "your freedom to punch ends where my nose begins" that I'm not sure if the comment I'm replying to is satire x)

You are correct that it probably won't be allowed. But your assumption that Sweden is restrictive isn't. I see that you live in Stockholm, so maybe you already know this, or you haven't spent much time outside the city in recent years. Almost every medium and small city in Sweden now features 16 to 17-year-olds driving old cars electronically or mechanically converted to only run at 30 kph (~20mph) without requiring a proper driver's license, adequate noise reduction, exhaust system and until recently not even winter tires or seatbelt. Making roads slow and dangerous, and the local environment much worse for everyone else.

Now I don't expect this to be well-received because of "cool hack" but it is truly a major issue. Other issues like the high housing costs, bad healthcare, lacking infrastructure, mediocre education and a short-sighted population are all hard to solve. But this issue is clearly a priority. Swedish voters and politicians are prioritizing this over providing a good quality of life at a decent cost to enable education, research and knowledge based businesses.

The result as a whole is that almost anyone who can is moving from these cities to bigger cities that don't have these problems, but are also so expensive that engaging in activates with high growth potential isn't viable. With grassroot hacking, small- and medium-sized business and major growth startup ending up being a fraction of what they have been and even more so should have been now.

> features 16 to 17-year-olds driving old cars ... converted to only run at 30 kph

I had to search to see what you were referring to:

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230320-sweden-s-teen...

As I understand it some of the cars are newer cars electrically modified (usually the previous family car, often a station wagon). Those are mostly wasteful by driving at slow speed with only two seats and no storage (which are also rules to be able to convert them). These can be converted back to a normal car when the driver turns 18 and gets a proper driver's license. But it is also possible to disable the electronic limits. Other cars are pemanantly converted much older cars and sold as such. These are the ones that are also bad cars without the regulation affecting a normal car.

Edit: Someone infamously converted and registered a heavy truck this way. Legal to drive as a 15-year-old with a moped license.

https://www.expressen.se/nyheter/eddie-15-har-en-lastbil-som...

Any chance the law will be changed before things get further out of hand?

Seems like the original target was mopeds? But somehow cars and trucks were included?

There are constant debates about them in Sweden. Especially after fatal accidents or incidents involving teens driving at speeds above 100 kph. [1][2]

The original law considered tractors and other farm equipment, AIUI. You can drive these so called A-traktor with only a moped or tractor license when you're 15.

[1] Swedish article from 2022 with some examples (there are many more since then): https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ungdomar-manipulerar-a-tr...

[2] Example police chase: https://youtube.com/watch?v=CqcEqhXWiYE

This comment seems out of place to me. It brings up (claimed) political issues irrelevant to the topic at hand.

The account is recently created and this is the first and only comment/post they've made on this site.

Car regulation is relevant to the topic, and so is car regulation of modified cars in Sweden which they are planning to drive through and a statement was made on. I have thought about this. It is something that is discussed a lot in Sweden. But not available outside it as those discussions are in Swedish, and also not held by everyone.

I'm interested in quality of life because I spend a lot of time working, organizing thing and doing projects. This is also on topic. But as such I don't have that much time. Or at least not enough to end up getting stuck here instead of doing something more important. I've found that the best to manage that is not to hold a regular account. My first account is however many years older than yours.

Sometimes I do have some time or find the motivation to post, because sharing information about something you know about to others who might not know about it but have thought about something I haven't is something that is harder to do anywhere else than on the Internet. In this case how the freedom to tinker with a car can affect the long time viability of creating bigger things.

Unfortunately your comment doesn't seems out of place. It's very much part of why I'm not around a lot. It simply isn't worth posting anything when I have something better to do. (Which isn't really now since I'm on a train to Stockholm with little else to do considering the holidays).

The political issues are all somewhat valid, but like most political issues rather more complicated (and also more debated) than described.

I’m not sure whether the commenter speaks Swedish or not, their username seems to suggest they do (sv_SE is the language code for the Swedish [country] dialect of Swedish [lang]) but their comment reflects a phenomenon I’ve both experienced and witnessed:

Swedes are more likely to discuss policy issues in Swedish (and all of these issues are debated back and forth with varying degrees of success). Our grasp of English is mostly contextual since it’s a secondary and utilitarian language for us. I think it’s easy and natural for an English-speaker to mistake hitting language barriers as ignorance. That can extend into the ESL-speaker [English as a Secondary Language] feeling belittled, and eventually you get this effect of people just avoiding English because you associate it with feeling stupid. We get the French-waiter-that-clearly-speaks-English-but-refuses-to trope.

On the other side of that fence we have ESLs butting in on domestic affairs in English-speaking countries because we happen to speak the language. That makes us appear elitist and judgmental, too.

Apologies for deviating further from the topic.

Going back to the legality of the car: It’s complicated. The police claims it’s illegal to use autopilot on their website, but there’s a blurry line between adaptive cruise control/lane assist and autopilot. The competition requires cars to be insured, hopefully that insurance company is aware of the modifications and can advise the owners on what they can and cannot do. https://polisen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/ost/2024/mars/autopilot/ [swedish]

More practically, if they use country roads and drive somewhat near the speed limits, they’re not likely to run afoul of the law unless they’re in an accident.

If the author is here, I’d urge them to remember that a moose is practically designed to bypass a car’s safety features and kill you. There are a quarter of a million of them in Sweden. Invest in good tires and headlights, drive carefully, and avoid hitting wildlife or reindeer.

How does it make the roads more dangerous?

Disregarding just being teenagers (using their phones, doing burnouts), not having a proper driver's license (usually a 20+ lesson affair in Sweden) and driving old cars without safety systems; driving at less than half the speed of regular traffic in a smaller city or a more rural area means a lot of dangerous overtaking as the standard road is one lane in each direction (especially where the terrain doesn't allow for much more) and these cars are not allowed on highways. Since you are allowed to choose high school in Sweden, some choose one further away and driving. Making such roads congested.

I was thinking it’d be similar to tractors, which I’m guessing are already legal (but maybe I’m wrong!)

It's normal cars regulated as tractors, because at some point it was considered useful to use cars as tractors. But as you can now convert them electronically, they are used at scale for convenience. So it like driving behind a tractor, but there are many tractors going back and forth to school, the supermarket and friends in rush hour and on weekend. All day, every day. And the drivers are very overrepresented in not behaving well on the road.

Here are some examples.

https://youtu.be/EprqvxTF5vI?t=92

https://youtu.be/RfhIPGVDQ2Q?t=461

https://youtu.be/wTkM5Cknobc?t=509

They tend to lead to more unsafe overtakings since getting stuck behind one is stressful, they’re driven by young people who have a license to drive a moped and haven’t gone through the ice-driving classes a regular Swedish driver’s license includes, and the cars are often older inherently unsafer car models lacking proper maintenance.

And a chunk of people driving them violate the framework and drive extra passengers, bypass the speed limiter, and drink and drive.

Adults that hate kids tend to do dangerous overtakings because they just can't chill for a bit at 30 km/h and so on. It's not the kids and their tractors making the roads more dangerous.

It's the same crowd who blame cyclists for making the roads more dangerous because drivers "have to" overtake them in dangerous ways.

As someone who has spent a lot of time in a literal tractor at comparable speeds I dislike drivers like you more than I dislike drives like them because once a few of you stack up behind me the situation becomes far less straight forward for drivers who want to pass and doing so becomes far more dangerous for them, which endangers me.

Just pass the damn tractor. You're not doing anybody any favors by being "patient".

I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.

I've grew up in the countryside and worked on a farm as an adult and don't agree with you despite many hours in tractors, with and without trailers, on public roads.

>I'm not going to risk my life or that of my kids, I'll wait until I can do a safe overtaking.

What I hear when you say that is:

"I will follow you for several miles ignoring whaat other people would consider fine passing opportunities (and me waving my arm out the window at you trying to get you to go around) until a bunch of pissed off traffic stacks up until some guy with a Dodge Charger (or whatever, you get the stereotype) comes along and decides to pass us all at once in a sketchy way, to everyone's detriment"

And from there it goes one of two ways. Either you get the message and pass me at the next decent (to the average person, not you) opportunity or you squander that opportunity and the second guy in line passes you both of us at a reasonable time and that repeats.

Now, obviously when someone who gives off those sorts of vibes shows up I'll pull over at the first available opportunity to force them to pass but when you're talking a 2-lane with no shoulder and ditches and a combination too long to use a driveway as a pull off it could be awhile.

Listen, I get it, not everyone can pass, some people have higher standards than others for . There's people towing trailers, there's heavy trucks, student drivers, old people, shitboxes running on three cylinders, etc, etc. But that doesn't make the situation safer and for a normal person in a normal car in normal conditions to subject themselves to that is just, ugh.... misguided

If you want to make things up, maybe don't send it to other people unless they asked for it?

You're missing the point.

The kind of people who won't pass (where reasonable, as defined by the average person) a tractor or moped or whatever in the name of safety are not creating a net increase in safety. They are creating a cluster fuck, which comes with a decrease in safety.

That's some hypothetical person you made up.

> because they just can't chill for a bit at 30 km/h and so on.

Driving 30 km/h instead of 70-80 km/h would drive anyone insane, it would effectively double your travel time.

Those aren't cars, they're tractors.

It’s carbage, so if it gets caught, impounded and destroyed, I’m sure that’s all part of the fun of the experience.

That's great until the self-steering mechanism drives into a pedestrian or gets the driver into the hospital. Insurance sure isn't going to pay out and even if it does, no amount of money can undo injuries.

These rules aren't in place to annoy people who have fun with cars, they're a public safety issue. Until OpenPilot is confirmed to be safe enough to be road legal in Europe (I doubt it ever will be).

Having a 1366kg vehicle under complete control of a system with the disclaimer

> THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.

with hardware that was cobbled together in a garage somewhere, taking this thing out on the road is pure insanity.

I wonder why you’re getting downvoted, these are good points.

“pure insanity” I mean cmon, hyperbole much? Y’all sound like people who have never operated a motor vehicle in less than ideal conditions.

Im sure you’d change your mind if it killed or maimed a relative of yours and you were suing the vehicle operator. It’s irresponsible at the very least.

It’s on a cross-country rally through sparsely populated countyside in the dead of winter. The risks seem negligible to me. The assistance may actually make this safer than without it on such a grueling 1000km/day distance, much of it spent driving in the dark.

The hardest to safely drive, with most risk to others safety, in the most densely populated areas of Sweden and Finland.

The well maintained highways would be much safer. Not even considering the autopilot.

> It’s on a cross-country rally through sparsely populated countyside in the dead of winter

The people who live in that sparsely populated countryside wouldn't agree with you that the risk seems negligible. To drive on ice (which some of the roads turn into if it rains/wet-snow then gets cold), with experimental technology on country roads sounds like a recipe for the car to end up in someones living-room.

The worry isn't the crappy car, it's that you can't get 3rd party insurance for it(or if you do, it won't pay out as your car isn't road legal). So yeah if you crash into a tree that's no big deal, but if you hit a Ferrari that's a problem as your insurance pays out nothing.

That depends on regulation in specific country, they might be mandated to pay out.

About no way this is legal. The throttle set up looks dangerous - any issue with the servo and it won't fail-safe to closed throttle like any drive by wire throttle body.

I would doubt that one could get it insured for use on public roads. Is having liability insurance a requirement for operation in Sweden and Finland?

Third party liability is mandatory in the EU afaik.

In practice it is legal until the yearly inspection or a police man says otherwise. If there is an accident I guess there might be negligence liability.

> Luckily [the accelerator servo] is also the only actuator that doesn’t come with major safety implications

This is giving me chills, what if that RC servo gets "stuck" at full throttle? I suppose the assumption is you could hit the clutch, but depending on the specific situation there might not be a lot of time for realizing what's happening and reacting accordingly.

Wasn't that the supposed cause of all those Toyota crashes a few years back? People claimed the accelerator was stuck on full, and pressing the brakes did nothing, but the actual cause was people panicking and slamming on the accelerator instead of the brakes?

That and improperly sized or installed floormats catching the pedals. There are many examples of people hitting the gas instead of brake, freaking out, and hitting it even harder on the IdiotsInCars subreddit. Here's one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/xj8540/they_u...

As discussed in that thread, apparently this mostly happens to “2-foot drivers,” people who use one foot for the gas and one for the brakes. When in a state of panic or surprise, they can accidentally mix up which foot they need to stomp down on and end up slamming down the accelerator instead of the brakes.

I know some countries have very....."easy going" attitude to drivers ed, but surely.....especially if most of your vehicles are automatic.....you must have been told that your left foot never leaves the floor or you're going to seriously hurt yourself, right???

I and everyone I know around my age was taught to only use the right foot for both brake and gas, but apparently it was relatively common in the 1960s or so for drivers (at least of automatic transmissions) to be taught the 2-foot "method". I have nothing to back that up other than anecdotes on the Internet, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration

One outcome of this is that driver floor-mats are no longer free-floating; they clip in to the floor, so they don't shift.

A car's brakes are required to be able to overpower the engine at full throttle.

Despite not being mentioned directly, the car is almost certainly manual so in case something like that happens, you can just shift to neutral (or even just press the clutch)

I assume part 2 will cover gear changes. Whilst not addressed directly, there are hints that it's a manual transmission (which would square very well for a 1993 Volvo bought in Europe), such as the clutch also being operated with hydraulics. I doubt a retrofit of a new transmission is in store, perhaps a clunky automatic clutch instead?

Though an auto wouldn't be expensive or hard to find. In that part of the world you could probably score one for free.

Fortunately, the picture of the car reveals its number plate, which means we can just look up.[1] The RDW data doesn't seem to include transmission type (at least from my glance), so I went to AutoWeek instead.[2] Here there is also no mention of transmission. My guess is that means it's a manual, since automatics would be the exception, and thus noted. I could also be wrong, I am not Dutch, and thus not completely familiar with the sort of data their vehicle registry would include.

[1] https://ovi.rdw.nl/ [2] https://www.autoweek.nl/kentekencheck/HN-FZ-69/

Since he explicitly mentioned a hydraulic clutch and needed to provide a separate fluid reservoir for it, it's a very safe bet to say the car is a manual.

As an American, every car I've ever owned was statistically included with an automatic transmission. Strangely, none of the cars I've owned have had an automatic transmission.

Subaru was making CVT automatic cars back then that were even worse than the awful CVT cars of today. That would be my pick if I wanted to do a 30-year-old self driving car.

https://japanesenostalgiccar.com/the-subaru-justy-pioneered-...

In Europe, statistically nearly every car older than 10 years is manual. With the recent improvements in automatics they are finally catching on in Europe.

You may be able to find an old automatic or CVT car in Europe, but you would need to look for a while

I take it you meant to write every car older than 10 years is a manual?

Thanks, I obviously need more coffee. Fixed above

Volvo made automatic versions of its cars from the late sixties onwards. A colleague had an automatic 244 in the early 1980s.

Here in Norway automatics are not finally catching on, they are ubiquitous and the driving instructors' association is campaigning to get the rules changed so that you can pass the driving test on an automatic and later simply do a conversion course to allow one to drive manual.

And of course it will all be moot quite soon because EV sales already outnumber ICE sales nearly nine to one here. Volkswagen and Hyundai no longer sell ICE cars in Norway. Volkswagen still sells ICE vans and pickups though.

Volvo is one of the exceptions though. I have friends whose parents are Volvo-people. Their cars have been automatic since the 80ies.

That's because Europeans prefer small cars, in which automatics really sucked until maybe 15-20 years ago. They were inefficient and heavy, and the engines in those cars didn't have a ton of excess power.

It's a different story in large sedans/wagons.

I suppose they didn't bother with that, and the system basically only works for cruising in 5th gear, which is what the car was likely doing for the absolute majority of the 6000km drive. You'd lose out on having "self-driving" in slower traffic where gear shifting would be necessary, but it's still hugely useful.

An automated manual retrofit that actuates the gear stick and the clutch could work.

"I think part 2 will be about the wiring and the custom ECU I designed to keep the actuators happy, and to implement things like the cruise control buttons, as well as reading out the speed, blinkers, …

After that, I’ll do part 3 explaining (and open sourcing) the code on the ECU and the openpilot port."

according to freely and readily available specifications, the 1993 volvo 940 had an automatic transmission.

> One minor complication with this retrofit is that the clutch was also operated hydraulically with brake fluid from the same reservoir, so we had to add an small extra tank (the iBooster master cylinder tank doesn’t have a port for this).

and apparently european 940s did come in a manual five speed, despite the fact that manual was not offered on the 940 in the us.

i stand corrected. live and learn.

I would never do this, but I'm glad there's someone out there who is brave enough to. It will make for a great story!

Wow what an amazing blog post!!! When will part 2 come out??

I saved this story to understand more about cars and inspire myself and others to DIY stuff, great!

You can add radar to a comma 3x? I thought it was vision-only. That’s interesting. Thanks.

the openpilot model can accept forward facing radar as an input

This is terrific. I’m trying to get it running on my older Subaru. Will see if I can hook this up if I can get that working.

This is an uphill project. I spent 3 years getting my last car supported in open pilot and it honestly felt like a waste of time when I picked up the keys for a car with less digital hoops to jump through. I plugged and played and immediately had a platform to test on vs a test bench of wires which always had a new error when you powered it up for the first time

We also found a diminishing return the older the car we supported. So now we are currently only focusing up to gen n-1

Reasonable. I’ll give it a crack. In the end, it’ll be useful on the minivan I end up getting for the fam

This is fantastic. I've been wanting an RC car for years, but I've never bothered to buy a car for this. This post has inspired me to try it myself in 2025, though mine will probably not be self-driving.

I really enjoyed this post, well done.

Nice project. Wow.

Sidenote: Since 2018 all my cars are carbadge. Restored fully a CLK 200 Kompressor and Jaguar X308. I cannot stand the current cars. Neither designwise nor tech. There is a lost art of honest design, aesthetic and pure functionality in today's automotive logic.

All the infotainment needs you have is live in your phone/tablet. You can use it with every carbadge car you can imagine.

I enjoy my cars. They are stylish and reliable. Something that I would not say about my 2016 BMW 6. Next stop Toyota Land Cruiser from 1995.

I must say, the elegance of a vacuum brake booster stands out in contrast to the electrical variant. Barely 5 parts, stamped steel probably.

Then, in contrast, the electric power steering assist seems so much easier compared to hydraulic, just because of the fuss that hydraulics introduce. I may be a bit biased from dealing with rotted 90s hydraulic power steering systems.

Nice build! I work on...similar actuators and, well, it's a lot easier to just drive the steering column. :)

Comma is actually hosting a hack in February, if anyone is feeling up to trying something like this on another "vintage" car

https://blog.comma.ai/comma-hack-5/

Very interesting build. Safety-wise it seems fine with the blatant exception of welding the steering column. A steering column could see very high torque, especially if e.g. power steering fails. The author even alludes to this twice but does not address it directly.

> Safety-wise it seems fine with the blatant exception of welding the steering column.

See the fatal accident of Ayrton Senna. Shortened and welded steering column was exactly the cause of the accident.

Looks like they did a bad job at it though:

> Lorenzini stated: "It had been badly welded together about a third of the way down and couldn't stand the strain of the race. We discovered scratches on the crack in the steering rod. It seemed like the job had been done in a hurry but I can't say how long before the race. Someone had tried to smooth over the joint following the welding. I have never seen anything like it. I believe the rod was faulty and probably cracked even during the warm-up. Moments before the crash only a tiny piece was left connected and therefore the car didn't respond in the bend."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ayrton_Senna

And the forces on a formula 1 steering column are also higher than on a road car, I imagine.

A proper weld should be very strong, I don’t think welding a steering column in itself is bad.

If a professional race team cannot make that weld properly, why do we have faith in amateurs doing it for the first time?

If that’s your bar for DIY stuff, you couldn’t do anything at all.

With enough time, everything will be messed up by a professional at some point.

If some electrician makes a mistake when wiring a house and it burns down, does that mean that I can never trust myself to wire something myself?

Arguably you have an advantage over the professionals because at least you’re motivated to do it properly because it’s your own life on the line.

Edit: for another half-serious analogy: if a professional race car driver ever crashes while driving on a regular road, does that mean I can’t drive myself? Because even a professional made a mistake while doing it, so how can I be trusted to do it better?

A professional race team working under time pressure on a car going 3 times faster and where weight is a concern.

Amateurs can take their time, it makes all the difference.

A professional race team is trying to build things that are just barely adequate and are working under crazy deadlines.

Amateurs are free to throw more metal at the problem.

If done badly, yes. There are lots of competition cars (rally cars I have direct experience of) with modified and welded columns that haven't had issues in extreme circumstances. Providing the welding is done to a high standard it is more than strong enough.

Bear in mind that all modern steering columns have joints in them for crash safety reasons and they are often welded at the factory.

That was a hell of a wiki dive. Thanks. Tragic story :(

Do you think the weld would fail or what are you alluding to? I'd assume that relatively large weld surface could stand up to the 200-ish Nm or however much it actually it is easily

It’s not so much that a weld _can’t_ be sufficiently strong to be safe in a steering column, it’s the QA and validation needed to be sure the weld was done properly. Obviously it’s possible the folks involved in this have the experience and equipment required to do that, but it’s unlikely.

Now, how much of a risk there is, and whether or not it should be allowed on public roads where the failure could kill them and/or other people is a question for the local society and legal system :)

The QA in this case is that the welder knows he doesn't suck and he knows when he does a good job. A 3/4 or so (approx the size most steering stuff is) shaft is going to be more than capable of handling steering wheel torque

Not everything needs to be treated like a nuclear reactor.

Luckily welders do not suffer from superiority bias.

With a competent welder it's basically never a question of whether or not the weld was good. It's a question of what's sufficient for the application. If you care enough you can make perfection happen but caring that much on everything is time consuming and unnecessary.

X-ray and other inspection processes are mostly there to force people to behave like they give a crap.

That's why they call it "Carbage".

"The daily value of your car should not exceed 1,000 Euros and the car must be at least 20 years old."

Also it completed the activity without failure.

https://www.carbagerun.nl/event/winter-editie-2025-naar-hels...

Also relevant: 24 Hours of Lemons [0] where they race "lemons" worth $500

[0]: https://24hoursoflemons.com/

Danger is the nature of this kind of "sport". Friend & I were hitch hiking thru Albania, we ran into a "carbage" race from Poland to Greece. Both of had to travel in different cars (and our backpacks in a third), because otherwise the vehicles wouldn't make it uphill. We've passed by another team who have lost a wheel (it fell off and rolled down a hill at night - effectively got irretrievably lost); they didn't have a spare, so they just sold their car for something like €25.

Fun times.

I must be getting old because this blog post scares me to death. Knowing this will be sharing roads with me, scares me. And it's not the DIY:ness, I don't care if this blogger is 10x more competent than all the engineers at Tesla, I don't trust a machine with my life or my family's life.

Obviously it's illegal so I don't expect them to use this while in Sweden.

> we also fitted a Tesla Continental radar sensor behind the front grille

Aha! So the obvious radar plate most manufacturers mount in an aesthetically horrible way directly in the middle of the grille is in fact complete lazy bullshit and it could easily be hidden without performance loss. The more you know...

Let's not get crazy here, I think that the engineering of the 'carbage' volvo probably has slightly less effort put into it than a major vehicle manufacturer.

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