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Comment by transfire | Hacker News Reader

Why would waste so much gad-dam money? If you really have to track us all (which obviously is a very dubious proposition to begin with) then just require the car makers to put RFIDs in the cars. They cost like a whole $1. While you're at it please require them to print serial numbers on the back of the cars too so we no longer have to pay the State extortion fees for license plates.

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Most cars today do have RFID

It's in the tires and broadcasts the VIN

Part of the TPMS tire pressure monitoring.

Mandated in many countries:

http://www.niradynamics.se/scripts/newsletter.php?id=55

How can tires broadcast the VIN? I bought my tire+wheel package on Tirerack, certainly didn't tell them my VIN.

I was under the impression factory TPMS have the vin.

It's been mandatory in the US since 2008 to have TPMS so all 2008 and newer cars have an oem system.

Signal isn't really that strong, a few feet away and your not gonna be able to capture that data.

I suppose it would be simple to embed the receiver in the street. You know with decent certainty where the tires will be, so if the signal works one wheel-diameter away it will be picked up.

Yes and no.

Direct TPMS sensors that use RFID transmit a serial number but probably not the VIN.

Many cars use indirect TPMS which uses the ABS sensors to measure rotational difference between wheels, thus indicating a low-pressure situation. No RFID is used.

When I worked on a TPMS system around 2007, we couldn't get the VIN off a sensor. We could get the sensor id and maybe the tire id (depending on the type of TPMS system). We had access to the VIN in our flash, as well as access to it over the CAN bus from a number of sources. I'd expect that you would have a very difficult time measuring random vehicles sensor ids and readings if they're just driving by because of how low throughput the system was.

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