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Bruce Perens is organizing a conference on Open Cars. It will take place Tuesday, November 6th, 2018 in Orlando, Florida, USA. The concept behind Open Cars, is the idea that the hardware as well as the software conform to open standards and that, as an automotive product, it must be sufficiently accessible and modular to enable technology upgrades, aftermarket products, and testing by security researchers. The interfaces must be openly documented and be backed by openly disclosed APIs and hardware interfaces. It would not have to run on open data, but could nonetheless protect data privacy and security as well as or better than proprietary automotive products do today. As the emphasis is on the standards and interfaces, both hardware and software, it would not necessarily require that manufacturers base their vehicles on open source software.
The automobile industry thinks they have a solution: lease rather than sell autonomous cars, lock the hood shut, and maintain them exclusively through their dealers.
That works great for the 1%. But what about the rest of us? The folks who drive a dented, 10-year-old car? We should have the option to drive autonomous cars, and to participate in the same world as the more wealthy folks.
Open Cars will be the solution. These are automobiles sold with standard fittings, plugs and standards, so that an autonomous driving computer can be purchased in the aftermarket, installed and tested by a certified mechanic, and put on the road. Similarly, the on-board computer, communication, navigation, and entertainment system on an Open Car will be pluggable, purchased on the aftermarket, and will fit into well-defined niches in the vehicle.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday July 17 2018, @06:19PM (2 children)
What is ride sharing? Carpooling? Uber? Once autonomous vehicles become widespread the Uber drivers will be kicked to the curb to die. People could potentially rent out their personal cars to be used as driverless taxis.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday July 17 2018, @09:31PM (1 child)
Ask what problem the automakers are solving. Planned obsolescence was their first attempt to convert intermittent customers into recurring revenue streams by designing cars to last about as long as the payments... usually to the finance subsidiary of the automaker. Foreign cars defeated it. So now they want to eliminate the end users entirely and switch on huge recurring revenue streams from self driving cars that the automakers retain ownership of, much like Apple products. At that point their incentives change, make smaller but predictable and long range planned runs of cars to upgrade the installed base and keep it refreshed but generate the lion's share of revenue from usage fees. A few middlemen will, on paper and for tax purposes, own all of the cars in the world and run them in fleets of mass transit / taxi services along with a few in limo service to the 1%. Nobody else will be allowed to own a car, for "safety reasons."
The powers that be will be happy to help them achieve that dream because it will give them what they desire control. Once the roads are redesigned to simplify life for automated cars manual control will be a crime. That means if they do not want people going somewhere they simply tell the cars not to go there and that is that. If somebody becomes a problem they just tell the cars not to carry them anywhere, or only to a few controlled destinations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:21PM
You left out the worst part. The ads. Ads everywhere! They won't be able to help themselves. Hold the door handle for 10 seconds so it can 'confirm your identity' to unlock the car while the window displays a video ad to you. Look right at the middle of the ad so the face recognition camera can get a good picture if you're carrying too much to touch the handle. Then pay an additional $10 to not automatically drive through a valued partener's drive-thu and to not automatically roll-down the window so the attendant can ask if you want a nice cold drink since the AC suddenly to stopped working 10 minutes ago.
Businesses go crazy when they think they've got a captive audience and control the laws in that industry.