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VW Golfs in Europe will communicate with wireless safety tech
The newest generation of Volkswagen's popular Golf will get the ability to communicate directly with other cars with wireless technology called V2X -- short for vehicle to everything. The technology has been slow to catch on but has the potential to reduce accident rates, which is the reason Volkswagen's adding it to its cars in Europe.
The Golf is the first major car model to get the V2X ability, and Volkswagen and its V2X chip supplier, NXP Semiconductors, hope the milestone will encourage others to follow suit. The more vehicles and infrastructure like traffic signals with the V2X communication ability, the more useful it becomes.
"Volkswagen includes this technology, which doesn't involve any user fees, as a standard feature to accelerate V2X penetration in Europe," said Johannes Neft, Volkswagen's head of vehicle body development, in a statement Monday.
V2X has the potential to revolutionize car safety by letting cars pay better attention to their surroundings, in all directions at once simultaneously and without getting drowsy like a human driver. V2X also could become an important foundation for autonomous vehicles, though leading companies like Waymo and Cruise aren't counting on it for now.
However, there are two incompatible versions of V2X technology: the older V2X standard one Volkswagen and NXP endorse, based on a variation of Wi-Fi networking, and a newer effort called C-V2X that uses the same mobile network technology as your phone.
The older standard, called Wi-Fi-p and pWLAN in Europe and Digital Short-Range Communications (DSRC) in the US, has been under development for about two decades but hasn't caught on except in pockets.
C-V2X has the advantage of using technology cars might build in directly anyway so they can download software updates, refresh map and traffic data, and offer streaming video to passengers. C-V2X also has the backing of powerful wireless network industry players who right now are eager to promote new uses of their nascent 5G networks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @08:30AM (12 children)
Some 15 years ago: "Here are the new Diesels." And then, Dieselgate.
So in another 15 years time we can expect WifiGate. We can neither confirm or deny these cars were sending data to third-party servers. We can neither confirm or deny our data retention policy. We can neither confirm or deny........
(Score: 3, Insightful) by J_Darnley on Thursday October 31 2019, @10:15AM (2 children)
Worse than that. Rather than Big Brother using a network of cameras to track a car's movement, the car will just broadcast its position. Easier for the the government that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @10:21AM
And the crooks. a WiFi enabled car stopped by faking an emergency. Never mind that most people will stop nonetheless if they perceive an accident.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:20PM
I think that is actually more frightening than the big brother network of cameras. At least ALL cars, rich and poor, politician or slave, leave a trail of evidence in the cameras.
Imagine a privileged group with cars that broadcast false location alibi info? No, the cops were not at your house beating you to a bloody pulp for using strong encryption. Their cars' location info proves it.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Thursday October 31 2019, @11:01AM (7 children)
Cars taking advantage of algorithms to get other cars to give them preference could potentially lead to an increase in efficiency of one group of vehicles at the expense of overall efficiency.
And there is certainly precedent for gaming the system.
But...how do you market the fact that you are cheating without being found out?
On the fuel efficiency (Dieselgate) numbers it was straightforward, you just got a better number to publish and people are happy buying your vehicle based on it. But they don't do those tests out in live traffic, so you can't expect the cheat to be useful in the same way, and you certainly can't tell people you are doing it.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:12PM
How do the super rich and entitled manage to presently collude about scams to enrich themselves at everyone else's expense?
Old boy networks. Special member's only clubs. Access to this feature by invitation only sponsored by someone else who already has it.
Good idea: include technical measures that make this bad behavior difficult or impossible to detect. Or that destroy any evidence that this feature existed in this vehicle. Gee, I can't imagine how that signal was transmitted, there is nothing in the firmware for that after the latest Windows 10 update. Oh, wait. We don't want vehicle crashes.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:16PM (1 child)
Unlike Dieselgate, vehicles would need to have had this cheat feature added after the fact, rather than included from the factory.
Even in a vehicle so equipped, tie the cheating behavior to specific individual drivers, so that testing by a government agency is unlikely to reveal the feature.
Detect that the vehicle is at a specific government testing agency, and destroy the feature leaving no trace of it. The prick BMW owner must later have vehicle "serviced" to re-enable the cheat feature.
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Thursday October 31 2019, @04:52PM
Hmmm, there's an embedded assumption there.
I mean, it may not be possible to detect if you are at a testing agency.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:58PM (3 children)
> But...how do you market the fact that you are cheating without being found out?
Simple, change the laws so its perfectly legal to do so.
I can imagine a future, where this technology is adapted as a kind of "pay per mile" toll system. There must be traffic priorities built into the system, because you know, emergency vehicles must be able to get past traffic.
Next, politicians will demand a higher priority for themselves, because they are important people on important business.
Then finally, I can imagine a world where you can pay for "priority access", not unlike in airlines now. So the rich will be able to afford traffic priority over the rest. How much priority depending on how much you want to pay per mile.
If you are not one of the above groups, tough luck. If your time is not important enough for you to pay for faster travel, then you can waste your life in more traffic. Eventually some people will get annoyed with the situation, create black market devices which transmit a higher traffic priority, and so starts a cat-ant-mouse game with law enforcement.
Plus ça change....
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Thursday October 31 2019, @04:55PM (1 child)
This is depressingly realistic.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday November 01 2019, @11:48AM
> This is depressingly realistic.
That's because it already exists. Except its not automated and all encompassing.
Case in point, you have to yield to emergency vehicles with flashing lights (police, ambulances, fire trucks, etc....). Nobody really minds this, because the emergency vehicles are supposed to only use their lights when it is an actual emergency/threat to human life.
Politicians and Rich/VIPs can get a police escort, or the roads are blocked by police so they can get past. Effective priority by (ab)use of the above law.
The main issue is that getting your own police escort is hard for the "normal rich", you can't just pay for it. This new system, apart from being horribly Orwellian, will allow the "normal rich" to get priority as well. This has already started in London with things like the "Congestion charge" and "ULEZ", which track cars using number plates, and charge you daily.
The effects are:
- The poor can't afford to have a car anymore, so are beholden to whatever poor alternatives exist.
- The rich get emptier roads to drive on, as for them the extra cost is just a rounding error on their monthly statements.
- Costs go up for all goods and services within the area, because commercial vehicles also have to pay, and they just pass the cost on to the customer in the form of higher end costs. This disproportionately affects the poor again.
This system is just more of the above, except it should be possible to enforce it on all the roads, everywhere. At the moment you can avoid the above by just moving out of the area (which is what I did), but a national (or global) scale network will be much harder to get away from. Especially if future self driving cars become popular, as the occupants of said car will have no say in what route it takes and how long it takes to get there. It will be set by priority.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday October 31 2019, @10:32PM
Yeah. It's called Fast Pass.
I got a story about that, but I'm not reliving that nightmare.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:24PM
Dieselgate was basically very very simply.
1. AdBlue is required to be added to reduce NOx production
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust_fluid [wikipedia.org]
2. All diesel vehicles, including tractors, are required to use this to reduce emissions.
3. It works
https://www.theaa.com/breakdown-cover/advice/adblue [theaa.com]
4. It costs $300/ton or about $0.30/liter wholesale
5. You need about 1.5L for 1000km.
6. Storage tank is about 10-20L in a car - so we are talking about $5 every 10,000km - not exactly a lot!!
but, on average, maintenance interval for cars is longer than that, so.....
7. magic and suddenly AdBlue is no longer used so much because car is "more efficient" so you only need to refill it during maintenance intervals!!
VW sold like 10m cars in one year. They could have given them *free* AdBlue maintenance checks and refills for the lifetime of the cars and it would have cost them less. But fuck that, cheat instead so you can tell customers they don't need to buy any additive for emission controls and car runs sooooo clean.
So there is your dieselgate scandal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 31 2019, @10:59AM (5 children)
"This is an unmarked police car"
"Get out of the fucking way"
"This car is out of control"
"Get out of the fucking way"
"The BMW at {co-ordinates} has a bomb on board"
"Get out of the fucking way"
...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 31 2019, @02:22PM (3 children)
Yeah, just like lane-tracking vehicles were going to be the downfall of civilisation because jokers would go out painting lines in the road to fool them. Face it, there just aren't enough arseholes in the world to validate your concerns.
Yes, what you suggest is technically possible, but right now it's technically possible for someone to put blue lights and a siren on a car an impersonate a police car. How often does that happen IRL? More than "never" I'm sure but it's hardly an epidemic.
So sure, some abuses of this new technology will be possible. But the technology itself will mitigate potential abuses as best it can (and report the ones that occur), and the law and society will deter most of the rest. It's like rubber-hose decryption: Sure, a malicious person could hack the car communication system to cause vehicular chaos, but if it would be a lot easier and cheaper to just drop bricks off an overpass.
This will happen, and we'll end up with exactly what we have now: An imperfect system that works very well most of the time, but gets abused very occasionally. The only difference is we'll have cool things like:
"Hey, car 956353209. Just to let you know that I just passed an obstruction on your side of the road round that bend. You might want to slow down." Or...
"Hey, car 847399574, this is the traffic light. Just to let you know I'm going to go green in 1.1 seconds, so you probably don't need to change down a gear." Or...
"Hey, car 934754495, I'm going to drift right to go around a big puddle. Don't think about overtaking just yet." Or...
"Holy Crap! Something's in the road and I'm braking hard NOW! Inform the car behind you!"
The potential for improved safety and efficiency far outweighs any possible gimmicky hack bullshit.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:22PM (1 child)
> Yes, what you suggest is technically possible, but right now it's technically possible for someone to put blue lights and a siren on a car an impersonate a police car. How often does that happen IRL? More than "never" I'm sure but it's hardly an epidemic.
I used to see it almost every day when I lived in London (UK). I now live out in the shires, and even here, I would occasionally see it (maybe once a month). Problem is, you can't be sure if the car in question is a legit undercover police car, or someone just put some blue lights and a siren in their car to bypass the rush hour traffic, so you assume they are cops and make a space for them to pass by.
I have noticed what I think are legit police cars tend to have at least two police officers inside, usually with stab vests on, even if the car outside looks completely normal. Quite often, when such vehicles are passing by, I just see one normally dressed person in the "undercover police car", and once I saw a lady with a baby in the back seat.
So yeah, I would say it happens often enough, and considering the penalties of impersonating a police officer can be quite high, I am surprised so many people seem to bother. I can only assume the police don't bother chasing up such crimes very much.
If it becomes as simple as buying a little Chinese device you attach to your car that (silently) makes others get out of the way, I can see it becoming so common that most people will be doing it (a bit like how radar speed camera detectors were once a big thing, until they moved away from radar based mobile speed cameras towards average speed cameras using ANPR).
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday October 31 2019, @05:47PM
> Problem is, you can't be sure if the car in question is a legit undercover police car, or someone just put some blue lights and a siren in their car to bypass the rush hour traffic,
Indeed. That fact kind of pisses on the rest of your anecdote, though.
> I just see one normally dressed person in the "undercover police car",
Well it would be a pretty shit "undercover" car if it had a copper in full uniform behind the wheel.
> a little Chinese device you attach to your car that (silently) makes others get out of the
Ah, the "silent" thing gets a little tricky though, doesn't it? The tracking and privacy invasion that everybody's worried about (assuming that such logging / centralised collection of data is implemented) here actually becomes useful.
Simply have all cars that receive a blue-light request report it immediately to the emergency services along with coordinates and any other relevant data. The authorities can check it automatically against their own records and, if there is no legitimate vehicle in the area making such a request, have the reporting cars' upload full logs (including camera data) that can be used to locate and identify the offending vehicle in realtime. With luck the perp would have a REAL blue light breathing down their neck within minutes. (Impersonating an officer is the kind of thing the police really don't take kindly to.)
Even if you have a less direct way of moving other cars out of your way (false reporting of obstacles, aggressive driving) then data from the other cars could be used to recognise, flag and report such behaviour.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 01 2019, @04:40PM
It's not about causing chaos or damage, it's about getting a better run through traffic. You tell other cars to get out of your way, and traffic lights that you have an emergency on board. Sure it will be illegal, but you better believe assholes will pay some nerd $100 for a little black box that makes their commute faster.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:05PM
I think even more frightening, especially this halloween . . .
"The BMW at {co-ordinates} has an entitled BMW driver on board"
"Get out of the fucking way"
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Bot on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:08PM
I already have a fitting name for the IoT enabled Golf:
"Hole in one"
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheGratefulNet on Thursday October 31 2019, @01:18PM (1 child)
ob disc: I work in the e-car industry.
we're planning on support v2x on our new design.
I'm told that there can be 2000 messages/sec that the cpu will have to process. mostly will be filtered out, but the cpu has to process a lot of 'noise' data. we're trying to understand if we need a 2nd cpu for this or if we can use an existing gateway cpu, etc.
while security will be a concern, cars talking to each other is a Good Thing(tm) and not to be afraid of.
and like it or not, its coming, so best make friends with all the new car tech.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday October 31 2019, @03:04PM
I think pedestrians should be equipped with V2X. That way cars could signal them to get out of the way NOW because pedestrians never have the right of way!
Back in my youth, when we saw pedestrians, someone would call out "2 points!" or "5 points!" or similar. This could bring new meaning to that.
and get off my lawn!
Would a Dyson sphere [soylentnews.org] actually work?