cars
Do you like #cars and #movies ? Find out what movies/shows your car has been in, or which cars appear in any movie with my new app, powered by #IMCDb 🚘 🎬
Latest comic: Electric vehicles gone wrong
I'm fine with the soft, whirring spaceship sounds that some EVs emit as a safety feature to alert people that they're moving. The new Dodge Charger EV comes with a deafening 126 dB roar, which is just plain obnoxious.
Fallacies of Distributed Computing: Automotive Edition
So our 2016 Subaru Outback has been having horrible battery drain issues for a couple years now. We got the attached service bulletin recently that explained the issue.
It turns out that the Data Communications Module that powers Subaru's Starlink service (emergency assistance/safety/etc. service) now causes a battery drain because it is trying to talk to a 3G network that is no longer there, and it just tries its little heart out.
You can bring the car in to get the DCM reprogrammed to not do this anymore which will fix the problem, and they will also cover batteries killed by the issue.
But my favorite part about this is that this happened because they didn't account for the first Fallacy of Distributed Computing:
"The network is reliable".
A bunch of vehicle computers each connecting to a home network sure sounds like distributed computing to me. 🤷🏻♀️
https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2024/MC-10251111-0001.pdf
#Subaru #DistributedComputing #Lesbaru #cars
Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving has been linked to hundreds of crashes and dozens of deaths, according to a federal investigation published today.
“In total, NHTSA investigated 956 crashes, starting in January 2018 and extending all the way until August 2023,” reports @theverge. “Of those crashes, some of which involved other vehicles striking the Tesla vehicle, 29 people died. There were also 211 crashes in which ‘the frontal plane of the Tesla struck a vehicle or obstacle in its path.’ These crashes, which were often the most severe, resulted in 14 deaths and 49 injuries.”
In Vox, I explained how federal policy encourages car bloat, making American vehicles more enormous, polluting, and dangerous than they'd otherwise be.
That's the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution
This is truly one of the more baffling decisions I’ve seen in a long time. Tesla is a leader in charging infrastructure, to the degree that virtually every other carmaker is even adopting its standard.
Then Elon Musk laid off the entire Supercharger team.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/30/24145621/tesla-layoff-supercharger-ev-charging-nacs-elon-musk
Here’s an idea for better cities: Make owners of big SUVs & pickups pay more to park.
That's what Montreal now does -- and it's the first North American city to try it.
In Bloomberg CityLab, I explored a groundbreaking way to fight back against car bloat.
Reminder to not work yourself to death for the sake of your employer.
THEY ARE NOT LOYAL TO YOU.
“Tesla Rewards Dedicated Worker Who Showered at Factory and Slept In His Car By Firing Him”
#ev #cars #tesla #employment #workers
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-worker-showered-factory-slept-laid-off
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60760563/porsche-911-hybrid-debut-announced/
New hybrid Porsche 911 is coming
Teslas are surveillance on wheels. Bay Area police increasingly check to see if there was a Tesla in the vicinity of a crime so they can get access to the footage from its cameras.
If you see a Tesla, it’s probably filming you — and more automakers are doing it too.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/tesla-sentry-mode-police-evidence-19731000.php
In The Verge, I explained why self-driving cars could be a disaster for climate change and road safety -- even if they work perfectly.
The answer lies in the Jevons paradox, a classic 19th century economic theory.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/2/24232386/self-driving-car-jevons-paradox-robotaxi-waymo-cruise