Electricity and the future of police vehicles.

pimpm3 said:

In reply to Dave M :

Not so much the equipment drawing down the batteries but the rechargeablity in say a 10 hour window between shifts.  Depending on the beat an officer could cover 150 miles a night, not to mention idle time.  My impala averaged around 12 mpg during a shift because of the short trips and constant idling.

FYI, the mobile charger that came with my car puts in about 30 miles of range per hour of charging when running off a 40A 220v circuit. So a 10 hour window is lots of time to fully charge. A 30 stop at a Supercharger (is, lunch) adds about 200 miles of range. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

So that’s a 2010 Prius done by the same two researchers who did the Cherokee hack later in their career. They also got into the Ford Escape. It’s a news story and not a tech story so there’s no real information,  but it looks to me as if they’re just injecting CAN signals into the bus via a wired connection. I can do that for you on an ND Miata if you’d like. 

 The later Jeep exploit was pretty bad as it was done 100% over a cellular connection and they didn’t need to know what vehicle they were targeting. 

Still, it’s not tied to the mode of propulsion, so claiming it’s a weak point of EVs is a bit of a stretch. 

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Sure it Isn't just the Tesla, but they require the car is always connected to the internet,  they can download new software to it...sounds like a hacking risk does it not, now if its just your autocross event someone wants to slow you down, maybe nobody would bother, but if police cars, criminals might invest more effort, it will make for a good movie plot in any case.  Lighten up man.

In reply to nimblemotorsports :

Now that's an idea. If you see my yellow mustang convertible dominating CAM..... well actually nothing to see here!

In reply to Halieutic :

All modern diesels (as in last 25+ years) are computer controlled so would be just as affected by an EMP as a gas or electric car. 

nimblemotorsports said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Sure it Isn't just the Tesla, but they require the car is always connected to the internet,  they can download new software to it...sounds like a hacking risk does it not, now if its just your autocross event someone wants to slow you down, maybe nobody would bother, but if police cars, criminals might invest more effort, it will make for a good movie plot in any case.  Lighten up man.

My point is that it's not a movie plot that's restricted to a specific vehicle. You're going to find that a pretty high proportion of modern vehicles are always-on. That Jeep hack was on 2014 Grand Cherokees. You should read the white paper, it's pretty interesting if you have the background.

Always on is not the hacking risk you need to be worried about. A non-technology company ramming in more features and toys to be first to market is the hacking risk, which is how FCA burned themselves. A technology company that actually has a bug bounty and hacking competitions? Not so much. I'll lighten up and you understand a bit more of the landscape and we'll all be good.

nimblemotorsports said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Sure it Isn't just the Tesla, but they require the car is always connected to the internet,  they can download new software to it...sounds like a hacking risk does it not, now if its just your autocross event someone wants to slow you down, maybe nobody would bother, but if police cars, criminals might invest more effort, it will make for a good movie plot in any case.  Lighten up man.

There is/was a Twitter account called "The Internet Of E36 M3" that highlighted ever-dumber 'Internet of things' devices.

Cars are the last thing that should be connected to the Internet.

The problem is the same: the rush to get toys to market at the lowest possible price, so security isn't taken into account at all. Even Ring doorbells - a device marketed specifically as a security device - have screwed that up. 

I have no IoT devices in my house. The one exception is one vehicle, and the reason I want that online is so it can share driving data to improve autonomous vehicles which will eventually benefit us all. The reason you'll eventually want all cars connected is so they can talk to each other. Driving is a cooperative venture, so the cars will need to cooperate. You also use that internet connection for navigation, for traffic, for weather and of course to keep the meatbag entertained.

Things like toaster ovens are the last things that should be connected to the internet. Cars, there are legit reasons.

Plus, you can still allow for it to be connected to the internet while also keeping it protected from more than 90% of attacks, like wardriving and such. Regular password changes, GOOD passwords, and not allowing devices to connect to networks you don't know and trust is a big chunk of protection- people just don't do it because it's difficult. Even more, if you set the car up to update only at specific times- thus having it locked away from networks without your permission- how would you get in? you'd have to know when it updates, get into the network, find the car, and then somehow inject code while it's updating without it knowing- assuming you do it in time before your "window" closes. Hackers aren't Oceans 11, at that point they'd just try to gain access to your network.

Keith Tanner said:

Things like toaster ovens are the last things that should be connected to the internet. Cars, there are legit reasons.

Just to play devils advocate, a hacked toaster doesn't weigh over 4000lbs and isn't capable of traveling triple digit speeds (on it's own).

No, but it can burn your house or apartment building down while you're sleeping.

The question is if the connection serves a real benefit to anyone. With cars, there is a pretty clear benefit to help keep that 4000 lb flying toaster safe around the other toasters. Car to car communication, fleet learning (I've had my car, on cruise, slow down as it approaches to a fast sweeper on the interstate because its friends had done the same, and it was right to do so) and OTA updates to safety components.

Being able to stream video of my pot pie over the internet is a murkier benefit.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Definitely. There are two sides to a cost/benefit calculation. Both sides are higher with connected vehicles. Upsides and downsides are both greater than the toaster.

I used to do computer and network security research. I choose not to own a car with CAN-BUS for pedantic reasons, and ones with a cellular link for very, very real and verified reasons. While some systems are quite secure, most seem to have at least one glaring error that opens the door to full exploitation. Early implementations of OnStar were, and are, vunerable to a host of attacks with no  dynamic authentication whatsoever. Most now at least use industry best practices, but I have written previously on how those are nowhere near sufficient. Some companies like Tesla ignore even those in an attempt to 'move fast and break things', but seem to be starting to come around as the potential liabilities mount. Their case is a bit special though, at least up until recently. 

Inter-car communication is a completey different issue, and has its own system. Implying that the cellular data serves this purpose may be technically correct, but functionally misguided. V2V standard already exists for ICE and non-ICE cars on the 5.8ghz band. This allows low-latentcy communication, which cellular, even 5g, still can struggle with. It is also fraught with issues as designed. However, the point is it exists independedent of carmaker-specific spyware phoning home, for whatever purposes.

I may just have to type up an article on modern car 'security' and how it is on a fast collision course with our hobby. It is not a simple issue that can be summed up in a reply. Things are going to get weird, both good and bad. 

Nugi - no car with CAN-BUS? That means you'll never own a car newer than 2008. That's when CAN became the underlying protocol for OBD by law.

What's your feeling on the new encrypted CAN?

I seem to recall Tesla pushing an emergency update right before Houston went underwater in that Hurricane, it allowed all Teslas in the area to completely drain their batteries so their owners could get out of the path of the storm. I forget how much more range it allowed, but it was a very nice gesture on Tesla's part

dculberson said:

In reply to Halieutic :

All modern diesels (as in last 25+ years) are computer controlled so would be just as affected by an EMP as a gas or electric car. 

Thank goodness I keep this ol girl around. 

As someone who repairs electronic crud for a living, I welcome the connected future because most people are too stupid/uninformed to handle their daily equipment.

As someone who repairs electronic crud for a living, I want as little to do with the connected future as I can manage. Sadly, I think this will be ever more expensive to manage as "more connected" continues to equate to better for the clueless public spending their Xmas bonus before July 4th on the low interest credit card and we continue on our down the "new is best" consumerist society path.

Amazon and Google are slowly invading my home, unavoidable unless I want to live in the 90s. What is a luddite to do?

Back to the original question it will probably well put in the future. We will probably see a few being used as senior management/detective transport. There will be a few F150s doing truck things and eventually more and more electrics being put in service.