cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/55598715
‘Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed By Mozilla — Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota — Flunks Privacy Test
Originally found on privacy@lemmy.ml
Buses. They’re called buses.
Growing up my grandfather always had those big thick JCWhitney catalogs. They had nearly ever replacement part of a jeep. So I always wanted to buy one of the fiberglass replacement tubs (body) and make an aluminum frame under it and a bunch of batteries and a couple motors.
this is a doomed idea, youd be better off doing open source ebikes and emotos
A browser. Just make a browser. A FUCKING BROWSER. Don’t bloviate on other topics. Don’t bake AI into it. Just do ONE THING well … make a FUCKING BROWSER.
I generally get your point and support it but want to point out that the Mozilla Foundation is a different entity than the Mozilla Corporation.
I’m retired. I’ll show up and turn bolts all day for free coffee and a couple of laughs.
Woudnt it be a better idea just to offer standard EV kits to turn combustion engine cars into EVs?
It’s unattainable for a low budget player to create and certify a car, and support it with parts for 20 years.
Just create a kit to turn your 10 year old VW into an EV, and let VW support the parts outside of EV domain
parts for 20 years
i think the good thing about an open source car is that we could crowdsource, or even make some parts ourselves, no?
daily driving conversions and heavily modified vehicles can get annoying.
Years ago i was looking for EV kits and found several people out there selling them. Idk what the current availability is, how much tech they have, or how open they are. The ones I saw were pretty low tech (lacking regen braking and such). Think accelerator pedal controls motor speed and a battery pack is about all they were. Again this was a while ago when I was looking (like 2010ish).
You could offer kits for older vehicles, but considering the cost of the kid and installation cost/effort, does it make sense to start with an older car that may have other issues coming soon?
So what’s the alternative? Start with a new car and throw out the ICE? Sure, but a bit wasteful and even more expensive than an older car or you could find an existing manufacturer (idk like Lotus) who will basically provide you the car without the ICE related components (aka a glider). ;)
My dream is to convert an 1980s Saab 900 to electric!
Don’t show this to c/carscirclejerk, it’ll turn them over.
😏
Only thinking about getting a TÜV certification or a permit to drive on public streets (Straßenzulassung) for an Open Source car in Germany produces nightmares about bureaucratic waves bigger then tsunamis.
Mm not really. The TÜV does not have a problem with open source.
But you need a manufacturer and a company that stands behind it.
But open source car does not equal diy car.
I never said that it is impossible, but the bureaucratic obstacles are nightmare inducing huge. And the TÜV is the smallest enemy, the end boss would be the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt for the operating permit.
Every single open source EV would, by law, need a new certification after every installation of a new or changed software to ensure that it still has all the required assistance systems and security features activated and working correctly. The same for the emissions values and other enviromental protection laws.
Edit: Hmm, after reading my post i have to say that emissions would not be a problem with an EV 😅
This is the same like for closed source. A new software release must be tested and have regression tests that homologation relevant parts are not changed and if they are changed, that they do not violate regulations.
That’s also one of the reasons why the software has different components. So that you can update the hmi for example without affecting the steering function.
Going down further that road, there are very specific regulations that cover software updates in particular. There needs to be a software update Management process behind it that makes sure software is only distributed to vehicles that it is designed for.
But none of that would be more difficult with open source…
Again, we are not talking about a crowd built vehicle, there still needs to be a manufacturer behind it.
This is the same like for closed source. A new software release must be tested and have regression tests that homologation relevant parts are not changed and if they are changed, that they do not violate regulations.
Yes, but with closed software you only have to have those tests and certification done once per version of the software. All installed instances of this version are the same, because only the manufacturer can make changes and sign the software to be installable.
This is completely different with open source software that can be changed and installed without limitations by every end user/owner of the car. Now the certification has to be done by every single person every time they install a new version to make sure that no forbidden changes were done to the code or the configurations.
Open Source Software that can be installed freely and unrestricted on a car turns every car into a DIY system, even if it was manufactured by a company
Going down further that road, there are very specific regulations that cover software updates in particular. There needs to be a software update Management process behind it that makes sure software is only distributed to vehicles that it is designed for.
Yes, but such a process would be so tight that it more or less produces the same closed system that we have at the moment. One possibility I see would be that the boot loader of the EV is locked and only updates signed by the company can be installed to the car, with the option to send in your changed open source version to have it checked and signed. But this would not be very open source and not really that much more secure then what we have today because you can never be sure that the version you send in for verification and signing is the same that you get back.
But if you have better Idea the would be true to the open source idea and be compatible with the strong regulations, I would love to read that.
Ah, but this is a different discussion. You want to be able to run modified software in a vehicle.
Then the question becomes an architectural one. Which Software components do you actually want to modify and still be street legal? In theory a modular structure can be build where all homologation and safety relevant limits are fixed and monitor the other non critical components. These non critical components could be changed without needing new homologation (you know, like „apps“).
You could also make the other ones modifiable with the limitation of losing street legality. So you could only run it on closed tracks or private land. Just like manufacturers do today.
What good would be an open source community EV (that is what the title speaks of) if there is no way for a single person or the community itself to modify and install the code on the EV? You would have no way of knowing that the version running in the car is identical to the source code provided, so having the code would be moot from a security and privacy standpoint.
Yes, you could put everything concerning street legality into a closed and signed hardware black box, more or less how it is done with the mobile communication hardware in smartphones, but street legality touches so many systems and functions that most of the cars software would be closed. So we are back where we are now.
For most persons who think about open source they have in mind that they are able to freely install the open source software on their devices, and yes I know that this is not part of the open source definition as written for example in https://opensource.org/osd but IMHO it should be added to it.
Signed software does not equal blackbox. You can still verify that the software in the vehicle is the same as the provided one (download the software from the vehicle and compare checksums for example).
Again, there must be software parts that must pass homologation to be allowed to run on public roads. The same is true for a lot of things, your laptop for example has lots of firmware blocks that you are not allowed to change because of regulations (emc and emi for example).
And that is a good thing. Trust me, you don’t want untested software on the street, risking lives. That’s why vehicle testing is done first on closed roads.
deleted by creator
Good luck with that in the EU. Try to bypass eCall and your car won’t score 5 stars on the Euro NCAP scale.
How exactly will my impoverished ass, who can’t afford meds, has nothing left to eat atm, and is watching his parents go under with an Aspergers brother, supposed to design advanced electronic vehicles?
To build as a community I meant. I expanded on this in the opensource community via cross post
Much love to ya though you’ll pull through. Its a pain to go through all that but it will be worth it.
Try joining and getting to know actual people from all kinds of groups: open source, Linux, etc. I’m sure some people would be willing to hire for simple tech jobs or other jobs in marketing, etc
Ok, I followed the link. We will see if I ever actually have time for it though.
EDIT: Read up more, residental stuff is more important right now. Need to design a cheap toolkit that will allow people to live off-grid.
I would definitely pay a premium for an open source car.
the premium you pay is for the space to build it and the tools. the (kit) car itself is a hell of a lot cheaper.
That feels like something we could crowd-source. I don’t need the space and tools to build two open source cars, but if we had ten people in the community that wanted them, it would make sense to rent the space and buy the tools.
Just a reminder that “kit cars” exist. Their existence makes the idea of “open source” cars seem more reasonable to me in that one does not need to make a large company, it is possible (though likely not profitable or cheap) to be a small car company.
do they make kit cars that are hybrids or electrics or have fancy safety features?
because i was looking at a real fancy lotus for like six grand a few years ago, but it was just an ice manual. i’ve built those before, those are easy. i do not know all these fancy new cars with regenerative braking and shit.
You can retrofit electric drivetrains to basically any car but it’s not cheap and takes a decent amount of research and expertise in fabrication
i wonder how much more practical it would be to do this kind of stuff if we standardized cars under an open platform.
regenerative braking is literally just a power supply to get the spinning energy of the wheel back to the battery. in concept, electric cars are way simpler than ice, the gizmos they put in modern cars make them look more complex.
Yeah but I ain’t built an electric nor a hybrid and I ain’t programmed one neither. I built an ice engine before and those are simple. Fun too. I figure the programming is the hard part.
I don’t want a car without the fancy safety features like checking your blind spot sensor or the backup camera or the dash cam or the adaptive cruise. For one, they lower your insurance rates.
you first need something that moves.
You kinda could before tesla even existed. I have a car in the garage still from the brief time when the cad/usd rate was decent but it got fucked right before I pulled the trigger on the batteries and motor. Was going to be a sick electric 80s honda civic station wagon but now its just a dusty old car.
“Hey so the auto assist locked the wheel and the brakes, swerved into another lane, shifted to reverse and blew the transmission, then…”
Hahahaha what a funny story consumer, anyways how’s your sex life?
You’re my favorite customer
How is
I love this idea
Eventually, electric cars will become the norm. For an open source OS it just needs enough commercial interest. That’s largely what lets down alot of open source projects by the looks of it.
I saw there is a new open source printer out there now. I’m excited about that and interested to see how it goes.
Most of the public don’t see the value in open source or the barriers to entry are not worth it for them.
I’m not a dev so I’m certainly not casting shade on all the wonderful projects out there, more just an observation that you usually need to learn abit about computers to be able to access these projects. I’ve enjoyed the learning experiences
