Nevada Looking To Proactively Legalize Autonomous Cars

from the paving-the-road-to-the-future dept

There's been a lot of advancement lately in the field of autonomous cars. The DARPA Grand Challenge a few years ago convinced many people that autonomous vehicles were possible and since then we've been seeing more and more work on concepts around such vehicles, including Google's secret testing of its own autonomous cars and some other researchers doing an autonomous drive from Italy to China. However, with Google, it needed to get special permission to take the car out on the roads, and apparently some politicians in Nevada are working hard to court autonomous vehicle manufacturers to its state. They've put together a bill that would make it easier to get autonomous vehicles on the road in the state, by setting up a process to "authorize" such vehicles, and allow them to operate on Nevada highways.

As Ryan Calo notes in his post (the one linked above) about this, it's great that Nevada is taking a proactive approach, however, he does worry about some of the broad language:

The bill's definition of autonomous vehicles is unclear, even circular. Autonomous driving exists on a spectrum. Many vehicles available today have autonomous features, while falling short of complete computer control. Surely the bill's authors do not intend to require that, for instance, today's self-parking Lexus LS 460L be tested and certified.

Either way, it's exciting to think that such vehicles are getting closer to being available to the public.

Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, cars, nevada

Does Your Car Need Its Own App Store?

from the apptastic dept

Many years back, I remember hearing Jonathan Schwartz (before he was CEO of Sun) predict that one day people would buy "horntones" for their cars, the same way they bought ringtones for their mobile phones. While we haven't quite reached that point yet, it appears that people may soon be buying "apps" for their cars. Slashdot points us to the news that Tesla has announced that (as many predicted) the giant touchscreen console on its Tesla S sedan will have support for third-party apps. Don't like the stereo interface? Download a new one. Want a program that provides you better analytics on your driving habits? Download it. While I'm still pretty skeptical about the appification of everything, I am intrigued by the idea of being able to customize a car via apps. The real question is if there will really be enough demand to make it worthwhile for developers... and if this means that we're going to face another standards battle as people try to standardize what in-dash apps look like.

Filed Under: app store, cars
Companies: tesla

DailyDirt: Automotive Apps And Other Car Stuff

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The past year brought some significant changes to the car industry, and the upcoming year is bound to bring a lot more. Besides just gasoline and diesel, car buyers are going to have a few more options for how their cars are powered. Fully electric or hybrid cars may only be the start. While we're still waiting on flying cars to hit the dealerships, here are some quick car-related links.

Fans of Saturn say goodbye to the brand in 2010. How many other car brands would (or will?) be so thoughtfully eulogized? [url]

Android-powered car radios could create a nice little app market for commuters. If you can't use your smartphone while driving, Android-powered radios sound like a pretty geeky work-around. [url]

Don't flash your headlights to warn other drivers about speed traps. At least, don't do it in the UK. [url]

Those "How's My Driving?" bumper stickers are turning to wireless crowdsourcing to find bad drivers. Insurance companies are gonna love this app... if folks really take to ratting on their fellow drivers. [url]

Filed Under: android, cars, smartphones
Companies: saturn

Court Rejects Publicity Rights Claim Over Pixar's Lead Car In Cars

from the publicity-rights-over-cars?!? dept

We've talked a lot lately about the rise of "publicity rights" as a new, and dangerous, area of the law that is being used to stifle forms of speech. The idea behind it was somewhat admirable. It was to prevent companies from pretending someone famous endorsed their product when they did not. But the law has been stretched and stretched and stretched in ridiculous ways with a series of ridiculous rulings. Thankfully, the courts don't always let the really ridiculous cases go forward, such as the case where Mark Brill claims that Disney/Pixar's movie Cars violated his publicity rights, because he owns a racecar that looks similar to the lead character in the movie, Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson). The article notes that "Apparently Brill is a big deal in the racing world and is closely associated with such a car." Of course, if he was that big of a deal, you would think that doing a Google image search for "Mark Brill, race car" would turn up some images. And I can't find any... Either way, the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has upheld a lower court's summary judgment against Brill, saying:

"a fictional, talking, driver-less red race car with the number 95 on it cannot be construed as a likeness of a driver of a similarly colored/numbered race car."

Nice to know there are some limits on publicity rights.

Filed Under: cars, mark brill, movies, publicity rights

Getting Closer To Autonomous Cars: Vans Make The Trip From Italy To China

from the marco...-polo... dept

Back in July we mentioned that some researchers had begun an attempt to have an autonomous vehicle drive safely from Italy to China. Then, about a month ago, we also noted that Google had been successfully testing autonomous vehicles on the roads as well. Now, Slashdot alerts us to the news that the Italy to China effort was completed successfully. As with the Google experiments, it wasn't "perfect." Apparently, humans had to intervene during a Moscow traffic jam -- and at toll booths. They also mention that "at one point, a van stopped to pick up hitchhikers." That's quite a story the hitchhikers must have left with... Either way, it's nice to see so much research going on in this field. Hopefully we can start to see some of that research make its way into actual production vehicles, at least to improve accident reduction techniques.

Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, cars

The Car That's Driven 2.8 Million Miles

from the feeling-like-a-slacker-yet? dept

These days, any time you hear of a car that's been driven over 200,000 miles, it's pretty impressive. But, apparently for a guy named Irv Gordon, that was just what it took to break in his 1966 Volvo P1800. Shocklee points us to the astounding story of Gordon and the 2.8 million miles he's put on the beloved car, which he bought new all the way back in 1966. He's hoping to get it up to 3 million in about 3 years. For anyone who believe "they don't make 'em, like they used to," apparently here's a datapoint. The guy drives 125-mile commute daily, but also apparently just loves driving and takes the car all over the place.

As for repairs and maintenance, obviously he takes pretty good care of the car, but doesn't seem to do anything special, beyond following the factory (not dealer) manual. He began to realize the car was pretty damn reliable when he surpassed 250,000 miles without needing a single repair beyond basic maintenance. And, yes, the engine has been rebuilt twice, but he admits that the first time it shouldn't have been. Volvo, of course, is well aware of Gordon and even gave him a free car years back when he hit 1 million miles. But he saw no reason to stop driving the original one. And, if you're wondering, yes, Gordon is in the Guinness Book of World Records. But he got there way back in 1998 when he only had 1.69 million miles on the car. Suddenly, "just" having 200,000 miles on a car doesn't seem so special.

Filed Under: 2.8 million miles, cars, p1800
Companies: volvo

Wait, Now I Need Security Software For My Car, Too?

from the trojan-brakes? dept

Remember a few months ago when a disgruntled ex-employee from a car dealer was able to login to the dealer's computer system and remotely disable over 100 cars? And, of course, there have been concerns over the ability to use systems like OnStar to remotely disable cars as well, with concerns about what would happen if malicious hackers were able to get their hands on the controls. Now, to add to those concerns, some researchers are reporting that modern day car computing is vulnerable to malicious hacks that could put drivers in danger.

The scientists say that they were able to remotely control braking and other functions, and that the car industry was running the risk of repeating the security mistakes of the PC industry....

The researchers, financed by the National Science Foundation, tested two versions of a late-model car in both laboratory and field settings. They did not identify the maker or the brand of the car, but said they believed they were representative of the computer network control systems that have proliferated in most cars today.

The researchers asked what could happen if a hacker could gain access to the network of a car, said Tadayoshi Kohno, a University of Washington computer scientist. He said the research teams were able to demonstrate their ability to circumvent a wide variety of systems critical to the safety of drivers and passengers.

They also demonstrated what they described as "composite attacks" that showed their ability to insert malicious software and then erase any evidence of tampering after a crash.

The researchers were able to activate dozens of functions and almost all of them while the car was in motion.

Happy driving, everyone...

To be fair, the researchers admit that they did not look at what kinds of "defense" the car might have to block such attacks, but they do point out that those developing car computing systems probably don't have as much experience or concern in the security realm. For the most part, this sounds like it's not a problem that anyone's going to face in the short-term. If anything, I'm guessing we'll have a lot more moral panic stories about what will happen before any reports of something bad actually happening. However, at some point, it seems likely that these sorts of stories will pass over from the hypothetical into the real world, and at that point, I'll be looking for a car that runs on open source software.

Filed Under: cars, hacking, security

Disgruntled Ex-Auto Dealer Employee Hacks Computer System To Disable Over 100 Cars

from the welcome-to-the-new-world dept

Ah, the fun of the electronic age. A few years back we started hearing about tools to remotely disable a car. These were talked about as a security system to recover stolen vehicles, but also as a device to put on leased cars, in case they need to be repossessed. Of course, once you put that technology on the car, what's to stop someone from abusing it? Turns out that a disgruntled ex-employee of a car dealership that put such a technology on its cars, was able to log into the computer system using a former co-workers account and then started methodically targeting the cars that used that system:

Ramos-Lopez’s account had been closed when he was terminated from Texas Auto Center in a workforce reduction last month, but he allegedly got in through another employee’s account, Garcia says. At first, the intruder targeted vehicles by searching on the names of specific customers. Then he discovered he could pull up a database of all 1,100 Auto Center customers whose cars were equipped with the device. He started going down the list in alphabetical order, vandalizing the records, disabling the cars and setting off the horns.

Good thing he wasn't fired from a hospital that used internet-connected pacemakers, huh?

Filed Under: cars, computers, disabled, disgruntled employees

As Cars Get More Complicated, Maybe Open Source Is The Way

from the progress-is-good dept

Back in 1999, a well-circulated false press release made the rounds, supposedly written in response to Bill Gates' jab at the auto industry at COMDEX that year. The memo joked:

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

    1. For no reason at all, your car would crash twice a day.

Of course, fast forward 10 years, and this is no longer really a joke anymore. Cars are now more complicated than ever, and now computers play a crucial part in the safe and efficient operation of modern automobiles. Today's premium vehicles probably contain close to 100 million lines of software code. That fact, coupled with the recent massive Toyota recall, seems to have spurred Slate's Farhad Manjoo to ask "Should we be worried that our cars are controlled by software?"

Perhaps if you're really into worrying for the sake of worrying, sure, I suppose the increasing complexity of the software in cars seems like a good reason to don a tinfoil hat. Certainly, compared to cars a quarter century ago, there's a huge amount of new technology between you and the road. But, cars are also safer and more efficient than ever before. While it's true that the software in cars may have bugs, that's really nothing new to be that concerned about -- car manufacturers issue recalls and maintenance updates all of the time to deal with not just software bugs, but mechanical problems as well. In the future, regular software updates may replace oil changes as regular maintenance for cars. But, the biggest Toyota recalls this year were still mechanical in nature: the floor mats and gas pedals, neither of which are remotely affected by any software in the car. Finally, as Manjoo points out, driver error is still the most common cause of accidents, so until we remove the human element from the driving equation (along with all of the driving distractions), recalled cars are really nothing to get worked up about.

That said, Michael A. Spiegel over at the Software Freedom Law Center makes an interesting point about this situation:

If Toyota truly wanted to repair its public image and reputation for quality, it would make its source code available to anyone interested, not just a single government regulator. The public is far more likely to discover bugs and suggest improvements than a relatively small number of overworked and potentially inexperienced government employees.

This is a intriguing proposition for a number of reasons. By releasing its software to the open source community, they could become key participants in the growing open source car ecosystem. By doing so, they could potentially benefit from the collective intelligence of that community looking at their code. Sure, Toyota may scoff at sharing what they consider to be proprietary IP with potential competitors, but in this case, Toyota could stand to gain more than it would potentially be giving away. After all, while software definitely is playing a critical part in automotive systems, by itself, it is not the selling point of a car. Even the e-voting industry is coming around to open source, after balking at the idea for years. For a variety of reasons, the automobile industry seems ripe for the exploration of new models right now. Programs like CityCarShare and ZipCar could be seen as "Automobiles As A Service" -- so maybe we'll start to see a Red Hat-like automobile company emerge in the near future.

Filed Under: cars, open source, software
Companies: toyota

Honda Sued For Trademark Infringement For Suggesting It Wants To Save The Earth

from the okay,-don't-save-the-earth dept

Be careful suggesting that you want to "save the earth." Automaker Honda just did that in an ad with a guy wearing a "save the earth" t-shirt, and for doing so, it got slapped with a trademark infringement lawsuit from the Save the Earth Foundation, which apparently has a trademark on that phrase (and has had it since 1972). The foundation claims that the ad was implying endorsement by the foundation. I wonder if morons in a hurry have any interest in saving the earth.

Filed Under: advertising, cars, save the earth, t-shirts, trademark
Companies: honda, save the earth foundation