Chinese auto-maker accused of altering data after fatal autonomous car accident Police are investigating an electrical vehicle company in China following claims that car data was tampered with following a fatal collision. On August 12, 31 year old Lin Wenqin was using the driver assistance feature on his Nio ES8 when he was involved in a fatal car crash. Chinese state-owned media Global Times reported Lin …
Okay, it's a possibility, but I wonder why the relatives are saying that. What proof do they have ? Why do they suspect that data was altered ?
In any case, the company's explanation seems plausible. A collision is very likely a bad thing for the batteries of an EV, so taking them out ASAP is probably the right thing to do.
In any case, I'm looking forward to hearing about this investigation.
I'm sure it must have, it has a 3 minute hotswap battery pack, that would require a cut off switch (second video).
(Video purports to be real independent review, but his tone suggests fanboi influencer):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jel7rDCmG68
It's seems to have issues with English speakers, the English guy speaking English has trouble with it, but the Chinese guy speaking English it understands! So you need to speak English with a Chinese accent!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rC1EbpqivpM
"that the first responder can get access to"
I was involved in a near crash. Women on the other side of the road fell asleep, crossed the road, smacked into a phone pole. Luckily a metal one, so she survived.
The first thing the fire bridge did was wrench open the bonnet with big jaw things, then disconnect and remove the battery. This was a petrol car.
It shouldn't need any remote intervention to "disconnect" a battery, this sort of thing must be easy for the emergency services to do, as nobody is going to want to go near a vehicle if there's a risk of shorting out the battery, and all that follows...
this sort of thing must be easy for the emergency services to do
But you definitely don't want to make it easy for someone to disable a vehicle in a parking lot, or you make things easier for rapists, carjackers and other evil doers. There's a reason why the hood needs to be unlocked from the inside of the vehicle when it used to be openable by anyone.
Even if there was a simple switch inside it would need to be in a standard/known location for emergency personnel to find it. They know where to rip open a typical car because they know where the battery is located in most cars. But not all - my mom's Cadillac has it between the rear seats for some reason. There may be enough Cadillacs around in the US that this is generally known, but if you have some rare car they probably won't have a clue where to look if the battery isn't found where they expect it.
On the other hand, here in the UK, every public service passenger bus as well as coaches, have an Emergency Engine Cut Off switch easily accessible under a flap at the back, well signed to make sure everyone knows it's there. Something you'd think would be a magnet for teens to access and pull whenever they see a bus or coach stopped at traffic lights or bus stops. And yet you never hear of it actually happening.
That makes sense for a bus, they are rarely left unattended and when they are out of service they are generally kept somewhere secure.
Sure someone could walk by and do that while on a route, but even if there are no bystanders these days a bus probably has a camera in the back to provide evidence in case of an accident. It could also catch someone messing with it. Anyway, if it is well marked the driver knows it is there so it would be easy to undo. Might put them a couple minutes behind schedule, but no real harm done.
Ahh when I were a whippersnapper I remember blocking the exhaust pipe of someone waiting at the traffic lights, that was a funny one. It was a just-started car so I could do it with my hand, rather than the old potato trick. It took them a few goes to re-start it!
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or if you really believe that brakes and steering can't be remotely hacked...
Just in case you believed it, here's a news article from 2016 about that exact attack against a real production 2014 car. Oh, they could control the accelerator too.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wired.com/2016/08/jeep-hackers-return-high-speed-steering-acceleration-hacks/amp
To back you up the UK forced the cancellation of a conversion kit to convert a Kia 2014+ into a self-driving car, all of the steering and acceleration etc were electronically controlled on the same net ,- you just plugged in.
Brakes required a hardware module, but I'm sure you could crash with throttle and steering alone
Disconnecting power from an damaged electric vehicle isn't as straightforward as flicking a master switch or disconnecting the battery from a conventional car. there's a lot of energy there. You would want to disconnect individual battery sets from the system to really neutralize the system, especially if it is damaged and may sit around for some time.
Also: self driving cars are better than distracted drivers but they certainly aren't perfect (yet?). That's why the makers legally require that a "driver" should monitor the car. Is that really achieved in the real world? Not reliably. "Drivers" are still distracted or are just lulled into a sense of security by the computer driving better than they can. So we still have accidents. Is it better than having a random selection of drivers and halfwits at the steering wheel? Statistically yes, but not if your computer slams you into something it fails to recognise. It's the old group v individual prisoners dilemma thing again.
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