Samsung wheels out new silicon that turns cars into 5G-fuelled entertainment hubs Samsung has wheeled out three new slabs of silicon for automotive applications. The Exynos Auto V7 is intended to drive in-car infotainment systems. Eight Arm Cortex-A76 cores hum along at up to 1.5GHz, helped by 11 Arm Mali G76 GPU cores. Samsung has dedicated three of the GPU cores to electronic instrument clusters. The …
As someone who is never going to get a "smart" phone the question I would like to ask is: Can all this stuff be removed from the car and it still works?
At the risk of being thought a Luddite, stuck in my ways and hopelessly old-fashioned what I require from a car is that it gets me from A to B reliably and cheaply, What I don' t want is some smart-arsed computer telling me where to go and how to drive, I'm quite capable of figuring that out for myself.
Added to which is the potential of a greatly expanded attack surface for all manner of ills. Would you trust the likes of Ford or Toyota to scrupulously keep all the software and firmware updated? Or would that involve some sort of paid subscription?
No, as a firm believer in the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well they can keep their mobile computers. I'll keep mine on my desk where it belongs.
Not really. Certainly in the UK/EU area the sim is enbedded into the car as part of an EU mandate that cars must have one from 2017 so that they can be in the future stoped.frrom drriving above the speed limiits. Its the whole other side of this with the constant telemetry going back to the manufacturer that gets on my nerves. Half of thisnis for the consummer, the rest is to enaable data transnfer back to base.
The concerning thing to me is the public awareness of it all, so many folk think the apps that they have for unlocking/locking their car l, viewing journeys etc connect to their car is frightening, they have no idea ita.connected to manufacturer then to their car. This is all a massive money spinner//saver for the manufacturer as the data they get off the cars is huge, saves them having to pay for research amd development teams.
The likes of JLR, VAG, BMW, Volvo etc are happy to engage on social media regarding their cars but go ssilent as soon as telemetry is mentioned. Also can be guaranteed every one of them breaks GDPR by not asking for explicit consent for this, either through dealers or direct.
The firmware is a good question, the more they make these vehicles connected, the stronger the possibility for hackers. Also this thing with over the air updates, loads of folk think is great, but I buy a car based.in what it's like to drive and use, then during ownership the system changee, its.not the car I bought. Then you get, like JLR are doing, apps pushed out (in JLR's case Alexa) which are completely unwanted and unable to be uninstalled. Who owns the car the consummer of the manufacturer?
They also lie about what they take off the cars, if you do question them and get an answer, its only journeys and location so you can find where you left it or theft tracker etc, but working for a poliice force in IT, I know folk who deal with Investigations who with a warrant can get almost anything the driver has done in the car ie accelorator usage, brake usage, speed, location, interaction with other car controls etc.
Go back 15-20 years ago and the only way to do this was stalking amd physical surveillance which was illegal, but now theres a "chip & internet connection" not an eyelid is batted.
Everything a driver pretty much NEEDS can be done without all this rubbish, decent sound system, a Sat Nav, bluetooth, prroper BUTTONS so you can press one thing the switch on/change a setting without taking eyes off the road.
Sorry gone off on a rant there!!
Agree with the sentiment, but a few corrections here. I've worked with a few OEMs specifically on connected car tech over the past 5yrs:
> sim is enbedded into the car as part of an EU mandate that cars must have one from 2017 so that they can be in the future stoped.frrom drriving above the speed limiits
The cellular connection is mandated for 2x reasons - eCall (emergency/accident) and bCall (breakdown). The former is automated on collision and goes straight to the local emergency services (not the OEM) and the latter goes to an OEM call centre or backs off to local public service. Nothing to do with speed limits. Even the V2X (vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure) tech, which uses WiFi bands has nothing to do with enforcing speed limits today (but the future?).
> constant telemetry going back to the manufacturer that gets on my nerves
This is opt-out in all cases that I'm aware of. Might not be obvious how to opt-out, but I think it has to be as OEMs are so worried about GDPR.
> This is all a massive money spinner//saver for the manufacturer as the data they get off the cars is huge, saves them having to pay for research amd development teams.
You would be shocked at how little, if at all, OEMs are using the telematics data. Other than Tesla who are light years ahead, most OEMs have little idea of how to exploit it, yet let alone have restructured their business around using it. EVs will change this posture - the margins are so razer thin on the car, they will need to make it up in value-add services like parking, charging, insurance, etc.
Again, agree that all this stuff needs to be transparent for drivers, but in many cases there can be legit trade-offs for data vs functionality. Examples: proactive JIT maintenance, stolen vehicle tracking, scheduled EV charging at cheap energy rates, etc. What needs to change is a more up-front, granular consent for each service. I have no doubt this will come.
Car data recorders have been a thing for more than 20 years, effectively anything with an odb port will have retained data in an accident that will be used in subsequent investigations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Event_data_recorder#Use_as_evidence_in_courts
Unless you want a pre 1999 non premium car without airbags, or abs then what ever you get will have telemetry.
Obviously, as you mentioned, newer cars have that constant upload capability, just that the feature you don’t want has been a thing for far longer than you realise
https://web.archive.org/web/20141127142500/http://www.temple.edu/law/tjstel/2006/spring/v25no1-Askland.pdf
<tinfoil on>
I just can't wait to have all new cars constant monitoring and reporting my every move. You know, for my convenience/terrorists/think of the children.
Oh, wait, you can add a couple of cameras and microphones and any car could also be used to spy on everybody in range.
</tinfoil off>
Yes it looks like we're heading for Chinese-style pervasive surveillance, without the general public being informed or asked for consent.
However in the immediate future I'm more worried that this will be used for taxation purposes. If we all start using leccy vehicles in the UK, our glorious government will miss out on approximately £30Bn per year in fuel taxes. So, this will have to be replaced somehow, as I'm sure they're not going to happily forgo £30Bn in the name of greening the world. This money will have to come from somewhere. Putting up the leccy charges generally won't be popular. So, this'll be some kind of mileage charge, and how will that be tracked...?
I sincerely hope video calls can not be enabled whilst the car is in motion, there is already too much crap in a modern car to distract drivers from the quintessential part of being a driver, the actual driving bit. e.g. Short sighted drivers peering at the google map on the screen while driving at max on the autopiste, then suddenly careering across all lanes to the exit they nearly missed. Whether deaf, talking on the phone or simply stupid I don't know but see it often enough.
Yes I include allegedly self driving cars too.
The leaders of the World get together at a single malt tasting jolly in Scotland and agree that 'something must be done about climate change' while the World's industry continues to create landfill as fast as they possibly can.
Chris, true. Already we in recreational aviation have been for years warned, rightly, about electronic distraction devices. As for the surface transport systems, a few drives in a Merc emergency vehicle has put me off anything made even partly in Europe for life.
Oh god! I once drove an A-Class and by the end of the journey I wanted to crash the car to make its incessant bonging stop so obnoxious.
I want to find the people who decided that was a good idea and fit them with a device that goes bong every time they move as punishment.
The number 1 rule is pay attention to your surroundings when driving. All of this puts that at risk. I know these things are usually "for the kids in the back" but i've had a taxi driver in a posh car wash his dashboard dvd player for 40 mins, luckily it was late at night when the roads were empty but still, there's always someone and it only takes 1 person on the road to ruin someone's life
Eight ARM cores? Check. They do run at a tad more than 1.5Ghz though. The Mali cores are there too. Electronic instruments on screen courtesy of "Torque" and a bluetooth dongle plugged into the car's ODB port.
Ok, it doesn't have a built in 5g modem (it could have) as it's cheaper and simpler just to share my phone's humungous data allowance with the car over WiFi. As a plus, I get to choose which apps are on it and how the UI is organised rather than some fucktard at the car manufacturer who has his head up his own bum, 28 fingers, macro lenses in his eyeballs and masturbates to a picture of Steve Jobs.
All this in the dash of a 2010 Alfa, courtesy of a fairly simple fitting process.
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