I don’t exactly know how these debugging ports work in cars, but couldn’t you just emulate driving around casually for a while and use that, having it plugged into your computer, rather than your car. I presume it doesn’t record date and time since that would evade privacy, for of a how long you drive and how fast, and saves them as averages. I’m guessing that the port is some sort of serial port, It’d be nice to have some more information.

Posted at 9:41 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by TheSkorm

looks like this

http://www.amazon.com/CarChip-CAN-Data-Logger-Version/dp/B000JH2RVY/ref=sr_1_57?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1214660855&sr=1-57

probably is this
logs data and uses a simple consumer ready usb port

Posted at 9:49 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by Dirwin517

So what’s to keep one from creating a computer interface for this device, and using a program to feed it status codes throughout the day? All you’d need to do is keep it plugged into a computer all the time, and have a program mimic the status of your car.

Posted at 9:51 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by daler

It seems to me this thing is really nothing more than a gimmick. You can tell some things from the OBDII port but the only thing that I can see that would be useful to determine ’safe driving’ that can be measured is possibly acceleration rates or maximum speed. I suppose one could easily build an OBDII filter device to smooth acceleration and limit maximums, but the question is: would it even be worth it?

The device cannot tell if you are speeding in a school zone or weaving in and out of traffic. It can’t tell if you are drunk. It can’t tell if someone else is driving your car. It can’t even tell if it is plugged into your car all the time! Insurance companies cannot afford to take the risk that someone might cheat with this device and therein lies the gimmick — it won’t really save you money. They will just adjust their margin slightly for people with this device based on some safe algorithm — maybe you will save $100.

So why even do it? Why pay people $100 to put this in their car? Because it will save them money on claims and in lawsuits with other insurers and give them more leverage when wanting to raise rates or drop proplem customers. Most probably when you make a claim they will drop by and download the device log. Now they can do all sorts of stuff with that data to save themselves money. Heck, just having their own record of the speed the car was going when an accident happened could save them millions.

Forget this thing.

Posted at 10:04 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by John Laur

There’s really no need to feed emulated information into the CarChip. Just generate false logs when it’s time to upload the data. At most, you’d need to create a shim driver to emulate a USB device for the data to come from.

As for the usefulness of the data, they’re probably just looking at speed and hard acceleration and decelerations. People who slam on the gas and the brakes all the time tend not to be safe drivers. And I totally agree with John, the data will most likely be used in the event of a claims dispute for accident reconstruction.

I don’t quite get the whole concept of the program though. The only people who are going to get it are safe drivers, who are unlikely to be in accidents, so the data for accident reconstruction isn’t going to come into play very often, and so probably won’t save Progressive much money at all.

Posted at 11:43 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by 2bithacker

I’ve had one of the Davis units for 4 years. I bought it when the Ford dealer couldn’t figure out why my wife’s Mustang kept turning the check engine light on. It’s probably hackable to fake the data, you’d have to simulate the OBDII signals and respond to the inquires from the carchip device, including providing the vehicles VIN to the car chip. Yep, the VIN is in the car’s computer and the carchip reads it to determine what vehicle it’s attached to. It also knows when it’s been removed and reinstalled and logs the date and time of every event. Trip points can be set to determine if you’ve exceeded a preset speed, accelerated or braked quickly. It also notes the last time it was cleared and reset, I’d bet Progressive keeps track of that to determine if the device has been altered or cleared by the owner. You’d have to reset the carchip and restart it with the exact same parameters and the exact same date/time to get around that. It could be done, but how do you know when the guy in the office last cleared the carchip? Yesterday when it was installed, last week, last month or ???

Just a thought.

Posted at 11:50 am on Jun 28th, 2008 by ack210

Well, on the page about the device, they say, that it shares the information wireless. That would mean, that if you drive around it would always be uploading the current data to them, so you have no way of deleting or changing any logs, because there are none. But If it’s really wireless, it would work like a mobile phone, requiring an antenna station “near” it. If you drive in an area with bad coverage it wouldn’t really work, i guess. Or do you think that’s just to prevent customers from modifying the device?

Posted at 12:53 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by Schnulli

Maybe the only reason that you have cheaper insurance when this is in your car is because people think that their driving is being monitored. This means that average Joe assumes that the chip knows everything there is to know about his driving and to keep his premium down he drives safer.This means that on average people with this chip drive safer and therefore can have a lower premium. I reckon the chip would work just as well even if it didn’t have a chip inside the serial port.

Posted at 1:01 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by David

SOMEONE MAKE AN EMULATOR … i drive way way to fast and i need cheeper rates
if u got one email me at hvhaxor@gmail.com

Posted at 1:09 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by alex mccown

Actually, max speed, acceleration and total miles driven per year are all facts the insurance companies want to know. If you think about it, someone who frequently accelerates as fast as the car can; drives faster than the usual speed limit (or frequently drives faster than the highest limit in the area; some states still have 55 as their highest limit); and who drives many miles per day or week probably meets the insurance company’s idea of someone who is 5% or 10% more likely to have an accident.

Remember that the insurance companies go mostly on statistics. When I had a full-ton pickup truck, it was cheap to insure because people driving trucks get into fewer accidents in my state. But, when I bought a Civic hatchback, my rates went up because people driving hatchbacks get into more accidents.

I wonder if Progressive would be nice enough to let you know if your MyRate monitor indicated that your car needed mechanical work…

Posted at 2:08 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by Joey Y

I had one of these for a while. The Carchip model that Progressive uses seems to be a stripped down version of the other ones that Davis Instruments sells. The only things that it would monitor are Date and Time, Speed, and Acceleration/Deceleration.

There really isn’t much of a point to trying to alter the data it records. No matter how ‘bad’ your driving is according to their standards, your rate doesn’t go up. It can only go down if you stay under 70mph and drive during ‘less risky’ hours of the day. In fact I got a 5% discount just for uploading the data no matter what it was. At least that’s how it worked during the pilot program.

Posted at 2:16 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by Matt

I’d say someone needs to screw with them, throw that chip into an Indy 500 car on raceday. Let them try to figure how my 10 year old truck pulled 200+ miles per hour for a few hours each week. I know it probably wouldn’t work for long but this seems like the perfect way to really mess with them.

Also, what’s to prevent me from turning over my grandparents car and saying that it’s my primary car?

Posted at 3:02 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by Abyss

ECM and BCM circuits are the most under-discussed subjects in the reverse engineering community IMO.

The RFID keys alone are intriguing as hell, but the equipment for interfacing with them is pricey.

Posted at 10:31 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by TJHooker

1) Only available in four states (Al, Mi, Mn, Or)

2) Tracks “How far you drive”, “When you drive”, “How aggressively you drive”.

3) Data collected is shared with the End User via website.

4) “Wirelessly” uploads data. I’d LOVE to know how that’s implemented.

5) Data available to law enforcement and third parties w/ given permission.

6) Rates can go lower OR HIGHER depending on driving habits.

Posted at 10:53 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by A. R. Thomas

I’m willing to bet that the data they say they will record and the data they actually record will be quite different, Though I don’t know if it will be more or less data than they say.

I also agree with #8, people do behave better when they think they are being watched.

Posted at 11:58 pm on Jun 28th, 2008 by hack124x768

Though they are pricey, there are emulators that mimic the information the ECU sends out. http://www.obd2cables.com/products/index.php?cPath=31_33
It would not be hard to build one yourself depending on the protocol. For example, before the 2008 models, Ford used power width modulation to communicate through the OBD-ii connector. different manufactures use different protocols.

Posted at 1:30 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by Rouss

im sure if i sit around with a scope and a logic-an i can make my own avr one fairly cheep but i dont got the time or da laptop :-)

Posted at 7:46 am on Jun 29th, 2008 by alex mccown

Sounds to me like a gimmick to push an underlying agenda.

Get everyone to install these to the point that they are so common, no one can or will be insured without one. Then slowly phase in gps based units and eventually they have big brother of the car world. No more privacy when you drive, no more avoiding tickets since they upload your data straight to a police mainframe if you ever speed and the ticket will be posted (heck why not just E-mail it lol) automaticaly.

Accidents are instantly asses to see which driver ran the light, was speeding, was driving dangerously etc etc.

Heck the list is endless, most of it can be used for good (help raise the premium of dangerous drivers, while lowering those of safer drivers etc), but majority of it will just be invasion of privacy (why do they need to know you parked outside a whore house/drug dealers premesis etc?).

TBH I would be very weary of using one of these things for the above reasons, afterall whats $100 more for piece of mind comapared with $100 saving on your cover in return for paranoia?

Posted at 9:58 pm on Jun 29th, 2008 by Mojo

Mojo, that’s a pretty iffy slippery slope you’re talking about. How do you make the leap from [optional, asynchronous, tracking "How far you drive", "When you drive", "How aggressively you drive" (as above] to [mandatory, GPS-based location aware, real-time]?

Posted at 9:51 am on Jun 30th, 2008 by James

Cars with computers in them, ha! What kind of crazy future are these guys living in?

Posted at 1:28 pm on Jun 30th, 2008 by PaulJ

the one I have (from progressive, a couple of years old now) has a simple USB connector to upload the data. The log only contains driving distance, speed, and date/time. It DOES NOT record location information. And, of course, it only records when it’s actually plugged into the odb-ii port in the car. (Mine is not wireless, but then again, it’s not the latest version, either.)
The device has pins for more than the data they’re collecting (such as, CPU status, exhaust system, trans, etc.), but only a couple of them are connected internally.

Posted at 1:57 pm on Jun 30th, 2008 by RWL

James – the slippery slope here requires that these devices really start to catch on to the point that an insurance provider can require them. Once a vast majority of policyholders have them, it’s not that big of a step to require the rest to get a device or receive a huge rate hike. Now, rather than getting a device to get lower rates, users will get one to avoid higher rates. After all, if you don’t want a device, you must have something to hide, and thus are a bigger risk.

As long as all the big players in the insurance business follow suit (why wouldn’t they, it helps their bottom line?), then drivers are pretty much required to have one to be insured. Then, there’s not much to stop the insurance companies from extending the functionality of the monitoring devices. GPS would be added under the guise of further monitoring driving habits, perhaps to see if a driver frequents dangerous roads or intersections.

Once the insurance companies have this big brother view of drivers, it’s only a small step to guess that the government will want a piece of the data mining action. One only has to look at the pressures government puts on the telecom industry for wiretapping rights to see where this could lead.

Posted at 4:55 pm on Jun 30th, 2008 by Dan

Someone could just get the specs on the ODBII data format and make an emulator based on an AT-Mega or similar uC that runs when the car is on and have it input false data into the device.
Give the thing the blue bill it’ll never know the truth.

Posted at 9:34 pm on Jun 30th, 2008 by Patchouli

Mojo: That kind of stuff is why you should only drive classic cars w/o odb-ii ports (and w/ big engines :D)

Posted at 3:09 am on Jul 1st, 2008 by E.J. Publius

who makes this new MyRate device for progressive?

Posted at 7:48 pm on Jul 15th, 2008 by charles

Just got mine in the mail. My wife saw that we could get a 5% discount. She clicked “sure”. So now I’m wondering what I should do. I could install it and repost in 6 months. My rate is $363 for my 2004 Expedition. I’ll keep you up to date.

Posted at 12:26 am on Jul 18th, 2008 by zumazen

To put it simple your cars computer spits out a good deal of information. but some things people mentioned aren’t sent

ECU doesn’t know its vin, doesn’t know the time of day, and it in most cases has no idea if you are putting your foot on the brake (possible in automatics).

The information the insurance company will be after will most likely be the rappid acceleration and miles driven,

both can easily be falsified. USB readers for OBDII are roughly 20 dollars on ebay, a small board can also be created to forward false codes and information into the progressive chip

if you have a carputer installed in your vehicle you can set the cap for RPM and MPH, this can easily fool the insurance company to think you’ve driven less and been more calm in your driving patterns.

The hacking, unless the OBDII and Carputer are already installed would cost far more than you would save insurance wise to validate the reason

just my 2 cents

Posted at 11:50 pm on Jul 22nd, 2008 by Bump The dead

just wanted to throw this into this dead post for shits and giggles. uploaded my girfriend’s data just now and got a 10.71% discount. worth it to me since we’re both good drivers.

Posted at 11:17 pm on Dec 15th, 2008 by bob

I just got a 10.3% discount – that’s $27 per month – $162 per 6 mo term – or $324 per year.

And that is with more “sudden starts and stops” than the average MyRate user. If I drove like my mother, I could save over $600 per year.

Posted at 10:12 am on Mar 10th, 2009 by Dave

I just got my device replaced because the first one stop working.

The new one is wireless version which use cell phone network to send the data back.

As you may know, every time you communicate with a cell tower, it can locate you with in … I don’t know, maybe a mile? Same feature on some cellphones with google map.

I really worried how they going to use these information.

Posted at 3:49 pm on May 5th, 2009 by Anthony