car hacks

468 Articles

The J1772 Hydra Helps You Charge Two EVs At Once

December 2, 2022 by 20 Comments

There are plenty of electric vehicle (EV) chargers out there that are underutilized. This is particularly common where older EVs are involved, where the cars may only be able to charge at a few kW despite the charger being capable of delivering more. [Nick Sayer] regularly found 6.6 kW chargers being used by vehicles that could only draw down 3.3 kW at his work. Thus, he built the J1772 Hydra as a nifty double-adapter to charge two cars at once.

The Hydra comes in two versions. One is a “splitter,” which is designed to be plugged into an existing J1772 AC charger. The other is a version designed for permanent installation to an AC power supply as an EV charger in its own right. Either way, both versions of the Hydra work the same way. In “shared” mode, the Hydra splits the available AC power equally between both cars connected to the charger. When one completes, the other gets full power. Alternatively, it can be set up in “sequential” mode, allowing one car to first charge, then the other. This is great when you have two cars to charge overnight and don’t want to wake up to shift the plugs around.

It’s a neat hack that could be useful if you’re running older EVs that rely on slower AC charging. We’ve seen other DIY EV chargers before, too. Expect hacking in these areas to become more commonplace as EVs grow in popularity.

Car Batteries: More Than Just Wet Lead

December 1, 2022 by 47 Comments

Working on car electrical systems used to be easy. The battery simply provided power for the car’s starter motor when starting or to run the small number of accessories when the engine wasn’t running. The rest of the time, the alternator charged the battery and provided power for the rest of the vehicle and the ignition system. While very early cars didn’t have batteries, and some old cars had 6 V positive ground systems, most of us have lived our entire lives where car batteries come in several sizes (controlled by Battery Council International) and cars have a 12 V, negative ground system.

Times have changed. Cars don’t have distributors anymore, they have computers. They also have lots of gadgets from GPS to backup cameras and cellphone chargers. Batteries have had to get beefier and the modern trend is to also require less maintenance So, today, you’ll find that there isn’t just one kind of car battery. But how do these other batteries work and what was wrong with the good old lead acid wet cell?

For the purposes of this post, I’m not talking about electric car batteries which is a whole different topic — and most of them have a regular car battery, too. Continue reading “Car Batteries: More Than Just Wet Lead” →

EV Chargers Could Be A Serious Target For Hackers

November 28, 2022 by 56 Comments

Computers! They’re in everything these days. Everything from thermostats to fridges and even window blinds are now on the Internet, and that makes them all ripe for hacking.

Electric vehicle chargers are becoming a part of regular life. They too are connected devices, and thus pose a security risk if not designed and maintained properly. As with so many other devices on the Internet of Things, the truth is anything but. 

Continue reading “EV Chargers Could Be A Serious Target For Hackers” →

Spoofing LIDAR Could Blind Autonomous Vehicles To Obstacles

November 22, 2022 by 74 Comments

Humans manage to drive in an acceptable fashion using just two eyes and two ears to sense the world around them. Autonomous vehicles are kitted out with sensor packages altogether more complex. They typically rely on radar, lidar, ultrasonic sensors, or cameras all working in concert to detect the road conditions ahead.

While humans are pretty wily and difficult to fool, our robot driving friends are less robust. Some researchers are concerned that LiDAR sensors could be spoofed, hiding obstacles and tricking driverless cars into crashes, or worse.

Continue reading “Spoofing LIDAR Could Blind Autonomous Vehicles To Obstacles” →

EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions

November 15, 2022 by 258 Comments

Call me crazy, but I’m ride or die for manual transmissions. I drove enough go-karts and played enough Pole Position as a kid to know that shifting the gears yourself is simply where it’s at when it comes to tooling around in anything that isn’t human-powered. After all, manuals can be roll-started. A driver has options other than braking and praying on slippery roads. Any sports car worth its rich Corinthian leather (or whatever) has a manual transmission, right? And you know that Rush’s Red Barchetta ain’t no automatic. Face it, shifting gears is just plain cooler. And it’s not a chore if it gets you more, although the fuel efficiency thing is a myth at this point.

You can imagine then my horror at the idea that someday within my lifetime, most cars will be twist-and-go electric go-karts. As the age of the combustion engine appears to draw to a close (no, seriously this time), there’s just one thing keeping the door open — marked enthusiasm for manual transmissions. From Audi to the Nissan Z, automakers report that the take rate for manual transmissions is quite high in the US, despite the death knell that has been tolling for two decades or so. Two models of Honda Civic are manual-only. This phenomenon isn’t restricted to sports cars, either — the 2022 Ford Bronco comes in a seven-speed manual, and has seen a take rate over 20%.

Continue reading “EV Sales Sticking Point: People Still Want Manual Transmissions” →

Garage Door Opener Ejection Seat

November 5, 2022 by 16 Comments

[Scott Prints] had a familiar problem. His garage door opener was boring, and rattled around annoyingly in his car’s center console. This was obviously a major issue that needed to be dealt with. His solution was to install an ejector seat. Er, well, an ejector seat button. At least, that’s what it’s labeled. (That’s sure to be a great conversation starter for passengers.)

The end result looks slick and combines several build techniques. He started by taking measurements and 3D-printing a test piece for the center console nook. Turns out, that’s a more complicated shape than it seems. Rather than try to measure the exact angles and radii, Scott turned to the tried-and-true method of fiddling with the parameters and printing a second test. Close enough.

The coolest and most challenging element of the build was engraving and cutting the aluminum plate that forms the visible part of the build. Turns out, the online recommendations for milling aluminum are laughably optimistic when you don’t have an industrial CNC machine. Slower, shallower cuts got the job done, albeit slowly. A red paint-filled marker made the letters pop. The guts of the donor garage door opener are fitted into a 3d-printed shell, and then a Big Red Button threads into the print, holding the whole build together. A bit of solder later, and the project is done. Simple, effective, and very stylish! We approve. Come back after the break for the build video.
Continue reading “Garage Door Opener Ejection Seat” →

Showing a car dash screen with options menu, showing a "Steering" entry and a bunch of options one can change, i.e. Normal, Sport, offroad, Eco etc.

Your Car Has Driving Profiles – Here’s How To Change Them

November 2, 2022 by 24 Comments

Just like mobile phones of yesteryear, modern cars have profiles. They aren’t responsible for the sounds your car produces, however, as much as they change how your car behaves – for instance, they can make your engine more aggressive or tweak your steering resistance. On MQB platform cars, the “Gateway” module is responsible for these, and it’s traditionally been a black box with a few user-exposed profiles – not as much anymore, thanks to the work of [Jille]. They own a Volkswagen hybrid car, and had fun changing driving modes on it – so naturally, they decided to reverse-engineer the configuration files responsible.

Now, after two years of experimentation, tweaking values and observing changes, there’s quite some sense made of the configuration binaries. You can currently edit these binaries, also referred to as datasets, in a hex editor – there’s profiles for the 010 hex editor that make sense of the data you load, and explanation of the checksums involved. With this, you are no longer limited by profiles the manufacturer composed – if a slightly different driving combination of parameters makes more sense to you, you can recombine them and have your own profile, unlock modes that the manufacturer decided to lock out for non-premium cars, and even fix some glaring oversights in factory modes.

This is pretty empowering, and far from ECU modifications that introduce way more fundamental changes to how your car operates – the parameters being changed are within the range of what the manufacturer has implemented. The smarter our cars become, the more there is for us hackers to tweak, and even in a head unit, you can find things to meaningfully improve given some reverse-engineering smarts.