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”
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”
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”
[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”
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.
We’ve noticed an uptick in cars–especially pricey ones–using 3D-printed parts. However, these are usually small and nonstructural parts with a few exceptions. This isn’t the case with the 2024 Cadillac Celestiq. The $300,000 luxury electric vehicle boasts 115 3D-printed parts, according to a post on [TheDrive].
It appears part of the drive–no pun intended–is to allow ultra customizations for people who need more than a car that costs more than a quarter of a million dollars. For example, if you buy an Escalade — another Cadilac vehicle — you have to tolerate that the switches that operate the window are the same as Joe Sixpack has in his Tahoe. Not so, the Celestiq since it has 3D printed switches that could even be customized for a specific owner. The post mentions that the large steering wheel trim is all printed so having, for example, your name, family crest, or company logo embedded in it would be feasible.
When I was growing up, my dad and I restored classic cars. Combing junkyards for the pieces we needed was a mixture of interesting and frustrating since there was always something you couldn’t find no matter how long you looked. [Emily Velasco] was frustrated by the high price of parts even when she was able to find them, so she decided to print them herself. She wrote an excellent tutorial about designing and 3D printing replica parts if you find yourself in a similar situation.
All four marker lights on [Velasco]’s 1982 Toyota pickup were on their way to plastic dust, and a full set would run her $160. Instead of shelling out a ton of cash for some tiny parts, she set out to replicate the marker lamps with her 3D printer. Using a cheap marker lamp replacement for a more popular model of pickup as a template, she was able to replace her marker lamps at a fraction of the cost of the options she found online. Continue reading “3D Printing Hard-To-Find Vintage Vehicle Parts”
