Singing car
Justin the Light Guy outfitted his Dodge Challenger Scat Pack with an LED grid up front and created animations to make it appear as if the car is singing
Getting into pro racing
SRO Motorsports is a Twitch channel showing off semi-pro racing. What makes it all interesting is that it shows off what just a few people can do. What would have taken a huge TV crew is being done by just a few folks.
It was exceptionally fun because the 2 commentators respond to the chat questions live while narrating the race. You could ask just about anything about rules, ages, etc and they would just respond on-air. One of them even ran off between heats to grab them both some food from the on-track food carts. People in the stands watching were commenting live on chat. The racers range from 17 year olds all the way up to 40+ and they use cars that are not that different than ones you might have as a daily driver.
People asked about getting started in racing and they even answered those question (you get a driving certificate for racing via schools like Skip Barber driving school) as well as lots of interesting tidbits about rules and behinds the scenes knowledge.
Lidar in Disneyland and Fooling self driving cars
Mark Rober tested out both a Lexus equipped with lidar, and a Tesla that uses just visible light cameras. He wants to see if which of the systems will fall for a variety of tests that could fool self-driving cars. Including painting a fake road on a brick wall.
Bonus points, he took a lidar onto his ride of various Disneyland rides. He tries to see if by just bringing his lidar on Space Mountain if he could map and 3D print it. Results of that at 16:25
Ball wheeled bike
James Bruton has made a number of omni-directional vehicles, now he creates a omni-directional bike that uses balls for the wheels.
Toyota turns to Unity for it’s in-vehicle UI
Unity was chosen by Toyota Motor to help deliver a graphical user interface for its upcoming cars.
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Russian and Chinese software and hardware to be banned from all US vehicles
During the rulemaking process, the Bureau of Industry and Security found that certain technologies originating from China or Russia present an undue and unacceptable risk to U.S. national security.
“Cars today aren’t just steel on wheels – they’re computers,” outgoing Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a news release Tuesday. “They have cameras, microphones, GPS tracking, and other technologies that are connected to the internet. Through this rule, the Commerce Department is taking a necessary step to safeguard U.S. national security and protect Americans’ privacy by keeping foreign adversaries from manipulating these technologies to access sensitive or personal information.”
The software bans will apply to Model 2027 cars, while the hardware bans will apply to Model 2030 vehicles.
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Popular EVs Lose about 11-18% of their range in cold temperatures
Teslas seem to do some of the best at retaining their range.
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Hackers control Subarus over the Internet
Security researcher Sam Curry found a security flaw in the always connected Starlink system integrated into Subaru cars. It allows bad actors to obtain drivers’ personal information include VINs, location history, the odometer, and personal owner information, including customer names, phone numbers, and email addresses.
Using the obtained data, the hackers could proceed to the next phase of the attack and use the access to Starlink servers to create new administrator accounts to a connected vehicle. Doing this granted the attacker full access to remote control features, meaning that a bad actor would have obtained permission to start a connected Subaru car, lock and unlock it, and see where it was in real-time.
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Bosch gives employees unwanted 4-day work week as economy slows
As automotive demand falters in Europe, Bosch said 450 of it’s employees (primarily in Stuttgart and Gerlingen) would get reduced hours, and equivalently reduced pay, starting March 1, 2025. In Oct, they also announced plans to lay off 7,000 employees
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Automated driving from big brother
The end of speeding as we know it?
The NTSB is calling on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to mandate the use of speed control technology in every new car. It uses a mechanism called ISA (intelligent speed-assist).
ISA technology uses the car’s GPS location and matches it to a database of posted speed limits and onboard cameras to come up with the legal speed limit. Passive ISA systems warn a driver when the vehicle exceeds the speed limit through sound, visuals or haptic alerts. Active systems might make it more difficult to increase the speed of a vehicle, or even fully limit it from going, above a posted speed limit.
Europe already mandated such systems in all new vehicles starting in 2022.
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