unlocking any car from X brand in most of the world
59 points by markerz
59 points by markerz
Amazing writeup! And this is why I’m never getting a car that connects to the internet.
Whenever I see amazing stuff like this, I always wonder why the manufacturer would opt for so goddamn much complexity. Of course I also don't understand why the car is "internet connected", but let's assume that's a good idea. Why this enormous complexity?
Internet connectivity is required for remote unlocking and ignition. E.g. if you want to start the car 10 minutes early in the winter while you're in the kitchen, you use the manufacturer's app on your phone to send an ignition request for your vehicle, and in order to receive that request the vehicle will have a 4G modem that can connect to the manufacturer's APIs.
You're gonna have to pry remote warmup of my car from my literally cold fingers.
More seriously, being able to check charging status from the phone is worth a lot.
I'm buying a car right now and as much as I don't love the idea of all the internet connectivity and computer stuff in modern models, I don't want to go back to shivering in -20c while waiting for the heater to turn on.
start the car 10 minutes early in the winter
Back in the '80s, people used to have a heat exchanger with a timer in their garage for that, assumed the car shouldn't fetch bakery.
I still see it in areas with especially cold (-40c) winters, but in more temperate (-20c) areas it seems less common. Also a bit tricky to do if you live in a building with outdoor parking.
But why is it done in such an incredibly enormously stupendously complex way?
Why isn't there just like a VPN between your car and whatever devices you want? Inaccessible to even the manufacturer. With only a minimalist service run by the manufacturer to store enough state that the car can be told "stay awake, owner wants to chat" when needed?
US car manufacturers when they were building out this functionality for the first time were not paying competitive salaries for good software engineers. That may have changed now that they've faced lawsuits and hacks, I dunno.
Why isn't there just like a VPN between your car and whatever devices you want?
I think "just" is doing a lot of work here. Neither the car nor your phone or laptop probably have static global IP addresses, so at minimum you need a server (ran by the manufacturer?) for discovery and likely NAT traversal soo. Then there's enrolling new devices. Can I do that by pressing stuff on my phone? My car? Does either work? There are interesting cryptography and UX implications for all of these. Before long, you have a buggy reimplementation of half of tailscale. It's far less complexity to have everyone just talk to the manufacturers servers.
You might say okay, then make the car literally use tailscale. Which, fair, maybe, but then you'd have nerds on lobste.rs rant about "Why does my car depend on Tailscale???"
Because car companies can(and do) charge $10-20/mo per car to do this. They tend to sell a lot of cars and recurring revenue like this for a car manufacturer is pretty much unheard of in their business. They don't pay software engineers much, though hopefully that's starting to change now that they realize how stupendously stupid the less paid employees did all this stuff.
Plus can you imagine how many companies/governments/organizations want to buy driving habits? I'm sure you can think of all sorts of good and terrible uses when you suddenly have a way to track every modern car in the world and where it was at any given time, how fast it was going, etc.
I'm sure there is words in their internal briefs about how they can use all this data they collect to improve their products too, but I mean that's just icing on the $$$$$ cake :)
No, it isn't. Just like your keyfob doesn't need the internet, an igniter doesn't need internet, it just needs a button on your fob. And remote unlock over the internet is just as nonsense. "but I lost my fob!" well then you learned an incredibly valuable lesson. In fact, about as valuable as buying a new fob and getting it programmed to your car. "But my loved one is stuck inside the car!" no they're not, latches open from the inside. "But I need to get into my car without anyone in it! I locked my key inside!" Cars don't lock with the fob inside so you had to really try to make that happen. Another valuable lesson: time to break a window and you get to pay for that, too.
You're right, I misspoke - internet connectivity is needed only for remote unlocking and ignition over distances beyond fob range.
I sometimes wonder if we'll ever return to a low tech society again without this complexity. Even on the orange site they were talking about key fobs that cost $175 to replace and I wonder if we'll ever go back to physical metal keys for unlocking your car door and starting your car. Probably never, as we've already given up on less complicated solutions like the headphone jack on mass produced consumer products.