Qualcomm's Connected Car Reference Platform To Connect Smart Cars To Everything (networkworld.com) 110
An anonymous reader writes: Qualcomm wants to supply the next generation of autonomous and connected cars with networking to connect everything inside and outside of the cars. That means 5G, WiFi, Bluetooth, GNSS, DSRC, V2X, OABR, CAN, etc. ... [Networkworld reports: "Qualcomm today announced its Connected Car Reference Platform intended for the car industry to use to build prototypes of the next-generation connected car. Every category from economy to luxury car will be much smarter than the connected luxury car of today, creating a big opportunity for Qualcomm to supply semiconductors to automakers and suppliers. Qualcomm described the following features of the Connected Car Reference Platform in its release:
Scalability: Using a common framework that scales from a basic telematics control unit (TCU) up to a highly integrated wireless gateway, connecting multiple electronic control units (ECUs) within the car and supporting critical functions, such as over-the-air software upgrades and data collection and analytics.
Future-proofing: Allowing the vehicleâ(TM)s connectivity hardware and software to be upgraded through its life cycle, providing automakers with a migration path from Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) to hybrid/cellular V2X and from 4G LTE to 5G.
Wireless coexistence: Managing concurrent operation of multiple wireless technologies using the same spectrum frequencies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy.
OEM and third-party applications support: Providing a secure framework for the development and execution of custom applications."]
Scalability: Using a common framework that scales from a basic telematics control unit (TCU) up to a highly integrated wireless gateway, connecting multiple electronic control units (ECUs) within the car and supporting critical functions, such as over-the-air software upgrades and data collection and analytics.
Future-proofing: Allowing the vehicleâ(TM)s connectivity hardware and software to be upgraded through its life cycle, providing automakers with a migration path from Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) to hybrid/cellular V2X and from 4G LTE to 5G.
Wireless coexistence: Managing concurrent operation of multiple wireless technologies using the same spectrum frequencies, such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and Bluetooth Low Energy.
OEM and third-party applications support: Providing a secure framework for the development and execution of custom applications."]
connected cars (Score:3, Interesting)
What could possibly go wrong??
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What could possibly go wrong??
Now that a secure android app is available to control your car from your phone , nothing can go wrong. It's also available for download outside google play!
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But you must click this link using your car's computer to get it free!
Data roaming fees (Score:2)
Data roaming fees just say 1-2GB download / update / software push / can cost you up to about $30K in data roaming fees at $15 a meg.
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And after a few years they shut down the authentication server so you have to buy a new car.
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Now replace "32 Million Twitter Accounts" with "32 Million Automobile Access Codes". Since you car talks to your cellphone, all your personal data will be at risk, including payment system info, bank access, email, contacts, etc.
Eventual headline: "Compromised Auto Password Database used to Loot Credit Accounts, Over $400 Million Missing".
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Oh, that's just money. How about "Hackers kill prime minister by taking over his car, accelerating it to 200 km/h and crashing it into a tree". Lulz!
Re:connected cars (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing if engineers that had some education were involved. Sadly most of the car makers do not hire Experts that have any education at all in security and stability.
there is ZERO reason for a bidirectional interconnection from the car's ECM systems to the Infotainment system. a single direction serial data stream to report speed and other data to the Infotainment is all that is needed. No I dont need my FM radio readout on my tachometer, it can be over on the radio. if you really want a multi function HUD then the HUD is also a single direction receive only device and it get's it's own streams from the devices.
100% hacker proof because even all the best hackers in the world combined can not write software that will make an optocoupler transmit data backwards.
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I think Joe_Dragon's hacked somebody's account.
Oh hang on, it's Lumpy. Forget that.
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What could possibly go wrong??
If it's as fast, reliable, and intuitive as Qualcomm's systems in commercial vehicles, it'll propel the auto industry into the 1990's!
No thanks (Score:1, Insightful)
Motor vehicles can be used as weapons. I prefer to be 100% in control of them at all times.
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I'm just the opposite. I let God be my designated driver.
Re: No thanks (Score:2)
Dog is my copilot.
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Re: No thanks (Score:2)
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As a pedestrian standing in the road, preventing your autonomous car from moving - who's really in control?
You are assuming that the AI doesn't calculate that it is safer to run over you versus subjecting the driver to being overrun by the car behind him/her. There is no more guarantee that a person in the road will be protected by an autonomous vehicle than a non-autonomous one. For both it is a judgement call, either by the driver or the programmer.
As such, my advice would be "Don't stand in the road when vehicles are coming at you."
Preferences vs data (Score:2)
Motor vehicles can be used as weapons. I prefer to be 100% in control of them at all times.
Well chances are that you aren't a particularly talented driver and there is ample evidence that you being "100% in control of them at all times" is almost certainly actually a safety hazard. Both to yourself and more importantly to the rest of us. Insisting on 100% control of a car is as ridiculous as insisting that you be the one to pilot the airplane or you being the train engineer. Just because you feel more comfortable doesn't actually make it a good idea. If technology can get better results and k
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Easy. Everyone except the .01% will be drinking Brawndo and watching "Ouch My Balls!" all day.
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The brave new world 10 years or 20 years from now we will have
* Driverless Cars
* Connected Cars
* Smart Bots
* Deep Learning Computers in Everything
* Smart Road
* Smart Drones
* Smart City
* Smart Swarming of Drones
* Smart Appliances with Embedded Deep Learning Capabilities
Can anyone spare a crystal ball?
I sure like to know how the brave new world might pan out
Probably not. Such a scenario requires working capital to produce such things. Working capital requires the sale of goods and services. The sale of goods and services requires consumers. Consumers require jobs with good wages. Average household income in most parts of the US is under $50,000. Most of that income is going towards housing, food and other basic necessities.
If shareholders want to profit by producing these things, then they need to have their businesses pay wages that support the purchase of
Something is missing... (Score:5, Interesting)
I am pretty sure 'Security' should be in that list as well, must have slipped the advertising drone's mind when they wrote it up. Let's hope the engineers designing it are not similarly deficient.
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Re:Something is missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a more primitive, all appliance based. A brake chip that looks after brakes, a service chip that looks after servicing, a communications chip that looks after communications, a dash board chip that looks after the control GUI, a throttle chip that looks after the throttle etc. and maybe, just maybe a chip that ties it all together, this chip with a big red button that switches it off and allows those others chips to be individually manually controlled.
No way in fucking hell, I want a wireless computer that looks after the entire vehicle and can drive me off a cliff, or into a train or into a river. Just no way, no thank you. Well, at least without an off switch that enables the car to keep going whilst that chip is shut down and cut off. Three letter agencies with laws that allow hacking of that chip, fuck I'll be a seventies car thank you very much.
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So on the one hand we seem to think that driveless cars will be safer than human driven cars, but on the other hand cars with high tech driver aids are more dangerous.
There must be a name for this fallacy. People think that if they have even a bit of control, they should have full control to override everything instantly and don't trust the machine. But if they have absolutely no control, like Google's cars where there isn't even a steering wheel, it's all fine and the machine is better than a human anyway.
Re:Something is missing... (Score:4, Interesting)
Problem is matey, I have bought so much high tech junk over the last few decades that has routinely fucked up, in fact software programmers claim it as the norm and seriously, what do you expect perfect software. Well, yeah, when going 100km an hour down a road I expect perfect software, you can't deliver, well then, no thanks. Generally I have found appliance based application to be more software reliable but sometimes of questionable engineering quality. Now I have no problem with automated vehicles in a subway tunnel system with a controlled environment so in the event of system failure, high hazard risks are very limited, but out in the open air, with trees, rivers, cliffs, buildings and vehicles going in all directions, typical software warranties scare the crap out of me, when my life would be dependent upon them.
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Okay, but let's look at the technical issues rather than wildly speculating.
Cars have a CAN bus. Well, multiple busses usually, connected and firewalled. The hacks have all involved getting in to the CAN bus by physical access or hacking the connected dashboard computer. In other words, the firewalls aren't good enough. That is fixable.
Let's not pretend this is some bullshit movie where an ace hacker can get through 17 firewalls a minute. We are talking fixed function hardware firewalls that can't be reprog
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Cars have a CAN bus. Well, multiple busses usually, connected and firewalled. The hacks have all involved getting in to the CAN bus by physical access or hacking the connected dashboard computer. In other words, the firewalls aren't good enough. That is fixable.
The problem is that the various modules have to talk to one another, and as soon as you do that, you open attack surface.
Let's not pretend this is some bullshit movie where an ace hacker can get through 17 firewalls a minute. We are talking fixed function hardware firewalls that can't be reprogrammed.
Sigh. First of all, there is no such thing. Nobody is building firewalls out of discrete components. They are making them out of computers, and computers have software. Second of all, a non-reprogrammable module is frightening to anyone with a lick of sense. That means recalls for failures, instead of field programming. So, you're not going to have non-reprogrammable firewalls anyway. The
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First of all, there is no such thing. Nobody is building firewalls out of discrete components. They are making them out of computers, and computers have software.
That's not what a fixed function hardware firewall is. It's a single IC that does have software, but it's stored in ROM and non-reprogramable or reconfigurable. It passes a fixed set of packets, and nothing else. They are commonly used on OBD-II ports, for example, so that diagnostics are possible but reprogramming functions are not available.
Also, these chips are not computers. They are not even microcontrollers. They are ASICs, designed using a hardware description language like VHDL. They usually don't h
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There is nothing contradictory or fallacious about believing a system can have a lower risk of a failure occurring overall, yet still be more vulnerable to certain types of failure.
Automated vehicle control systems have obvious advantages over human drivers when they are working properly. They don't get fatigued or distracted or irritated by someone else's bad driving. They can look everywhere at once, with much better sensors than human vision. They can respond much faster to the changing environment. In t
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There is nothing contradictory or fallacious about believing a system can have a lower risk of a failure occurring overall, yet still be more vulnerable to certain types of failure.
I agree, but then why do people here, a tech sites fully of supposedly technically mided people, keep saying they want a 1970s level of technology in their cars? That was my point.
An OTA update can't cause 100,000 human drivers to start running red lights because the new image recognition algorithm had a bug, or cause 100,000 human drivers not to brake properly on corners because a buggy sensor response said the surface was slippery and the brakes should be disabled on all four wheels to prevent a skid.
True, but those are things that are actually relatively easy to test for. We should expect car manufacturers to do it, just like the tested their ABS systems on different surfaces. And in any case, computer drivers will be more cautious anyway and unlikely to end up in a situation where one mis-application of the brakes results in
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I agree, but then why do people here, a tech sites fully of supposedly technically mided people, keep saying they want a 1970s level of technology in their cars? That was my point.
A lot of people have made the decision that they would rather do the driving than expose themselves to early adopter risks when their life is at stake. Why does that seem unreasonable to you? Full-fat, modern driving aids are very good, but lots of cars are still being built with older, cheaper systems. Really good ABS can brake better than any human in any conditions, but mediocre ABS is still being sold and will still fail completely to brake if the road surface is torn up well enough; going over a pothol
People don't like change (Score:2)
I agree, but then why do people here, a tech sites fully of supposedly technically mided people, keep saying they want a 1970s level of technology in their cars? That was my point.
Because change is hard even for people who like technology. Furthermore just because someone reads slashdot doesn't mean they are necessarily progressive in their views on technology. Slashdot has a small contingent of idiots here arguing against vaccines for crying out loud.
Once people get used to something a certain way it can be incredibly hard to get them to change, even if all the evidence indicates that the change will be for the better. Many people like to drive a manual transmission car even thou
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The biggest reason I prefer my manual transmission is throttle-based engine braking. When I am driving down the road I expect to be pressing the accelerator pedal to maintain speed, and a sudden lift of the pedal (w/o cruise control engaged) should have the car immediately decelerating, not coasting and freewheeling as if there is no air, road, nor driveline friction. A clever automatic should be able to do this even better than my manual, automatically upshifting or downshifting to give just the right am
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True, but those are things that are actually relatively easy to test for.
I'm not sure how true that is; the image recognition problems involved in my red light example are not trivial, after all.
In any case, this still relies on someone thinking to test for all relevant failure cases and writing those tests properly. Unfortunately, almost no-one else in the software industry manages testing so reliably.
With the control software for modern cars being as large and complex as it is, it's hard to imagine that nothing serious will slip through. And with cars, it only takes one suffic
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There must be a name for this fallacy.
You mean the one where you aggregated every comment about technology in cars, and made a universal Slashdotter?
No matter what technology is put in vehicles, there will be some people against it. That doesn't mean all of us.
Conversely, all of the technology available for vehicles does not mean every bit of technology is a good thing.
I generally like the improvements so far. Seat belts? Worn them since I started driving in the early 1970's. I want 5 point seatbelts, I want real roll cages, I want fire s
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I'm sticking with my 1982 car. Maybe someday I'll buy another (similar age) car as backup, but I will not give up my current car unless it is completely destroyed or the government passes a law that forbids the use of my car. However, if the law only concerns the fuel (my car runs on gasoline or LPG), then I'll look for someone to replace the engine with electric motor (assuming such modifications would be allowed by the law). Even then, the car would not be connected to the internet and all controls (excep
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...This makes me almost shudder.
That comes with the first firmware update... and you can get used to shudder.
The third update enables yaw... that's when things get interesting...
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I do not want a car that has wireless access to start it, or eventually hack into it. I don't believe I'll ever want one that can update OTA. I'll stick with my old fashioned 2014 car that only connects to my Bluetooth phone.
What is with all the Luddites on SlashDot?
Where did the people who embrace and understand Tech go?
Side note: You can not want it all you like, you will simply have no cars to pick from in the next few years.
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Cars aren't TVs, there are still people that fix cars.
That's kind of a problem to my mind. The fact that we still have such a huge car repair industry is a bug, not a feature. If someone wants to buy and repair old junky cars they aren't going away any time soon. But looking forward I'd prefer cars that don't actually need to be repaired or rebuilt because doing so is largely a wasteful activity.
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They understand tech alright, we get reports every week of a manufacturer making a complete arse of security and or remote updates. Even if it works, we cant trust them not to monetise our private info or remove already paid features.
DO NOT WANT.
Re: Something is missing... (Score:2)
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Side note: some of us enjoy driving for the act of driving itself, and not for any practical outcomes.
That's fine, but it won't stop self-driving cars from taking over the roads in the next 20 years...
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"...must have slipped the advertising drone's mind when they wrote it up."
Given the level of Gibberish, it must have been an MBA:
"“With the Connected Car Reference Platform, Qualcomm Technologies has developed a platform for automakers, module OEM customers, and developers that emphasizes scalability, modularity and security for integrating and managing multiple cutting-edge wireless technologies inside vehicles,” said Nakul Duggal, vice president, product management, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.
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Don't worry, they'll add the phrase "security is ensured by military grade encryption" to marketing material.
You missed the point about Luddites (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty you can do with technology to make cars more interesting or useful. Look at all the modern driver aids, such as traction control or assisted braking. Look at modern navigation systems. Even the lights on modern cars are getting totally redesigned to be more effective.
However, connecting cars wirelessly to anything and everything is foolish with today's technology. There was a story just yesterday about how an OTA update broke the radio and navigation systems on Lexus cars [bbc.co.uk]. A couple of days before that, there was a story about how the alarm on a Mitsubishi model could be remotely disabled due to poor wireless security [bbc.co.uk]. Paranoia is irrational distrust. It's hardly irrational to be concerned when we've had two major failures so far this week and plenty more before that.
The point about the Luddites was that they were opposed to technological changes that would potentially make them redundant by doing their jobs better and more efficiently. Nothing about having hopelessly vulnerable control systems attached to vast numbers of heavy, fast-moving vehicles falls into that category.
Think Of The Cash Saved On Spike Strips (Score:3)
custom applications? (Score:3)
Providing a secure framework for the development and execution of custom applications.
Will be updated to:
Providing a secure framework for the development and application of custom executions.
security/reliability (Score:2)
Valet Car-jacking (Score:3)
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That'd be a fun virus. Infect cars. Give it a month to spread. When the clock hits the preset date, every self-driving car sets off simultaneously for one destination. Pick any business or organisation you dislike and watch as their headquarters and all the roads in the vicinity become inaccessible.
huh? (Score:2)
Are we posting ads as stories now?
Two more words (Score:2)
DISCONNECT (Score:1)
I want a UN-connected car, no transmit or receive abilities at all. Hard wire connections only to separate sub-systems. I heard an TV add touting connection to your smart watch. For what earthly purpose should your car talk to your watch. For all the techie nerds jonesing autonomous cars I suggest a dedicated expressway, for the Lemmings, to the cliff overlooking the ocean, God speed you to your destiny. For the companies fighting to climb on the band wagon you need to lead the pack on the new i666 road to
Re: DISCONNECT (Score:2)
But... (Score:1)
Does it run Linux?
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I work for a company that does R&D that CARB uses to make decisions on new regulations for vehicles sold in California. For the past 6 months or so we have been testing a platform for real-time centralized monitoring of emission systems in both passenger and commercial vehicles.
In this platform, connected vehicles send real-time diagnostic information from the OBD system to CARB via a GSM link. CARB can then identify vehicles that have emissions problems and notify owners, prevent the vehicles starting, and if necessary, automatically levy fines for non-compliant commercial vehicles.
Overall this is a wonderful system that will help vehicle owners keep their cars and trucks compliant with CARB regulations, reduce health effects of fossil fuel use, keep our children healthier and safer, and capture lost noncompliance revenue, which is estimated to be millions of dollars every year.
Compliance is big business. From lobbying to get your shit mandated to massive windfall you and your supply chain makes when all of those dollars backed by the states monopoly on violence start rolling in.
The use cases and cost benefit analysis in California particularly are sometimes laughably absurd because the goal is often not really public safety or helping everyone. The goal is the creation of new markets and self enrichment.
You don't need a real-time data link to enable a check engine light or impl
Where is the free access to the API? (Score:2)
Full platform docs, api, etc.... What? it's not 100% open.
FAIL. Will not be adopted.
Who would want that? Marketing People (Score:5, Insightful)
Just put an line-input jack on the stock radio, and make the radio opening is a standard replaceable size, and stop fucking around with it.
It's a car--not a information center. Even GPS may be replaced someday. Are we just supposed to throw our car out because the some codec or protocol isn't supported in your stupid hackmagnet monstrosity of pointless obsolescence and seething complication?
Re: Who would want that? Marketing People (Score:2)
Just put an line-input jack on the stock radio
How about optical S/PDIF input... and fucking 4.1 RCA outs so we have the option of connect amps that don't suck??
where is security on the list? (Score:3)
I see "OEM and third-party applications support". That sounds like a "good idea"(tm) when every third party app will come with the required 400 page disclaimer and rights waiver "this app is not guaranteed in any way and you waive and damage claims against the supplier"
Although I do see great promise in phone apps for the "real time driving experience you have always wanted" connected to the car app "leave the driving to us".
No mention of security (Score:3)
It boggles my mind that with the constant stream of reports coming in about cars being hacked in one way or the other, not a single mention of the word 'security' appears anywhere.
Car companies have clearly demonstrated that they don't know shit about security, and don't seem to care either. If Qualcomm is going to put together some kind of reference network design for car companies to use, that makes them equally culpable should the car get stolen, or if anything else happens that turns out to be network related.
Uh Oh (Score:3)
"Qualcomm's Connected Car Reference Platform To Connect Smart Cars To Everything"
Yes, and by "everything", they mean "ads and hackers". Yippee.
What if I don't want any of this? (Score:2)
Error (Score:2)
s/cars/lawnmowers/