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Linux Powered Dodge
Dan Koppenheffer writes "Wow! Linux (and Java) underlies the Dodge Super8 concept
cars's Infotronic
information/entertainment system. " The car looks pretty terrible, but hey, embedded Linux! You'd have to be a lot more careful hacking on that system, then, say, your Tivo. (Segmentation Fault: Welcome to Idaho)
Okay, if you have poor directional stability in RWD and snow, *let off the gas!*
I think that is inherently the problem. It usually happens when I am trying to accelerate, and I try to accelerate very slowly mind you, but a sudden slipperier section of road knocked me out. Letting off the gas doesn't do much for me, I am not sure if I even have the response time.
My very main beef with RWD systems is that in itself. IMO they just don't handle very well at all when you have sudden and unpredictable changes in road conditions. The other is that they get stuck easier, I have a friend that owns a Mark VIII and one time he didn't bother to stop by our house because we had some snow in his driveway, a concious decision made *bacause* it was RWD. He passed us and went home only to get stuck in his own driveway. The weight and the power are in totally different places and if the snow isn't perfectly manicured one can run into trouble if you have little momentum. Putting weight in the back is a poor hack at best, IMO. At least the truck has 4WD to make up for it.
I think the handling issue is _much_ more of a platform issue than simply FWD / RWD / AWD.
From 1984 to maybe recently Chrysler made at least one FWD car that outcornered every GM car made up until maybe the C5 (current model) Corvette, as I have been tracking the cornering and slalom ratings in car magazines for quite a while. I have scared people with the way it corners, even with tall tires.
It was the humble Laser / Datona platform, when both cars shared pretty much the same body. Later Lasers were built on a Mitsubishi body style, I believe they handled just about as well. I think the current Neon sport package can outhandle most cars even at twice the price.
I have driven RWD vehicles in unpredictable icy winter conditions with much less luck. Once my rear wheels slipped I had much less directional stability than I would desire, I ended up in the ditch far more often than with FWD vehicles (well 2 and 0), even with a decent weight balance on the rear tires.
Even if I lost traction on an FWD vehicle, I still had momentum, a similar situation would put me in a tailspin on a typical RWD system. The argument that loosing drive traction means loosing steering power on FWD systems don't mean much to me because of the way most diffs are set up. If the diffs were positraction I think I might have much better luck but they aren't on many vehicles that I have noticed.
Just curious, has anyone tried hacking the embedded system powering recent (1999+)Jeep/Durango/Caravan trip computers? I would _love_ to have a 'screensaver' instead of just the compass + temp.. Heck, even horizontal space invaders using the garage door opener buttons would be cool ;)
Your Working Boy,
Indeed, as Sho Funaki might say. It is necessary to drive SUVs with proper respect for their center of gravity. It's like the Corvair - it handled beautifully, but it didn't have the understeer common to front-engined cars of the time, so people who didn't have a good feel for what their car will do when driven hard found themselves swapping ends and rolling. That's not at all the car's fault, though.
Also, I take your point regarding misuse of SUVs (not ever getting them muddy). It bugs me to see the lady down the block drive all of 1/4 mile in her shiny black Explorer to pick up her kids at the bus stop. I walk down there for mine, and save the big iron for going way up in the hills. The right tool for the job, sort of thing.
-- Jeff Paulsen
SUVs are safer than smaller cars. You can drive them over bad / nonexistant roads more easily. They fill the role formerly taken by station wagons (or "estate" wagons, if you speak British), and can also be used for some country work. Some of the advantages of the pickup, and all of the advantages of a station wagon.
As for the gas shortage, I haven't been turned away at the pump yet. BP's market manipulation has had just as much to do with the price going up lately.
Let's see. Great American cars that could not possibly represent evidence of Genital Compensation or Stupidity. The Neon, Valiant, and Corvair (whatever that Commie Nader thinks) spring immediately to mind. Given more reasonable standards, this list would include dozens of full-size, V8 cars. They are more than reliable enough, easy to fix, and amply powerful.
The engineering on foreign cars is sometimes great, but very few of them have that engineering along with adequate size, performance, features, handling, and price. The larger Volvo, Mercedes, and BMW models come closest - but I can get most of those features in a $750 '83 Buick, and I can fix it myself.
So is this, comrade.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Don't go to many car shows, do you?
-- Jeff Paulsen
NOW YOU'RE TALKING!!!!
An electric car would be VERY nice because they have constant torque, and there are things like capacitors which would allow you to literally SMOKE the tires through an entire quarter mile, for far cheaper than the Viper that a feat like that requires today.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
...they built the important stuff on Linux...but the video is "windows media only". Does this mean drivers won't be able to see the ads for their own car as they drive around? P.S. I have to agree with the "hideous" side of the argument - this car seems to have all of the BAD aspects of 50's retro mixed with the bad aspects of modern "extruded"-looking cars... But, obviously, that's just my opinion.
A vote for the lesser of two evils is still a vote for Evil.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
This sounds like the sort of design choices driven by the sort of thinking that goes, "Let's see who our strategic partners are and that will dictate our platform choices to our engineers." I noticed Sun's name mentioned in the Dodge release -- a pretty good indication that the Mountain View marketing machine stormed their way into the engineering castle early on in this project's lifecycle.
MOO;IANAL.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
It's not that awful, and at least it doesn't look like every other big car out there. Though it does look like Dodge's attempt at a VW Beetle.
Hopefully all code used to communicate with the outside world is written in Java. If this is the case, there will be no buffer overflows and hopefully no bugs related to some script using an insecure command line parameter.
It's a valid concern of course. I personally think that the use of Java (or Smalltalk, etc, etc) is a good choice of platform to lessen the likelyhood of security issues.
/ Peter Schuller
--
peter.schuller@infidyne.com
http://www.scode.org
A BSD (and Perl) powered Ford.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I haven't seen a single post asking about the source code, and demanding release yet!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Offtopic me, but I'd kill for a Triumph TR-8 with a convertible top, just because it's so unusual, and hated by British car purists/zealots.
Linux powered but you need windows media player to see the video.
.. so all linux hackers live in the US ?
"All American" hmm
---
I'm sure what you meant to say there was "SUVs are safer than smaller cars because you can drive them over other cars more easily". Although technically that's still wrong because SUVs are officially trucks. Also, here's a small collection of links about SUVs.
It's perfectly fitting that this inefficient bloated monster should run Java onboard...
On another note I think the car looks pretty cool and who cares what the car looks like the stupid thing has a 353 HP!!!
Never knock on Death's door:
The Anti-Blog
If a dohc, or even sohc setup was used, the engine would have produced significantly more power.
None the less, it is nice to see a full-sized car made that is not for a grandmother!
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
*shrug* Yeah, but look at what Honda is doing.
178BHP in a 1.8L normally aspirated engine (The Acura Integra). Tweak the same engine, and you get some incredibly good gas mileage, and low emissions. Good engine design produces more power from less fuel, producing less waste emissions.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Good Lord, what an ugly car! Even for a prototype, it's uglyugly. Yech!
And that engine? 353BHP out of 5.7L? Big (censored) deal! Torque is a bit better, but this is the same as they got out of this size of carburetted engine in 1956!!! For a MODERN two-spark hemi engine, they should be able to drag 100BHP/L out of it easily. (and normally aspirated)
Sorry, just a rant about crappy, big, inefficient engines. I'll behave now.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
It runs Java, huh?
... but you'll be driving the SLOWEST CAR EVER!
/bill
So bascially, you can drive it anywhere
the author proceeded to reinstall, port, and then place a 'powered by freebsd' sticker on the bumper.
----
My Jetta is Linux powered and has +many+ more pimp features than that dodge. But it's fun to see where the industry is going. My Jetta has DVD, GPS, HUD, Mp3s, Quake, LCDs in the headrests, etc. Check it out at: http://juno.ath.cx/cbergeron/mp3jetta/ Enjoy!
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
If you do nothing else, watch the video promo for the car (on the page linked to in the article, Windows Media Format only). The cheesiness throughout it as a typical american family 'rediscovers the backroads' is hysterical.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
I think the handling issue is _much_ more of a platform issue than simply FWD / RWD / AWD.
Yes and no. There are some FWD cars that will handle better than some RWD cars. But primarily, the effects of FWD torque steer into a set of MacPherson struts is often insurmountable and unrecoverable.
From 1984 to maybe recently Chrysler made at least one FWD car that outcornered every GM car made up until maybe the C5 (current model) Corvette, as I have been tracking the cornering and slalom ratings in car magazines for quite a while.Yes and no.
The Daytona/Charger/Laser platform is, of course, an Omni/Horizon derivative. Like the Shadow/Sundance, it shares the same steering geometry, same front unibody clip, same drivetrain options (for the most part). Most importantly, while the spring rates and lock-to-lock counts may be different, the same MacPherson struts, top plates and steering rack as a Shadow/Sundance or Omni/Horizon.
Now, that doesn't mean that it handles badly. In fact, Chrysler FWD has far less torque steer than the competition (notably GM's X-cars). But that doesn't mean it handles well, either.
The primary problem with a MacPherson Strut front suspension is that the steering pivot point (axis) is well behind the wheels, in an invisible line directly below the centers of the MacPherson strut to inner fender attachments under your hood. The arc that the wheels cover is big.
Now, a more conventional suspension - specifically a double-A arm - the wheel's steering axis is a vertical line drawn from the upper balljoint to the lower balljoint. Those are attached right to the steering knuckle. On most cars, that's in line with the outside of the rim. In fact, on some double-A-arm front suspensions, for example a Pontiac Fiero with alloy rims, the steering axis is almost centered within the wheels because of the offset of the rims.
(Note that a Fiero is RWD and uses MacPhersons in the back, not on the front wheels.)
This means an incredible reduction of the understeer associated with FWD, more specifically, MacPherson struts. And, because of the width of the engine and transmission transverse-mounted in the engine bay, designers often don't have any choice other than a MacPherson strut setup, which is small. Car companies like them, too, because they're cheap and lightweight.
The one company that I've seen which has addressed this effectively was Honda. Now, I don't like them, but they've done a very good thing: Honda's MacPherson struts are generally shaped so that the wheel is almost directly under the top plate. This is a great enhancement to the handling.
I have scared people with the way it corners, even with tall tires.That's not tough to do. Most people get frightened when they're in my truck and I swing the back end out to fishtail around a corner. I've seen bus drivers in the Laurentian mountains of Quebec do it to make corners on mountain highways. Some of the people in the bus were scared there, too.
Hell, to scare people with what I drive, all I need to do is start the engine. (400 CID (6.6L) V8 in my 1976 Dodge Ram.) Just sitting at idle, the happy panting burble is subsonic, you feel it more than hear it. It feels distressingly powerful to most people.
I think the current Neon sport package can outhandle most cars even at twice the price.Twice the price of a Neon = ~$30,000 = still FWD, still MacPherson struts, just with more body weight and sheer bulk. Yup, the Neon wins that contest. But with good tires, a Chevette (with double A-arms and RWD) will outhandle a Neon. No sweat. (Just watch out, Chevettes have really nasty brakes, so upgrade to Fiero rotors and calipers before racing your 'Vette.)
You won't see an improvement to the Neon until you actually get into RWD sports cars and sedans, like Caprice Classics, Crown Victorias, BMWs, Mercedes, not to mention the Vipers, Corvettes and mega-buck exoticars.
I have driven RWD vehicles in unpredictable icy winter conditions with much less luck. Once my rear wheels slipped I had much less directional stability than I would desire,Okay, if you have poor directional stability in RWD and snow, *let off the gas!*.
That's all there is to it.
With FWD, you need to stay on the gas, but you want to get off it before you turn a corner, then apply power again after you're out of the corner.
In RWD, use the gas pedal as a steering device. Turn the wheels gently, hit the gas pedal just hard enough to lose traction, and you've used the fishtail to your advantage.
Or, you can drive like you are with FWD, but remember to be more gentle with the gas pedal.
I ended up in the ditch far more often than with FWD vehicles (well 2 and 0), even with a decent weight balance on the rear tires.Like an automatic transmission, FWD tends to be easier to drive.
Like a manual transmission, learning how to drive RWD well is a lot more rewarding.
Even if I lost traction on an FWD vehicle, I still had momentum, a similar situation would put me in a tailspin on a typical RWD system.Tailspin? Let off the gas. Be gentle. Instead of starting out in first gear, start out in second gear. Accelerate gently and skillfully, and you can make any RWD car accelerate in snow every bit as fast as the "better traction" of FWD will allow.
The gas pedal is a steering device. It's easy once you get the hang of it.
The argument that loosing drive traction means loosing steering power on FWD systems don't mean much to me because of the way most diffs are set up. If the diffs were positraction I think I might have much better luck but they aren't on many vehicles that I have noticed.When you turn a corner, your wheels rotate at different speeds. The wheels on the outside of the corner spin faster (and cover more ground) than those on the inside of the corner. A posi differential in a front wheel drive car would be a very bad thing. Instead of letting that happen, the posi would try to make both wheels turn the same number of revolutions through the corner. The result is, since most vehicles have some caster, that the car would try to force the wheels straight as you hit the gas pedal. In order to accelerate hard into a corner, you'd have to fight against the little clutch in the differential carrier that has to slip to unlock the wheels from each other.
This is related to torque steer, but it's not quite the same thing. Olds Toronados/Buick Riveras/Caddy Eldorados were some of the early American FWD cars, had *huge* V8s (like the Cadillac 500CID (8.3L)), and often had posi FWD. Very scary to drive sometimes.)
In RWD, since the wheels are hard-mounted in their positions, the little clutch in the differential carrier gives and slips. Since it's not trying to force the front wheels to spin at the same speed, you don't feel it in the steering wheel.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I think that is inherently the problem. It usually happens when I am trying to accelerate, and I try to accelerate very slowly mind you, but a sudden slipperier section of road knocked me out. Letting off the gas doesn't do much for me, I am not sure if I even have the response time.
Make sure you start out in *second* gear, not first, if it's a fishtail off the line. And make sure that *both* your rear tires are equally worn. Otherwise, you're sliding!
My very main beef with RWD systems is that in itself. IMO they just don't handle very well at all when you have sudden and unpredictable changes in road conditions.Practice.
The other is that they get stuck easier, I have a friend that owns a Mark VIII and one time he didn't bother to stop by our house because we had some snow in his driveway, a concious decision made *bacause* it was RWD. He passed us and went home only to get stuck in his own driveway. The weight and the power are in totally different places and if the snow isn't perfectly manicured one can run into trouble if you have little momentum.Practice!
And, make sure that you're starting out in second gear. For sure. Reverse is your enemy, because it's a *very* low gear (Often lower than first), so be careful if you're trying to rock a stuck car. Spinning the tires only melts the snow under them. When that happens, your car sinks into the hole, and the water promptly refreezes.
First gear will generally make your wheels spin too easily. You want low speed torque, not high speed rotation. Automatic transmissions are not your friend here, since most of them will always start out at first.
(ie. you put it in "D", and as you accelerate, it goes through first, then second, then into third. Put it into "2", it starts out in first, upshifts to second, and stays there. This is not what you want, you want it to be in second whenever the shifter is pointed at "2". A stickshift is a definite advantage here unless you have some years of Chrysler TorqueFlite or GM TH-350 automatic.)
Putting weight in the back is a poor hack at best, IMO.Completely. It's a kludge. For sure, in most cars, FWD has the advantage of weight on the driven wheels. But the other advantages of RWD more than make up for it.
And remember, the weight distribution on most cars is in the 60 front, 40 rear range; regardless of FWD or RWD. If you can put the weight behind the rear axle, it won't take much. You can calculate the weight required for the distribution to be 50/50 when you know how far behind the rear axle (fulcrum) the weight is on the lever (distance between fulcrum and ballast).
*Never* put more more than 50% of your vehicle weight on your rear wheels, or you're in CorvairLand and asking for trouble.
At least the truck has 4WD to make up for it.Not my daily driver!
'76 Dodge Ram D-140 (2WD), 400 CID (6.6L) V8, 727 TorqueFlite automatic, 9.25" diff with 3.93:1 open gear (no Posi). Weight distribution unloaded, about 75% front, 25% rear. Scary.
It's one of the worst vehicles I've ever driven in snow. It really doesn't like it. (And I can't blame it.) When I let off the brakes, the rear wheels are spinning without even touching the gas pedal. And a '76 TorqueFlite isn't one of those ones that starts out in second if you tell it to - so I lose that advantage.
But with a good set of Firestone Radial ATX tires (yes, they're recalled; yes, the treads separate; no, that's not as bad as a blowout; no, if you can't drive through a blowout, you shouldn't be allowed to drive; yes, they were cheap; no, I'm not worried, I live in a cold climate and I keep them well inflated; yes, I like them, they seem to last really well) and an old Volvo motor strapped into the very back of the bed, the truck is perfectly well mannered.
The best part is that people don't tailgate me because the old engine looks like it's precariously balanced on my back bumper.... yet another RWD advantage!
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Of course, mondern all wheel drive is far better than only front or rear wheel drive. Note that I'm *not* talking about four wheel drive that can really suck on things like Jeeps etc.
I'm not sure if it really is. I think AWD/4WD/4x4 just give most motorists a false sense of security and that leads to problems. ie. Usually, you see more SUVs in the ditch during a snowstorm than any other kind of vehicle.
As for which is better, a high tech AWD or a Jeep-inspired low-tech 4x4? Gimme the 4x4 anytime. KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid. No electronic controls to break. No CV joints to couple the power, just simple and brawny universal joints. No weird computer controlled differentials that will lock you out entirely if you break a wire while driving over a treestump.
It's not that I don't like computers in cars. I think they're great for some things. But the tendency with the electronically controlled parts in drivetrains is that they either work, or they don't. If I break that wire, I'm stranded until I pull out the diagnostic equipment and figure out which wire is broken. If I crack a PC board in my traction control computer, I'm screwed.
With a low-tech vehicle, if I break something, it's likely that I can pound it together to the point where it runs.
I was out bushwacking once in a friend's old full-size Blazer. I popped the rear universal joint, and it was a 2WD truck, so I couldn't take out the driveshaft and use the front wheels to drag me home. I was stranded.
So, I pulled out my toolbox, where I found that I had a couple of chisels. I drifted out the remains of the U-joint's spider, and pounded the chisels through the yokes.
Then, I cut off a few links of some of the old tire chains kicking around in the truck, put them through the chisels, and then got out a big sledgehammer to mushroom one chisel so that it wouldn't fall out of the differential yoke.
I hooked up the chain links to the chisel on the driveshaft yoke, pounded it through, flattened it off, and there it was: a universal joint made of chain links and chisels. It was loud (clink-clink-clink-clink!) and it was fragile. But it got me home.
Try that with a CV joint in a new car.
All I demand in a 4x4 is a torquey and efficient motor (like my lovely old Chrysler Slant-6!), a good four speed with overdrive manual transmission (my Chrysler A-833 fits the bill here), a New Process selectable transfer case (like the NP-170; 2WD lo, 2WD hi, 4WD hi, and my favorite, 4WD lo.) and a Dana 44 front axle. Oh, man, there's nothing you can't drive over with that - I accidentally backed over a Subaru Outback one morning. And in 2WD mode, with reasonable tires, in my old 1983 Dodge Ram, I was getting 20 MPG. (That old truck is scrapped, but I saved the entire drivetrain out of it, so I'll put it into something else someday.)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
A RWD car with snow tires will do as well as a FWD car. I had a 1971 Plymouth Valiant. Me and p*ssy were mutually-exclusive during that period, slant-6 or not. It was an ugly car that repelled women but you could drive it 25,000 miles without changing the oil and not hurt the engine. Try doing that to one of those sissified cars today and it will sue your ass.
That's a lovely car!
I've got a '74 Valiant Brougham (scroll down for a description, I've yet to find any pics on the 'net). It's a Valiant with velour and leather seats and shag carpets. And, despite how horrific that must sound, it's actually really tastefully done. And it's incredibly comfortable. Also, it's got the 1973-1976 styling, which combines an aggressive looking front end with lots of chrome trim, a form-fitting vinyl roof (no opera windows, thank god), tailfins (the Valiant was the last car to still have them), and a really neat shape to the back doors.
The damned thing is timeless. Sure, it looks old, but not in the same way that a 1975 Cutlass Supreme or even the Vista Cruiser on That 70's Show looks old.
What can you compare it to today? 2001 Nissan Maxima. It's about the same size, same passenger space, handles and stops about as well. The Slant-6 doesn't keep up with the OHC Nissan 6-cyl, though it puts out a hell of a lot more torque.
It's my baby, and I'm restoring it and rebuilding it as my "touring car" for long trips.
And chicks seem to like it. It's not a silly little Honda with a big stereo and a chainsaw muffler like most other guys they meet are driving. It's a sensible car, and yet it's also got a shag carpet and a few other neat things. And it's one of those rare things that looks more expensive than it really is.
Your '71 was a great about-town daily driver, and it's a lot more interesting now that something boring and expendable like a Honda Accord or some similar crap. I'm sure it would attract a lot of attention around here, especially with an immaculate body and a good coat of paint. (Gotta be something really chintzy. They looked *awful* in the gold metallic that was popular at the time. I suggest a modern replacement would be Volvo Copper paint.)
Besides, is the chick dating you, or the car?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Both the Aspen and Volare could be equipped with the slant-6 (I know, I owned the stationwagon).
Of course. I'm unclear as to where I said otherwise.
The base engine for the Volare/Aspen - and for most of Chryslers cars and trucks at the time - was the Slant-6. The Volare and Aspen were available with either the 318 or the 360 as an option. Chrysler big blocks, like the 400 and the 440, were available in other car lines until 1978. They were never factory installed in the F-body (Volare/Aspen), though it's an easy engine swap.
The 318 and 360 share most of their geometries with the Slant-6, so they're almost as tough, though the 318 is preferable because the heads that were being used on 360s at that time had valve lubrication problems.
The station wagon was my favorite of the lot, too. I'd love to get a 1980 Volare Premier wagon, and bolt on a 1976-1977 hood, grille, front fenders and bumper. That's a reliable and kinda cool (in a 70's retro way) looking car.
Amazing enough...there's a LOT of these cars are STILL on the road. (I still see valiants!) They got okay gas mileage...but they were reliable as hell.The Slant-6 is widely considered to be the toughest gasoline engine ever made. Consider its heritage: it was designed in the late 1950s as an aluminum 170 CID (2.8L) racing engine. In 1958, in typical Chrysler do-or-die fashion, they had to bring out a new car, the Valiant. They still hadn't found a suitable motor for it. So, they tried the aluminum racing engine: expensive to cast, unreliable if they overheated. With no time to spare, they poured molten iron into the molds (which had been designed for softer aluminum) and the Slant-6 was born. Since the block and head castings were originally designed to be aluminum, it's amazingly tough in the high-nickel iron alloy that Chrysler chose to make them with.
By 1961, people were already starting to talk about how tough these motors were. And with their intake manifold design and the fact that they were tilted to the passenger side, they had a tunnel ram intake and a weight distribution that was set up for good handling. Valiants were quick. Chrysler eventually decided to offer a longer stroke version of the Slant-6. They brought out the 225. As emissions controls like catalytic converters and EGR systems reduced the efficiency of the cars in the 1970s, the 170 CID (and the 198, which I didn't mention) Slant-6 was dropped and the 225 was all that remained.
The only thing I hate about Chrystler/Dodge is that their automatic trannys made manuals pointless (and I like manual transmissions). The 904 & 727 are the best transmissions I've even had.Yeah, I prefer a stick, too.
I've seen a 1969 New Yorker at a Mopar show. Big 4-door land yacht. Comes with an automatic transmission. This guy factory-ordered the only known New Yorker to have been made with a stickshift - they hand-built some linkages for him and everything. A-833 4-speed manual, in a 440-powered New Yorker. Very nice. :)
<grin> I've got a 904 in my Valiant and a 727 in my 400CID Ram. And there's a beautiful A-833 4-speed manual, full clutch linkage, Slant-6, small-block and big-block bellhousings, languishing in my garage, waiting for one of my TorqueFlites to fail. It's going to have to wait a long time...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
a Chrysler PT Cruiser (4 star crash rating) or a Honda X car (unrated, but 2004 model will have a hybrid gas/electric engine, so the mileage will be killer, probably 50+ mpg).
That said, note the supplier is using the Red Hat distro, according to recent PR Newswire articles (which dropped out of my cache, but occurred on Monday or Tuesday this week).
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Seriously, if it's a Linux OS car, does that mean we can't get the drivers for the DVD player? Or can we take the firmware for the DVD player in the new Linux powered Dodge and use it in other systems?
Hey, it's a hack. An expensive one, but just claim someone stole your DVD player that you ordered and get a new one through the dealer. After a few months, they'll probably notice, but it will be too late.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It seems like the embedded kernel would already be so tweaked for use in the car's cpu that the only thing it would really need in the way of modifications would be an RPM/Speed-limit remover like some chippers already do. Why would you want to hack a car's cpu? This is not rhetorical. Why would you?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Why did they choose Linux?
Is it because Gates fears what will happen if people begin to use many Windows power'd computers in applications even more mission-critical than what's in their desktops- their CARS??
A stable system that will not cost hundreds to upgrade every few years, that can be customized to the level of security required by the customer?
Linux.
p.s. that car is beautiful. Taco, can you auction that off instead of the slashdot cruiser?
Goat sex free since 2001
The infotronic center in this car uses a JVM running on top of Linux. This represents a good move on their part IMO, since the software is easier to code and maintain, and the speed hit of a JVM isn't critical in a real time system unless you're using a GUI. It also makes remote administration of the car easier, assuming that they wrote in an XML layer.
My question is, how easy is this car going to be to (maliciously) hack? Imagine some script kiddie rooting your infotronic center and uploading a new version of the software...or sending signals to lock/unlock your doors...or tracking your car's location via the infotronic system....
I really hope that the designers kept privacy and security in mind, and that the infotronic center code was thoroughly tested for cracks. Otherwise we're going to see some really ugly cracks (and scripts!) and another round of oppressive anti-hacker legislation and prosecution in the not too distant future.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
I crashed my Dodge into a tree and it took forever to fsck the engine.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Slashdot Cruiser
Now there's an ugly car.
Good lord, what WERE they thinking?
Part of it looks like a 50's Chevy. Part of it looks like a truck front-end. It makes old Volvos look rounded, when viewed from the front.
Maybe that's why it's wired up? To distract you from the fact you're driving a god-awful dog of a car?
The car looks pretty terrible, but hey, embedded Linux!
The car looks pretty terrible, but hey, big V8 without silly things like extra valves per cylinder or front-wheel-drive. And it's a Hemi to boot!
That's the *real* priority. Linux was just a smart business decision.
But the big Hemi-head RWD V8 setup means that the automakers have finally realized that there's a segment of the population that really responds to big, brawny, unrefined American V8s. Myself included.
Sure, it'll be a gas pig, but that's okay. If I can afford to daily drive a 1976 Dodge Ram with a 400 CID (6.6L) big-block V8, I can afford to drive this.
Sadly, it doesn't look anything like one of the concept cars they've had kicking around, the Hemi-powered V8 Charger. I hope this is a signal that the platform is going to happen and that they'll make the Charger, too.
As it is, that's a great market niche for Chrysler. Police departments are screwed, because Ford's dropping the Crown Victoria, GM has already killed the Caprice Classic. And cops love rear wheel drive because it handles so much better than front wheel drive.
You'd have to be a lot more careful hacking on that system, then, say, your Tivo. (Segmentation Fault: Welcome to Idaho)<grin> As long as you're not hacking the traction control, ABS or airbag computers. It's still not a teleporter, you know.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Remember that car that was so great, and came from some other country? Me neither.
-- Jeff Paulsen
Our cars can't crash!
æeee!
363 Horsepower? Rear-wheel drive? Sounds like a 70s-era gas guzzler to me (see also Dodge Aspen).
Okay. Where to begin. Hmmm...
First thing, is the Volare and Aspen were made from 1976 to 1980 as replacements for the compact, efficient and highly reliable Plymouth Valiant. They were not gas guzzlers, even when equipped with the optional 360 CID (5.9L) V8.
Now, they weren't as good on gas as today's cars, but technology has progressed. The Valiant, with its base engine, the legendary Chrysler Slant-6, was routinely capable of 20-25MPG; the Volare/Aspent, because of emissions controls, got a little bit less gas mileage than that. For their day, good gas mileage. And for their size, good gas mileage.
The cars that were really bad on gas were things like the big-block powered Cordoba/Mirada personal luxury cars, the New Yorkers, etc. of that era. That's because of the sheer size of the car (which was what people wanted at the time, and apparently again want) and the fact that they had three-speed transmissions with a final output drive ratio of 1:1. At the time, overdrive automatic transmissions were just starting to come out. So, yeah, they were gas pigs.
Rear wheel drive does not itself mean bad gas mileage. However, it does mean marginally more weight. And because the entire drivetrain is not assembled as a single unit like in a front-wheel-drive car, it does mean more time and labor going down the assembly line.
However, for the consumer, rear wheel drive is generally a good thing, though most consumers erroneously believe that the opposite is true.
In a front wheel drive car, everything - steering, suspension, engine, transmission, driveaxles, etc. are crammed into a small engine bay. That means that if you have to replace a starter motor, you might have to spend three hours taking out the front axles before you can get at it. It also means that in a collision, everything mechanical is probably screwed, and therefore the car is a write-off.
Finally, rear wheel drive handles better. Why? Well, if you lose traction on one of your front wheels, you lose the ability to steer. (Ever tried to steer with your front wheels locked up?)
With front wheel drive, how your car will handle on a snowy road depends on how much traction you have, where the wheels are pointed, and how hard you have your foot on the gas. Unpredictably, one or the other wheel can lose traction - when that happens, you lose steering in that wheel. And because there are so many variables for the driver to consider, it's tough to manage.
On the other hand, with rear wheel drive, there's less weight on the driving wheels. Put a bag of kitty litter in your trunk to prevent getting stuck. But the best part is that when you lose traction, your RWD car will fishtail predictably. Let off the gas, it straightens out. If you need to make a right turn, point the wheels a little to the right and punch the gas. With some practice, you can use this tendency to your advantage and control it completely.
(Do your practice in a snowy parking lot so that you don't hurt anyone else, until you've got the technique down.)
I grew up in Ottawa, Canada. It snows a lot there. And now that I live in Toronto, I can spot my fellow Snowbelters - they're the ones who *don't* slow down to take corners, they just fishtail sideways into them, and then accurately pull the car straight. I can take a corner faster in snow than I can on dry pavement.
The same thing occurs on wet or dry pavement, and you can use it to your advantage if you know how. It's a lot more useful than silly little front wheel drive parking brake donuts.
Why do you think it is that most police forces buy rear wheel drive cars?
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
[smuj@pepper ~]$ ssh -l root admin.yourcar.com /usr/bin/honk -o /dev/horn /usr/bin/speed /dev/axle /dev/console
root@admin.yourcar.com's password:
admin#
admin#
Current Speed: 73MPH
admin# rm -f
admin# echo "Hahahahaha" >
admin# exit
This car would sell great in the US. Here's a list of the strong points:
1) Big doors to allow 300+ lb. people to get in and out.
2) Lots of headroom for teased hairdos and cowboy hats
3) Great big wheels for running over tiny animals
4) Antique appearance - this definitely looks like your father's Buick
5) Gigantic engine, because driving 55 in the fast lane is better with 350 horsepower.
6) Probably zillions of beer^H^H^H^Hcupholders
7) Bench seats so the lard doesn't get pinched, plus there's a place to put a whole tray of hot dogs.
8) 22 inch wheels - just like your teenager's Honda Civic
9) Pushrod engine technology - fuck that DOHC shit. This car looks old, so why not use old fashined engines too? Grampa won't get confused when he looks under the hood.
Remember the car that Homer Simpson designed? This is just like it.
Don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.