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Hack Your Car
gurps_npc writes "The New York Times has this story about hacking your car's chip. You can get significant horse power and torque boosts (+18 horsepower and +70 foot pounds of torque in the given example), as well as improve (or decrease) fuel efficency. The car companies do not like (surprise surprise) people personalizing their vehicle's programming and warn of burning out your engine with bad code, and voiding your warranty."
I would tinker with the insides of any computer, or any electronic device.
But on the other hand, if I make a mistake with a car I could hurt or kill myself.
I think I will just leave them alone and keep hacking my Xbox and Tivo, I cant die if I screw up my Tivo.
When I was taking Real-Time programming we discussed car code. The prof said it has a 7 year development cycle and takes about 2 developer hours per assembly instruction to write, test, and debug the code.
I don't see a hacked code being anywhere near as reliable. Even if it makes the changes you want, your car might end up stalling as often as windows crashes.
Jason
ProfQuotes
The article states that some of these hacked cars are violating state emissions standards. Yet, they also have the ability to reset their cars back to the factory settings whenever they need to. In fact, in some states, newer cars aren't even emissions tested every year because it's presumed they come out okay from the factory.
"But if it wasn't for the smoke, I'd be happy with it," is I think the exact reason why car makers are underclocking the potential power of cars. This could be an enviromental problem waiting to happen if this catches on.
No different than overclocking and many people have been very successful doing this...
Because we all know an internal combustion engine, with hundreds of moving parts, metals with critical temperature points, etc, is exactly like a CPU.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It's a question of responsibility. If you do tests in a controlled environment and with crash dummies, there is very little chance of hurting someone versus if you openly encourage every Joe Blow to mod his car...
DrkBr
Most cars are tuned for a compromise of fuel efficiency, low pollution, and reliability. So these mods will adversely affect these more mundane automotive goals.
On the one hand, these high performance mods probably turn the car into serious emitter of nasty gases.
On the other hand, the added stress probably shortens the lifespan of the engine and gets the car off the road that much sooner.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This reminds me a bit too much of the "simple free digital cable PPV device" we see spammers selling. You hook it up, you "buy" as many order-with-your-remote shows as you can for a couple months, and then when the bill comes, you see just your base bill with no charges for the shows your watched.
The device blocks the upstream communciations frequencies so your box can't call home, but allow the broadcast frequencies to pass through so you still get watchable signals. However, after a few months, the party's over. The cable company sends down a signal cutting off your service, and tells you you'll have to let the digital box call home before you can watch anything again. Guess what, the box has been keeping count all along. So you pay full price for everything you thought was free, and you're out the money you spent on a worthless device...
If somebody's selling an unathorized upgrade without being willing to stand behind their product, you better watch out. Something's not right with the deal.
What makes you think this provides any useful information to the company? I guarantee you that the auto manufacturer does a VASTLY more thorough test of an engine design than any amateur can possibly do -- fully instrumented, checking all corners of the configuration space, etc. There are in fact generally good reasons why the manufacturer chooses NOT to wring the extra 5% of power out of the engine -- reliability, emissions, efficiency, etc., especially within the context of assembly process and component variations during mass production.
Hackers aren't engineers. Get that through your head. The auto company learns NOTHING it didn't already know when people reprogram engine computers.
Hacking cars does not make you a better customer, it just makes you a hacker. They have your money either way, but from their point of view they are likely to get dinged with warranty repair costs they don't deserve when somebody hacks. And the truth of the matter is, they're right.
Same as overclocking. You think it doesn't cost Intel and AMD money? I guarantee you it does. People break their CPUs overclocking and abuse warranties to get them replaced all the time.
You pulled that "100 hp" out of the air: nowhere in the article is such a claim made.
However, significant gains can be made in some areas without running afoul of your first failure mode. If you are willing to commit to always using high-octane fuel, for example, then you can safely derive significant benefit by changing the ignition advance settings in the ROM maps.
Other useful features can be added to your ECU as well. Consider the products from TechnoMotive. You can add security so that the engine will only start if you tap a secret code on the gas pedal. You can make instrumentation display many different data -- helping you prevent the types of failures you mention. You can even have bugs from the manufacturer fixed:
ObDisclaimer: not associated with TMO in any way, but have heard great things from their customers.