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VW Goes USB
MadCow42 writes "According to this story on CNN, Volkswagen is going to offer in-dash USB connections on several models as of this December and others next year. This function is to let you connect your MP3 Player or USB drive to play your tunes on the car stereo! The bad news? I just got my Touran... sans USB."
It's good to see VW using the standard instead of going with the trend and putting ipod adaptors in, like BMW did.
There are other products out there than Apple's, and although the iPod may be the best (personally, i think yes), it does not mean it should be the only one to get car adaptors.
Business Voyeur
Can anybody explain to me why they'd offer USB for this? Personally, I'd prefer it if they'd just give me a line-in jack. It'd work with everything, rather than requiring the car to have drivers for the player. The article's pretty sparse on details, too. Does this require the iPod to be formatted for Windows (in the case of the iPod)? Does it support anything that mounts as a generic USB Mass Storage Device? Is this some idiotic version of Microsoft's CarPC software, and therefore vulnerable to everything that CE is vulnerable to?
My Systems
Only the most foolish designers in the world would manage to some how connect the in-car stereo system to say, the braking system. The most any malware could do would be to play some really annoying sounds at you - or perhaps amusingly, sirens (esp if vehicle has surround!) - and even then, you'd be able to turn down the volume until you got to the garage - unless of course, they were so *intelligent* they gave the car an *intelligent* volume system that balances with the noise of the road. So I think we're safe for now, although I never underestimate the geniuses working in the motor-vehicle industry.
I ride a bike.
As far as I know, you can't hide viruses in mp3 files yet, so I don't see how putting an mp3 player in your car stereo is going to be a security risk. This is just the same as your car CD player being able to read mp3s, except on a different medium.
You can take your tin foil hat off now.
A $90 stereo will probably be better than 90% of the users can hear. The speakers have a far greater influence on that. The other 10% is usually fooling themselves (ie the kind that thinks they hear better with their wallets empty).
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
really? My whole music collection is in ogg and my car is a BMW. It's not an all or nothing deal. If VW or BMW want to sell me a car that would only srive on the roads of their choosing then I wouldn't buy it either. As it happens, they drive on the 'open standards' roads. he didn't ask for a player with schematics. he asked for a player that would play the music format of his choosing.
Uhh, not so much. It'll be opened by your media player, not cmd, and the media player will just scratch its head.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
...despite all of the techno-whizzy gadgets, they're still powered by refined petroleum products.
No. They're powered by whatever fuel you put in them. If you *choose* to use refined petroleum products, you can, but you don't have to.
I drive my VW on 100% biodiesel -- refined from vegetable oil -- and it runs great. Cleaner and smoother and generally better for the engine than that petroleum crap most people use.
Sure, I *could* run it on refined fossil fuels, if I wanted to, but why would I?
It's especially strange to say this about VW, who is the only carmaker to still sell diesel passenger cars in the US! Any other carmaker *requires* you to use those dirty fossil fuels (even hybrids like the Prius).