WiFi in Your Rental Car

Jezebel writes "Avis is bundling a 3G-to-802.11 bridge with their rental cars that will turn the vehicles into WiFi hotspots. Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?" From the article "Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz told the International Herald Tribune that the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, including all major US cities. Pratz claims to have minimized the problem of dropped signals with a technology similar to that used by the space shuttles to maintain an Internet connection."

Comments

In soiviet Russia

[GC]

In soviet Russia, wireless hotspots wardrive you!

Regulation

[denebian devil]

Well, many states have taken to banning cell phone use in cars by drivers, or at the very least cell phone use that isn't "hands-free." It's possible they could do the same thing with computers/internet use. Though considering how long it took for those laws to catch up to the reality of cell phone use on the road (assuming you believe they even have caught up yet), I have to wonder how many accidents will happen before such laws manage to get on the books.

Re:Regulation

[Silver Sloth]

I don't know about the US, and IANAL, but here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'. Whilst driving while using a laptop is not specifically illegal the courts would use 'due care and attention' in the same way that they would for those caught reading whilst driving - or in on recent famous case, applying make-up

Re:Regulation

[Bloke down the pub]

We may talk funny in olde England town, but we're not entirely stupid. We've had a law on the books for some time now about "driving without due care and attention". Yes, it's vague. Yes, it's a catch all. Yes, it requires some element of judgement from 1) the driver 2) the police and 3) the justice system. And we can't be having any of that now, can we?

No no no, much better that the law tries to define exactly and explicity what you can't do while driving a motor vehicle. Let's see, item 2647a - watercolour painting, 2647b sketching with a pencil ... 2648a playing a trombone...

My client was, in fact, doing a landscape in oils and playing the clarinet when he ploughed through a red light and killed 23 people. He is innocent!

Re:Regulation

[arivanov]

C'mon, that case was "a person who was well known to deserve it": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/478568 6.stm

Mrs Donna Marie Maddock also had her license suspended for 20 months for an alcohol related offence just before being handed this ban and these points. Whatever the courts and BBC tell I bet that the magistrates handing out the ban actually knew who is getting it and the list of her previous (or in processing) offences. In fact they definitely knew, because her solicitor has asked the judges to reduce or waive the ban because she was already serving one (the best example of Chewbacca defence I have ever heard of).

Re:Regulation

[Kadin2048]

here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'.

We have laws like that (in most places) here in the U.S. as well, but enforcing existing laws doesn't let the politicians demonstrate how freaking "in-touch" and "useful" they are. Thus, we get nonsense legislation every few years. Solving problems that don't really exist or that ought to be covered by existing laws already is a favorite.

Looks like we'll have free broadband on the run :)

[torex]

Question: if my car goes 70 miles/hour and my wifi goes 11Mbs, will the overall packet speed be bigger? :D

alternate to municiple wifi

[v1]

This would be an interesting way to solve the problem of municiple wifi. If even 5% of the cars in a city were functioning as short range wifi routers, and if they were using tech similar to cell phones how they hand off seamlessly from tower to tower, that would be a really elegant way to network entire cities. No need to plant towers like dandellions, no problems with dead zones due to buildings, etc. I'm not thinking of people browsing web while in their car, but imagine being able to use voice or video chat (think iChat) while driving down the freeway, your car reading you a new email as you sit at a stoplight, or being able to take your laptop to the park and know there are a dozen hotspots within 300 feet of whatever park you pick. I hope this takes off.

Tho the way things are going, some paraoid person is going to flip out because it will make it easier for people to get untraceable internet access and lord knows we can't allow that, and will ruin it for everyone.

Kind of Shortsighted, don't you think?

[sabinm]

Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?

Yes, because the first application I think of when I think of riding in the car is a surfing the web on a laptop. This is a step further in a persistent connection to caches of information on the road. We're pretty much limited by GPS, commercial radio, cellular and CB communications. Let's get out of thinking that a computer is something you sit at and type. Multiple devices can take advantage of a persistent connection on the road. A networked car computer will either enhance or replace already existing information channels (like the ones I previously mentioned). And supply a few more; think of automated driving and distancing through wireless arrays. Traffic systems that can 'predict' with greater accuracy when cars need the lights changed or the railroad crossing sign lifted. Anyway, Yeah, people will use it to download iTunes (is that a bad thing), but let's get beyond the old man sitting at the terminal inputing text at a keyboard. That is SO twentieth century.

Using a Wifi device in a car

[MosesJones]

There are several things here to consider.

Firstly Wifi != Laptop, this could enable things like Google Earth sat images to be downloaded in real time to your Sat/Nav system, it could be used to switch your mobile to VOIP rather than using a cell, it could be used by the cars Radio/CD/iPod player to offer you new tracks.

Secondly the person driving doesn't have to be the person working. Last year myself and a friend drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas, with a bunch of work to do we split the driving and use a car-charger adapter for the laptop, we got a good 10 hours of work done and an internet connection would have made that a lot better.

Thirdly this also means that Avis can start flogging you added extras that work on Wifi, which is cheaper than 3G connected devices.

My big question though is do all those cars have different SSIDs and will they be WPA and greater protected? If I'm connecting up to a network then I'd prefer people not being able to hijack my devices, some SatNavs can already be bluejacked and this could make it miles worse.

Re:Can they really achieve the coverage

[Da_Weasel]

More than likely no, but if you really need access out in those areas, then there are satellite options, although I'm sure they are cost prohibitive for most situations.

GSM Coverage Maps:
http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm

Re:The Killer App

[JazzLad]

Here in the states, the Salt Lake valley of Utah has these on I-15. I've never /noticed/ them tell me to slow down, but they often give predicted times to different points ahead (indicating traffic congestion) - especially when headed toward downtown Salt Lake City.

Re:The Killer App

[ShannaraFan]

Here in the US, the reaction to a sign stating "Right lane closed ahead" would be two-fold:

- 25% of the drivers seeing the sign would be confused, coming to a near stop on the freeway while they ponder the meaning

- 25% would dive to the breakdown lane, accelerating around everyone so that they can be the first on in line at the merge point

- 25% will do nothing, staying in the right lane until they reach the closure point, then will sit there with a turn signal blinking, waiting for someone to let them over.

- 25% will sit there frustrated, watching all of this take place, wishing they had some sort of mini-nuke system with which to dispatch the other 75%

Make it work like car TV's

[phorm]

Car TV's that have been installed properly, will, if in viewable range of the driver, disable the screen while the e-brake is off. That gives the driver the ability to watch shows while parked (good for, say, truckers or distance-drivers that want a break), but does not allow for watching-while-driving (unless one wants to grind the e-brake down to the nub). Of course, many shops and self-installs bypass this by attaching the safety connector to ground. My car has a DVD player, but the screen isn't installed by default so the safety is disabled. When I have passengers who want to watch, I just pass them back the screen and some headphones (my JVC unit allows them to watch/hear the DVD, and me to plug an Mp3 player into the deck-amp so I can still have my own tunes).

However, I believe that by law, a screen visible to the driver is/should be disabled when the e-brake is off or perhaps when the vehicle is out of park if possible. Applying this to wifi wouldn't be too difficult either, especially if this is a factory install.

I must ask though, why do you need wifi in a car? If you need a laptop signal then an ethernet jack in the center console would work fine, even if it is piggybacking on a wireless system.