Have electric vehicles been "oversold" to the detriment of public transport, walking and cycling?

[Snow1964]

Winter tyres are a bit more popular here than they were, but still far too few people invest. A FWD, even RWD, car with winter tyres would be better than a 4x4 - and as you say, plenty of 4x4 drivers assume they're invincible.

(Off topic) The problem is that you can change the tyres and have far better grip and traction, but you're only going to make progress as well as the vehicle in front of you. I realised this the hard way on a road where everything was going fine until vehicles ahead couldn't go on - and we got stuck waiting for them to sort themselves out.

I also got a set of winter tyres 3 years ago (and I live in South of England), and I wouldn’t go back for following reasons:

1) Since all season tyres were introduced over last 5 years, latest summer tyres have been reformulated to be optimised for more summer like temperatures, and are now rubbish in wet below about +10c (I have heard a rumour now optimised for WLTP test temperature of +23c, but don’t know if true)
2) The treads deal much better with winter puddles, damp misty grey days, cold rain, muddy field run off, patches of frost, sleet etc. None of that skittishness that summer tyres have, you feel like driving on dry road.
3) They still grip when salt is on the road (if it’s cold enough for salt, then summer tyres are hard, and do you really want to be doing 70mph on a salted motorway with hard Eco tyres with little grip).
4) My car handbook suggests you should swap the wheels around about every 15,000Km (9000 miles) to even out tread wear. So easy to do, as just do it whilst swapping to winter wheels early Nov and about Easter.
5) It is actually saving money, yes there was an upfront cost of buying winter rims and tyres, but after 3.5 years it appears won’t need any more new tyres until at least 7 years or 70,000 miles (and I know people buying 2 tyres every 15-20k miles which costs more).
6) On the two occasions we have had snow in 3 years, I was able to drive safely, go shopping (at nearly empty supermaRhett) to stock up, drive up and down hills past people abandoning cars, so basically get home safely.
7) I would rather stay safe, and not end up in a ditch, hitting another car or stone wall. The cost and potential injury of sorting that out is nothing compared to the £600 I spent.
8) There is some smugness when it snows and my little Arona can carry on and embarrass those with a £50k+ luxury car that is stuck.

Even though I live in a slightly hilly area now, would rather have a £600 set of winter rims and good winter tyres than waste £2000 on all wheel drive that just spins 4 summer tyres on snow. Even my 1 litre Arona could spin wheels pulling out of side turning on cold damp morning with factory fit summer tyres. It was then I realised the grip in cold mornings was too low to be safe.

 

[reddragon]

To add to the EV discussion, my Step-Mum has had her electric car (a Volkswagen id.3) for a couple of weeks now and is probably going to give Motability a call to see if she can swap it.
Naturally one of her issues is that she has no facilities to charge it at home and so has to charge it on the move and has found the lack of rapid chargers nd the need to have multiple apps a nusiance.
My Dad also hates the way it intervenes all the time if it thinks you are doing something wrong when you aren't (like thinking you are getting to close to the car in front when you are not), the fact that it turns on by someone sitting in the driving seat (so it wouild appear you can't sit in the drivers seat with it "dead" to save battery and when they have been to the dealer the service haas not been good.

Will probably mean she'll go back to a Hyundai or Kia, probably another Ioniq or their new small SUV as that;s pretty much all Motability seem to be offering in the nil advance and low advance payment brackets.

Personally given her situation I thought going electric wasn't feasible yet and it looks like that is the case.

All new cars are getting this, it's the law now. You can switch bits off but most come on again when you restart. Swapping might not be the answer!

 

[miami]

All new cars are getting this, it's the law now. You can switch bits off but most come on again when you restart. Swapping might not be the answer!

My new car has "lane assist", which kicks in, jerks the wheel, and feels like hitting the pothole I've tried to avoid. It seems to think there are lanes despite there not being lanes. I can turn it off, but it comes back on after restarting, right pain. When I hire a car I typically get a Corsa, and with that you turn it off and keep it off.

Rest of the features are great - the auto stop/start (in an ICE), front assistance etc. I look forward to things like speed limit detection being standard in the future too, but definitely need to compare more rather than just going for a newer skoda because the last few were good.

 

[ABB125]

My new car has "lane assist", which kicks in, jerks the wheel, and feels like hitting the pothole I've tried to avoid. It seems to think there are lanes despite there not being lanes. I can turn it off, but it comes back on after restarting, right pain. When I hire a car I typically get a Corsa, and with that you turn it off and keep it off.

Rest of the features are great - the auto stop/start (in an ICE), front assistance etc. I look forward to things like speed limit detection being standard in the future too, but definitely need to compare more rather than just going for a newer skoda because the last few were good.

Apparently the lane "assist" feature is somewhat problematic is places like Pembrokeshire, where you have narrow lanes with relatively high grassy verges. The feature thinks it's being "helpful" by turning you back towards the centre of the road... straight into the path of the vehicle coming the other way (which you went closer to the verge to avoid)!

 

[Bletchleyite]

Apparently the lane "assist" feature is somewhat problematic is places like Pembrokeshire, where you have narrow lanes with relatively high grassy verges. The feature thinks it's being "helpful" by turning you back towards the centre of the road... straight into the path of the vehicle coming the other way (which you went closer to the verge to avoid)!

I would say that an "incomplete" system like that is dangerous overall - you don't want potentially incorrect steering inputs like that. A lane departure warning i.e. a sound is less of an issue and may be overall positive.

 

[reddragon]

I turn mine off as I mostly use country lanes with little or no markings. I only use it on a motorway.

 

[DustyBin]

I turn mine off as I mostly use country lanes with little or no markings. I only use it on a motorway.

You can turn it off permanently in my little ST, which I’ve done as it’s a nuisance. Having said that at least it doesn’t try and drag you back into lane, it simply vibrates the steering wheel as a warning. The hill start assist is another thing I can’t stand, again it’s set to “off” permanently!

 

[trebor79]

Pretty sure it won't be long before people start homebrewing and sharing car control software in the same way that they do Android operating systems for mobile phones. I suppose it depends how well secured the OEM software is, but where there's a will there's a way and a lot of these mandated "aids" are little more than a distraction and annoyance.

 

[AM9]

Pretty sure it won't be long before people start homebrewing and sharing car control software in the same way that they do Android operating systems for mobile phones. I suppose it depends how well secured the OEM software is, but where there's a will there's a way and a lot of these mandated "aids" are little more than a distraction and annoyance.

If these 'aids' are mandated and form part of vehicles' type approval, that approval will require pretty strong protection as well to prevent circumvention. I know that the UK is often relaxed about safety features on road vehicles, but the global forces for safety legislationn are the EU and the US, so I doubt that vehicle manufacturers will go to the expense of bombproofing software and then having a small proportion of their production not only made hackable, but also then having to prevent it being used to replace the standard setup.

 

[JamesT]

If these 'aids' are mandated and form part of vehicles' type approval, that approval will require pretty strong protection as well to prevent circumvention. I know that the UK is often relaxed about safety features on road vehicles, but the global forces for safety legislationn are the EU and the US, so I doubt that vehicle manufacturers will go to the expense of bombproofing software and then having a small proportion of their production not only made hackable, but also then having to prevent it being used to replace the standard setup.

It's noticeable that although you can mess with much of the software on a mobile phone, generally the bits relating to the operation of the radio itself (e.g. which frequencies it uses) are very tightly controlled so end users do not have access to them. I would expect type approval for a car to be used on UK roads to have similar restrictions placed on it by the regulator.

 

[DustyBin]

Pretty sure it won't be long before people start homebrewing and sharing car control software in the same way that they do Android operating systems for mobile phones. I suppose it depends how well secured the OEM software is, but where there's a will there's a way and a lot of these mandated "aids" are little more than a distraction and annoyance.

It must be doable, I can't see how it's any different to "cracking" ECU software, I suspect it's just never been a priority. You can certainly bypass some of these features if you know how, but that's slightly different to using the cars own software!

If these 'aids' are mandated and form part of vehicles' type approval, that approval will require pretty strong protection as well to prevent circumvention. I know that the UK is often relaxed about safety features on road vehicles, but the global forces for safety legislationn are the EU and the US, so I doubt that vehicle manufacturers will go to the expense of bombproofing software and then having a small proportion of their production not only made hackable, but also then having to prevent it being used to replace the standard setup.

It's worth noting that there are already much tighter restrictions in other countries around re-mapping etc. but I'm not sure how much responsibility is placed on manufacturers to prevent it. I think there's too much expertise out there at this point to stop it if I'm honest.

 

[AM9]

It must be doable, I can't see how it's any different to "cracking" ECU software, I suspect it's just never been a priority. You can certainly bypass some of these features if you know how, but that's slightly different to using the cars own software!



It's worth noting that there are already much tighter restrictions in other countries around re-mapping etc. but I'm not sure how much responsibility is placed on manufacturers to prevent it. I think there's too much expertise out there at this point to stop it if I'm honest.

i'm no softie but the use of anti-tamper techniques, (both hardware and in code) is quite possible such that there would be a very slim chance of it being circumvented, - it would be much more effective if detection of any tampering was obvious and ideally, limited further use of the vehicle*. So long as competing profit-making manufacturers are able to decide the level of protection implemented, there will be back doors. If they were made all or partly liable for the consequences of an inadequately protected vehicle, it might focus their attention to use methods that have been freely available for some time.
* typically they might include:

a permanent flag that would be detected at the next MoT or whatever official examination replaces that.​

a limit on performance that would stilll allow get me home use but rendering the vehicle unusable, especially to some of the drivers that woulld risk tampering with the car's system.​

if we end up with real time road charging, a notification to the charging authority that an illegal activity had taken place.​

I'm sure there are other measures that would make modifying safety critical firmware very unattractive.

 

[paul1609]

There's already loads of piggyback and replacement modules that circumvent various engine and safety systems. You just plug and play when it comes time for the mot it's a 5 min job to revert to the manufacturers spec. All readily available in this country but if you go to the scandanavian countries its a massive cottage industry!

 

[ABB125]

I'm sure there are other measures that would make modifying safety critical firmware very unattractive.

But are any of these features actually safety critical?

 

[AM9]

There's already loads of piggyback and replacement modules that circumvent various engine and safety systems. You just plug and play when it comes time for the mot it's a 5 min job to revert to the manufacturers spec. All readily available in this country but if you go to the scandanavian countries its a massive cottage industry!

But that is in the current environment where safety critical features are not legally required to be tamperproof to a much higher level than as determined by commercial imperatives. Of course, an innocent driver is protected by a failure of a safety system in the legal sense because they would have not been responsible for it's failure (subject to adequate maintenence and servicing). In the event of a hack to defeat a safety function creating any other fault on the equipment, the manufcturer would walk away from the problem and leave the problem with the hacker/driver/owner. The problem with commodity motor vehicles is they they live their live in amongst other road users, so a failure of a system at a critical point could involve people who would be totally innocent and unconnected with the faulty vehicle.

 

[DustyBin]

i'm no softie but the use of anti-tamper techniques, (both hardware and in code) is quite possible such that there would be a very slim chance of it being circumvented, - it would be much more effective if detection of any tampering was obvious and ideally, limited further use of the vehicle*. So long as competing profit-making manufacturers are able to decide the level of protection implemented, there will be back doors. If they were made all or partly liable for the consequences of an inadequately protected vehicle, it might focus their attention to use methods that have been freely available for some time.
* typically they might include:

a permanent flag that would be detected at the next MoT or whatever official examination replaces that.​

a limit on performance that would stilll allow get me home use but rendering the vehicle unusable, especially to some of the drivers that woulld risk tampering with the car's system.​

if we end up with real time road charging, a notification to the charging authority that an illegal activity had taken place.​

I'm sure there are other measures that would make modifying safety critical firmware very unattractive.

The question, as per @ABB125's post, is are these features safety critical? I'd suggest that the likes of lane assist, city stop and similar systems, the dreaded hill start assist etc. aren't safety critical; they're simply driver aides which is why they can be deactivated as it stands already. Unfortunately it appears that some manufacturers force you to deactivate them every time you start the car which is a bit of a pain and that's the issue.

 

[paul1609]

But that is in the current environment where safety critical features are not legally required to be tamperproof to a much higher level than as determined by commercial imperatives. Of course, an innocent driver is protected by a failure of a safety system in the legal sense because they would have not been responsible for it's failure (subject to adequate maintenence and servicing). In the event of a hack to defeat a safety function creating any other fault on the equipment, the manufcturer would walk away from the problem and leave the problem with the hacker/driver/owner. The problem with commodity motor vehicles is they they live their live in amongst other road users, so a failure of a system at a critical point could involve people who would be totally innocent and unconnected with the faulty vehicle.

I don't disagree with your principle but if you had any experience with working with these systems you'd realise that the only way to make them tamperproof would be to make them all most impossible to repair. The bottom line of that would be that the life of the vehicle would be much shorter. If you want an example of this Google BMW or Mercedes Hybrid battery failure where 8 year old cars in the manufacturers and dealers eyes are beyond economic repair despite in many cases only 1 cell of a hybrid battery having failed.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I don't disagree with your principle but if you had any experience with working with these systems you'd realise that the only way to make them tamperproof would be to make them all most impossible to repair. The bottom line of that would be that the life of the vehicle would be much shorter. If you want an example of this Google BMW or Mercedes Hybrid battery failure where 8 year old cars in the manufacturers and dealers eyes are beyond economic repair despite in many cases only 1 cell of a hybrid battery having failed.

This is just like trying to make e-tickets 100% secure - it's a hiding to nothing and totally unnecessary.

You just need to make them secure enough that casual tampering won't happen by blokes in their garages. You'll never stop organised crime entirely, you just have to prosecute it when it's caught.

 

[ABB125]

The question, as per @ABB125's post, is are these features safety critical? I'd suggest that the likes of lane assist, city stop and similar systems, the dreaded hill start assist etc. aren't safety critical; they're simply driver aides which is why they can be deactivated as it stands already. Unfortunately it appears that some manufacturers force you to deactivate them every time you start the car which is a bit of a pain and that's the issue.

I'm told that there's one manufacturer (Mitsubishi?) that's planning to withdraw entirely from the European market due to all the modern requirements for "safety" features which they don't consider to be worthwhile creating for their vehicles.

 

[bspahh]

If there is already an option to turn a feature off when the car starts, then its not so bad to allow that setting to be saved as a default. You will not see the source code for something like collision avoidance itself, where it has control over the brakes.

 

[AM9]

The question, as per @ABB125's post, is are these features safety critical? I'd suggest that the likes of lane assist, city stop and similar systems, the dreaded hill start assist etc. aren't safety critical; they're simply driver aides which is why they can be deactivated as it stands already. Unfortunately it appears that some manufacturers force you to deactivate them every time you start the car which is a bit of a pain and that's the issue.

Not really.For drivers that don't want to avail themselves of the facility that's their choice but if their use needs to be encouraged where possible. Then eventually laziness means that a lot of drivers just leave them on and then get used to them.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 2 Feb 2022 ==

I'm told that there's one manufacturer (Mitsubishi?) that's planning to withdraw entirely from the European market due to all the modern requirements for "safety" features which they don't consider to be worthwhile creating for their vehicles.

That's their choice.

I don't disagree with your principle but if you had any experience with working with these systems you'd realise that the only way to make them tamperproof would be to make them all most impossible to repair. The bottom line of that would be that the life of the vehicle would be much shorter. If you want an example of this Google BMW or Mercedes Hybrid battery failure where 8 year old cars in the manufacturers and dealers eyes are beyond economic repair despite in many cases only 1 cell of a hybrid battery having failed.

BMW and Mercedes have had a tendency to integrate vehicle electronics for some time (I know I had an A-class) where replacement of one item meant that the system had to be told of it's replacement by an authorised maintainer. Hybrid batteries are relatively small so a total replacement would seem like a second market thing if there was sufficient volumes of the problem. Hybrids are a transitional product so a volume car manufacturer would rapidly lose it's market for full EVs if that was the case.

 

[DustyBin]

Not really.For drivers that don't want to avail themselves of the facility that's their choice but if their use needs to be encouraged where possible. Then eventually laziness means that a lot of drivers just leave them on and then get used to them.

As I said upthread I can disable most unwanted interference driver aides and they remain disabled unless I go into the menu(s) and re-enable them; it gives me the choice without causing unnecessary inconvenience (which was the original issue raised).

The problem I have is that some of these driver aides actually lower driving standards by providing a false sense of security. There's also a fine line between mitigating human error and actually exacerbating it through de-skilling drivers or at the very least encouraging lazy habits. Personally I think we're (just) on the wrong side of that line as it stands.

 

[AM9]

As I said upthread I can disable most unwanted interference driver aides and they remain disabled unless I go into the menu(s) and re-enable them; it gives me the choice without causing unnecessary inconvenience (which was the original issue raised).

That maybe at the present, but if the regulations change (without compliance, vehicles don't get approval) facilities to disable things permanently may be no longer.

The problem I have is that some of these driver aides actually lower driving standards by providing a false sense of security. There's also a fine line between mitigating human error and actually exacerbating it through de-skilling drivers or at the very least encouraging lazy habits. Personally I think we're (just) on the wrong side of that line as it stands.

What's lazy about antilock brakes, auto wipers, auto dipping mirrors and auto headlights? It gives the driver more time to concentrate of the random things that happen surrounding them

 

[reddragon]

The question, as per @ABB125's post, is are these features safety critical? I'd suggest that the likes of lane assist, city stop and similar systems, the dreaded hill start assist etc. aren't safety critical; they're simply driver aides which is why they can be deactivated as it stands already. Unfortunately it appears that some manufacturers force you to deactivate them every time you start the car which is a bit of a pain and that's the issue.

Hill start works on EVs

 

[ABB125]

That's their choice.

Indeed. But does it perhaps suggest that some of these features which are mandated in Europe are unnecessary?

 

[Bletchleyite]

What's lazy about antilock brakes, auto wipers, auto dipping mirrors and auto headlights? It gives the driver more time to concentrate of the random things that happen surrounding them

I personally dislike auto-dip headlights because they don't respond quickly enough and so I get a brief period of blinding, and they don't dim/dip at all for a cyclist or pedestrian. I consider them dangerous as a result.

The rest are fine.

 

[reddragon]

I personally dislike auto-dip headlights because they don't respond quickly enough and so I get a brief period of blinding, and they don't dim/dip at all for a cyclist or pedestrian. I consider them dangerous as a result.

The rest are fine.

I disabled my auto lights, they're too slow.

 

[Bletchleyite]

I disabled my auto lights, they're too slow.

Good choice.

 

[ABB125]

I personally dislike auto-dip headlights because they don't respond quickly enough and so I get a brief period of blinding, and they don't dim/dip at all for a cyclist or pedestrian. I consider them dangerous as a result.

The rest are fine.

I have automatic headlights. It's an excellent system, called "my brain", whereby my eyes see an oncoming vehicle/person, and my brain then instructs my hand to pull back the indicator/light stick...

 

[DustyBin]

That maybe at the present, but if the regulations change (without compliance, vehicles don't get approval) facilities to disable things permanently may be no longer.

Possibly, I don't think it's necessary however.

What's lazy about antilock brakes, auto wipers, auto dipping mirrors and auto headlights? It gives the driver more time to concentrate of the random things that happen surrounding them

There's nothing wrong with ABS as it improves braking performance; I'd position it alongside say airbags as it improves safety considerably. Auto wipers and lights are simply unnecessary IMO, I don't use either (I accept that auto lights can save you a talking to from the police however). I'm not sure what you mean by auto dipping mirrors? If you mean auto darkening then they're great, but they don't interfere with the operation of the vehicle.

Hill start works on EVs

They work on anything with an electric handbrake (another thing I hate but I suspect won't be able to avoid for much longer!).