That's a non-starter in most countries. Since the car software is tied into a number of important safety features and regulated controls, custom operating systems will never be supported.

There are already massive problems with people miswiring head units to play videos while driving and updating their ECU to spew pollution into the air. You're not going to convince any significant number of people that it's a good idea to allow arbitrary code to run and control most of the other systems too.

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dylan604 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Since the car software is tied into a number of important safety features and regulated controls, custom operating systems will never be supported.

Then that's a poor design that should go the way of the dodo. Someone hacking the entertainment system should not be able to take over control of the engine. The entertainment system on planes do not allow one to hack into the autopilot. There should be no need for a firewall, they should have no shared wires between them.

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Arainach 3 hours ago | parent [-]

"Safety critical" isn't just the drivetrain. I don't work in automotive and won't pretend to understand all the rules, but off the top of my head, some things that my car uses the head unit for:

* Backup Camera

* Turning traction control on/off

* Turning auto hold (maintaining the brake pedal while stopped) on/off

* Window defrosting

Many cars are even more integrated - are there any physical buttons inside a Tesla or is it all through the touchscreen?

	▲	dylan604 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Many cars are even more integrated - are there any physical buttons inside a Tesla or is it all through the touchscreen? If you're going to use the worst example as the comparison, then we'll get no where fast.

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dada216 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Those two set of systems are separate and very distinct.

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Arainach 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They're not. Use any car's heads up display and you can configure an enormous number of things. Even if there was somehow a pure separation, things such as "playing video while the car is moving" are regulated in many jurisdictions and would land firmly in the "UI" layer.

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dylan604 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You can detect the car is in motion or not without talking to the engine computer. Just like my phone can tell I'm in motion without connecting to the car at all. You're trying to justify a bad design with bad reasoning

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mohamedkoubaa 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

People watch videos on their phone while drive and will continue to do so no matter what infotainment OSes allow or don't allow.

	▲	Arainach 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		"Some people break the law" is not a reason to not have laws. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

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Arainach 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Not with the necessary precision. GPS doesn't work in tunnels or parking garages and can be wildly inaccurate in city centers with skyscrapers blocking line of sight, for instance.

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ssl-3 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The built-in, offline mapping in my Honda uses a whole host of local-only sensors to handle these situations where GPS is intermittent. It works rather well at figuring out where the car is on the map, and when it deviates from the prescribed route.

It works in tunnels. It works in cities with tall buildings. It works on Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago.

Is there some technological limitation that precludes using this data to determine whether or not a movie can be played?

(It's not like it's new tech. It's decades-old. Honda started using it over 20 years ago.)

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Arainach an hour ago | parent [-]

There's no need when OBD does just fine for this purpose.

It's also not clear what the purpose of this line of argument is. Some sensor says "car is moving". The operating system in the car/head unit is responsible for enforcing that signal, and it could ignore it equally from either OBD or some pile of gyroscopes. Where that signal comes from has nothing to do with why you will not see cars accepting custom operating systems.

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ssl-3 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> It's also not clear what the purpose of this line of argument is.

It completely dismantles your previous goalposts, which were planted firmly on GPS:

>> Not with the necessary precision. GPS doesn't work in tunnels or parking garages and can be wildly inaccurate in city centers with skyscrapers blocking line of sight, for instance.

(I guess we all have the freedom to be as flexible with our goalposts as we wish. I didn't come here for a tireless argument that is motivated by nothing but the desire to argue, though. Have a great day!)

	▲	Arainach 22 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		My line of argument is "the head unit is responsible for not allowing video playback while in motion". Anything to do with detecting motion came after that.

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dylan604 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The point of argument is that it no longer becomes a security issue to allow customOS on the infotainment system because it absolutely has no connection to the engine computer.

	▲	Arainach 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		This is not an architectural issue. The threat isn't a bad OS causing the car to explode. This is a safety issue where the car is required to prohibit certain things - such as video playback.

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juliangmp 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You'd hope so but I fear that many safety critical aspects run on the same system as the infotainment system... And that's a perfect excuse for manufacturers to keep these things completely closed

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binary132 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“Users shouldn’t be same to control their own engines actually” hmm well ok then

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Arainach 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One person's "controlling their own engines" is another "spewing nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, and other pollutants into the air, giving cancer to neighbors and destroying the atmosphere". We tried the "don't regulate" path and it ended in a multitude of disasters.

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mohamedkoubaa 3 hours ago | parent [-]

You can regulate emissions without preventing custom tunes

	▲	Arainach 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In practice, no, you can't. Certainly not without enormous costs such as mandatory regular vehicle inspections.

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subscribed 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

May I introduce you to the "rolling coal" morons?

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ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No need. I've seen them.

In the States, for example: Every state I've looked at has laws that make it illegal to roll coal.

And at least in my own state (Ohio), it's a primary offense. A person can be pulled over and ticketed for this even if they're doing everything else by the book. It's super easy to spot.

It seems that it persists not because of a lack of laws, but because of a lack of enforcement.

	▲	subscribed 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		IMO they exist in spite of the laws (and more broadly "woke" science) and I'd expect much more of them if they became legalised.

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binary132 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

do you really think there’s no way to prevent or penalize that behavior without preventing the user from owning and operating their own engine?

also, what scale of harm do you think exists from those people?

do you really believe that control of one’s own engine should be removed from all vehicle owners if a few people misuse it?

do you understand that vehicle manufacturers use their proprietary systems that control the vehicle to exploit customers?

	▲	Arainach 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> also, what scale of harm do you think exists from those people? Serious health complications, particularly to cyclists and pedestrians. Significant pollution surges: > According to government estimates, the practice can increase nitrogen oxide emissions as much as 310 times, non-methane hydrocarbons 1,400 times, and carbon monoxide 120 times. [https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/rolling-coal-donal...] > AED estimates that the emissions controls have been removed from more than 550,000 diesel pickup trucks in the last decade. As a result ofthis tampering, more than 570,000 tons of excess oxides of nitrogen(NOx) and 5,000 tons of particulate matter (PM) will be emitted by these tampered trucks over the lifetime of the vehicles. [https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/epa-on-tampered-diese...]