I like that we’ve collectively agreed on the idea that Tesla’s driving AI will detect and target children.
Not most children, but if a rich shareholder needs a transplant, the car has a database of matching people who are organ donors or who’s parents believe in organ donation and will make subtle attempts to accidentally run them over. (A joke but fuck it maybe not at this point)
This is the worst timeline.
Eh, medium worst. There’s still pretense here.
This is getting really dystopian sci-fi
So I guess you’d have to either fill up your trailer with gas or charge it. Now that’s two vehicles you have to power, which kind of defeats the purpose of towing anyway.
It seems a better solution would be a PHEV with a large battery and a range extender for when you need to tow…why on earth do this?
I could see this working if it was hardwired to the lead vehicle for data over a wire and that would also include a safety tether. Since it seems to be aimed at EV owners, give it a big ass battery and allow it to share power with the lead car to extend the range of the pair. If the trailer give you longer range on your road trips, let you have one plug to charge both vehicles at each charge stop, and had a safety tether and did the data wired rather than wirelessly, I could see some rich folks springing for it. As advertised it sounds like a bad joke from a b rated 90s scifi movie
Even then it seems far less practical than building a PHEV where the range extender really only is used during towing. There really isn’t a practical gain here except that it’s another thing a manufacturer can sell, repair, and upsell you on. Diesel electric locomotives still exist and until rails are fully electric will continue to exist.
I can see the theoretical benefit, but yeah, I wouldn’t trust it.
If you’re a person with a car with no hauling capabilities, and no one to borrow a truck or van from, this should be a nice solution.
But yeeeaaaah, no thanks.
I feel like self driving trucks would be viable before the safety issues for this are worked out.
Well this is basically easy-mode self driving… Just follow the leader. You don’t have to worry about other cars or pedestrians… That’s on the driver
This is basically a convoy of 2, it seems framed to minimize legal questions
Fuck it. Why not just get a little steering wheel and a little person to drive your little tow truck behind you? No need to worry about losing Wi-Fi signal.
Electric vehicles lose a lot more range when towing than diesel vehicles, and they take longer to charge.
This would be a good option for a family that has an EV, but doesn’t want to drive an 8,000# EV day to day, just needs the extra juice when towing.
You could use an EV motor home, but then if you wanted a smaller vehicle with to drive around at your destination, you’d have to either drive that separately, or town that vehicle.
This is a solution for people to have a single, smaller EV that can bring an existing travel trailer for vacation.
This is EXACTLY the type of thing that would help prevent people from “needing” an F-350 for day to day driving, cause they have a trailer they use twice a year.
Couldn’t you instead add a massive battery to the trailer and physically connect both it and the trailer to the car. Essentially letting you tow a battery bank with extra storage? Like that you mitigate having to work out the safety issues and you don’t have to pay for another set of motors etc.
You could upsell it by the trailer being extra battery for when you’re camping f.ex… And it could be modular, accepting a camping to / flatbed/ whatever.
Ford has filed for a patent
https://electrek.co/2023/07/13/ford-patents-portable-charging-trailer-power-ev/
here is a french startup
https://europe.autonews.com/blogs/french-startup-uses-battery-trailers-cure-ev-range-angst
and my personal favorite (no trailer, but 2 extra wheels for battery weight. (30 mpg in 1980)
Nicola already has a portable charging setup for its EV tractor trailers. At least they’re marketing one. I don’t know what’s actually in production.
But really there’s already an EV trailer with motors and a battery to make towing with an EV more possible. They picked a stupid name though. https://pebblelife.com/
Not surprised people are working on it.
It’s a real shame that we can’t get swappable batteries in my opinion. Standardise the technology and retrofit gas stations. Maybe there could even be a smart way to use the batteries in storage as a buffer in the grid, needed with the increase of renewable energy.
Not yet for cars, but I’ll dream for now
Scooters with battery exchange/charging kiosk
I think the big advantage here is you could rent the doohickey, rather than buying a massive battery bank you’ll only use a few times a year.
The doohickey could still be attached physically to the car. It’s probably cheaper to add a hitch than the necessary tech for this to work remotely.
I can definitely see a use case for a powered dolly for vehicles with poor range or low towing capacity.
why not both? make it a thing you rent when you need it that also extends the range of your EV when you are on a long road trip without making you haul around extra batteries/weight during your normal commute. If they did this with a data cable and a safety cable and allowed the caravan to share power with the tow car I think it’s actually a neat idea
Of course it takes longer to charge. Who charges a diesel vehicle?
/s just in case.
I think a way better solution would be to just borrow a bigger car for those two days a year.
Let’s make more vehicles with a single purpose, this will save the environment. One set of wheels and a motor is not complicated enough. We need two sets of those and A motherfucking I to achieve the same thing farmers did as soon as tractors were invented.
What problems does this bullshit solve?
This is actually almost environmentally motivated. Instead of driving a pickup truck because you need to pull a trailer for your once a year road trip, you get a self driving tow to follow your fuel efficient compact car.
A compact car is already perfectly capable of towing a trailer, no pickup truck needed. Just ask the Dutch.
Yeah, I don’t see why this small tow car should be more capable of towing than a small person car…
Look at the size of a fifth wheel truck or tractor, and what a vehicle like that can tow, compared to something like a bus, designed to carry passengers.
Vehicles designed to tow as their primary purpose are very compact.
Dedicated tow vehicles are compact but powerful. Powerful engines and strong drivetrains are expensive, and especially if they’re going to run unattended these would have to be powerful.
Otherwise can you imagine having this thing chase your light, fast car up a big hill, slowly falling further behind until it loses connection?
Or roasting itself on a long climb until it boils coolant, blows a head gasket, depletes its batteries or one of the many other things that could happen to an unattended motor working at 100% load.
You’d need a way of slowing down the lead vehicle, for sure.
European towing standards are ridiculous, manufacturers decide what their car can tow. It’s one of the only places where the American standard, which requires testing the vehicles and passing actual tests, is much better and safer.
Trailer design is also different with European trailers having their wheels further forward, putting less weight on the hitch, this in turn makes the assembly less stable which is why the speed limit when towing will often be lower.
How fast are you allowed to tow?
Speed limits are the same, towing or not in North America.
Your average compact car, if you’re lucky, can tow 1200 kg braked. A midsize SUV can typically tow 2,000+, and a large SUV 3500.
Renting a gizmo like this would possibly be a lot more cost effective than owning a large vehicle that you only use the full capacity of a few times a year.
The only stuff I need to haul is furniture and firewood, and my Yaris with a tow hitch manages that just fine.
I can’t think of a scenario where I would ever need to haul anything heavier than 1200 kgs, and if I did, I would just rent a van.I’ve come to the conclusion that people like you are genuinely, colossally, thick. You’re completely unable to imagine someone leading a different life to yours, and having different needs from a vehicle to you.
For example, a number of people have trailers that they only use a few times a year, caravans for example, and this would be a great solution for them.
Try and expand your mind a little, and see past your own needs.
if you’re already renting something to tow a trailer just rent a truck and leave the car at home. if you’re moving or something and need to bring your car, put the car on a trailer and pull it behind a box truck. I guarantee it’s more efficient having one vehicle towing one trailer than having two vehicles towing one trailer.
put the car on a trailer and pull it behind a box truck.
That seems far simpler than having a self driving tow bot show up to tow your caravan. Why didn’t I think of that?
Everybody is driving SUVs nowadays. Toyota is making SUVs.
The idea sounds neat for trucks, where one driver could lead a whole fleet of AI trucks in some kind of a road train. But even then there’s a whole load of problems e.g. with people overtaking on the oncoming lane or if there’s enough space after the intersection for some of the trucks but not all of them. But for RV’s? That’s dumb AF.
But see the R&D for this could easily go to improving the existing infrastructure of shipping a fleet of trucks single-file along…
…rails.
What was the name of the law that states that if techbro starts inventing a new form of transportation, they will always come up with shittier form of train given enough time
Thomas the Techbro Theorem
Lmao this is a recurring joke in AdamSomething’s video essays.
“Cities of the future” with thousands of suspended, individualized cars on thin rails propelled by their own motors. New shiny dedicated roads with tons of individualized, but linked, passenger cabins. Heck, the hyperloop scam!
But hoo boi don’t you dare say train. It sounds so… communal.
Really shows what these lofty designers think of the public they’re allegedly designing for.
right??? the only reasonable use for this tech would be to make a train of trucks…but we already have trains…so just make a fuckin train
even if you insist on trucks, just use converter dollies like we already do across the US for double and triple trailers, or hook a bunch of b-train style trailers together like the aussies do for their road trains. physical links are hell of a lot more robust and reliable than some goofy wifi gokarts with a trailer hitch can ever be
That’s exactly it. If you need to haul loads of stuff efficiently the train is definitely a better option. But, can’t deny there’s some compelling pros to this idea if it was actually feasible. The main one is that you wouldn’t need to load stuff on and off the train and instead just run the trucks all the way from start to finish. Another one is re-using the existing infrastructure and vehicles. And the last one is that truck warehouses are easier to move than train stations, so they don’t impede city’s growth as much, but I’m not sure about that one, maybe there’s some other options - I’m just salty at my homecity’s planning where a train line effectively splits the city in half causing massive congestions at the few available rail crossings.
It’s a way around length limits. Towing a giant-ass rv with a giant-ass boat and a giant-ass trailer full of toys all at once? No need to tow triples and be 180 feet long. Just use some of these bastards.
To be honest it has more utility for commercial trucks
Early tractors were more domesticated than invented…
Well, it is just an American problem. Here we just tow the caravans with normal cars, most of which have a towball, anyway.
I’ve seen caravans that weigh over 3,000 kg, good luck towing that with a hatchback.
Well, there is a lot in the “I have seen” category, but e.g. my car could tow a 1800kg trailer, which offers good caravan space for four people.
Yes, for a 3 ton trailer one will need a larger car than mine, but even they are towable by cars in Europe.
What vehicle is classed as a car, but can tow three tonnes?
Don’t remember what brand of car that was. I worked in a caravan shop decades ago, and my boss had a car - a station wagon, not a truck - that easily pulled 10m+ caravans, Tabbert caravans, back then it was “Princess 1050” IIRC, just like the modern Cellini models.
Only real use I can imagine, is for having a whole convoy of individually towed trailers, so you can transport multiple trailers with one trip.
But yeah, for personal use, that’s far too niche for them to actually build this. I imagine, they’re working on the same technology for linking lorries/trucks into big convoys and figured, they’d invest the tiniest bit of effort into a concept for re-using the technology with normal cars.
It allows a tiny car like a Leaf or Ignis to have the ability to tow I guess.
Might even be able to do it with a motorcycle as the lead vehicle so it’s only your bike and your caravan on your trip, I would have loved it in my younger days touring on a supersport bike.
Well I doubt this can match the supersports acceleration ;) but I get what you mean.
It’s actually interesting from a design standpoint. How do you handle a lead vehicle that has much better acceleration. Do you artificially slow down the lead vehicle so it can’t abandon the “towed” trailer? What does the follower do when it loses the leader. This basically needs nearly fully autonomous driving.
Yeah like we used to have massive packs on bikes and camp between cool spots to ride or someone had to drive and tow a trailer of gear + their bike while the others ride.
Still no reason it should be wireless.
They could have a physically attached trailer with extra engine to allow those small cars to tow more than they are capable of.
It’s not just engine capacity that defines towing capacity though, you need brakes that can stop the entire combined vehicle, a chassis and suspension capable of taking the strain etc.
Supplementing electric vehicles ability to tow? (I don’t actually know this is just the only thing I could think of)
Why would making a separate unit improve the situation though? Plenty of EVs have enough torque to tow, it’s the battery capacity that’s the problem. It would make far more sense to do a hybrid system in the tow vehicle than have an entire separate vehicle with its own drivetrain.
I replied to the guy you replied to, what if the lead vehicle was a motorcycle? I lived for a decade with only a motorbike.
Given the price of something like this though it feels like you’d just be buying a car that would then be able to physically tow the bike and hold whatever you were hauling to begin with lol.
Driving and carrying the bike defeats the purpose of touring 🫢
No idea. I agree with you.
Everyday, car engineers move closer to the ultimate form of transportation: the train.
I like trains
Doctor Octagonapus, BWAAA!
Oh my God, it’s Alfred Molina?!
Are there train tracks going to every campground in the country?
Didn’t think so.
A lack of infrastructure is not a failure of the train, it is a failure of us to properly utilise the train.
I mean obviously you would never build a train line to every campsite. That’s what busses are for.
Hauling camping gear on and off multiple forms of public transport sounds like a shit holiday, to be honest.
I’ve done it, was great would recommend.
Obviously I do think that there’s a place for cars in the world. But most transport happens along routes that could easily be trains with good infrastructure. Camping isn’t a good use of trains really tho lol
Public transport is great for commuting, or travelling between urban centres. The point of camping is usually to get away from urban centres.
The perks of sitting their without a care in the world while someone else drives the train is divine though.
People have different definitions of “camping”, so this thread is going to be a hot mess.
For example: I’ve done backpacking (“camping”), starting the trek from a train platform, and ending up somewhere in the wilderness. It absolutely works, but is going to be impossible or not at all to taste for a lot of people. That and infrastructure limits where you can go.
Meanwhile, some people define “camping” as something more like “tailgating”, which is where they pull up their vehicle right to the camping spot and may even sleep in the car. This fits with your take on things and I completely agree: this mode of camping would be a nightmare with trains, uber/lyft, and moving heavy a mile or more on foot.
The first example is a hiking trip.
This kind of extremism is really stupid and self-defeating
Shut up please you never you’re always spouting contrarian half statements that are just trying to bait people into arguments. What is the extremism in the comment you are referring to?
A lack of infrastructure is not a failure of the train, it is a failure of us to properly utilise the train.
I mean obviously you would never build a train line to every campsite. That’s what busses are for.
This is an extremist comment that posits no future for personal vehicles.
It’s neither contrarian nor bait to call out such statements as doing more harm than good.
No. You assume that calls for more trains and public transport is a call to eliminate personal vehicles. Those two things are not the same you made an illogical jump from we need better transit options to ban all cars. Here’s an idea what if better infrastructure took more cars off the road leading to less traffic for those who choose to keep a personal vehicle? Reading through your comments hurts my brain man half the time you seem like a level headed guy then you go off into left field call people communists and extremists just like that.
Yes I would literally always choose to have a personal vehicle.
I don’t really care about your opinion. I don’t think your opinions are valuable. Your opinion of me seems entirely based on whether or not you think I agree with you, and most of the time your assumption there is probably wrong
For instance, I am heavily in favor of increases in public/mass transportation.
The people I’m responding to self-identify as those things. They aren’t insults. They’re acknowledgements of reality
If trains are so great why is everyone smoking crack on them
Just have three jacked trailers orbiting you like koopa shells
I’ll take 'solutions for problems that don’t exist ’ for $500, Alex.
You, with your greasy hair, and Dago mustache…
Owning an EV that can’t tow for any great distance is very much a problem that exists.
That’s not a problem that a small machine like this will fix though. The problem with EVs towing isn’t that they don’t have enough power to tow, it’s that the energy consumption goes up significantly due to changes in aerodynamics and the loss of regen braking. Petrol and diesel cars have the same problem, but can refuel quickly. EVs can’t.
Now imagine an autonomous trailer drone behind your EV. It’s most likely going to be electric, as most new automotive things are going to be electric by now. Then there are two options:
- You end up with a small thing that can’t go very far due to limited battery capacity.
- You end up with a gigantic machine that can go pretty far, but that’s in no way cheap or easy to store.
In the first case you might as well use your own EV to tow. In the second case you might as well just rent or buy a vehicle meant for towing. I don’t see how the economics of it are going to make sense.
Why do so many people think renting a vehicle when you already own one is cost effective, or a reasonable thing to do? Especially if you won’t be using it much once you arrive at your destination.
Whereas the tow bot can be put to work while you’re on holiday, and you still have transport.
Are you suggesting that the tow bot takes your camper to the site and then leaves? It’s like a municipal resource?
More like an Uber, but you get the idea.
I don’t buy a U-Haul truck just for the occasion that I’m moving, am I?
In a less snarky response, in case you can downscale your primary car to be more efficient and less costly, you can save significant amounts of money. In my country, weight, size, type of drivetrain and the sticker price all determine the amount of tax you pay on the vehicle. Getting a small, light vehicle instead of a big one you need for towing can definitely make sense financially, even if you are going to tow a caravan once a year and therefore have to rent a car to do so. Of course the individual circumstances really change a lot and in general people don’t do this due to convenience or the simple fact that they do this more often.
But you also missed the point of my reply. The point is that these tow bots will essentially be a second vehicle on their own. It will be expensive to buy one, it will be expensive to rent one and it will be expensive to own one. It won’t make sense as a product, even if you can still use your car when you arrive at your destination. The economics won’t work out, I’m pretty sure of that.
Why do so many people think renting a vehicle when you already own one is cost effective, or a reasonable thing to do?
The 5 year cost of a fairly base 2020 F150 is ~49k according to Kelly blue book - that’s fuel, maintainence, depreciation, loan interest, etc. The 5 year cost of either a 2020 Civic or a 2020 Chevy Bolt is $37k.
$12k / 5 years = $2,400/year. If you’d spend less than that a year, you’d be better off renting a truck when you need it and driving a cheaper vehicle daily.
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Do you not value your time at all, in this scenario? Renting a vehicle every time you need a truck is a massive time sink.
Think of how much extra you’d pay for a rental service that dropped the truck off at your house, picked it up, and handled all the annoying things like filling the car up or cleaning it out.
Then, just add that into your calculations. That number is going to depend on how far you live from rental places and how much you value your time. Ballpark it.
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You are completely out to lunch, my friend.
Aero is very much fixable on these things. Sure you are not going to get zero losses but you can 100% get better than the 2 to 1 loss I get when I tow my caravan with my EV currently.
I don’t lose regen on mine when towing, where you getting that from? I cant use one pedal, but that uses the brakes so I don’t use that mode very often.
The good old airstream caravans despite being massively fat for their size actually get better miles per kwh and they aren’t even modelled to modern aero standards.
The other problem are caravans, particularly American caravans, are massively fat. A lot of US caravans aren’t actually towable within recommended limits by European cars.
The right answer is to rent a truck. If someone has trailer/boat money, they absolutely can afford a rental for an excursion.
Sadly, until we see EVs that can compete toe-to-toe with vehicles that can haul stuff, gas-burning trucks are going to be with us a while. Shifting from an ownership to rental economy for such things would still be a substantial reduction in emissions.
If you want to move logistics to electric, this technology matters.
This is how they compete.
Ok…from where?
It’s like…people just think of the worst fucking ideas that are possible to imagine…& other assholes KEEP GIVING THEM MONEY for the worst ideas possible. Is this real life?
bus enter the chat
“hey guys, I know yall hate me because poor people can use me but it seems like this whole self driving car thing isn’t working out because it requires an absurd amount of new technology to work perfectly… you know if you just put a moderate amount of money into me I could solve most mass transit problems right?”
mob of angry suburban karens swarm the bus, light it on fire and tip it over
Its not about solving problems. Its about using existing problems to make money without solving them.
My car goes from where I am, to where I want to be, when I want to go there, regardless of time or location.
Buses will never come close to this level of convenience.
My car goes from where I am, to where I want to be, when I want to go there, regardless of time or location.
Hahahaha absolutely not… well maybe in your fast and furious fantasy it does, in the real world everyone else has cars and wants to get places too so you end up in huge amounts of traffic going anywhere. Anywhere worth going becomes inundated with traffic to the point that it massively decreases people’s quality of life, anywhere with enough car infrastructure to actually handle the amount of cars on the road these days is fundamentally ruined by said infrastructure (8 lane highways, massive suburban sprawl with no density, culture or thought in general to pedestrians) and not worth going to. Cars make cities extremely loud (they are by far the biggest sources of the noise you stereotypically associate with cities), unsafe, difficult to navigate and destroy air quality all while taking up the vast majority of space on a street (and making the remaining space miserable to exist as a pedestrian in).
In places that have good mass transit people literally live a more vibrant existence with a higher quality of life than you because the design of the spaces they inhabit doesn’t prioritize cars over humans.
And before someone says “I live in the middle of nowhere South Dakota mass transit will never work”, good for you, the overwhelming majority of USians live in places NOT like where you live in the US. Keep driving your car, this isn’t a discussion about you. For the rest of us living in population centers, cars and especially self driving cars are just sad misguided obsessions with trying to solve a problem by doubling down on doing the very thing that causes the problem.
Tl:DR
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Yes. See “Fyre Festival” for more examples.
Guarantee asshole drivers will try to squeeze into the space between car and trailer.
Solution is that the trailer will tailgate you all the time. It’ll also flash its beams if you don’t go 10mph above the limit.
Because of the millisecond reaction time of the powerful processor, there is no way this could go wrong.
I drive trucks pulling a set of double-trailers for a living and people already try to merge between my trailers. like yeah, the gaps too small and there’s a converter dolly there already, but that doesn’t seem to stop them from trying
People use “WiFi” as a generic term for wireless protocols all the time, this almost certainly doesn’t use actual WiFi.
Yeah, the tensile strength of Wi-Fi is way too low to tow anything larger than a jet ski. You’ll need at least some vhf 5G CBRS to tow a camper.
I’m so confused
What’s to be confused about? This is basic metaphysical modulation spectroscopy theory.
Eh, even If it does, it shouldn’t be a problem. Relying on a wireless link that could fail due to interference or jamming for actual control would be Musk-level insane.
The hitchbot would need to be capable of visually following the lead vehicle, possibly using something like a big QR code for identification and tracking.
The wireless link could be for telemetry like range and non-critical controls like “stay here” and “start following”.
If the link fails, you get a big warning to stop ASAP but the bot keeps following.
So… Ethernet?
Maybe, maybe not
Fascinating.
Yeah it would probably use IR
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In Europe, where nobody fell for the lies of the car manufacturers that you would need a big fat truck just to tow a caravan, we just hang them legally and without issues to our cars.
LOL, just commented that I had a hitch installed for $175 on my 2002 convertible. Works great. I’ve towed trailers and small boats all over.
This would conceivably have a much higher rating than your convertible though.
I turned my laptop on this afternoon and my wifi couldn’t connect because my laptop couldn’t find my wifi network.
Took two goes.
So now imagine you are driving at seventy miles an hour down the motorway, and your car loses contact with your cararvan…
I’ve been battling Wi-Fi issues with my soundbar for a week now and because Wi-Fi won’t work properly it’s struggling to remember that it’s supposed to turn on with the TV…
The worst part is it wasn’t an issue with the ISP at my old place so I’m close to the point where I’ll have to go and buy a rooter to bypass their Wi-Fi…
TL;DR: Wi-Fi towing is fucking moronic.
Yeah WiFi is kinda known to be the opposite of the namesake of your instance
Badumtsss!
And then there’s a turn ahead.
You can only watch helplessly as your WiFi enabled caravan drives straight into Dairy Queen.
This is pure poetry, with steady crescendo!
What about wifi jammers?
One asshole with a radio jammer targeting WiFi bands will cause an accident. This could be exploitable by nation state actors in specific scenarios if this gained popularity. Bad bad idea and should be discouraged. Towing should be physical-driven with interconnecting hardware.
Meh, it’ll just show to a stop and put up safety signals. I doubt anyone actually gets hurt if it’s reliable. WiFi jamming isn’t all that common.
Oh boy more traffic because some asshole outran his wifi trailer.
It’s not going to sell unless it’s reliable. Nobody is going to tolerate randomly losing connection. It’ll have to be an incredibly rare occurrence.
This is the kind of thinking that gets people hurt or killed.
🙄
The vast majority of towing and driving is on whatever the population can afford and it’s usually rackety old shit that certainly has killed people. This can reduce a fuck ton of emissions.
If this shit is unreliable nobody is going to put their cargo on it. If it’s reliable and popular, shit is going to happen just like any idiot in a 30 year old Nissan doing 130.
I think in this situation, it’s best to wait and see. There are always articles about new things that never come to fruition.
I agree on that one. The tech will come out, and if it’s problematic it won’t sell well.
Yeah, it’s not common now, because all the damage it causes is someone going “Huh, the wifi is not working, I’ll switch to data”.
If it starts to cause actual physical damage and shutdown of highways, it’ll be a lot more common.
Any dipshit can buy a professional WIFI jammer for $2-300 online or look up build instructions for even cheaper. Plus, as the Ukraine invasion showed us, these thing can be delivered with drones remotely.
You’re clearly not very knowledgeable about cybersecurity.
Lololol it’s not that common, and very few people are going to risk the federal felony plus fines in the states.
I’m curious, what’s your background that you are so educated on security that you so handily dismiss opinions as uneducated?
Lololol it’s not that common
It’s not that common NOW. It’s seems you either didn’t read my comment or didn’t understand it.
very few people are going to risk the federal felony plus fines in the states.
And how are you going to catch those people?
Are you going to build towers to detect jamming alongside all roads and freeways in the US? That’ll be somewhat expensive.
I’m curious, what’s your background that you are so educated on security that you so handily dismiss opinions as uneducated?
I understand technology and have common sense.
Spectrum analyzers are cheap and common. In the US fines can be 5 years and 100k. Very few people are and will fuck around with felony and prison.
Understand tech and common sense. That might just be one lever above do your own research.
Spectrum analyzers are cheap and common.
They’re gonna need to cheap and common if you want to cover 4.2 million miles of roads in the US.
Very few people are and will fuck around with felony and prison.
There are an estimated 19 million felons in the US, and nearly 80 million who have a criminal record.
Not my definition of “very few people”.
That might just be one lever above do your own research.
It would be great if you understood tech and had common sense, yes.
Alas…
“where nothing can possiblie go wrong. I mean, possibly go wrong. That’s the first time something has gone wrong…”
When you get to hell, tell them Itchy sent you!
“All right kids, remember where
we parkedthe car parked itself”
Damn there’s a lot of people here complaining about innovation.
Here’s a quick tip, if you can think in 10 seconds a problem with this, the engineers that work on these projects for YEARS probably already thought of it.
1 - Yes, wireless isn’t 100% reliable, so they are going to need more than one backup system. With a data connection between the trailer and the car, you have MANY ways to alert the driver that there’s a problem, AND your trailer has a processor that can safely handle problems. Heck, a VERY easy fix is to just keep a camera pointed at the license plate and keep it centered in the view while flashing a thing on the dashboard that the trailer isn’t working correct and you need to pull over. Worst case the trailer detects a problem and slows to a stop with the emergency flashers on, but even that would only be needed if several other options failed.
2 - People bitch all the time about Giant Dually Trucks™ that are just used for daily driving. Well, pulling trailers on the weekend is why a lot of people have the excuse for this. If we can eliminate the need for the heavy tow vehicle, then you can just drive a small sedan and still be able to go glamping on the weekends.
3 - There are MILLIONS of travel trailers out there right now. If we switch to small EVs overnight, we can either landfill all those trailers, or figure out a way to retrofit them to still be useful.
4 - Encryption is a thing. If this is using current, modern Wi-Fi, then you can be pretty damn sure that nobody is going to hack into that connection.
Sure, companies cut corners and cheap out of things all the time, but this is absolutely possible to do right, and solves an actual problem.
As someone who’s observed the process for these patents, typically the company just patents anything it thinks it can, regardless of whether or not the idea is practical or if they have any interest in bringing it to market. It doesn’t even need to relate to their core business. Just cause they filed a patent, does not mean they spent any time determining if it was a good idea. Someday one of these crazy patents might prove valuable so they want as many as they can.
Yeah, and some countries (like the US) are all about first-to-file, which means that even if someone thought of something first (with documentation to prove it), if a second party files for a patent first, they’ll get it. So it’s better to file and not use it than to hold onto it.
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The engineers do their best, then management gets to it.
Yeah, of course, the engineers thought of the problem. Then they reported it to management and management will ensure to always find a reason why exactly this problem (much like the rest of backlog) cannot be prioritized right now.
Also a corporate engineer. I put faith in corporations wanting to avoid lawsuits. Assuming you don’t have an insane billionaire calling the shots, the suits will make sure things are as safe as they need to be to avoid losing money.
Touchscreens in cars are a great example of this. It’s not a safety-critical component (like steering or brakes). The negative safety impact can be argued away in court. So the suits give touchscreens the a-okay. But if there’s a hint of a problem with steering, braking, or ECM, management will be in full support of a proper fix.
Not that they’d manage to avoid messing up wireless towing, but as long as there’s financial incentive in doing things right, management will fight for it.
A processor that can safely handle problems on the road does not exist. And if a pseudo trailer exists with it and a drive train, it’s just an autonomous electric car. Buying two electric cars will not be price competitive with buying a larger vehicle for cargo/towing capacity, especially considering the additional hassle on the user (have to store two expensive vehicles, have to set up a pseudo tow between the two anytime you think you might need the capacity). So people will still buy large vehicles, there definitely won’t be a switch “overnight”. Besides, most of them already are bought based on an overstated/oversold need, making the purchase less rational will have a marginal, but not sea-changing, impact on buying habits. Encryption is good, but plenty of companies and individuals get hacked today, it will stop the vast majority of attack vectors but the idea of it stopping all attack vectors is borderline laughable. Why is landfilling trailers a positive thing? Preemptively replacing gear that is perfectly operational is part of the toxic consumerism cycle that has put our environment in this mess.
Speaking as an engineer, we may think about the best solution to a problem for years, but that doesn’t mean we are solving the right problem
Here’s a quick tip, if you can think in 10 seconds a problem with this, the engineers that work on these projects for YEARS probably already thought of it.
Then why do so many cars have fucking touchscreen infotainment systems?
2 - People bitch all the time about Giant Dually Trucks™ that are just used for daily driving. Well, pulling trailers on the weekend is why a lot of people have the excuse for this. If we can eliminate the need for the heavy tow vehicle, then you can just drive a small sedan and still be able to go glamping on the weekends.
How do you think this ‘little towing-robot-car thing’ is going to tow, steer and break a heavy trailer safely on the highway?
It got to be heavy for itself, needs a big battery pack, powerful motor… It’s basically got to be an F150 itself. Nice if you don’t need daily drive it, but it cost almost as much and won’t actually be very environment-friendly either I assume.
The brakes are part of the trailer. I’d imagine laws are different everywhere, but where I’m at trailer brakes are required for 3000+ pound trailers, though it’s a bit more complicated than that and even a 1500 pound trailer could require them.
Anyway, the point is that big 5th wheel travel trailers are way heavier than even a huge dually truck. A 7,000 pound truck can tow a 25,000 pound trailer. I’d imagine the towbot would be limited to something a bit more sane, like 6,000 pounds (class 3 hitch). Since the towbot doesn’t also have to carry passengers etc, I’d imagine 1,500 to 2,000 pounds for it.
(since you are using pounds, I’m just gona assume you are American?)
In Germany (and most of Europe) every car model has a its with/without breaks trailer wight limit in the paperwork, in general this is about the wight of the car and half of it if your trailer has no overrun breaks - no matter your license.
Without a special trailer or heavy duty license, you may not carry more then a metric ton (or 3/4 of it without breaks). Car+Trailer combined have to be below 3.5 metric tons - no matter the car you drive.
For your giggles: There are Hummers in Europe, but they are not allowed to carry more load then a Seat Ibiza if they are not registered as a heavy vehicle.
I would buy this, assuming it’s reliable over an f150 in a heart beat. If they can actually get it working reliably they will print money. I’d easily drop 15k on something like this. Fuck you can even share the cost between family members and friends.
Yeah I’m imagining that they’d be easy to rent U-Haul style. No need to drop 15k if you only tow your camper a few times per year.
I want to tow like 10-15 times a year though. I have no interest in an f150 but I’m saving up a down payment for that when what I would love is something like a Volvo v90 recharge to daily. I’d more than be able to share this tool with friends as well as family.
It has so so many use cases. Toyota really could print money here I think.
