Tag: cars

Cybertruck Finally Gets Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

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A select number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US highways hands-free, after the automaker pushed an update to vehicles this morning. Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy wrote on X that Cybertrucks will be the first Tesla features to receive the “end-to-end on highway” driving feature, which the company says uses a “neural net” to navigate all parts of highway driving.

“Nice work,” Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk responded to his AI chief.

The feature appears to be in “early access,” meaning it’s only available to some Cybertruck owners who purchased the feature. It’s unclear when the automaker will release the feature more widely. Tesla, which disbanded its public relations team in 2021, did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Tesla owners’ manuals maintain that the full-self driving feature, or “FSD (Supervised)”, should only be used if drivers are paying attention to the road. The feature reportedly turns off if it detects that drivers are looking elsewhere. Critics have argued that Tesla’s marketing incorrectly leads drivers to assume that FSD can truly drive itself, and that the automaker hasn’t been proactive in preventing driver misuse.

Customers who purchased base model Cybertrucks early, at pre-order, paid $7,000 for access to the driving feature, with some waiting almost a year for it to actually be available on their trucks. Tesla owners can now subscribe to the “FSD (Supervised)” feature at $99 per month.

One Cybertruck driver reported on X that, based on driving this morning, the feature is “working well.”

The feature’s introduction is some much-needed good news for the Cybertruck, which has faced a rocky introduction into Tesla’s lineup. The vehicle was delayed for years by the Covid-19 pandemic and by engineering issues. (A leaked “alpha” briefing on the vehicle, first reported by WIRED, found the truck had serious issues with braking, handling, and noise.)

The all-electric truck has also been subject to a handful of safety recalls, including one in which the company had to repair or replace accelerator pedals that had gotten stuck.

As more automakers rush into the electrification race, and Tesla’s huge lead in electric cars has been eroded by other manufacturers, Musk and company seem to believe that “self-driving” features enabled by AI will help Tesla regain its edge. “The value of Tesla overwhelmingly is autonomy,” Musk told investors this summer.

The US’ road safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has found that Tesla’s Autopilot feature, an older and less sophisticated version of FSD, didn’t sufficiently prevent drivers from misuse—and was involved in 13 fatal crashes between 2018 and 2023. After a years-long investigation into Autopilot, last year Tesla recalled 2 million vehicles with Autopilot. (The automaker said it did not agree with the government’s conclusions.)

Earlier this year, Tesla settled a lawsuit brought by the family of a Northern California man who died while using Autopilot on his Model X.

Tesla also faces a class action lawsuit alleging it misled customers who purchased Teslas after Musk promised the cars had everything they needed to drive autonomously. Eight years later, Tesla has made significant improvements to its driverless features, and plans to make big bucks off the feature—but still hasn’t produced self-driving technology.

That could change this month. Musk has promised that Tesla will unveil a self-driving taxi, called a “Cybercab,” at an event in Southern California on October 10.

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September 30, 2024
Millions of Vehicles Could Be Hacked and Tracked Thanks to a Simple Website Bug

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In January 2023, they published the initial results of their work, an enormous collection of web vulnerabilities affecting Kia, Honda, Infiniti, Nissan, Acura, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Genesis, BMW, Rolls Royce, and Ferrari—all of which they had reported to the automakers. For at least half a dozen of those companies, the web bugs the group found offered at least some level of control of cars’ connected features, they wrote, just as in their latest Kia hack. Others, they say, allowed unauthorized access to data or the companies’ internal applications. Still others targeted fleet management software for emergency vehicles and could have even prevented those vehicles from starting, they believe—though they didn’t have the means to safely test out that potentially dangerous trick.

In June of this year, Curry says, he discovered that Toyota appeared to still have a similar flaw in its web portal that, in combination with a leaked dealer credential he found online, would have allowed remote control of Toyota and Lexus vehicles’ features like tracking, unlocking, honking, and ignition. He reported that vulnerability to Toyota and showed WIRED a confirmation email seeming to demonstrate that he’d been able to reassign himself control of a target Toyota’s connected features over the web. Curry didn’t film a video of that Toyota hacking technique before reporting it to Toyota, however, and the company quickly patched the bug he’d disclosed, even temporarily taking its web portal offline to prevent its exploitation.

“As a result of this investigation, Toyota promptly disabled the compromised credentials and is accelerating security enhancements of the portal, as well as temporarily disabling the portal until enhancements are complete,” a Toyota spokesperson wrote to WIRED in June.

More Smart Features, More Dumb Bugs

The extraordinary number of vulnerabilities in carmakers’ websites that allow remote control of vehicles is a direct result of companies’ push to appeal to consumers—particularly young ones—with smartphone-enabled features, says Stefan Savage, a professor of computer science at UC San Diego whose research team was the first to hack a car’s steering and brakes over the internet in 2010. “Once you have these user features tied into the phone, this cloud-connected thing, you create all this attack surface you didn’t have to worry about before,” Savage says.

Still, he says, even he is surprised at the insecurity of all the web-based code that manages those features. “It’s a little disappointing that it’s as easy to exploit as it has been,” he says.

Rivera says he’s observed firsthand in his time working in automotive cybersecurity that car companies often put more focus on “embedded” devices—digital components in non-traditional computing environments like cars—rather than web security, in part because updating those embedded devices can be far more difficult and lead to recalls. “It was clear ever since I started that there was a glaring gap between embedded security and web security in the auto industry,” Rivera says. “These two things mix together very often, but people only have experience in one or the other.”

UCSD’s Savage hopes that the Kia-hacking researchers’ work might help shift that focus. Many of the early, high-profile hacking experiments that affected cars’ embedded systems, like the 2015 Jeep takeover and the 2010 Impala hack pulled off by Savage’s team at UCSD, persuaded automakers that they needed to better prioritize embedded cybersecurity, he says. Now car companies need to focus on web security too—even, he says, if it means making sacrifices or changes to their process.

“How do you decide, ‘We’re not going to ship the car for six months because we didn’t go through the web code?’ That’s a a tough sell,” he says. “I would like to think this kind of event causes people to look at that decision more fully.”

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September 26, 2024
Proposed Ban Would Be a ‘Death Sentence’ for Chinese EVs in the US

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After officially hiking tariffs on Chinese electric vehicle imports earlier this month, the US government is getting even more serious about keeping China-made autos out of the country. On Monday, the US Commerce Department proposed a new rule that would ban some Chinese- and Russian-made automotive hardware and software from the US, with software restrictions starting as early as 2026.

The Biden administration says the move is needed for national security reasons, given how central technology is to today’s increasingly sophisticated cars. In announcing the proposed ban, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo cited vehicles’ internet-connected cameras, microphones, and GPS equipment. “It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how a foreign adversary with access to this information could pose a serious risk to both our national security and the privacy of US citizens,” she said.

The US government’s move comes as China has dramatically increased the number of affordable vehicles, and especially electric ones, it makes and sells overseas. Chinese auto exports grew by more than 30 percent in just the first half of this year, setting off alarm bells in Europe and the US, where officials worry inexpensively made Chinese vehicles could overwhelm domestic industry. The US and Europe had moved to make it harder and more expensive for China to sell its autos in those regions, but the Chinese automakers have responded by setting up manufacturing bases in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Mexico—all of which might one day provide a loophole to allow more Chinese-designed and engineered vehicles into new western markets.

Still, the proposed rule focuses on security rather than competition. Raimondo had previously raised the specter of foreign actors using hijacked connected car technology to cause mayhem on the US public roads. “Imagine if there were thousands or hundreds of thousands of Chinese connected vehicles on American roads that could be immediately and simultaneously disabled by somebody in Beijing,” she said in February.

That situation isn’t quite realistic, given how few Chinese and Russian firms supply automotive software or hardware in the US right now. A proposed software and hardware ban is more preemptive than a response to any immediate security risk, says Steve Man, the global head of auto research at Bloomberg Intelligence, a research and advisory firm. “PRC and Russian automakers do not currently play a significant role in the US auto market and US drivers right now are safe,” a senior Biden administration official told WIRED.

Because the rule would apply to any connected vehicle, not just electric ones, it would create even stronger prohibitions against Chinese-made auto tech. “If the 100 percent tariffs on made-in-China EVs were a wall, the proposed ban on connected vehicles would be a death sentence for China EV, Inc. aiming to enter the US,” says Lei Xing, the former chief editor at China Auto Review and an independent analyst. Under such a rule, he says, the prospects of seeing Chinese EVs on sale in the US in the coming decade is “nearly zero.”

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September 23, 2024
Lotus Theory 1 2024: Price, Specs, Availability

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There’s more to the future of Lotus than big electric SUVs. That’s what the British company once famous for its lightweight sports cars wants you to believe—and it’s why Lotus has revealed a striking new supercar concept, called Theory 1.

To be clear, this is not an electric rebirth of the Lotus Esprit, the wedge-shaped ’70s icon driven into the sea by James Bond. At least not yet. Lotus aficionados will notice its name isn’t “Type” followed by three numbers, as is concept car tradition, nor does it begin with an E, as almost all production Lotuses do. Instead, it’s a way of showcasing technology that Lotus has planned for future cars and, just maybe, a hint of a supercar to come.

Speaking exclusively to WIRED, Lotus design vice president Ben Payne said: “We wanted to recapture that sense of purity, but not to do a kind of pastiche of an Esprit, because that doesn’t make any sense. So it’s more about the spirit of that car, the logic of the design and how controlled it is in the execution.”

Thanks to weigh savings, Theory 1 has a range of 250 miles from a modest 70-kWh battery.

Photograph: Leon Chew

That sense of control is key to all aspects of the Theory 1. Lotus could have given it 2,000 horsepower to match its Evija flagship, but it settled at a more reasonable 987 hp (1,000 PS). It could have let its designers run wild with enormous aero structures, ground-effect fans, and other hypercar paraphernalia, or overdosed on concept car tropes like huge touchscreen displays, artificial intelligence, or a drone that takes off from the rear deck.

Instead, Lotus did what it is best known for and, in the apocryphal words of founder Colin Chapman, it “simplified, then added lightness.”

Payne explained: “There’s been this period of maximalism, and people having to do one-upmanship and go above, above, above. And I think we’ve reached that point where it plateaus in stylistic terms, and also in the demonstration of tech.” He adds, “We’re not in a crazy numbers race with this car.”

Seriously Quick, Remarkably Light

Although not crazy by 2024 EV standards, Lotus is still pitching the Theory 1 as a seriously quick supercar. It’s aiming for a range of 250 miles from a modest 70-kWh battery, an all-wheel-drive system with its rear motor bolted directly to the suspension, motorsport-style, a 0 to 62-mph time of under 2.5 seconds, and a top speed of 200 mph. That’s all the usual supercar boxes ticked, but it’s nothing to give Rimac sleepless nights—or indeed get awkwardly close to Lotus’ own $2.3 million Evija.

More important than outright power is weight. Lotus says the all-carbon Theory 1 has a target of sub-1,600 kg (3,500 lbs), or around 300 kg less than the Evija. To further drive the weight-saving point home, the car has just 10 “A-surface materials”—those being the materials you can see and touch without digging beneath the surface—compared to the industry average of 100, according to Lotus. The 10 include cellulose-based glass fiber, chopped carbon fiber, and titanium, as well as recycled forms of glazing, polyester, rubber, and aluminum.

It’s also sensibly sized, as far as modern supercars go, with a width of 2,000 mm (78.7 inches), a length of 4,490 mm (176.8 inches), and a height of 1,140 mm (44.9 inches). Add this relative sensibility to the ingeniously practical doors, three seats, and excellent visibility, and it’s easy to imagine what a production version could look like.

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September 16, 2024
The Auto Industry Finally Has a Plan to Stop Electric Vehicle Fires

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Last month, a Mercedes Benz EQE 350 electric vehicle caught fire in a South Korean apartment building’s underground parking garage. Reportedly, 23 people were sent to the hospital and approximately 900 cars were damaged. The fire reached temperatures of more than 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius), and took firefighters almost eight hours to extinguish.

The incident led to a series of swift policy changes in the country, including the acceleration of a planned EV battery certification program and new rules in Seoul that should prevent owners from “overcharging” their vehicles in underground parking garages. It has also pushed automakers to do something they wouldn’t normally: reveal who makes the batteries inside their electric cars. (In early September, the South Korean government said it would require automakers to disclose this often secret information.)

Data from the National Transportation Safety Board, the US’s independent federal investigation agency, shows that the risks of electric vehicle battery fires are low. In fact, very low. An analysis of that data by one insurance company suggested that more than 1,500 gas cars catch on fire per 100,000 sales, compared to just 25 electric vehicles.

On some level, fire is a risk of any kind of battery technology. Professionals talk about the “fire triangle”—the three-ingredient recipe for ignition. Fire needs oxygen, a spark, and fuel. Because the point of a lithium-ion electric vehicle is to store energy, the fuel is always there. EV batteries are meant to be tightly packed and isolated from other parts of the car, but an incident like a catastrophic crash might quickly introduce oxygen and heat to the brew.

Building a Fire-Proof(ish) Battery

Some battery makers have taken steps to reduce the risk of their batteries catching fire. The first is to create stringent manufacturing processes and standards. This is important because any sort of flaw in a battery could lead to an inferno, says Venkat Srinivasan, who studies batteries and directs the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science at the US’s Argonne National Laboratory.

To understand why battery manufacturing matters to fire risk, you have to understand the basics of lithium-ion batteries. The battery’s anode and cathode store lithium, and they are connected by an electrolyte, a liquid chemical that passes lithium ions between the two to store or release energy. If, say, a tiny particle of metal gets into that electrolyte through an unclean manufacturing process, and it keeps getting electrified as the battery charges up and down, it could create a spark, open the battery cell, and allow oxygen to come rushing in and possibly expose the entire battery pack to fire.

These sorts of battery-making screw-ups do happen. In August, Jaguar told some 3,000 owners of its 2019 I-Pace SUV to park their vehicles outside because of fire risk, which was linked to three fires. The manufacturer behind those vehicles’ packs, the South Korean firm LG Energy Solution, has been subject to a US road safety probe since 2022. BMW, General Motors, Hyundai, Stellantis, and Volkswagen have all recalled vehicles over battery risks (some of them in hybrid rather than all-electric vehicles). But these situations are rare. Through solid manufacturing processes, “one can never make the risk of fire absolutely zero, but good companies have minimized the risk,” says Srinivasan.

Less Fire-y Chemistries

The good news is that less-fire-prone batteries are already rolling around in cars, thanks to specific battery chemistries that are harder to ignite. Since the first Tesla hit the road in 2008, the standard electric vehicle battery has been made primarily from nickel and cobalt. Batteries with this makeup charge quickly and hold lots of energy, which is great for EV use because drivers of vehicles that use them enjoy longer ranges and faster top-ups. They’re also more likely to enter “thermal runaway” at lower temperatures, in the 400- to 300-degrees Fahrenheit (210 to 150 degrees Celsius) range.

Thermal runaway is a state in which lithium-ion batteries enter a kind of fire doom loop: A damaged battery cell produces heat and flammable gases, which in turn produces more heat and flammable gases, which begins to heat nearby battery cells, which release more heat and gas. The fire then becomes self-sustaining and hard to put out.

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September 15, 2024
Where Is CarPlay 2? | WIRED

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For lots of smartphone owners, Apple is the conduit to the internet. Since 2022, Apple has made it clear that it wants to be the same for lots of drivers, too. That’s when the company announced “next-generation” CarPlay 2, which is set to extend CarPlay’s convenient phone-mirroring technology beyond a vehicle’s central infotainment screen to additional dash screens, including gauge clusters and dashboards.

That is, if carmakers allow it to. On Monday, another Apple event came and went without word of when, exactly, this new CarPlay might show up, despite the fact that Apple says on its website that the first vehicle models with the feature will make their debut in 2024—a year with only three months left in it.

Since Apple unveiled its vision for the next generation of the service two years ago, many automakers have made it clear that they’re uncomfortable handing over design control of their screens to Apple Inc. Weeks after Mercedes-Benz’s logo was included in Apple’s initial CarPlay 2 presentation in 2022, the car company appeared to balk. “To give up the whole cockpit head unit—in our case, a passenger screen and everything—to somebody else?” Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius told The Verge back in 2022. “The answer is no.”

Two automakers, Porsche and Aston Martin, have committed to partnering with Apple for next-generation CarPlay. A spokesperson for Porsche, Calvin Kim, said that the automaker had no updates on when the new CarPlay would arrive. A spokesperson for Aston Martin declined to comment and referred WIRED to Apple for CarPlay news. An Apple spokesperson did not immediately respond to WIRED’s questions about when the next CarPlay would make its debut.

Still, Apple appears to have heard at least some of automakers’ concerns. At Apple’s WWDC conference over the summer, the tech giant posted two new CarPlay videos making it clear that automakers would have some control over the architecture and design of the interfaces that show up in their cars, using what Apple is calling a “punch-through UI.” This will allow an automaker to, say, display its specific driver assistance visualization or backup camera even when CarPlay is “in control” of its car’s visuals.

From a technical perspective, the new CarPlay communicates more closely with vehicles’ software than the previous version. While the first version simply provided a video screen to a car, the CarPlay will need to interact with a vehicle’s software to provide car-specific information including tire pressure and climate on its own user interface.

At least one automaker has said it definitely won’t play along with Apple CarPlay, or even its competitor, Android Auto. General Motors announced last year that its vehicles would rely on its own GM-built operating system.

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September 9, 2024
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Polestar?

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The all-electric sibling of Volvo has a new CEO, new models landing, and a new plant in South Carolina—but will this be enough to stop the EV brand’s decline?

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September 7, 2024
A simple driving trick could make a big dent in cars’ carbon emissions

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Researchers modelled nearly 1 million driving scenarios at US intersections

Aerial Archives / Alamy Stock Photo

You may be guilty of accelerating up to intersections and slamming the brakes at a red light – this common habit can generate significant carbon emissions each year. But programming modern cars to glide up to intersections instead could significantly reduce annual emissions.

An AI-powered model suggests that if every single gas or diesel-powered vehicle in the US consistently followed certain eco-driving practices, they could cut the country’s yearly carbon emissions by between 62 million and 123 million tonnes.

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August 26, 2024
How Much Will It Cost to Charge Your Electric Car? It’s Complicated

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Another weird feature of electricity pricing are demand charges. These are fees that EV charging site hosts pay, and are based on their highest usage, in 15-minute to one-hour intervals, during a pay period. These demand charges help utilities deal with the various costs of building and maintaining an electric grid. But they’re frustrating in the EV charging context, because some chargers get used very rarely—but when they are used demand a lot of electricity in a short amount of time. That leads to demand charges.

These demand charges can hit the “hundreds of thousands annually for a specific site,” says Rachel Moses, who directs sales, marketing, and business development at Electrify America.

Meanwhile, some utilities charge “peak” pricing—that is, more money when lots of other people are using electricity. This means it tends to cost more for charging sites to provide electricity between 4 pm and 9 pm, when everyone heads home, turns on their televisions, air conditioners, or heat units, and perhaps plugs in their cars. It all amounts to slightly unpredictable charging prices.

Electrify America says its pricing is “station specific,” meaning it will charge customers more money to charge at stations that are more expensive for it to run. But other EV charging companies take a broader approach and average out the costs of running their whole network to figure out pricing across a wider area.

What’s more, companies are permitted to charge dynamic prices for EV charging, meaning they can change. There is, fortunately, a limit to this strategy. Rules around national public-charging infrastructure funding means that any chargers built with public funds can’t change their prices when you’re in the middle of charging your car, even if the price the company is paying for its electricity changes.

This all means it’s hard, right now, to predict what you’ll pay to top up at a public fast charger. No wonder drivers are frustrated.

Nu Gas Station?

But should drivers be frustrated? Not quite knowing what you’ll pay to charge up your car at a public fast charging can be annoying. But it’s also not a full reflection of most peoples’ EV experiences.

The real advantage of owning an electric vehicle is that, while you can only find gas at a gas station, cars can be charged in lots of different locations. At home, at the grocery store, at work: These places might not all have fast chargers, but plenty have outlets and “level 2” slower chargers where drivers can get a bit of juice.

Headlines—and some drivers—get really hung up on public charging stations. But some 90 percent of today’s electric vehicle drivers have garages, driveways, or other places where they can charge their cars overnight. Someday, that won’t be the case, and public chargers will have to fill in the gaps for people who live in apartments or park on the street.

But for now: Maybe don’t get too caught up on public chargers, which today mostly fill in the gaps when EV drivers are on long car trips.

“We have this gas-station model in our heads,” says Kellen Schefter, the senior director of electric transportation at the Edison Electric Institute, an association representing US investor-owned electric companies. “If our goal is only to replicate the gas-station model for EVs, we’ve missed out on one of the real advantages of EVs.”

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August 22, 2024
Ford Steps Back From EVs—and Says Hybrids Are the Future

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Even early adopters and those seeking to reduce their CO2 emissions wilt at some EV’s first year depreciation of 50 percent.

Automakers, too, are feeling the heat. In a press release Ford said it was to broaden choices for customers as it “adjusts its rollout of pure electric vehicles to deliver a capital-efficient, profitable electric vehicle business.” It also noted that Chinese automakers have “advantaged cost structures including vertical integration, low-cost engineering, multi-energy advanced battery technology and digital experiences.”

By killing its three-row SUV, and delaying a next-generation pickup Ford is hoping to stem losses resulting from its previously ambitious all-electric plan.

“It’s coming back to understanding the customer, understanding how this is going to transition over time,” Lawler said in this morning’s media briefing. “It’s about providing them those choices that meet their duty cycles and their needs, and that is giving them the options between full battery electric vehicles, hybrid technologies.”

Future Fords Must Make Money

In a hostage to fortune, Lawler said that Ford would not launch any EVs in the future unless they can be profitable within 12 months.

“We are launching multiple electric vehicles in Europe this year,” Ford said in a statement, referring to the EU-only Ford Explorer EV and the Capri built on the same platform borrowed from rival VW’s ID. 4. “We are adjusting the company’s North America vehicle roadmap to offer a range of electrification options designed to speed customer adoption, including lower prices and longer ranges.”

The Ford statement added that “scores of new electric vehicle choices hitting the market over the next 12 months and rising compliance requirements” were causing pricing pressures. “These dynamics underscore the necessity of a globally competitive cost structure while being selective about customer and product segments to ensure profitable growth and capital efficiency,” explained the statement.

Among the cost-cutting, Ford is delaying its midsize T3 electric truck, thought to be a more advanced successor to the F-150 Lightning, to the second half of 2027. It was supposed to start production this year. The truck will be assembled at BlueOval City’s Tennessee Electric Vehicle Center. Ford also plans to introduce an all-new, fully electric commercial van that is slated to begin production in 2026 in Ohio.

Lawler said that Ford has “multiple hybrid technologies under development” and is working on other powertrain options. “We’re going to continue to provide gas vehicles and diesel vehicles, because there’s a demand for those and that’s going to continue,” he confirmed.

“Our focus here is to remake Ford into a high growth, higher margin, more capital, and an efficient and durable business,” Lawler said.

EVs need to turn a profit, he stressed. “And if they’re not profitable, based on where the customer is in the market, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions, and that’s what we’ve done.”

Ford is not the only automaker in pivot mode. General Motors and Honda ditched a plan to co-develop low-cost EVs last year, with GM preferring to prioritize hybrids. VW of America, too, said recently that a “balanced approach is the best way.”

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August 21, 2024