Delphi has come up with a dongle that plugs into the OBD-II port of any car built since 1996 and incorporates a cellular radio. The OBD-II port is an industry standard diagnostics port that can be used for reading out trouble codes, re-flashing ECUs and other tasks.
Until now only vehicles with embedded cellular radios like GM vehicles with OnStar or Ford's new plug-in vehicles could support this kind of capability. With a cellular device, you can use a smartphone to lock/unlock your vehicle, start it up, locate with GPS and more. This dongle would add that capability to tens of millions of existing vehicles. The big question is how much will the device and corresponding Verizon service cost and has Delphi done their homework on the security side.
Security will be a big issue. Until now the only real remote computer security problems with cars have been some demonstrations of cracking into the tire pressure monitoring system and some rare instances of grabbing wireless codes for keyless entry systems. Anything else required actual physical access to the OBD-II connector. This device would provide that access remotely. I'll sit back and wait to see what security experts think of this after they pound on it for a while.
Delphi Lets Nearly Anyone Control Their Car Via Smartphone
Smartphones have become our cameras, our radios, and our wallets, and they’ll continue to become more central in our lives — at least until they’re integrated into eyeglasses or contacts or some kind…
Post imported by Google+Blog for WordPress.
+John Hostile any thoughts?
Really depends on what they do with the software/website to make it user friendly, and extend the functionally beyond the basic OBDII diagnostic readouts. This basic tech has been around and accessible for quite a while ($20 Bluetooth dongles), but if someone has the vision and chops to integrate it smartishly and usefully that would be cool. But I kinda feel like Torque is already pushing the boundaries of what is actually useful, while using what is surely cheaper hardware…
Will not work, at least for now, with my car:
_Check Vehicle Compatibility
Your vehicle: 2012 Fiat 500 Abarth, with Key Fob Change Vehicle
Your vehicle is currently not compatible. We plan to expand coverage so please check back often.Feature Summary
Key Fob Features:
Keyfob-on-phone features not yet supported for your vehicle. We are rapidly expanding coverage so please check back often.
Extension cable allows mounting the device in a hidden location:
The device can be installed directly in the OBD2 connector._
+Sam Abuelsamid While your are here, I have a question for you:
A while back, my iPhone was at 1% charge and I have a hands free system built in the car. How was it possible that I held a good 10 minutes conversation w/o problem. Is there more in in car system then just relaying sound thru Bluetooth?
I guess this could be the next step for companies offering Fleet Management and Vehicle Tracking services. They already have their software optimized to displays vehicle's trips and analyze all the received data to trigger user-specific alarms and generate automatic reports about vehicle's performance/behavior.
Nevertheless, for the professional market, this kind of devices might be not powerful enough because in some cases the users need/want to add some peripherals (sensors, remote immobilization, navigation & two-way messaging).
+Luc Desaulniers estimating the state of charge of lithium ion batteries is at best an imperfect science. Because the output voltage and power stays pretty steady throughout the duty cycle, the engineers have to create models based on the power usage of the devices and the characteristics of the battery. That's why batteries need to occasionally be calibrated by going through a full charge cycle. Most likely when it was showing 1% it was probably closer to 8-10%
It's also possible that Apple has a reserver buffer built into their estimate much like automakers do with hybrid and plug-in batteries.