^^^Agreed
This is not a significant hurdle. The Vehicle to Vehicle communication only needs to communicate for short distances (say 20-30 feet). Since no one is in mass production with V2V they can standardize to any given frequency.
Most of the hacking is for research and testing. I don’t know of any mass hacking by individuals to cause crashes or harm. Besides–a hacker isn’t going to make any money by making someone crash their car. And isn’t hacking usually about money?
And in many hacking scenarios, the hacker also has to have access to the car to begin with, usually to plug something into one of the ports. Or if they’re going to try to steal your vehicle by grabbing your fob’s signal, they need to be nearby and have a device to do it (and those devices aren’t free). It’s not that simple.
Hell, I’m old enough to remember when seat belts were optional and mom had to specifically request them as an add-on whenever she got a new car. You could be as old as me, I have no way to know.
When I lived in Chicago I dealt with the traffic by simply not driving, mass transit worked well for me for a couple decades and on the few occasions I needed my own wheels I could rent them.
I don’t live in Chicago anymore, though, and around here cars are sort of essential for doing things like getting to work and shopping.
Still sounds like “screw you, old fart, you’re not the market demographic we want”. I’ve seen a LOT of new stuff on vehicles that I emphatically DON’T want - my current car, for instance, has manual locks and window cranks and I am very happy with that. And yes, I have tried the power versions - my pickup truck has power doors and windows and after 21 years of experience driving I think it’s safe to say I’ve given the powered options a try and… I still prefer the manual ones. All I want or need is an AM/FM radio - I don’t need a fancier sound system (my late spouse did opt for one for the truck, but I seldom used it myself). Cruise control is nice, but when the car’s stopped working I never bothered to have it repaired. A back up camera would be nice for the pickup, but that wasn’t an option when I bought it. Don’t need one for the car. I don’t need a blue tooth hook up - I don’t talk or text when driving on general principle so I don’t need it.
In other words - you’re making a BIG assumption with your “most people”. I know plenty of people getting vehicles with all sorts of bells and whistles that they don’t really want but they’re stuck with because there were no other options available.
The manufacturers removed almost all access ports to individual models a few years ago and almost all communication now has cyber security features. Sure they could be hacked at some future date but then most anything can be hacked as mentioned by others.
And it’s not that easy to actually get things to work as planned even when you know what you are doing. It’s much easier to brick a system than it is to successfully hack one.
Yup. I got it.
That’s why I get aggravated when some local person in our community Facebook group claims that teenagers have these ten dollar hacking boxes and they can break into and steal into anyone’s car. I’m like, no they can’t!
Or folks that carry on about how easy it is to hack cars and I try to explain it’s not that simple.
Just wanted to point out about the backup cameras. I think they are required now by law.
At a certain point it becomes more expensive for the manufacturer to offer the manual options because there’s some cost just in having the option at all.
A base model Yaris is $15,650. It’s pretty basic but still has Bluetooth and a few other things. Obviously, those aren’t driving up the cost much. That $15k in 2000 is $22k now after inflation, so the current Yaris is actually quite a bit cheaper.
As for “most people”, you’ve got your wants and other have different ones. I personally have no need for an AM/FM radio and would delete it if it saved $10. But that’s not likely to be an option since it would cost the automaker more to offer it.
Message recieved! 
But seriously I hear you and many people like you bend my ear all the time. Thing is the tech isn’t really that much more expensive than the older stuff one you start making millions of them. I personally hate that they add a sunroof to every damn high end package, I hate sunroofs but like the high tech stuff. Why should I pay for them to cut a hole in my roof? And I also hate that they put airbag warning stickers on sun visors that cannot be removed, I pay good money for a nice interior and they put that crappy ass sticker right where I see it all the time(I’m not welcome in that department) . They can get the fuck off of my lawn!
And I do remember when seat belts came out, had Pinto and a GD K-Car that I got from my mom. Things are actually better now, I think.
I hope you’re right, because others are saying the sky is falling.
Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao had warned the FCC decision could result in “thousands more deaths annually on road and millions more injuries than would be the case otherwise.”
Chao said in an Oct. 15 letter the FCC’s cost-benefit analysis is “fatally flawed” and puts efforts to use connected vehicle technology “in peril.”
This is pulling spectrum away from the short range communication, but giving some back to “cellular vehicle to everything.”
I am not qualified to judge whether the objections are realistic or just whining because they’re losing something they have. Other opinions I’ve read suggest that the automotive industry has sat on this spectrum for so long without using it, that it’s time to do something else with it.
The only thing I can think of to make this idea dumber is to name it wrong. Which in fact they did. ALL license plates are ALREADY digital. They show distinct symbols to represent the value of the character string, as opposed to, say, little drawings in a Pictionary game.
The idea they’re trying to express is that these things are electronic, with radio remote control, so the batteries can run down and the microprocessor can crash. But I don’t know a single word to express that.
Well, not for polite company, anyway.
Now imagine the outrage when they change the licence plates from vBulletin to Discord!
Form should follow function. What is the function of license plates? To act as a unique identifier for a car. What, then, makes a license plate a better license plate? Well, one way to make a license plate better is to make it more difficult to change. This does the opposite of that. Another way to make a license plate better is to make it easier to read. This probably hurts that, too. Like most material things, a license plate is better if it’s more durable. These are less durable.
All this is, is a way to go to a lot of trouble to make something significantly worse in many ways, and better in no way. Why?
From the article:
Currently, a little over 4000 Rplates are running on the roads in California and Arizona
So, about .02% of cars in those states?
That’s all I’m saying. I am in no way a technophobe even if not an early adopter. Still, every thing useful about this idea can be installed in some other part of the damn car. How about brake lights that flash “stolen” if that’s what you want?
Overall, in many ways things are better.
That does not stop me from grumping about a few pet peeves.
In Singapore, counterfeit number plates is common - you can order any sort of number plate you like. There have been plenty of cases of fake plates only being spotted because the number belongs to another car.
Would think that for a digital plate, it would be relatively straightforward to “marry” the plate to the VIN of the car so that it is (relatively) difficult to change. I can’t imagine that the plate is simply an independent LCD screen.
technology issues (longevity / durability / robustness) aside, sounds like a great idea. I have little sympathy for people that complain about issues such as speeding, non payment of insurance and the possibility of the plate being disabled. Ultimately, those rules are there for a reason, and making them harder to circumvent would be a good thing. (and yes - I am a pretty regular speedster and have spent time driving an unregistered car)
If you want that on cars, it has nothing to do with a physical license plate though. I mean, I’d hate it with the fury of a thousand suns, but you could just plunk a little government mandated box under the hood if you wanted automatic speeding tickets or shutdown the car for no insurance.
You can’t imagine that because it would be unbelievably stupid. And yet, here we are: That’s exactly what these things are. Well, an independent e-ink screen, not LCD, but that doesn’t really change anything.
If you want to make it difficult to change, then you make it a stamped piece of metal, and then weld it to the frame of the car. What you don’t do is make it a technology that’s specifically designed to make it easy to change.
No way? That DMV shit is annoying. It’ll be great when I can buy a car, and before the first time I drive it the plate has been registered with the DMV and appears on the car. And then after that, the plate registration details are all automatically updated to be current. No more nonsense with temp plates, waiting for the real plates to arrive, having to install the new ones myself, applying new stickers once a year, etc. It’s not a huge deal, but it would be one less annoying thing in my life (especially as I’ve had the stickers lost/stolen in the mail, and was lucky to not get a ticket before I got replacements).