I have a 4 cylinder Subaru, plenty of power.
Power is relative. Another post noted the increasing power in US autos over the years. In about 1963 I had a Renault Dauphine with a 27 HP engine, and I found it adequate. Ditto with a 1960 Ford Falcon with 85 HP.
My current car has 170 HP, and it was the smallest engine I could get. I could get by with a lot less.
YupâŠthey probably can be hacked. I HATE the line in the article âMost of our web-connected products donât have a team of engineers working to make them more secureâ. Thatâs just BULL. It doesnât take a team of engineers. My whole software engineering group is less then 10 people. We design extremely secure web systems. It is more difficult to add security once the system is up and runningâŠhowever if you think of security when the system is designed itâs a hell of a lot easier. These systems are hackable because they were designed that way.
My first Outback was a four-cylinder model, and it hadâŠadequateâŠpower.
However, my second one had the 3 liter six, and it was much more enjoyable to drive, as well as quieter.
My current one has the 3.6 liter six, and to be able to get it up to an effortless 70-75 mph by the end of the interstate entrance ramp is a great safety advantage, IMHO.
We will have to agree to disagreeâŠ
Thatâs fine!
Some like vanilla, some like chocolate, some like neither.
Câest la vie!
I disagree. One of our cars was stolen while our daughter was at college. The thieves broke into her house and stole electronics and anything else they thought they could sell quickly. They made off with the loot in her car, taking the car keys off of the kitchen counter. Itâs a Cobalt, and we had OnStar activated. They found out about the burglary an hour or two after it occurred when they got home from a football game. She called us, we called OnStar, they located the car, and our daughter was on site within 45 minutes of calling. If we had depended on the local police, Iâm not sure we ever would have recovered the car. We got her an extra set of keys the next day. None of this would have been possible if the car had not had the GPS and cell phone system activated through OnStar.
This use seems a lot more likely than someone hacking into the car at random for some nefarious act. Add to that the accident notification to OnStar, and it can be a lot more valuable to the subscriber than the random criminal that might hack into it.
Yep, old fashioned âdumbâ thieves that can be defeated by computer technology far outnumber the highly skilled hackers in this world. Most thieves and other criminals are dumb, although there are a few high IQ people in our prison system, Ted Kaczinsky for example.
We worry about hackers when we should be worrying about old fashioned burglars who just break into our homes.
Our cousinâs husband is a public defender. Almost all of the criminals he defends get involved with crime because they are too dumb to recognize how they expose themselves to trouble with the law. The smarter criminals that enlist them get off because they are far enough away from the crime to stay out of the crime/trial/prison process.
This thread sums up the old, old story of the good and bad of âprogressâ. Progress is another word for change, and we do resist change more and more as we age. What we also experience seems to be loss of insight and perspective. The change that makes us all uncomfortable is also responsible for some great improvements in our lives, and even in staying alive at all. Sure, all the data flow through the internet is nerve wracking and frightening, but we all are still using it, if only to post our opinions here.
If youâre not the customer, youâre the product.
I read an article in the âLA Weeklyâ in the '90s about a crew of thieves who had computer-controlled radios that tried thousands of combinations per second for car door locks. They would stand near a likely target, turn it on; if it hit the combination theyâd hot-wire it and drive off.
As a lawyer-friend observed, there isnât an IQ test to be a criminal.
I think this can be made safe by turning security on when youâre away from your car. I guess this would require keeping the electronic key elsewhere. Doesnât Lojack work like this?