Ask HN: Do you think connecting your car to the cloud worth your money? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you think connecting your car to the cloud worth your money?

1 pointaminekh9 comments

I'm working on a Cloud Platform to connect cars to the cloud. What do you think of the idea?

Nope. I would not connect my car to "the cloud" even if I was paid to do it.

What are benefits? Are they bigger than security problems? No software is 100% safe and cars are considered "critical equipment" - no for cars or medical equipment in "the cloud". But ofc, your mileage may vary.

those variances in mileage are no doubt very valuable to marketers.

Seriously though. This comment is very true. Cars are "technical" enough as it is (ie onboard computers that can make servicing/repairs more troublesome/expensive).

Why on earth would anyone want to compound that with "the cloud".

how do you think cars will be connected to the internet without using the cloud? I think using the cloud is inevitable

Well this is a very interesting question.

A) what possible use is there for having my car connected to the Internet?

B) you realise that "the cloud" as used by most people today is just a marketing gimmick term for hosting shit on computers someone else controls, right?

C) In the traditional sense, "the cloud" is the network connection between a client device and the servers it's connecting to: eg the last mile connection, ISP wan, peered ISPs/etc all the way to the data centre.

If you want to connect cars in like smart city/roads/self-driving, as i.e. "let's keep that speed so traffic is as effective as possible etc", then you do not need any "cloud" - peer-to-peer is as effective without need for central "cloud".

Still, I do not believe anyone would easily accept any cloud connected (or cloud-like) car. First there are many other problems that humanity need to solve before jumping into such complicated matter.

There was a Wired article [0] that had the writer in a Jeep driving down the highway while two hackers (who were part of the article) were able to shut down the Jeep. If that is happening already I wouldn't want to open my car to any more risk by connecting it to the cloud.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...

I will never willingly connect my automobile to the internet. I'm something of a luddite, though. I miss being able to easily find vehicles with analog dials, crank windows, manual transmissions, and non-ABS brakes. I'm nostalgic for simplicity and reliability...

Depends on the details. I have no problem giving it some API keys to my cloud so that I can e.g. listen to my google music without taking out the phone.

But really, provide some more info, what does the platform offers, what exactly do you mean by a connection etc.

The lesser we will drive on our own the more time we will have doing other things.

API services (parkermeister.com, idrop.in) that bring value to this experience will be immensely useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com