[walrus01]

I'd bet that the TPMS (tire pressure monitor/sensor) in the wheels is an off the shelf component purchased from a top-10 supplier in the automotive industry, and the problem was as simple as not having the TPMS programmed for the car. This is the same problem you can encounter if you replace all four TPMS in most any medium to high end car manufactured after about 2006, and the tire shop forgets to use their handheld wireless EEPROM flasher to apply the car's VIN to the new TPMS modules.

[BenjiWiebe]

Your local Walmart auto care center will reset/relearn the TPMS system for free, and the tool they use does support Tesla.

[greglindahl]

Teslas have a button on the menus in the console for that kind of reset... must have been more than just a different vin.

[olivermarks]

This sort of complexity is why I like pre smog era cars

[alephx]

Tell me about it, I had a 2007 1 series BMW and its transmission computer became dead. Now, I was quoted 4000USD at the dealership (the car was worth about 5000 at that point). I went to a third party specializing in automatic transmission and they almost could do it by swapping the computer from a crashed car.

Turns out it needs an encryption key (who only the dealership has) to get the car to recognize the computer, otherwise it won't even start. I sold it for parts and will never have an automatic BMW again.

According to the transmission guy things have only gotten worse with newer models, particularly Audi/Volkswagen and BMW.

[seanp2k2]

https://hackaday.com/2018/10/26/dmca-review-big-win-for-righ...

However, the actual practice of applying the now-legal practice to something like you described is far above the technical skill of most automotive shops. Some tuners may be able to do it, so it might be worth asking around and doing some digging if this happens to anyone else.

[gmueckl]

One thing to keep in mind is that one person's spare part may be another' srolen car or car parts. Especially in Europe, stealing parts is a thing. Some gangs won't steal entire cars, but only break in and take parts according to a "shopping list". Locking components to one another helps to make stolen parts useless and acts as a deterrent.

[serpix]

Yeah my dad and my mother both had their cars broken into and both of their steering wheels stolen. The door locks were surgically removed and nothing else was touched or ruined. They only removed those parts and went their way.

[deadbunny]

Then there should be a mechanism of being able to prove provenance of part and forcing the manufacturer to "re pair" components into another car without having to pay an absurd price.

[TeMPOraL]

Reminds me of a guy I met once. He ran a small auto repair shop focusing on a single brand (Audi, AFAIR). He had a special device to talk with cars' computers and a laptop for it with software and appropriate keys. He explained to me that getting this from the auto manufacturer would cost a small fortune; instead, what he did is contract with some Chinese people, who from time to time would RDP to the laptop and update whatever in that software that needed updating; with the interface that I think was probably second-hand also, it apparently costed only a fraction of what manufacturer would want.

[StillBored]

Cars like other pieces of technology are gradual. Its pretty easy to pick up a 90's era car with electronic fuel injection and spark advance while still having a fairly simple emissions system, and actual relays and mechanical buttons to turn on things like cruise control.

If that is to much, you can go back to the early 90's or late 80's for systems where only injectors are electronic and based solely on a couple simple sensors (mas air, or o2 sensor) and things like spark advance are still done in with a distributor + vacuum. Its all a question of what you want to tolerate, but the advantages of EFI+electronic spark advance or VVT are immense for both reliability and efficiency.

[baroffoos]

Same reason I like bikes. I can pull the whole thing apart in a day and understand what every bit does. As soon as you start including electronics you end up with black boxes that no human could ever understand entirely.

[braythwayt]

Even with bicycles, those days are almost over. Wireless electronic shifting is trickling down from the top-of-the-line bikes.

The charm of a bicycle being mechanically simple is going away...

[baroffoos]

I'm not sure if wireless shifting will ever become standard. I have an ebike with di2 and I haven't noticed any reason I would want it over regular shifting. You also have the problem that if the battery goes flat you cant shift gears.

[braythwayt]

One of the big reasons for electronic shifting counter-intuitively applies to “daily riders” more than to race machines, even though at current prices, electronic shifting is rare on affordable bikes.

That reason is that once you have a solenoid, sensors, and a CPU in the mechanism, you have a self-adjusting shifter. The more gears on a derailleur-type system, the tighter the spacing, and the sooner a mechanical shifter needs adjustments or replacement of the cable.

Electronic systems can adjust themselves as needed, offering a massive potential for affordable bicycles to “just work” for people who don’t have the inclination to fiddle with their own adjustments.

[gtaylor]

Ehh, I never want to go back to the days of points and carbs.

[newnewpdro]

The 90s have a sweet spot in automotive history where they finally got all the 80s-prototyped computer-controlled smog equipment refined and simplified, but hadn't yet let the computers infect every other nook and cranny of vehicles.

I basically aim for just before fly-by-wire became commonplace when considering ICE vehicles. No throttle cable? No way.

[jdavis703]

In other words, let’s kill off people [0] from air pollution so car maintenance can be simpler.

0: http://www.prevenzione.ulss20.verona.it/docs/Sisp/Inquinamen...

[teej]

I mean sure. But my gas vehicle is purely recreational, it gets a few hundred miles a year at most. I really enjoy teaching myself car maintenance and repair with it. Being an 80s car, it’s super roomy in the engine area and easy to work on.

No one is dying because I own and drive this car today. Someone might’ve died mining the lithium for my Tesla however.

This is all to say that your comment is reductive.

[TeMPOraL]

In defense of GP, their comment is properly reductive as this is how things generalize when deployed large-scale. Your smog may not kill anyone and my smog may not kill anyone, but it's also true that X% greater in emissions leads to Y% more premature deaths, so some extra Y% people are going to keep dying if these emissions are not reduced.

I don't think GP meant it to be personal. But Kant's categorical imperative does work in some cases, so it's worth remembering.

[jdavis703]

If someone died mining our hypothetical battery, that is a choice they made (assuming that we all know working in mines is dangerous). OTOH we have little choice in breathing in smog... clean air is a communal resource we all have to share.

And the problem isn’t your gas vehicle that you rarely use, it’s the general concept of everyone from Volkswagen to our local auto sports enthusiasts thinking their smog doesn’t really matter that much.

[benj111]

I assume there's a mortality rate for software developers. Is it therefore the software developers fault if they die on the job? Should we shrug a point out that that career was their choice?

Does this thinking extend to other activities? The mortality rate for sleeping in non zero after all....

[jdavis703]

I guess I’d draw an analogy to astronauts, firefighters or race car drivers. Obviously mining, firefighting, space flight and racing should be made as safe as possible from a worker’a rights perspective. But anyone going in to those careers hopefully understands the risks!

And thanks for the reply, I was wondering what the downvotes were about — my comment apparently was blasé, especially since many miners frequently don’t have much other economic opportunity.

[TeMPOraL]

The problem isn't electronics itself. The problem is a frankly evil combination of artificial technical and legal barriers that prevent you (or your local car repair shop) from being able to do fixes and checkups yourself. In a nicer world, you'd have standardized interfaces and tools released to facilitate repairs of the complicated systems in cars.

[bluGill]

OBDII has been legally standardized on all cars for years. However it only covers basics, every engine is different on details and so you can't get far on the standard alone.

[adrianN]

I wonder how much of the additional complexity is actually necessary for lower emissions.

[AnthonyMouse]

More to the point, how much of the complexity is an excuse to charge $4000 at the dealership for something an independent mechanic could do for $495 except that there is some kind of DMCA nonsense in the car to prevent that on purpose.

[rusticpenn]

Most of the complexity arises from using feedback loops in the engines similar to other control systems in industry. There are also similarities to techniques used in electronics.

[frosted-flakes]

You can like something without wanting to go back to it. It's nice being able to fix your own car, but great fuel efficiency and low emissions is also nice.

[olivermarks]

https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2019/04/19/earth-day-2...

[dsfyu404ed]

In states that don't have their head up a certain bodily orifice "pre-smog" is a rolling window. Requiring people to maintain emissions systems in their stock configuration on cars pushing 50 is insane. If you really are hell bent on making people smog stuff that's old and uncommon to the point of being a rounding error to the big picture then just stick a sniffer in the tail pipe and pass it as long as it meets or exceeds the standards it was built for.

[diminoten]

Aren't those the cars that made the smog tho?

[throw0101a]

> ... * and the problem was as simple as not having the TPMS programmed for the car.*

This is fairly common for those people who put on winter tires with 'winter rims'. Many people don't bother with TPMS devices for cost reasons, and just live with the low pressure "warnings" for the colder months.

* https://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-trials-of-installing-...

Of course having lower pressure means worse gas mileage, so one can end up recouping some of the cost of the sensors by being properly inflated.