Opinion piece in the NYT by Bill Hanvey, President and CEO of the Auto Care Association:
Your Car Knows When You Gain Weight
Personally, I think he's exaggerating a bit. How exactly is the car supposed to know when the driver has gained weight? It may be able to measure the front-seat passenger's weight using the Passenger Occupancy Detection sensor, but last I looked, driver's seats didn't have such sensors because the car assumes that a driver is always present. OK, it could base this the total mass of the car, which it could calculate from acceleration vs. power applied, but then how would it differentiate between a weight gain/loss and some change in the amount of crap stored in the trunk?
Then there's this: "Modern cars collect as much as 25 gigabytes of data per hour". I'm sure they generate that much data and more, but I see no evidence that they collect (i.e. store) it, nor is anyone likely to be willing to pay to transmit that much data via the cellular networks.
That said, the point he's trying to raise is valid. Who owns that data? Who should and shouldn't have access to it?
-Uwe-
Your Car Knows When You Gain Weight
Personally, I think he's exaggerating a bit. How exactly is the car supposed to know when the driver has gained weight? It may be able to measure the front-seat passenger's weight using the Passenger Occupancy Detection sensor, but last I looked, driver's seats didn't have such sensors because the car assumes that a driver is always present. OK, it could base this the total mass of the car, which it could calculate from acceleration vs. power applied, but then how would it differentiate between a weight gain/loss and some change in the amount of crap stored in the trunk?
Then there's this: "Modern cars collect as much as 25 gigabytes of data per hour". I'm sure they generate that much data and more, but I see no evidence that they collect (i.e. store) it, nor is anyone likely to be willing to pay to transmit that much data via the cellular networks.
That said, the point he's trying to raise is valid. Who owns that data? Who should and shouldn't have access to it?
-Uwe-