I have for some time felt that robot cars absolutely need a physical disconnect lever. Nice and big, break glass, and you're driving off the wire.
But, this hack reminds me that there's no such thing in a modern car; the whole thing is networked.
So, yeah, physical updates of firmware. Although, in the article, it's a subsystem's firmware, which physically protecting that is just not in the minds of engineers right now: think of all the ports you'd need.
Even if the physical kill switch left me with just (unpowered) steering and brakes, I would have a vastly different perspective on the safety inherent.
In lots of cars the key doesn't do anything when the vehicle is moving. In some cars you can't even turn it mechanically if you don't have gear in P or R, in other cars you can't even turn it at all because its just a button. There are very good reasons for this, the recent GM issue where the key fell out by vibrations which killed the power steering comes to mind, some people actually died because of this.
But, this hack reminds me that there's no such thing in a modern car; the whole thing is networked.
So, yeah, physical updates of firmware. Although, in the article, it's a subsystem's firmware, which physically protecting that is just not in the minds of engineers right now: think of all the ports you'd need.
Even if the physical kill switch left me with just (unpowered) steering and brakes, I would have a vastly different perspective on the safety inherent.