KeriBlog

Cars, Security & a Peek into my Life

WiFi Hotspots are Coming to Cars

This year, our cars will be constantly connected to the internet.  It’s going to be HUGE.

By 2021, the auto industry will have have the highest revenue that’s connectivity-related.

It arrived last year via Audi, and Chevy is a front-runner, with 10 of their models to be offered with 4G and LTE connections by this 2014 summer.

Read it online at Autonet.ca

Favourite line:

It will be interesting to see how the data will be priced, because using the rule of thumb that at YouTube video is 1MB per minute, we’d all be driving down the road just hemorrhaging money. 

Remember my column about War Driving? I wonder how this will affect things like that. I also wonder about the security aspect of an always-connected car.  Remember, you are responsible for hotspot users. 

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This is a Working EMP Device

Photo: eV2

EMP – ElectroMagnetic Pulse

EMPs (electromagnetic pulses) are often featured in movies – characters in The Matrix: Revolutions used them to defend against the sentinels, and do you remember Ocean’s Eleven? In that movie, a character is seen pulling into a parking lot in a white panel van that’s holding a giant machine, which he powers up and uses to knock out the power to the casino a block away. That’s an EMP attack.

Very basically, the targeted car is blasted with high-power radio frequencies and microwave waves, confusing the electronics system until the engine just gives up and shuts down. – Autonet.ca

That’s newspaper writing, in blog writing:

Radio Frequencies (RF) are pulsed at the car, which just melts the electronics like, you don’t bounce right back from an EMP attack.

Neat eh, movie-kinda stuff indeed.

Until UK company eV2 built the one above, and demonstrated its device to the BBC on an unused airport runway.

It was touted in the press as:
the device that would end car chases

Wrote about it at work, here.

Funeral Procession Etiquette

It’s not a hearse, it’s a “funeral coach.”

Read it online at Autonet.ca.

Favourite line:

Try this trick; imagine how the person in the casket would give anything to trade places with you, and be the one stuck in traffic. 

Two favourites this week.

It’s in your best interest to give the procession a wide berth, because this is a line of distracted drivers.

Really though, be kind to a passing funeral.  

I received a bunch of emails this week – when you honk and get angry at a procession, it can haunt someone for 20 years.

Thanks for taking the time Bruce, of Humphrey Funeral Home.

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Diesels are the New Hybrids

Today’s diesels are far different than when they first arrived in the 1970s, yet somehow the stigma has unfairly stuck.

If you’re looking for great fuel economy on a tough-as-nails engine, consider a diesel. Better re-sale value too.

Read it online at Autonet.

Favourite line:

Don’t take my word for it – ask a diesel owner, because they will sing its praises, and word-of-mouth is how you really know. 

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Driving in a Roundabout

If you feel nervous: don’t be shy to put on your hazard lights and let the other drivers know you’re new to this.

Just remember…

The 1 Rule of a Roundabout:
never brake inside one

Read it online at Autonet.ca

Favourite line:

Remember there are hundreds of thousands of roundabouts being used in Europe right now, some 4 lanes wide, and there’s no way they’re all better drivers than you – you got this.

Turns out roundabouts are a touchy topic, 73 comments, not bad.

Below is a video of me driving inside a roundabout.

I’m driving a GMC 2500 HD Denali in the States. There’s a video over at Motoring TV.

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