Category: News

Honda and Acura add garage door control to Apple CarPlay, Android Auto

Honda

Honda

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You’ll soon be able to use Apple CarPlay or Android Auto in your Honda or Acura to open and close your garage door. It’s a new feature made possible through a partnership with the Chamberlain Group’s myQ Connected Garage service.

Honda says that all of its 2023 and 2024 model year vehicles will be compatible with this new tech, but it also says that “millions of older Honda and Acura models supporting Apple CarPlay and Android Auto also have compatibility.” That’s especially great to hear that the convenience is not just going to be limited to brand-new models.

As for how it works, the system is fairly straightforward. You can set a geofence that will automatically prompt you with a system notification when you get within a certain distance of your garage. Follow the onscreen instructions to open, and your garage door will do as you command. The same can be done to close your garage door.

For this tech to work, Honda says that you’ll need a compatible garage door opener, but there’s a good chance you already do because myQ is compatible with most openers on the market today from LiftMaster and other Chamberlain brands. If your opener is already myQ enabled, then you won’t need to do anything. However, if you have an older style, Honda says you can use a “myQ Smart Garage Control device” to upgrade it into one. Honda is offering everybody one for free if you sign up for its 30-day demo subscription of the service, so don’t worry about having to buy one.

However, if you do wish to continue beyond that 30-day free trial, a three-year subscription costs $129, while a five-year subscription will run you $179.

The real benefit to this system is that you’ll be able to open and close your garage door from anywhere, not just within the range of where your opener or car-linked button will work. Of course, myQ has a phone app that will do the same, but this allows you to do the task directly through the car’s interface without needing to yank out a phone.

Honda says this tech is functional as of today, so go ahead and try it out if you have all the necessary garage door tech in place.

Watch a behind-the-scenes video showing how the new badass Batmobile was built

The Batmobile is as much a character in the movies as the Dark Knight himself. Outlandish designs with rocket thrusters and insane computer systems have defined the vehicle for years, but the latest movie car took another direction. In The Batman, prop designers looked at what could happen if Bruce Wayne had built the car himself with complete disregard for his massive fortune. A recent video detailed the design process, and it’s impressive, to say the least.

Beyond the early Adam West portrayal, Batman has long been a conflicted character, oscillating between rage and grief over his parents’ deaths. Robert Pattinson played the hero in the latest film, diving into his darkness and introspection. The car that came out of that mindset is unlike any Batmobile so far, and the team that created it spent countless hours constructing an intricate and detailed machine.

The car looks like a mashup between a classic Camaro and Mustang, mixed with some elements of a modified dirt track racer. Compared to the swoopy Batmobile of the 1990s and the outrageously militaristic vehicle from Christian Bale’s Batman, the new car looks uniquely homebrewed – the desired effect. The team wanted to design a car that Batman had built in a garage by himself, and the exposed tube frame and somewhat ragged look do the trick.

A big block LS provides power for the rig, while a separate dummy engine in the back provides a dramatic effect. The crew designed and hand-built the prop engine, using thousands of parts to create a realistic second powerplant for the car. They added flame elements and dynamic louvers that move to provide drama with the under-hood lighting.

Since the film includes glimpses of the interior, there had to be at least a partial cabin setup. The team achieved an old-school muscle car look with leather-wrapped components, including the seats, steering wheel and dash. The dash features class-looking gauges and controls, and the interior is surprisingly complete for an open-back prop car. Once all of that was done, the team had to figure out how to mount and control multiple cameras.

Beyond the gas-powered primary car, the team built other electric cars, and all of them saw extensive testing for safety and performance. Through that process, they discovered new design potential and capability that allowed them to push filming further, including jumping the car.

Related video:

Apple seeks patent for an augmented reality windshield

While Apple continues (or doesn’t continue) to develop its plans for a self-driving automobile, the company is proposing an advanced high-end technology for an augmented reality (AR) display system that would generate a bunch of information onto a vehicle’s windshield.

In a U.S. Patent Office filing last week, Apple described a graphical overlay on the glass in front of the driver that would provide information about the real-time environment as well as data about objects in the distance — humans included — along with the vehicle’s speed, suspension and other factors.

The system, which may borrow on Apple’s science being employed in its soon-to-be-released Vision Pro headsets, would rely on a variety of sensors to collect information about the surrounding environment. This could include visible light cameras, various types of infrared cameras, as well as ultrasonic and light-based scanning devices for building up a three-dimensional picture of the car's surroundings. The patent also mentions the use of geographical positioning devices and radar devices.

Rather than just overlaying the physical elements of the environment, the AR project would essentially integrate elements into the full-scale projection on a large glass area — a complex operation — in a multi-dimensional model of the outside world.

Another feature buried in the 24-page patent filing under patent point #092 indicated that Apple is working toward a FaceTime application that would sync conversations between occupants in the same vehicle and/or those in another vehicle. Apple notes that "In some embodiments, an augmented reality display system included in a vehicle enables visual communication between an occupant of the vehicle and a remotely located user, including an occupant of a separate vehicle.”

Some of the proposals in the current patent application are not radically new. In 2018, Apple filed for similar system implementations that would flash extensive information onto a “smart” windshield.

Just a year ago at its annual developers event, Apple showed an updated version of CarPlay — it revealed CarPlay transforming an instrument cluster using virtual gauges, adding widgets such as calendar alerts and weather info. Display possibilities in the new CarPlay also provided access to native car info like engine RPM, coolant temperature, HVAC and radio controls.

Researchers’ new car antitheft device could be super effective

Keyless car hacking and high-tech ways to steal modern cars continue to proliferate, but the University of Michigan just proposed a somewhat low-tech method of halting these kinds of thefts.

Researchers are calling it the “Battery Sleuth” for the time being, and while it’s at least three years out from being a product one could buy, it’s an intriguing proposition nonetheless. The device is connected between the vehicle’s battery and the electrical system, and it works by monitoring voltage fluctuations. The driver can interact with the device via a numerical keypad or fingerprint sensor, and if they enter in the correct code, the Battery Sleuth will send out a “voltage fingerprint” over the electrical system that enables the vehicle to start. Until the correct code or fingerprint is detected, the Battery Sleuth limits the amount of power that can be drawn from the battery. There will be enough power to operate things like the lights, windshield wipers and turn signals, but not enough to power the vehicle’s starter, which should thwart a thief from simply getting in and driving off.

Being able to use those auxiliary systems is important, too, because researchers say that operating those systems in a certain order could also be used as an authenticator to deliver the correct voltage fluctuation fingerprint. A combination of flicking the wipers, activating a turn signal or two, flashing the lights on and off and locking/unlocking the doors could theoretically be your voltage fluctuation “code” to make the car turn on.

Of course, thieves could always try to guess a passcode or sequence of actions, but the consequences are similar to trying to guess someone’s smartphone passcode. Enter in the wrong sequence, or press the wrong fingerprint into the sensor enough times, and the car’s alarm will sound. It’s also designed to completely shut down the car’s electrical system if it detects an unauthorized power source is connected to the vehicle.

The University of Michigan says a field test determined the Battery Sleuth to be 99.9% effective “at detecting and preventing illegitimate activity without interfering with normal vehicle operation.” That study only involved eight vehicles, but more testing is in the works. Researchers claim there’s nothing to hack due to this solution’s simplicity, but making the impossible-to-hack claim is always a dangerous game.

Three more years of research and testing is on the docket next, and once that’s complete, the team believes it will have a prototype that can be used for commercial production. The greatest potential is that this system could be used as a complete vehicle entry and control system that does away with key fobs and keys, but we’ll just have to wait and see if the Battery Sleuth has a future in new production cars.

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Michelin testing airless tires in real-world conditions on French mail vans

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Michelin will continue testing its Uptis range of airless tires by fitting them to 40 vans owned by French postal service La Poste. The brand has already started testing the prototype tire — which can't deflate or go flat — in real-world conditions in Asia and in North America.

The pilot project will begin in June 2023, when La Poste installs a set of Uptis airless tires on three of its delivery vehicles. It sounds like the yellow vans will then deliver letters and parcels like any other van fitted with regular tires. The data gathered during the first phase of the project will then be analyzed and used to make improvements if necessary, and up to 40 delivery vans will be fitted with Uptis tires by 2024.

Michelin's images show the Uptis tires fitted to a Citroën Jumpy, which is a medium-sized van that competes in the same segment as the now-gone Mercedes-Benz Metris and the Renault Trafic, among others. This is one of the bigger vans in La Poste's fleet, the service also owns thousands of smaller Renault Kangoo-type vans, and Michelin hopes the tire will help La Poste reduce service-related downtime.

Once the pilot program is in full swing, La Poste will send its Uptis-riding vans on routes around Lesquin, Valenciennes and Douai in the north of France, near the border with Belgium. Regardless of which route they end up on, they're sure to turn heads: the Uptis tire is airless, so it relies on a series of flexible fins to support the weight of the vehicle. It's see-through, and it's certainly not a subtle modification.

We expect that more details about Michelin's pilot project will emerge in the coming months. As of writing, it's too early to tell if or when the Uptis tire will reach production, though the French company notes that it's developing the technology primarily for "light commercial fleets intended for professional use," meaning you may need to be patient before you can buy a set for your BMW 3 Series daily driver.

Related video:

Upcoming iPhone iOS 17 software can identify dashboard warning lights and symbols

"Siri, what’s the 'check engine' light mean?”

OK, most car folks already know what that light means. But many drivers don't.

Siri may not drive or even have a license, but later this year, with the help of an Apple iPhone’s software update, he/she (hey, the "Hey!" goes away soon) will be able to explain to Apple users what the alert light means (but won’t explain the underlying problem).

In other words, a program called Image Search will relay a picture of the dash light to an appropriate site on the web for identification. It’s worth repeating that it won’t actually diagnose or fix the supposed problem. For that, you’re on your own.

The search function is now being refined by Apple’s software developers, and is expected to become available to iPhone users when the upcoming version of the operating system iOS 17 is released later this year, most likely in September when the next-gen iPhone is revealed.

Assuming the driver has a phone with a camera and an internet connection for data retrieval, the software can identify various buttons on the interior screens on the dash as well as all the lights or symbols that may illuminate. The search results will show up as a list on the phone. Isn't technology great? (Because it's not like there's been a book inside the car that will explain all those lights and symbols for all these years). 

Last week, Apple talked about a new app for music listening in the car called SharePlay, which allows anyone with an iPhone in the car to “join” a playing session and add songs to the queue; essentially, it won't be necessary to pass one phone around the car to order up the latest Foo Fighters.

Apple CarPlay gains SharePlay tech at WWDC for seamless road trip music

Apple’s 2023 WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) just wrapped up, and while most of the world is focused on the new $3,499 Vision Pro headset it just revealed, we’re focusing on the small bite of car news Apple fed us.

Per usual, the news concerns CarPlay, but unfortunately it wasn’t an update on the full-screen CarPlay takeover that was revealed last year. Instead, Apple revealed that it’s adding SharePlay functionality to CarPlay. 

What’s that mean? The goal is to make road trip music playlists and song selection way easier than before. Assuming you have CarPlay running with Apple Music as the media player, other people with iPhones in the car will be able to “join” your session and add songs to the queue — your iPhone should automatically push a notification to you if this option is available. This means you won’t need to pass a phone around the car to get everybody’s music selections and should hopefully mean a more seamless experience for all in the car.

Apple was a little stingy on the finer details, but we can see that the interface allows folks to play/pause, skip/rewind and reorder the queue of songs. Details about what music apps this will be available for in the future weren’t made readily available, but Apple demonstrated it with Apple Music, so we suspect that will be the only compatible app at launch. We’re also waiting on a release date for when the feature will go live, but keep an eye out for it if you’re an Apple Music user.

Related video:

Transformers: Rise of the Beasts trailer is Endgame with (only) robots

The seventh movie pitting Autobots against various human and mechanical enemies will be here next summer, and it's gone feral. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts follows 2018's Bumblebee, not as a sequel but as a new front in the cinematic battle for galactic domination. Partly taken from the cartoon's Beast Wars storyline, the secondary good guys are Maximals, transformers that turn into animals. The bad guys come from a different cartoon storyline — not that continuity matters here, because the Transformers' universe is just as convoluted as Marvel — and they're called Terrorcons. Instead of turning into dinosaur-like creatures from the cartoon, Terrorcons turn into cars and a semi.

The action takes place in 1994, sometime after August 8 of that year based on the soundtrack. Based on the Wikipedia page, the flick will pit ten good guys against four Terrorcons (but that's certainly preliminary info). Based on the trailer, these two minutes make the movie look like a 90-minute version of the final fight from Avengers: Endgame. This one's for the robots, clearly, with Optimus Prime (as either Captain America or Iron Man) called on to face enemies from his past and future, whatever that means. The humans in the trailer are props; two of the four main biological characters each get one line, both being punchlines in reaction to what Autobots are doing.   

Future trailers will tell us more. For now, if you like giant machines making giant explosions and giant destruction, enjoy. 

Related video:

Anti-speeding tech and ‘black box’ now mandatory in new EU cars

After ruling that motorists can no longer buy a new gasoline- or diesel-powered car after 2035, European Union regulators have passed a law that makes anti-speeding technology and a so-called black box mandatory for all new cars. The controversial features are a requirement in every car introduced after July 6, 2022, and they will become required in all new cars regardless of launch date starting in July 2024.

The anti-speeding technology is called Intelligent Speed Assistance (ISA) in government-speak. European regulators explain that the system calculates the posted speed limit by analyzing either data from the navigation system or data sent by the traffic sign recognition technology. If it detects that the driver is speeding it can perform one of four actions: send out a visual or acoustic warning (like a warning message in the instrument cluster or a chime), emit a series of vibrations (likely through the steering wheel), provide haptic feedback through the accelerator pedal, or automatically slow the car down to the posted limit. Carmakers are free to choose how the system they adopt reacts.

Regulators stress that, for the time being, the driver can override the ISA (even the type that slows down the car) by simply pushing down the accelerator pedal. There's no word on what the system considers speeding, however. Are we talking 55 mph in a 50-mph zone or 95 mph on the highway? Similarly, officials haven't explained how they will ensure that the speed limit information fed to the ISA is accurate.

On a personal note, I drive through a tunnel when I go to the airport. The speed limit is 130 kph (about 80 mph, which is par for the course on French highways), but the tunnel goes under a road that's limited to 70 kph (around 45 mph). Every time I'm in it, a "woah there, slow down" message appears in the instrument cluster. This isn't an isolated case, and it's an issue that will need to be resolved sooner rather than later.

As for the black box also made mandatory by European officials, it's a device that records and saves data points like the car's speed, the engine's revolutions, the brake and accelerator pedal inputs, the force of the impact, and whether the occupants are wearing a seatbelt 30 seconds before and 10 seconds after an accident. Regulators stress that this information will exclusively be available to law enforcement officials in the event of a crash and to the various government agencies in charge of compiling traffic accident-related data.

Related video:

Apple wants to take over every last screen with CarPlay

Apple

Apple

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A next-gen version of Apple CarPlay is making waves in the automotive space at Apple’s WWDC 2022 event today. It’s far more than just a minor update to the regular, old screen projection on the infotainment display. No, today Apple proposed a system that would take over every screen in the car, instrument cluster included.

As shown, Apple software would power literally every last part of the car's user interface. By contrast, today's Apple CarPlay can take over your infotainment system’s display, but that’s where the experience ends. The gauge cluster (if it’s fully digital) and any other ancillary screens are all powered by OEM-designed software. In Apple’s example of the next-gen system, the instrument cluster essentially becomes an Apple CarPlay-powered instrument cluster, using Apple-designed gauges, widgets and more. The look you end up seeing on the cluster is highly customizable with various Apple-designed gauges, layouts and more. But, it would be a unified and consistent experience across every vehicle capable of running this version of Apple CarPlay. In theory, the gauge set of a Porsche could be made to look exactly like that of a Nissan, should both companies decide to support this level of integration.

How does this work? Apple says that “your iPhone communicates with your vehicle’s realtime systems in an on-device, privacy friendly way.” Yes, that is extremely vague, but there’s no additional information as of now. At the very least, it seems like the iPhone will continue to require the same wired or wireless connection to the car to make the system run. But again, that’s not made crystal clear here.

Skip to 40:28 in the video above to see the section on Apple CarPlay.

The integration goes deeper into the infotainment system, too. Instead of having to exit out of CarPlay to tune the radio or adjust the climate control (in cars without physical climate controls), you’d be able to do both within the Apple CarPlay software. This really would be a true Apple takeover of your everyday vital car functions. You’d be able to customize the display with widgets such as the calendar app, music app and more, allowing you to move them between the central infotainment display and gauge cluster as you wish. 

So, when is it coming? And what cars will be able to run this software? Apple doesn’t have clear answers to either of these, but it did flash some brands up onto the screen and say that they’re “excited to bring this new vision of CarPlay to customers.” Those include Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Nissan, Ford, Lincoln, Audi, Jaguar, Acura, Volvo, Honda, Infiniti, Polestar and Renault. 

As of now, Apple says it’s going to start to announce specific vehicles that will support it “late next year.” Basically, don’t expect this to hit cars anytime soon, as the first vehicles announced will be toward the end of 2023.

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