The TechMobility Podcast
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The TechMobility Podcast
Spirit of Purpose-Driven Real Estate, INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster review, EV Battery Recycling Breakthroughs and Cybersecurity
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Key topics in this episode include the transformation of church real estate into affordable housing, an in-depth review of the INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster pickup truck, advances in EV battery recycling, and the cybersecurity implications of software-defined vehicles.
Church Real Estate Transformed
- Many aging churches with dwindling congregations, especially in the Northeast, are repurposing their buildings into low-income housing, responding to local housing crises and remaining true to their social mission.
- IRS rules prevent churches from selling their property for personal gain; nonprofit solutions, such as converting buildings to homeless shelters, are highlighted.
- The discussion encourages listeners to reflect on social responsibility and community benefit versus maximizing monetary returns.
In-Depth: INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster Pickup
- The INEOS Grenadier Quartermaster, an off-road-focused British pickup manufactured in France, is reviewed extensively.
- Engineered as a successor to the classic Land Rover Defender, it features a BMW-sourced inline-six engine, robust off-road capabilities, and a utilitarian design.
- Praises include rugged build and purposeful styling, but critiques center on its difficult steering and challenges related to low-volume production and limited dealership availability.
Breakthrough in EV Battery Recycling
- MIT researchers have proposed a new EV battery design utilizing an organic solvent process, making future end-of-life recycling easier and more economical compared to current methods like shredding.
- With the expected exponential growth in EV battery waste, innovations could turn recycling into a multi-billion-dollar industry within a decade.
- Ken emphasizes ongoing efforts to build a circular economy for batteries and the value of reused packs for stationary energy storage.
Are Software-Defined Vehicles a Cybersecurity Risk?
- Software Defined Vehicles (SDVs) represent a shift from hardware-specific controls to a flexible, updateable, software-driven architecture.
- While open source and flexible applications promise greater innovation and upgradability, they also introduce new cybersecurity risks due to more points of connectivity and outside developers.
- Automakers must assume a new role as software administrators, validating and securing open source contributions to reduce vulnerability to cyberattacks.
- The episode notes the industry’s proactive stance, referencing past recalls due to software hacks and the importance of ongoing vigilance.
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Speaker 1:I'm Ken Chester On a docket my impressions of the Ineos Trialmaster Quartermaster pickup truck cracking the code on EV battery recycling. And will software-defined vehicles worsen vehicle cybersecurity a topic for future discussion? Call or text the TechMobility hotline, that number, 872-222-9793, or you can email the show directly. Talk at techmobilityshow. Be sure to subscribe, follow and like us on social media, our YouTube channel and our two podcasts. For those of you on Substack, you can find me at Ken C Iowa. That is K-E-N, the letter C, i-o-w-a. I am a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Come join us From the TechMobility News Desk.
Speaker 1:Here's a peculiar question Facing empty pews, churches are turning their buildings into low-income housing. What do you do with the building when you don't have the members to support it? What do you do with the facility, with the grounds, with the compound, when dwindling membership is insufficient to maintain it? In the case of these churches back east in Boston, they're opting to transform mostly empty properties into housing for lower income families. In the case of a lot of these churches, they already had a relationship in the community with folks with respect to housing and security and food and things like that, so for some of them it wasn't that much of a leap In areas where affordable housing is an issue. The churches are deciding that here's an opportunity to take this property and actually do some good in the community the ultimate good. If our congregation is too small to longer be supportive, then there may be an opportunity to take this property and leverage it into affordable housing for those who need it the most.
Speaker 1:And nowadays, with the prices of homes, new homes are out of reach for a lot of folks Used homes. It's an issue because what's happening is the baby boomers are looking to downsize. They're the ones with the equity. They're looking to sell bigger homes as they do. They're looking to downsize into something smaller, be it a condominium, be it, you know, a detached duplex. As a result, it's pushing up the prices on homes, starter homes and the like that folks first-time homeowners would be looking to buy. And recently, particularly through the pandemic with all the craziness of people bidding up homes and paying in cash and paying money over the asking price, which I still don't get for the homes they want, if you're pinching pennies and you just got it together, you're priced out of there before you even start. And I'm wondering for those folks who overpaid, how do you square that with the bank and the insurance and getting everything square when you bought the house. That's another question for another time.
Speaker 1:But a number of congregations are aging out their church buildings. Used to house hundreds of members, maybe now just a handful, and it's a difficult decision. In this one church's case, their church organization had been around for 300 years, but the membership had dwindled to a point where they had to make this really tough decision. So instead of just selling it to some developer, pocketing the money and go, they're handing the keys to the building over to a homeless nonprofit and in this case it will be transformed into a resource center for the area's growing homeless population.
Speaker 1:Longest cornerstone of American life, many churches and other places of worship have fallen on hard times in recent years as the number of people attending religious services has dropped steadily. This is a report from the Boston Globe 20 years ago, 42% of Americans attended regular services. That's according to Gallup. Today that figure is more like 30%. So it dropped from one half to barely less than one third. And while many congregations are significantly reduced, they still own large chunks of real estate acquired and built out in a bygone era, when they needed the space for services, schools and dormitories that they can no longer afford to maintain. You're talking millions, in some cases maybe billions of dollars when you look at the aggregate. Churches have been around 100, 150, 200 years now, looking at the situation of we have the property, we don't have the membership. What do we do now In this, in a number of cases at least, in the Northeast, where housing is acute, affordable housing is non-existent.
Speaker 1:In New England, in Massachusetts, where I'm from, particularly ugly, these churches are opting to transform mostly empty properties into housing for lower-income families and are petitioning state legislatures to make it easier for them to do that. And they argue that this is a natural second life for places of worship, and most religions emphasize shelter and helping the needy. So building new affordable homes in an area that has too few of them is a modern fulfillment of these moral principles that many of these churches espouse. To Remember, I said a long time ago, particularly during the pandemic where would you live if you could live anywhere? For some people they don't have that choice. They live where they can afford to live and very often it is less than favorable, less than preferable. The average home today, the average home today, the average home, even a starter home in most places is well north of $200,000. And that's a quote unquote. Starter home Used to be at a long time period in America that one income family could have a house in middle America, middle class car, maybe two or three years old and a decent standard of living. Those days been gone. But here we are. Here's an opportunity to help the less fortunate among us with property that's just being dormant anyway and being run down, to rejuvenate, regenerate and actually improve the lot of the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:My question is to you if your congregation was in a small town and had a similar situation. Church has been around for 150 years in this community, but the dwindling church membership is now below the number needed to even for basic bump keep, snow removal, lawn care, changing light bulbs, fixing the little stuff that needs maintenance. Would you be in favor of helping the less fortunate by turning it into affordable housing, or would you be in favor of maximizing the return? What's the church going to do with the money anyway? Now you could argue that with a smaller congregation you could sell it at market, turn around and secure a smaller property and still continue. But what if your aging membership is beyond that? Then what will you do.
Speaker 1:Irs regulations don't mean that there's a distribution for the membership. They can't do that legally. So if you're thinking that the folks left could split the money, it doesn't work that way. If you've got tax, if you are considered a nonprofit as a church by the IRS, you cannot do anything that accrues benefit to individuals. You'd have to donate it to another non-profit. So even if the church sold it, they could buy another building or donate it to another non-profit, even give it to another church, but the members don't get a dime Because the IRS contends that the tax write-off privilege is a privilege given to the church by the taxpayers of the United States of America and as a result, because it's a privilege, it doesn't give anybody specifically the right to benefit.
Speaker 1:But yet here we are. Would you help the homeless or would you see your church take the money and run? What would you advocate? What would you do In the case of these churches? They went to help the homeless, to resolve an issue in their communities, Because after all, isn't that truly the Christian thing? Jesus said the poor you will have with you always. What would you do? How would you handle it? Designed in the UK, manufactured in France, the Ineos Trialmaster Quartermaster Pickup Truck Review is next.
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Speaker 1:To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility Show by visiting techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow.
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Speaker 4:Learn more at pincommunityorg. Boxed ladder frame and precision engineered off-road capabilities. The Inyos Grenadier lives comfortably outside of your comfort zone, where the sunrise over the horizon pulls you from your daily grind and where the call of the wild is your guiding star. Hailing from the heart of the United Kingdom, where legends are born and traditions run deep, comes a true off-road champion the meticulously engineered In inos grenadier for the demanding terrain of the pacific northwest. The inos grenadier, born in the uk, made for the northwest, proudly offered at ron tonkin gran turismo but it's made in France though.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I usually don't run commercials that are concurrent with the vehicle that we're talking about, but since Ineos Automotive didn't exist 10 years ago, it's the best I could do. I wanted to give you a little taste and flavor of that, because their commercials are hard to come by, which is why you ended up with a dealer commercial for this installment, for this episode. So let me do. Let me give you a little context, like I always do. Ineos Automotive came into being because of something that Land Rover did back in January 2016. With the discontinuance of the production of the original Land Rover Defender after 67 years of production and let me stop right there the irony of the 1948 Land Rover was the British interpretation of the all-purpose Jeep that was developed for the Second World War. So this is the British rendition of the British rendition Sir Jim Ratcliffe he's chairman of the board of British chemical conglomerate INEOS. He made an offer to the automaker in 2016 to purchase the tooling to continue production. Imagine having that kind of money to be able to do that. Land Rover declined, so Ratliff decided to design and build a similar vehicle because he wanted a replacement to his. He had a Land Rover Defender an original one. He wanted a new one. Land Rover said we're not going to make them anymore. He said well then, sell me the tooling. They said no. He said, okay, I'll do you one better, I will create my own. And what came to life as a result was an SUV called the Grenadier, named after Ratliff's favorite London pub.
Speaker 1:The Ineos Quartermaster is a pickup truck variant of the Grenadier. They call it a station wagon. Really it's an SUV, but we're talking about the pickup, available in three models. The Quartermaster is manufactured alongside the Grenadier at the company's manufacturing plant in Hambach, france, which fun fact is where the smart car was formerly manufactured by Mercedes-Benz. Remember that little thing. Production of the Grenadier SUV began in 2022, with the Quartermaster. A crew cab pickup version of it was launched a year later.
Speaker 1:Power for the ineos grenadier quartermaster, which is its full name, is produced by a bmw source three liter inline, six-cylinder gasoline engine generating 282 horsepower and 245 foot-pounds of torque. Energy is communicated through a ZF 8-speed automatic transmission, a 2-speed transfer case with manual mode and a locking center differential, and it gets that power to all four wheels. Epa fuel economy is 14 miles per gallon. That, 14 miles a gallon, that's it. Yeah, I heard you wince. Yeah, payload capacity is just under 1,900 pounds. Maximum towing capacity is approximately 7,700 pounds when equipped with trailer brakes.
Speaker 1:The Ineos Grenadier models make a big deal about their off-road capabilities and the ability to be heavily customized from the factory. About their off-road capabilities and the ability to be heavily customized from the factory. The whole direction of the truck maker is based on the functional simplicity centering, capturing the can-do spirit of the original Land Rover model from which it gets its inspiration. So I actually drove one of these. So let me tell you what I liked about it. First of all, I got the opportunity to drive the Trailmaster Edition and let me clear this up, because I've been using some terms interchangeably. Let me correct the full name of this pickup truck is the Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster, the trim level is the Trialmaster. And no, I didn't get it wrong, it's Trialmaster, not Trailmaster. Trialmaster, which is the model's most off-road oriented trim, and I drove it this past spring up at Alcart Lake, wisconsin. And the Trialmaster name, in case you were wondering, comes from the belt-staffed Trialmaster jacket, which is designed for grueling motorcycle competitions, hence Trialmaster.
Speaker 1:It becomes obvious immediately that this truck is purpose-built, with its fighter jet inspired cockpit of displays, controls and switchgear, adding a sort of mission-critical military fighter jet atmosphere to the passenger cabin. The driver sits bolt upright with an unobstructed view outward. Built for mudding and confidence, the Quartermaster features a full-size spare tire that is mounted in the cargo bed, a nod to older functional pickup trucks of the past. This one is not going to win awards for styling. It is purpose-built, it is straightforward, it's not ugly but, like I said, it's not swoopy and is very. When you look at it, yeah, it screams. I'm built for a reason. Get over it and kind of really, if you look at the lines and angles, would get again the inspiration in the exterior styling from the original Land Rover Defender.
Speaker 1:Here's what I didn't like about the Quartermaster. Yes, you're elevated, because part of its big claim to fame is its approach break over and departure angles for getting over stuff. As a result sits up kind of high and there are no hand grips to facilitate cabin entry for front or rear seat passengers. And the power steering is quirky to the point of being dangerous with regards to handling control. I don't know how they missed this. I mean steering. Really, of all the things you might come up short on, it's the power steering. Seriously, you could buy that from TRW or you could buy it from any one of the automotive suppliers. I don't understand how this particular thing went south, but it is to the point of being dangerous and you notice it more on-road than off-road. It is not okay Because of the nameplate's small numbers.
Speaker 1:Maintenance and customer service may prove to be an issue, which is something I would be concerned about, because these are not cheap. Also, low production numbers impact overall quality, as most vehicle assembly plants reach a sustainable level of vehicle quality and line improvements after manufacturing tens of thousands of units over time. Let me explain further. Your average assembly plant what they call straight time has the capacity to build roughly 250,000 units. Through good management you can get upwards of. You can get as much as 300,000 or more. For the quality out of that plant to get good, you're going to need to be building somewhere near 170,000, 180,000 units. It's also where your break-even is, and that is called product smoothing. It allows them to get good line changes. You get proficient at what you do by doing it a lot.
Speaker 1:The low numbers have me wondering and, from what I heard, early assessments of Ineos quality suggest the automaker has a ways to go in this regard, and since there's only 21 Ineos dealers in the United States, your best bet on availability and pricing is to reach out to one of them that is closest to you for more information, and please understand when I say closest, that is a relative term. You should try to drive one, though, though, if you get the opportunity. It is an experience. Mit scientists may have cracked the code on EV battery recycling. This is the Tech Mobility Show.
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Speaker 1:Visit pincommunityorg. Did you know that TechMobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the TechMobility Show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. Check it out.
Speaker 1:With the continued growth of EV sales, there's a looming concern by industry experts figuring out the best way to repurpose the several hundred pounds of battery pack that power these vehicles. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently published a study showing a new way to potentially bypass the shredding step of battery recycling altogether. This could be a game changer. Welcome to Topic B. I get a lot of questions about what about the battery packs when they've come to end of life? What about recycling? What about these ending up in dumps and they're unsafe and they catch fire and they got all sorts of heavy metals and stuff that is bad for the environment? Isn't this the downside, they ask, of electric vehicles? Yes and no, there has been a move of foot over the last four to five years in terms of developing a recycling chain, of recycling, getting it to recyclers, recapturing value, recouping metals in the different materials. But the problem is twofold. Number one it is very expensive right now because what the given the acceptable industry way of capturing this stuff is to take these batteries and basically grind them up and then try to pick out the metals and everything from it. It is labor intensive, it is capital intensive, it is expensive, invariable cost, and it's risky because you have a problem of all that material sitting there which could be, if exposed to water, leach into the groundwater or leach into the system. So it's not the best idea.
Speaker 1:Mit scientists said, hey, we may have figured out a new way to build an EV battery so that you can take it apart real easy at the end of a lifespan by just using an organic solvent to break it apart and recycle it. Real easy and a lot less costly. Here's why, according to a 2023 study by McKinsey, the global supply of EV batteries for recycling is steadily increasing and is expected to hit a whopping 7,850 kilotons. And that's barely 10 years from now, 2035. That same year, mckinsey projects that EV battery recycling would be a $7.2 billion industry in the United States of America.
Speaker 1:As I mentioned earlier, experts are still trying to find the best way to actually scale the recycling process. The prevailing strategy is a technique that essentially involves shredding the EV batteries into a superfine powder, a process that has proved costly, complicated and efficient. The new way that the MIT folk had developed is addressing the current state of EV recycling, which right now, you either reuse or recycle, and there's a lot of effort, because here's something and I've said it before you may not have heard me say this, but let me explain it. Your average EV battery pack ceases to be of value in an EV when it can only hold 80% or less of charge. That seems like a lot, and while it's no longer fit for a car, there are a lot of second and third acts it is fit for, and a growing number of businesses are using that as stationary energy storage units to power different things, because it can still be charged and discharged. It's just not fit anymore at transportation level. In fact, there's one example where a company is repurposing old batteries to run new EV charging stations. Think about that for a minute. What they're doing is they're using the EV batteries to store energy, which gives them flexibility as to when to recharge them, so they could theoretically charge them during low demand times and cheap power and have it available as needed during peak times. So there's an opportunity to make money there. Others are searching ways to break these batteries down, and that's recycling. And we talked about this fine powder. It's called black mass, but unfortunately this black mass, as it is today, has to be sorted into salvageable metal parts, and it usually requires specialized facilities in advanced recycling markets like China to actually make the metals usable. In other words, you need the knowledge and you need the outlet, once you've taken this and reduced it down, in order to remake whatever you're going to remake.
Speaker 1:Now to a point. The United States has not been sitting on its hands relative to this level of recycling. Redwood Recycling is working with Ford. There are other companies that are in the recycling business ramping up to do just that stateside, but, as the piece talks about, it's messy, complicated and expensive, and it's the expensive part Again. Again about the money.
Speaker 1:What is clear is that there's plenty of motivation to turn EV manufacturing into a more circular economy. Can you imagine when? You make it? You use it. If you don't reuse it. You can recycle it easily. The end of life is easier and to that point, just as an aside, you realize a lot of vehicles that are made in Europe are designed for end of life to be easily recycled.
Speaker 1:Now we're trying to get this way with batteries. From an economic perspective, ev batteries contain valuable metals like nickel, cobalt, manganese and lithium, which can be harvested and reused to prevent more expensive and polluting or mining operations which we're also doing which takes years and years through the permits and development to get a lithium mine online. They're trying to do that in Nevada right now. So all these other things are going on, so it's not happening in a vacuum, but they're looking at trying to get an easy way to make this end-of-life thing less expensive because of the crush of batteries that are coming. What they did is, rather than try to focus on the batteries as they're made now, is they designed a battery that was easily recycled and then tried to build it to standard. Just so you know and you might not know this, ev batteries are made of three main parts the positively charged cathode, the negatively charged electrode and the electrolyte that shuttles the lithium ions between them, that slurry of lithium.
Speaker 1:Typically, ev batteries are sealed so tightly that, in order to take them apart, shredding them becomes the best way to recycle them. The novel innovation from MIT is a new electrolyte material which, when soaked in organic solvent, just dissolves like cotton candy, easily separating the battery's parts. Think about that for a minute. You don't have to apply all the machining, all the dust capture, all the safety issues. You can take it apart, makes it easily recyclable, makes it cheaper to recycle, more literal to recycle, less cost in the system, lower cost for batteries, because somebody's got to take that cost somewhere.
Speaker 1:Now to their point. There's still a ways, because the battery they designed while, although it met the initial parameters for performance, they're not quite there yet. And the material that they need, the material that they developed it, won't be commercially available just quite yet. So they've got to scale that up. But the way batteries have been evolving these last 5 to 10 years, I think that this could be something that could be viable by the end of the decade. And if it is, you're looking at the middle of the next decade for these to make their way into batteries. So it could be another 10, 15 years before we see the full benefit of these new batteries as they work their way through the supply chain. But can you imagine? It would only get better and less pressure on our resources With the rise of software-defined vehicles. Will cybersecurity issues be more of a problem in the future? We are the Tech Mobility Show.
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Speaker 1:To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings at the Tech Mobility show by visiting techmobilityshow. That's techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow.
Speaker 2:In business opportunity doesn't wait, and neither should you. At Playbook Investors Network, we connect visionary entrepreneurs with the strategies, resources and capital they need to win. Whether you're launching, scaling or reimagining your business, our network turns ambition into measurable success. Your vision deserves more than a plan. It deserves a playbook that works. Playbook Investors Network, where bold ideas meet bold results. Visit pincommunityorg today.
Speaker 1:Did you know that TechMobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the TechMobility Show. Each week I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out. Check it out.
Speaker 1:The development of software-defined vehicles, otherwise known as SDVs, rely on an inconvenient truth that applies to all electronics More points of connectivity mean more attack vectors. It's not if, but when a vulnerability will be exploited. What are automakers doing to keep motorists safe? This is Topic C. Now you know me. I hate the fact that folks want to throw around industry jargon, so I didn't come with STVs. Let me explain first of all what is meant by a software-defined vehicle, and then we can talk a little bit from there. So what are they talking about? Because you would argue, but shoot. Vehicles for the last 11 years have had software. How are these different? Let me explain. Software-defined vehicles are among several parallel tracks of innovation in the automotive industry, while some experts say SDVs are more of a trend or a spectrum. They will have certain qualities. Here are the traits.
Speaker 1:Number one flexible hardware enables new functionality. Parts of the vehicle architecture are not limited to a single purpose. Let me stop right there right now. In your vehicle right now You've got an engine control computer, you have a transmission computer, you have a computer that runs your infotainment system, you have another computer that runs other stuff in your vehicle and, depending on how your vehicle is equipped, you may still have a third computer or a fourth or fifth computer. With a software defined vehicle, it's not controlled by the hardware, which is task specific. It's the software that controls it. So the hardware is software agnostic. Let me read this again Flexible hardware enables new functionality, meaning as they roll out new products, they can reprogram your vehicle. Can you imagine? The whole goal is that a vehicle that's 10 years old, if kept up, would have as much new stuff relative to functionality as a new one right off the line, even though it's 10 years old.
Speaker 1:Part of the vehicle architecture and they're talking about the framework the hardware is not limited to a single purpose. Software comes from an ecosystem of developers and problem solvers rather than a single automaker or tech company vendor, meaning open source. That's a blessing and a curse, and we're going to come back to the words open source. It means it's open and unlocked for hordes of programmers to work on it that are not specifically tied to any given company. And while that is good on one hand, it's bad on another. We'll come back to that in a minute.
Speaker 1:Automakers differentiate their vehicle offerings by using applications that surprise and delight consumers. These SDVs, or software-defined vehicles, these flexible architecture, allows the companies to add capabilities to the vehicle in what we call over-the-air updates. And now fairness, there's an increasing number of vehicles right now that are updated with over-the-air updates. They tend to be EVs because of the nature of their architecture, but we've got a growing number of vehicles that you can update over-the-air right now. This will only increase. Outside developers and I'm worried about the word outside, by the way will be able to build functions that can be installed or employed will be able to build functions that can be installed or employed.
Speaker 1:49% of consumers in the US, germany, japan and the UK say they worry that their car can be hacked. My hand is up, by the way. According to a survey published in April by Cubic 3, which provides engineering services to the automotive industry. Case in point last year, an independent security researcher hacked into a Subaru interface used by employees, accessed more than a year's worth of location data and unlocked a vehicle remotely 2024. I don't know if that was a new Subaru. They didn't say. I'm going to assume that it was or fairly new. Did I mention last year? Up till now, software is something that automakers have held close to the vest as being proprietary. In this brave new world, it's not so proprietary anymore. Brave new world, it's not so proprietary anymore, because what they're looking at is if you've got this many eyes looking at it, it will find any vulnerabilities or any problems.
Speaker 1:My concern is in this brave new model, it falls on the automakers to validate and verify this open software. That it's okay. They need to be the gatekeeper of bringing it in. In other words, just don't accept it. Bring it in. Do the validation, do the testing, make sure that there are no hidden vulnerabilities. Because my nightmare, remember I said open source. It means open source. What's to stop somebody from burying something in this? Maybe through what looked like an innocent update or mundane maintenance feature? But they buried it deep inside. If the automakers are not checking this. If they're not doing the administration necessary to verify and validate the open source, then we're no further along, because then bad actors can put it in there, bury it like fishing Worm on a hook they see the worm, they don't see the hook and get messed up.
Speaker 1:Now let me be clear. Any connected vehicle can be vulnerable to attack and here's a bombshell it doesn't have to be software-defined. How do I know Listeners of this program? If you go back almost 10 years, we talked about some Stellantis. Well, at that time via Chrysler vehicles that had gotten hacked in 2015. The first recall ever due to finding a problem or deficiency in an infotainment system where it could be hacked and it was, and I believe it was a Jeep vehicle 2015. 10 years ago, it falls on the automakers to transition from the developers of this software to be the administrators of this software and run it through its paces and make sure that it is okay. Run it through its paces and make sure that it is okay.
Speaker 1:Then comes the next question. In the case of software-defined vehicles, if something goes wrong, is it a product defect? Is it particularly if you're talking about autonomous or semi-autonomous software, which is where we're going or maybe a default or defect in the electrical part of it? Is that? Who bears the responsibility for that? Is that, particularly in open source software? Is that still the manufacturer who didn't single-handedly develop it? It's not the suppliers, because the suppliers are not in the loop directly anymore. It's open source.
Speaker 1:Here's a question to think about. Here's a question to think about. The consensus is, however, that by being open source means that not only do you have more eyes looking at it, but you have the opportunity to fix problems faster, to find problems sooner and to keep this risk low, low, low. As opposed to a manufacturer who may not have the same resources, as opposed to a manufacturer who may not have the same resources. For the record, every automotive manufacturer has a cybersecurity unit to where? This is their claim to fame. This is what they're responsible for doing. This is what they need to be on top of.
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Speaker 1:To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings of the Tech Mobility Show by visiting techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow.
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