I was relating the phone-key’s existence to what a different car’s proximity key is like, in that they both work by staying in your pocket. Phone stays locked in your pocket, you just walk up to the car and grab the door handle, and it does some behind the scenes bluetooth magic to unlock the door in a split second.…

Very cool site, I’ve bookmarked it. Currently I’m seeing Juno to Madrid, Voyager 1 to Goldstone, and SOHO to Canberra.

You don’t need to get out your phone to unlock the car. It’s what you already do with your proximity key, where you just go up to the car and grab the handle and go inside. Minus the having to carry around a whole separate electronic device in your pocket part, which you seem to enjoy for some reason.

Agree probably not enough to matter on that particular distinction, but useful in another way. I think the point of that remark was that they’re targeting a roughly planet-sized target versus with a traditional comms satellite you’re targeting a tiny car-sized target.

They do sell a keyfob, and you could get a keyring for the keycard. But you just don’t really need to use it. As long as you have a modern phone in working order, especially with working Bluetooth, then it should work every time. For the few times it doesn’t work I just open the app and then it re-syncs or something…

Teslas come with what looks like a credit card shaped hotel key that you tap against the A-pillar to unlock and against the center console for ignition. I’ve found the phone key to be reliable enough that I don’t even carry the keycard with me and only use it when I’m dropping the car off for annual State Inspection.…

I have not seen a forecast by anyone … government or private, anywhere that has told us that that number is achievable. At this point, it looks impossible

Good call! certainly a possibility

I think you, author, are confusing throughput with ping. The ping is what’s fixed (due to lightspeed), not the amount of bits per second. Think of it like a highway adding more lanes but keeping the same speed limit. If you send a car of 4 people at 60 mph down a 60 mile road, after an hour you have 4 people who have…

If they don’t know who the suspect is though, and ditch the probably stolen vehicle especially if they have multiple days to do so, then they indeed will escape punishment. So it’s sort of a fine line. Sure, if you have an absolute positive ID on somebody and know they’re driving their own car, but typically people tha…

It looks like a poof of steam right at the moment of impact, almost like it busted off a radiator hose or something

Can you even read? I specifically said that I am not an Elon fan. I agree that he is a fascist and very much a tool, especially how he’s been this past year.

To add on to the last message: part of my point was that the stuff Google is patenting is already commonplace on cars. The very fact that cars already have this is what makes each car and the patent itself not really special anymore. That stuff has already been out in the wild for years.

I think I got my first cell phone while I was in driver’s ed, but I didn’t have a phone that could do maps until many years later. I did have one of those Garmin standalone GPS units for quite a while! Even before I had one of those Garmin standalone map units, I had a Garmin e-Trex handheld unit, which didn’t have…

To clear up any confusion, I’ve voted blue for the last several elections and I’m not at all a fan of current-era Elon. Unlike you it seems, I’m able to separate personal experience, facts, and automobile companies apart from media blitz. If you think you know it all, despite probably never having hands-on experience, …

Do you have Hardware 3 and FSD? I daily drive a 2018 Model 3 updated to HW3, with FSD package. I think the software is actually a bit more reliable on mine than when my wife’s 2023 Model Y’s has FSD trials activated for some reason.

Somebody making use of their truck, it’s miraculous! My next door neighbor has a crew cab truck and I’m fairly certain I’ve never seen anything in the back of it

Interesting point. It’s not explicitly listed in the chart whether your eyes have to be on the road but maybe it’s hidden in the ambiguity of “You are driving” verses “You are not driving”, where the definition of “are driving” is whether you have to be paying attention or not.

I love the large screens, because when filled up with a map, you can have it zoomed out for more context but large enough that you’re not squinting to see where your car is. Comparing my 15" laptop sized screen against the 6" (and low-res) cell phone sized in our former Mazda, it’s an enormous improvement.