Very cool project though!
These rules aren't in place to annoy people who have fun with cars, they're a public safety issue. Until OpenPilot is confirmed to be safe enough to be road legal in Europe (I doubt it ever will be).
Having a 1366kg vehicle under complete control of a system with the disclaimer
> THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A PRODUCT. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COMPLYING WITH LOCAL LAWS AND REGULATIONS. NO WARRANTY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
with hardware that was cobbled together in a garage somewhere, taking this thing out on the road is pure insanity.
Now I don't expect this to be well-received because of "cool hack" but it is truly a major issue. Other issues like the high housing costs, bad healthcare, lacking infrastructure, mediocre education and a short-sighted population are all hard to solve. But this issue is clearly a priority. Swedish voters and politicians are prioritizing this over providing a good quality of life at a decent cost to enable education, research and knowledge based businesses.
The result as a whole is that almost anyone who can is moving from these cities to bigger cities that don't have these problems, but are also so expensive that engaging in activates with high growth potential isn't viable. With grassroot hacking, small- and medium-sized business and major growth startup ending up being a fraction of what they have been and even more so should have been now.
I had to search to see what you were referring to:
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230320-sweden-s-teen...
The account is recently created and this is the first and only comment/post they've made on this site.
There truly is more freedom in the US than there is in Europe in that context.
"The daily value of your car should not exceed 1,000 Euros and the car must be at least 20 years old."
Also it completed the activity without failure.
https://www.carbagerun.nl/event/winter-editie-2025-naar-hels...
Fun times.
Now, how much of a risk there is, and whether or not it should be allowed on public roads where the failure could kill them and/or other people is a question for the local society and legal system :)
See the fatal accident of Ayrton Senna. Shortened and welded steering column was exactly the cause of the accident.
> Lorenzini stated: "It had been badly welded together about a third of the way down and couldn't stand the strain of the race. We discovered scratches on the crack in the steering rod. It seemed like the job had been done in a hurry but I can't say how long before the race. Someone had tried to smooth over the joint following the welding. I have never seen anything like it. I believe the rod was faulty and probably cracked even during the warm-up. Moments before the crash only a tiny piece was left connected and therefore the car didn't respond in the bend."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Ayrton_Senna
And the forces on a formula 1 steering column are also higher than on a road car, I imagine.
A proper weld should be very strong, I don’t think welding a steering column in itself is bad.
Bear in mind that all modern steering columns have joints in them for crash safety reasons and they are often welded at the factory.
The author seems to have a lot of electrical hacking knowledge, but didn't know some car stuff that could have made getting these controls installed much easier:
1) They could have just swapped in a newer BOSCH ABS pump, which can activate the brakes electrically without involving the brake booster. European cars started getting these when they got traction control in the late 90s, but I believe some would be virtually (or maybe even exactly) a direct swap into this vehicle. I was able to do this in a VW with about 10 minutes of work, which uses the same basic ABS systems as Volvo. This is assuming the car already had factory ABS which I think most (but possibly not all) 940s did.
2) They could fix the steering problem by swapping in an entire electric steering rack- they're fairly standard dimension wise, installing a fully manual rack from a Volvo 240, or adding an A/C compressor clutch to the hydraulic power steering pump to disable it above parking speeds (the only time torque would be high anyways). Moreover, these racks are strong enough to simply work with the hydraulic assist removed, because people in the Volvo racing/performance community do it all the time.
3) This car does not have a carburetor- it is electrically fuel injected. You can see the fuel injectors and rail above the throttle body. This could be just a mistranslation if the author is not a native english speaker. However, more importantly there was a factory system on this car to electrically control the throttle for the cruise control. They are missing those parts, but they are cheap and common, and would have just dropped in to a bracket and cam already on his engine. They consist of a vacuum servo on the throttle itself connected to a box that can actuate this with an electrical signal.
It does indeed not have a carburator (I wrote this while half asleep on a plane, I meant to say that it has a mechanical throttle/air valve which is cable operated).
It also doesn't have ABS (although I believe this was an option on the car starting this model year), so swapping out that pump wasn't an option. The iBooster is a great and easy retrofit, definitely recommend!
Haven't done it yet, but I'm just going to lower the pressure of the hydraulic steering by shimming the regulator, should be enough. It already steers somewhat ok without this mod too
Did everything you needed a reasonable car to do, well, and just kept on going.
Actually injection system is largely independent from throttle control. Required amount of fuel is calculated based on manifold air pressure sensor, so there were cars with fuel injection and cable operated throttle plate. I suppose the problem was with plumbing in modern throttle body as carburetor needs to be upstream of throttle plate.
This is giving me chills, what if that RC servo gets "stuck" at full throttle? I suppose the assumption is you could hit the clutch, but depending on the specific situation there might not be a lot of time for realizing what's happening and reacting accordingly.
https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/xj8540/they_u...
[1] https://ovi.rdw.nl/ [2] https://www.autoweek.nl/kentekencheck/HN-FZ-69/
After that, I’ll do part 3 explaining (and open sourcing) the code on the ECU and the openpilot port."
according to freely and readily available specifications, the 1993 volvo 940 had an automatic transmission.
I drove my car 2500 miles on Openpilot this holiday and it was wonderful. I took over maybe 10% of the trip and let automation handle the rest. That said, there are many many many areas of improvement and I have devoted this year to creating an openpilot fork to bring it's ADAS functionality closer to modern vehicles (read: tesla).
I will Show HN the first release!
But, in seriousness, if you don't mind pointing to your GH fork that'd be awesome, in case I miss the show hn
My wishlist, as soon as I work up the nerve to build and flash my own image, is:
- recognize lane change blinkers and decelerate (since currently it only decelerates once the car has intruded into the lane). I am aware of the innumerable edge cases about this, but it still seems like it should be a pretty safe (and polite!) change to make
- recognize multiple brakelights and lay off the accelerator; I believe it currently uses the radar from the car immediately ahead but if 75% of the other cars have their brakelights on and the car in front is just lazy or driving aggressively, there's no reason for the Comma to cause me to further that chain
really nice to haves:
- have it recognize speed limit signs and adjust the cruise accordingly
this change is related to my desire for it to decelerate on exit ramps versus screaming into them at 65mph and then whining because the curve is too sharp for its speed. If it recognized the "recommended speed limit" sign on the exit ramp then we'd all get what we wanted, and if the exit ramp was going into a new highway no driver action would be required (versus exiting into a stop sign intersection)
- have it recognize stop signs (and yellow or red lights would be awesome). I don't need it to detect traffic or whatever, but I also don't enjoy it screaming at stop signs and red lights at full velocity causing me to have to take further action
- I need to investigate whether the Comma is bright enough to know I have an electric car and to merely let off on the accelerator versus applying the brake. My car also has multiple levels of regenerative braking, so I'd be open to it taking that into consideration but for me personally I always run in the highest level of regen because that's how my BMW i3 drove and I got used to it
If you take your fork to the next level, look at frogpilot. It uncovers all of the tweakable inputs to the driver model. This enables you to customize your driver model to your preferences including less aggressive braking and faster acceleration.
Open pilot at its core (and thus all forks) supports one pedal driving as far as it needs to maintain 1) speed, 2) distance, 3) acceleration velocity. The car will accelerate when it deems the desired speed is below the target speed. It does this as long as there is space and will do so at a certain acceleration profile. It does the same in reverse, except it will apply brakes if safe distance is violated. As such, it will reduce the amount of gas to maintain distance or stop applying gas entirely prior to brake application. This would be your one pedal driving.
That said, there are a few underlying problems that need some major revisions to fix. Like the model was trained with a majority of drivers coming from California. Thus open pilot models tend to prefer the California stop, which will slow to 5mph and continue through the stop.
While OP can handle curves with ease, it excludes certain inputs. such as the angle of the road and thus will approach and predict a slower speed than the car can actually take. It does not predict actions from cars in other lanes. And while the blinker is a good indicator of head fakes, the model could very well be extended to observe the direction and speed of adjacent cars and adjust itself accordingly. On that same topic OP models do not care about pedestrians and will happily pass them with 6” of clearance.
This and a few more things are on my feature list that the software needs, like the ability to avoid potholes and slow over speed bumps. Full disclosure: I do not think this is possible with the current generation of comma hardware but that’s why we clicked the fork button!
Aha! So the obvious radar plate most manufacturers mount in an aesthetically horrible way directly in the middle of the grille is in fact complete lazy bullshit and it could easily be hidden without performance loss. The more you know...
I really enjoyed this post, well done.
Sidenote: Since 2018 all my cars are carbadge. Restored fully a CLK 200 Kompressor and Jaguar X308. I cannot stand the current cars. Neither designwise nor tech. There is a lost art of honest design, aesthetic and pure functionality in today's automotive logic.
All the infotainment needs you have is live in your phone/tablet. You can use it with every carbadge car you can imagine.
I enjoy my cars. They are stylish and reliable. Something that I would not say about my 2016 BMW 6. Next stop Toyota Land Cruiser from 1995.
Then, in contrast, the electric power steering assist seems so much easier compared to hydraulic, just because of the fuss that hydraulics introduce. I may be a bit biased from dealing with rotted 90s hydraulic power steering systems.
Obviously it's illegal so I don't expect them to use this while in Sweden.
