WiFi in Your Rental Car

Jezebel writes "Avis is bundling a 3G-to-802.11 bridge with their rental cars that will turn the vehicles into WiFi hotspots. Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?" From the article "Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz told the International Herald Tribune that the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, including all major US cities. Pratz claims to have minimized the problem of dropped signals with a technology similar to that used by the space shuttles to maintain an Internet connection."

In soiviet Russia

[GC (19160)]

In soviet Russia, wireless hotspots wardrive you!

The Killer App

[ukemike (956477)]

The killer app for this will be to add real-time traffic conditions, and traffic cams, to the GPS mapping system in your car. Every day on the way home I exit from the freeway one exit early because about 20% of the time traffic is backed up and it takes 30 min to get to the next exit. When traffic isn't backed up staying on the freeway saves 10 minutes. But for me arriving at a predictable time is more important that trying to beat the odds. If I could access a traffic cam from my car a few minutes bef

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[kkwst2 (992504)]

Maybe not. Traffic jams are interesting beasts. If traffic can be diverted as soon as the accident happens, then the congestion might be minimal. It would be easier for emergency vehicles to get there and take care of business, and the jam may never materialize to the extent it does now. Most of the time when you get to a traffic jam, the instigating event has long been cleared and you're dealing with the residual mess which can last for hours. If 75% of that traffic could be diverted soon after the in

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[Ollierose (202763)]

A better approach might be to follow the example of the motorways in the UK - they have overhead signs with a matrix to display a road sign (perhaps an altered speed limit) along with a reason for the altered limit. An example might be that it says "50 (surrounded by flashing amber lights) Queuing Traffic Ahead". These are usually a couple of miles apart, so they won't catch everything.

Around busier interchanges, there is an overhead gantry with a smaller matrix per lane, which allows police to advise traff

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[JazzLad (935151)]

Here in the states, the Salt Lake valley of Utah has these on I-15. I've never /noticed/ them tell me to slow down, but they often give predicted times to different points ahead (indicating traffic congestion) - especially when headed toward downtown Salt Lake City.

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[ShannaraFan (533326)]

Here in the US, the reaction to a sign stating "Right lane closed ahead" would be two-fold:

- 25% of the drivers seeing the sign would be confused, coming to a near stop on the freeway while they ponder the meaning

- 25% would dive to the breakdown lane, accelerating around everyone so that they can be the first on in line at the merge point

- 25% will do nothing, staying in the right lane until they reach the closure point, then will sit there with a turn signal blinking, waiting for someone to let them over.

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[Hadlock (143607)]

I was once in west, west austin, when I saw something like this. Except every single driver had merged to the left lane, a full mile in advance. My jaw dropped. Then some bald fat fucker with NJ licence plates decided he would drive in the right lane. People glared at him. You could feel the hostility from every driver. As people in the left lane approached the BFFfromNJ they would drive inches away from the person in front of them's back bumper, and as close to the dashed white lane divider as possible. I

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[jacksonj04 (800021)]

Because if the speed limit is red, glowing, surrounded by flashing lights, next to 2 Lane Closed displays and has a matrix above it reading "EXTREME CAUTION MAJOR INCIDENT" then people do tend to pay attention.

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[Hadlock (143607)]

I don't know about where you live, but there's only one significant backup in Dallas that I know of (southbound), which is immediately after the 75 and 635 interchange it slows to a crawl/stop and immediately after Royal Ln on ramp, everything goes back to normal. Just recently they made it illegal to park your car on the highway unless you got in an accident involving a serious injury.

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[MarkGriz (520778)]

"The killer app for this will be to add real-time traffic conditions, and traffic cams, to the GPS mapping system in your car"

The other killer app will be posting on slashdot *while* you are driving to work.

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[smyle (108107)]

I give you TMC [wikipedia.org]. I found out about it because it was an option for my GPS when I bought it. I don't drive enough metro areas to make it worthwhile for me (living in the backwaters of Kansas), but I definitely think it would be worth the price.

Regulation

[denebian devil (944045)]

Well, many states have taken to banning cell phone use in cars by drivers, or at the very least cell phone use that isn't "hands-free." It's possible they could do the same thing with computers/internet use. Though considering how long it took for those laws to catch up to the reality of cell phone use on the road (assuming you believe they even have caught up yet), I have to wonder how many accidents will happen before such laws manage to get on the books.

Re:Regulation

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

I don't know about the US, and IANAL, but here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'. Whilst driving while using a laptop is not specifically illegal the courts would use 'due care and attention' in the same way that they would for those caught reading whilst driving - or in on recent famous case, applying make-up [bbc.co.uk]

Re:Regulation

[arivanov (12034)]

C'mon, that case was "a person who was well known to deserve it": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/north_west/478568 6.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Mrs Donna Marie Maddock also had her license suspended for 20 months for an alcohol related offence just before being handed this ban and these points. Whatever the courts and BBC tell I bet that the magistrates handing out the ban actually knew who is getting it and the list of her previous (or in processing) offences. In fact they definitely knew, because her solicitor has asked the judges to reduce or waive the ban because she was already serving one (the best example of Chewbacca defence I have ever heard of).

Re:Regulation

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

here in the UK there's the offense of 'Driving without due care and attention'.

We have laws like that (in most places) here in the U.S. as well, but enforcing existing laws doesn't let the politicians demonstrate how freaking "in-touch" and "useful" they are. Thus, we get nonsense legislation every few years. Solving problems that don't really exist or that ought to be covered by existing laws already is a favorite.

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[Da_Weasel (458921)]

There are many charges in the US that can apply to someone using a laptop while driving that was either in an accident of caused one:
Careless or negligent driving
Reckless Driving
Reckless Endangerment
Contributing to an accident

And when all else fails and a police officer know you were being a dumb ass and deserve to be charged with something but can't find something that is fitting:
Miscellaneous traffic violations

It's stupid to legislate laptop usage in cars because it's not the laptop usage it's the mindles

Re:Regulation

[Bloke down the pub (861787)]

We may talk funny in olde England town, but we're not entirely stupid. We've had a law on the books for some time now about "driving without due care and attention". Yes, it's vague. Yes, it's a catch all. Yes, it requires some element of judgement from 1) the driver 2) the police and 3) the justice system. And we can't be having any of that now, can we?

No no no, much better that the law tries to define exactly and explicity what you can't do while driving a motor vehicle. Let's see, item 2647a - watercolour painting, 2647b sketching with a pencil ... 2648a playing a trombone...

My client was, in fact, doing a landscape in oils and playing the clarinet when he ploughed through a red light and killed 23 people. He is innocent!

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[Jessta (666101)]

Bittorrent is 'hands free'

California bans front-seat laptops, dvd players

[billstewart (78916)]

California has had bans for a couple of years on using laptops in the front seats of cars, as well as on having DVD players there. Basically the only display screens you can have visible to the driver are for controls and navigation equipment. So your GPS is fine, but running Google Maps on your laptop isn't.

Reverse wardriving!

[91degrees (207121)]

Fantastic! I can wardrive from the comfort of my living room. Just let the hotspots come to me.

Looks like we'll have free broadband on the run :)

[torex (777800)]

Question: if my car goes 70 miles/hour and my wifi goes 11Mbs, will the overall packet speed be bigger? :D

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[Mizled (1000175)]

Question: if my car goes 70 miles/hour and my wifi goes 11Mbs, will the overall packet speed be bigger? :D

Doubtful considering the velocity of the packets would clearly be less than the car...my guess would be slower speeds. =p

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[C10H14N2 (640033)]

Unless you're Buckaroo Banzai or perhaps St. Anselm, that's a highly doubtful proposition.

Re:Looks like we'll have free broadband on the run

[Alsee (515537)]

Slashdot: Ask a purely humourous science/technical based question, get a rediculously rigorous science/technical answer :)

Question: if my car goes 70 miles/hour and my wifi goes 11Mbs, will the overall packet speed be bigger? :D

Answer: If you are driving directly towards the base station, you'll get about 1.2 extra bits per second. If you are driving directly away from it, you'll lose about 1.2 bits per second.

However I think you were technically mistaken in asking about an 11Mbps wifi speed. The relevant l

Actually an interesting question

[wsanders (114993)]

I have heard it told that the speed of a moving car is enough to screw up US digital broadcast TV signals. And it has to be taken into account for GPS reception (well the sats move much faster than most everything on the gound canmove...)

So why would doppler not be a problem with WiFi? I'm just thinking out loud here...

Here's the math:

[wsanders (114993)]

In 2 dimensions, a reasonable approximation for a radar gun, or if you are driving directly toward an RF source, the ratio of the shift is 2V/c. At 100 fps, that's about 2E-7, or a couple dozen Hz at 100 Mc. This is how doppler speed guns and doppler radar work, and they can easy pick out speed variations of a few MPH. For GPS there is much less effect because the sats don't move directly toward or away from the observer, but, still, as I understand it, some GPS units can measure the phase difference (http:

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[Da_Weasel (458921)]

Yes, the observer would have to know ahead of time not only the Frequency being transmitted, but the speed at which the traveller is moving.

On top of that the traveller would have to maintain a constant speed.

Can they really achieve the coverage

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

From TFA

the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country,

The last time I looked vast tracts of the USA was wide open spaces with vast amounts of not very much. I realise this will be irrelevant to 99% of the Avis customers but will it realy work in the middle of North Dacota? the Arizona Desert? Yellowstone? (Ok, maybe Yellowstone, but you get my point.)

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[thegrassyknowl (762218)]

I just tried a 3G modem with my PC in a major city. There was a 3G signal for the phone, but the signal into the 3G card was flakey - it went up and down in speed like a yo yo and went on and off continuously. Wasn't worth the money for the service.

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[Da Fokka (94074)]

Dude, it's daKota. They already have to live with the predicate 'North'.

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[shogun (657)]

They probably mean in %95 of the population areas of the country. They use similar figures in Australia to describe mobile phone coverage where %90 of the population is in %10 or so of the land area, mostly along the East Coast....

Re:Can they really achieve the coverage

[Da_Weasel (458921)]

More than likely no, but if you really need access out in those areas, then there are satellite options, although I'm sure they are cost prohibitive for most situations.

GSM Coverage Maps:
http://www.coveragemaps.com/gsmposter.htm [coveragemaps.com]

alternate to municiple wifi

[v1 (525388)]

This would be an interesting way to solve the problem of municiple wifi. If even 5% of the cars in a city were functioning as short range wifi routers, and if they were using tech similar to cell phones how they hand off seamlessly from tower to tower, that would be a really elegant way to network entire cities. No need to plant towers like dandellions, no problems with dead zones due to buildings, etc. I'm not thinking of people browsing web while in their car, but imagine being able to use voice or video chat (think iChat) while driving down the freeway, your car reading you a new email as you sit at a stoplight, or being able to take your laptop to the park and know there are a dozen hotspots within 300 feet of whatever park you pick. I hope this takes off.

Tho the way things are going, some paraoid person is going to flip out because it will make it easier for people to get untraceable internet access and lord knows we can't allow that, and will ruin it for everyone.

Oblig

[Dunbal (464142)]

This would be an interesting way to solve the problem of municiple wifi. If even 5% of the cars in a city were functioning as short range wifi routers,

      I just couldn't help it, because in this case, it almost makes sense:

      In Soviet Russia, car wardrives YOU!

      Now do we have to worry about those pesky homeowners logging in illicitly on our mobile connection? ;)

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[Otto (17870)]

This would be an interesting way to solve the problem of municiple wifi.

Too bad it won't work.

a) Range of WiFi is limited in these devices. The power levels are intentionally low so as to avoid interference. Even if you were to crank them up, the distance is not significant. How far are you from a street where one of these cars could be reasonably expected to be?

b) 3G networking is not free. Whoever has these devices in their rental cars will be paying for it. There will be access controls of some sort, these won't be open hotspots. Probably just a WEP key on the side of the b

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[complete loony (663508)]

Better than that. If *your* car is operating as a wifi hotspot. It follows *you* around. Making it much easier for *you* to get internet access. Much like the way the car phone helped to start the mobile phone market by allowing your phone to follow you, even though at the time it required heavy equipment and a large power source.

Obviously this assumes parking is plentiful where you need it, which is generally true in some cities and generally false in others.

this could be cool

[phrostie (121428)]

on long road trips your passengers could chat with friends, look up roads on google.maps, or even check the weather.
if you are driving with multipule vehicles, you could have a lan party or play UT.
just think of the possibilities!!

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[Dunbal (464142)]

on long road trips your passengers could chat with friends, look up roads on google.maps, or even check the weather.

      Drive-Thru Pr0n!!!

DS Lite!

[metamatic (202216)]

Right, and now that every kid with a DS Lite has WiFi in his handheld game system, the kids could be playing Animal Crossing online.

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[blugu64 (633729)]

"on long road trips your passengers could chat with friends, look up roads on google.maps, or even check the weather."

Been there done that :)

Let me tell you google maps + Wireless from Verizon + Tablet PC = never ever having to stop to find your way again.

Kind of Shortsighted, don't you think?

[sabinm (447146)]

Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?

Yes, because the first application I think of when I think of riding in the car is a surfing the web on a laptop. This is a step further in a persistent connection to caches of information on the road. We're pretty much limited by GPS, commercial radio, cellular and CB communications. Let's get out of thinking that a computer is something you sit at and type. Multiple devices can take advantage of a persistent connection on the road. A networked car computer will either enhance or replace already existing information channels (like the ones I previously mentioned). And supply a few more; think of automated driving and distancing through wireless arrays. Traffic systems that can 'predict' with greater accuracy when cars need the lights changed or the railroad crossing sign lifted. Anyway, Yeah, people will use it to download iTunes (is that a bad thing), but let's get beyond the old man sitting at the terminal inputing text at a keyboard. That is SO twentieth century.

Using a Wifi device in a car

[MosesJones (55544)]

There are several things here to consider.

Firstly Wifi != Laptop, this could enable things like Google Earth sat images to be downloaded in real time to your Sat/Nav system, it could be used to switch your mobile to VOIP rather than using a cell, it could be used by the cars Radio/CD/iPod player to offer you new tracks.

Secondly the person driving doesn't have to be the person working. Last year myself and a friend drove from San Francisco to Las Vegas, with a bunch of work to do we split the driving and use a car-charger adapter for the laptop, we got a good 10 hours of work done and an internet connection would have made that a lot better.

Thirdly this also means that Avis can start flogging you added extras that work on Wifi, which is cheaper than 3G connected devices.

My big question though is do all those cars have different SSIDs and will they be WPA and greater protected? If I'm connecting up to a network then I'd prefer people not being able to hijack my devices, some SatNavs can already be bluejacked and this could make it miles worse.

the rollout is new, but not the tech

[artifex2004 (766107)]

It's nice someone is finally exploiting this concept commercially for travelers, but mobile 3G routers have been around for a while.

Remember Tor Amundson's DYI Linux StompBox [slashdot.org]*?
Or commercial boxes like the Junxion Box, which showed up in this solar-powered hotspot [slashdot.org]?

Now there are several little routers that will take these cards, and with EV-DO rev A, speeds are starting to compete with older-generation DSL lines.

*instead of using the URL in that article, use this one [stompboxnetworks.com].

Woohoo!

[ProppaT (557551)]

Everquest on the go!

Now nerds world over can actually leave their house while waiting for 12 hours spawns to pop.

Now worry?

[Drathos (1092)]

Will we now have to worry about laptop use on the Interstate?

Now? Over a decade ago, I saw a computer parts catalog selling a laptop mount for the car - that attached to the steering wheel. It scared the hell out of me because I can easily see people on the DC Beltway using it during their commute. It wasn't just a distraction, it was a hindrance to the already poor driving ability of most people on the road.

Fix your customer service first...

[garcia (6573)]

I went to Las Vegas over Christmas because nothing says Christmas like Vegas... As partof ourpackage deal we had a car rental from Avis. After arrivig, we took the 10 min bus ride to their area and were directed to one of 10 or so kiosks for service.

While this works for the most part with airlines, it blows for people flying in at 11pm. There two real people on duty with a line of about 50. The kiosks wouldn't pull up anyone's info and directed you to go to the counter instead.

After waiting in line for over an hour, I was told that the kiosks are down. Awesome, direct me there when you know full well they don't work.

So, if they can't keep their kiosks running, I can't only imagine what their 3Gwifi will be like.

Make it work like car TV's

[phorm (591458)]

Car TV's that have been installed properly, will, if in viewable range of the driver, disable the screen while the e-brake is off. That gives the driver the ability to watch shows while parked (good for, say, truckers or distance-drivers that want a break), but does not allow for watching-while-driving (unless one wants to grind the e-brake down to the nub). Of course, many shops and self-installs bypass this by attaching the safety connector to ground. My car has a DVD player, but the screen isn't installed by default so the safety is disabled. When I have passengers who want to watch, I just pass them back the screen and some headphones (my JVC unit allows them to watch/hear the DVD, and me to plug an Mp3 player into the deck-amp so I can still have my own tunes).

However, I believe that by law, a screen visible to the driver is/should be disabled when the e-brake is off or perhaps when the vehicle is out of park if possible. Applying this to wifi wouldn't be too difficult either, especially if this is a factory install.

I must ask though, why do you need wifi in a car? If you need a laptop signal then an ethernet jack in the center console would work fine, even if it is piggybacking on a wireless system.

So, now we can revise the age-old question,. . .

[cashman73 (855518)]

Two cars leave two different cities heading toward each other at different speeds with different WiFi routers. When and where do they meet?

Car A, traveling 70 miles per hour (mph) with a 802.11b (11 MBPS) WiFi Hotspot, leaves Westford heading toward Eastford, 260 miles away. At the same time Car B, traveling 60 mph with a 802.11g (56 MBPS) WiFi Hotspot, leaves Eastford heading toward Westford. When do the two cars meet? How far from each city do they meet? When can a person in Car B pick up the WiFi signa

The name of the space shuttle technology

[fistfullast33l (819270)]

Tang

pr0n in 0G

[metamatic (202216)]

Pron in zero-G. Now that'd be interesting!

Look up The Uranus Experiment. First zero gravity cum shot, I believe.