Most of the time, including in the picture from this article, people would be towing something like a camper. To go camping. In a remote area. Which has no WiFi to begin with.
For generations, a hitch has been a sufficient tool for towing shit. I guess its simplicity just doesn’t allow enough avenues to monopolize from. I can’t possibly think of how Wi-Fi towing solves more problems than it causes, other than charging the consumer for shit they don’t actually need.
Wi-Fi is just a wireless protocol. You PROBABLY don’t connect to a stationary wifi access point that is a relay to the wider internet, you are probably using a wifi connection from the towing device to an access point in the tow vehicle that’s tied into the CAN bus of the towing vehicle to relay things like position, speed, breaking, road conditions, etc.
You could pretty easily do this all with a local LAN without needing any external Internet access.
It’s called Ad-hoc WiFi. This is how almost all dash cams work these days. They are the access point you connect to. You then use whatever app required to view the videos on it. This is how the trailer would work for control.
The theoretical use case is for cars without the capacity to tow. Either due to engine power, or lack of a tow ball. Effectively, it’s a small, self driving vehicle, that can tow. It just follows close behind your care, and so needs far less in the way of navigation capabilities.
It’s a stupidly small niche however. Anyone who could justify and afford one could do far better just by hiring a driver and tow vehicle.
I mean, if the problem is lack of power, so the tow vehicle has it’s own motor, couldn’t you just have the same tow vehicle setup connected to the back of the car, using it’s motor to cancel out the extra load on the main vehicle without a potentially risky wireless connection?
or, hear me out now, we put a passenger compartment and driver controls on the vehicle capable of towing and leave the car at home. why reinvent the wheel when rental trucks exist here and now?
I could see it working similar to surge brakes on trailers, a sprung mechanism with sensors that would accelerate when stretched and regen braking when compressed.
That’s not even mentioning that you can get hitch receivers that you attach to just about every car out there. Hell even back in the 50s it was common place to see a sedan with a tow hitch. Unless you’re driving a car that struggles to carry itself up a hill the only thing stopping you from putting a hitch on a Prius or Challenger is your willingness to buy a receiver hitch and bolt it to the frame.
Given the likely pricetag, you’re talking luxury cars and upwards. The owners don’t want a tow ball ruining their car’s look. They might also want to avoid the additional strain on the engine. I’m not sure how high end cars deal with low speed high torque situations, but I doubt Porsche does much testing with towing in mind.
…Of course it is. Bluetooth is a totally different technology with different protocols and different uses. Bluetooth can be emitted by a single tiny on board chip with no need for a whole WAP.
I was interested to discover that Android Auto will make Bluetooth and WiFi connections to your phone, just to be able to send and receive on both at the same time.
I wonder what the breakdown is, it probably wouldn’t separate audio packets across protocols, maybe one gets relegated to instructions and metadata and the other is dedicated to audio? Or along service lines with different throughput requirements, like Maps on one and Spotify on the other? Or heck, maybe one is just for handshakes to establish the other.
Bluetooth does seem fine for handling audio, and at handling many devices simultaneously, so neither of those seem like good candidates for pulling WiFi in.
I could just look this up but I’m enjoying thinking about it.
WiFi just means “wireless” now, people call all kinds of wireless stuff “WiFi” when it has nothing to do with the protocol at all, like smoke detectors.
My question is, “Why?”
Most of the time, including in the picture from this article, people would be towing something like a camper. To go camping. In a remote area. Which has no WiFi to begin with.
For generations, a hitch has been a sufficient tool for towing shit. I guess its simplicity just doesn’t allow enough avenues to monopolize from. I can’t possibly think of how Wi-Fi towing solves more problems than it causes, other than charging the consumer for shit they don’t actually need.
Wi-Fi is just a wireless protocol. You PROBABLY don’t connect to a stationary wifi access point that is a relay to the wider internet, you are probably using a wifi connection from the towing device to an access point in the tow vehicle that’s tied into the CAN bus of the towing vehicle to relay things like position, speed, breaking, road conditions, etc.
You could pretty easily do this all with a local LAN without needing any external Internet access.
It’s called Ad-hoc WiFi. This is how almost all dash cams work these days. They are the access point you connect to. You then use whatever app required to view the videos on it. This is how the trailer would work for control.
The theoretical use case is for cars without the capacity to tow. Either due to engine power, or lack of a tow ball. Effectively, it’s a small, self driving vehicle, that can tow. It just follows close behind your care, and so needs far less in the way of navigation capabilities.
It’s a stupidly small niche however. Anyone who could justify and afford one could do far better just by hiring a driver and tow vehicle.
I mean, if the problem is lack of power, so the tow vehicle has it’s own motor, couldn’t you just have the same tow vehicle setup connected to the back of the car, using it’s motor to cancel out the extra load on the main vehicle without a potentially risky wireless connection?
or, hear me out now, we put a passenger compartment and driver controls on the vehicle capable of towing and leave the car at home. why reinvent the wheel when rental trucks exist here and now?
You and your logic…
I could see it working similar to surge brakes on trailers, a sprung mechanism with sensors that would accelerate when stretched and regen braking when compressed.
I like the idea.
That’s not even mentioning that you can get hitch receivers that you attach to just about every car out there. Hell even back in the 50s it was common place to see a sedan with a tow hitch. Unless you’re driving a car that struggles to carry itself up a hill the only thing stopping you from putting a hitch on a Prius or Challenger is your willingness to buy a receiver hitch and bolt it to the frame.
Given the likely pricetag, you’re talking luxury cars and upwards. The owners don’t want a tow ball ruining their car’s look. They might also want to avoid the additional strain on the engine. I’m not sure how high end cars deal with low speed high torque situations, but I doubt Porsche does much testing with towing in mind.
You mean cellular service, it has no cellular service. Wi-Fi is a communications protocol for communicating over short distances.
It’s the router that generates the Wi-Fi.
No, they mean WiFi. Everyone knows what WiFi is. But routers don’t grow on trees!
Routers aren’t just lying around all over the place, dude…
The router would be a part of the car… You don’t need an internet connection to utilize Wi-fi for local networks. It’s literally just wireless LAN.
I’m not talking bout the Internet. Router as part of a car? That’s an insane proposition.
Dude you’re mind will be blown when you find out about wireless headphones
Bluetooth is a different matter. That might actually make sense.
No it’s not a different matter
…Of course it is. Bluetooth is a totally different technology with different protocols and different uses. Bluetooth can be emitted by a single tiny on board chip with no need for a whole WAP.
Maybe it works with Bluetooth, everything is better with Bluetooth, even WIFI
I was interested to discover that Android Auto will make Bluetooth and WiFi connections to your phone, just to be able to send and receive on both at the same time.
I wonder what the breakdown is, it probably wouldn’t separate audio packets across protocols, maybe one gets relegated to instructions and metadata and the other is dedicated to audio? Or along service lines with different throughput requirements, like Maps on one and Spotify on the other? Or heck, maybe one is just for handshakes to establish the other.
Bluetooth does seem fine for handling audio, and at handling many devices simultaneously, so neither of those seem like good candidates for pulling WiFi in.
I could just look this up but I’m enjoying thinking about it.
WiFi just means “wireless” now, people call all kinds of wireless stuff “WiFi” when it has nothing to do with the protocol at all, like smoke detectors.