Porsche introduces blockchain to cars

Porsche introduces blockchain to cars(newsroom.porsche.com)

31 points by Donmario 8 years ago | 22 comments

I wonder if they're just announcing this to see what it can do for their stock price. At the risk of saying something completely reductive, I feel like any technical person with a beginner's grasp of what blockchain technology can do is only going to say "but why", and the appeal here is going to be limited to speculators or people impressed by the social proof that blockchain is impressive to others.

wpasc 8 years ago | |

I could not agree with you more, the hype to reality ration surrounding blockchain is beyond ridiculous to the point that a mental heuristic saying "any blockchain headline is bullshit" becomes more accurate with each new article...

mvindahl 8 years ago |

> "Taking 1.6 seconds, the process of opening and closing the car via an app is up to six times faster than before. In addition, efficient cryptographic encryption takes place."

A remote car key. You've invented a remote car key.

jackhack 8 years ago | |

It's even worse than that. They've invented a remote car key where, if 51% of the other key holders agree, stops working.

This stupidity and fetishistic lust after overcomplication and fad chasing must end. I can only hope the mechanical engineers are more sensible.

zzz157 8 years ago |

So I read this and I can't tell what it actually does in the car.

ct0 8 years ago | |

Sounds like you/porsche can allow lock/unlock access via blockchain, using smart contracts. Does this open the door (no pun intended) for governments to deliver subpoenas for getting access to locked cars? Convenience is always at the expense of freedom.

tachyoff 8 years ago | | |

Can’t wait until it costs $30 and takes 45 minutes to unlock my car!

na85 8 years ago | | |

Well as we have seen, there are never bugs in smart contracts.

Cannot wait until a hard fork is required to prevent thieves from opening my car.

castle-bravo 8 years ago | | |

Do you think this could be used by rental agencies and car sharing services without having to be managed by Porsche? What about privacy; would it be possible to identify the current occupant of a particular car from inspecting a public ledger?

headsoup 8 years ago | |

Same. Most of the tech seems to not relate to actual blockchain use and instead talks about 'temporary authorisation of access' and data logging.

If someone does understand what Porsche is doing here with blockchain, please translate...

mvindahl 8 years ago | |

I also read through the thing, and it was all empty buzzwords and white noise to me.

Was hoping to at last have someone describe an actual use case for the blockchain, but nope, another blank.

scrumper 8 years ago |

Porsche has been playing with new ownership models recently, including a sort of membership club where a fixed monthly payment gets you access to any model.

So this blockchain-based entitlements thingumy could be seen as an attempt to put in a flexible technology to support more experimentation along those lines.

gambiting 8 years ago | |

What they are doing is just the next logical step from personal leases - and it's actually brilliant at that. Instead of say, a lease at $1000/month for a new Porsche, you pay $2000-3000/month for access to almost any model whenever you want it - but I imagine it makes Porsche a lot more money as long as most of the fleet is occupied at any given time.

scrumper 8 years ago | | |

Exactly. That's the kind of thing (and extensions of) that you could conceivably use a blockchain to support, if you think about decentralizing the fleet.

magneticnorth 8 years ago | |

Thank you - this seems like the missing piece that might answer the obvious "but why?" the article title inspires.

FrozenTuna 8 years ago |

I'm so glad the sentiment has changed on this useless garbage. Why would anyone want to decentralize car security? Porsche could just unlock your car through a centralized app. Why does everyone need access to that?

jaclaz 8 years ago |

Just in case, the previous mechanism wasn't that much safe:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/26/scientist...

The paper has been published only in 2016, with a few amendments to "hide" (maybe) the parts that could have led to replication by thiefs:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/2971826/cybercrime-hac...

https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity15/technical...

Please note how the Authors only tested a few VW models, but Porsche and a number of other luxury car manufacturers used the same chip/mechanism so that itis very likely to be hackable in a similar way.

jaimex2 8 years ago |

Blockchain all the things!

Well, I guess we officially know what this years buzzword technology that will be added to everything whether it makes sense or not is.

WheelsAtLarge 8 years ago |

I suspect that blockchain will eventually serve as a peer to peer database. If you can make it secure and no one needs to put up the infrastructure to maintain then it's a boon for car makers. We have a long way to go but it has promise.

Porsche is starting so it seems like BS but it has potential as it develops.

RobLach 8 years ago |

I don't get how these logging and sending commands to a car use cases benefit in any way from a blockchain as opposed to just having a central server handle it.

If anything, having Porsche be responsible for the security of that system is a benefit. Not to mention the reduced overhead.

I am very interested in seeing how my assumptions are proved wrong.