The Lemon Fool

From the BBC...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68426263

It seems owners of Nissan Leaf cars more than 8 years old will soon be unable to use the remote warmup facility (presumably in conjunction with pretty much any remote facility) as it uses 2G technology.

Now 2 things strike me here..
1) surely the comms module could be upgraded relatively simply, once you'd managed to access it
2) on acutting edge technology pioneering car like the Leaf, what on earth were nissan doing using a comms protocol that was superceded 15 years earlier? 3G was out 10 years beforethe first Leaf rolled quietly off the production line, in fact 4G was available by the time it was launched.

Presumably their old "You can with a Nissan" slogan won't be making a comeback any time soon.

Paul

DrFfybes wrote:From the BBC...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68426263

It seems owners of Nissan Leaf cars more than 8 years old will soon be unable to use the remote warmup facility (presumably in conjunction with pretty much any remote facility) as it uses 2G technology.

Now 2 things strike me here..
1) surely the comms module could be upgraded relatively simply, once you'd managed to access it
2) on acutting edge technology pioneering car like the Leaf, what on earth were nissan doing using a comms protocol that was superceded 15 years earlier? 3G was out 10 years beforethe first Leaf rolled quietly off the production line, in fact 4G was available by the time it was launched.

Presumably their old "You can with a Nissan" slogan won't be making a comeback any time soon.

Paul

There probably isn't a "comms module". It would be quite a bit smaller than a cell phone (no battery, display or keyboard) and so will be integrated with some other board, or more likely some other chip. Upgrading would probably require replacing the ECU or dashboard or wherever they stuck the functionality

When connectors are the biggest, most expensive and least reliable component you don't do "modules" if you can avoid it.

2G was up to the job, mostly off patent so cheap software implementations were available and at the time projected to have a longer lifespan than 3G.

9873210 wrote:

DrFfybes wrote:From the BBC...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68426263

It seems owners of Nissan Leaf cars more than 8 years old will soon be unable to use the remote warmup facility (presumably in conjunction with pretty much any remote facility) as it uses 2G technology.

Now 2 things strike me here..
1) surely the comms module could be upgraded relatively simply, once you'd managed to access it
2) on acutting edge technology pioneering car like the Leaf, what on earth were nissan doing using a comms protocol that was superceded 15 years earlier? 3G was out 10 years beforethe first Leaf rolled quietly off the production line, in fact 4G was available by the time it was launched.

Presumably their old "You can with a Nissan" slogan won't be making a comeback any time soon.

Paul

There probably isn't a "comms module". It would be quite a bit smaller than a cell phone (no battery, display or keyboard) and so will be integrated with some other board, or more likely some other chip. Upgrading would probably require replacing the ECU or dashboard or wherever they stuck the functionality

When connectors are the biggest, most expensive and least reliable component you don't do "modules" if you can avoid it.

2G was up to the job, mostly off patent so cheap software implementations were available and at the time projected to have a longer lifespan than 3G.

The Telematics Control Unit for the Leaf is behind the glove box https://docs.openvehicles.com/en/stable/components/vehicle_nissanleaf/docs/index.html#:~:text=The%20TCU%20is%20located%20behind,this%20page%20for%20LHD%20cars.

it would not be hard to provide a drop in replacement for that with a different modem ( I suspect they will have had to do this for different regions anyway) which would leave the antenna pass band as about the only other thing to consider from a tech perspective
- but I suspect it just wasn't worth it financially

-sd

9873210 wrote:2G was up to the job, mostly off patent so cheap software implementations were available and at the time projected to have a longer lifespan than 3G.

Which in fact it has. 3G is already being turned off in the UK. 2G is still going, for now.

Switching off the UK’s 3G mobile networks: what you need to know

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice-for-consumers/advice/3g-switch-off

Other consideration is that 2G coverage was always much better than 3G, so for low-bitrate applications like this it would just work over a much greater area of the country.