Podcast: From Diagnostics to Connected Cars: The OBD Evolution

In this episode, we discuss how on board diagnostic (OBD) ports came to be in modern cars and how they are being leveraged today for bring internet of things (IoT) to the automotive realm.

This podcast is sponsored by SAE International. 

Episode Notes

This episode is part of a series developed in collaboration with SAE International to explore the leading edge of mobility with the support of experts from industry and academia. Learn more about how vehicle diagnostics is evolving - especially with the adoption of EVs - by checking out the symposium discussed in the episode via this link.

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Transcript

Hey folks, do you ever wonder what that little port is by your left knee when you're driving your car? Well, it's called the onboard diagnostics tool. And surprisingly, it does a lot more than you think. So, if you're interested in learning more about that or wonder what the future of it could look like, then fasten your seatbelt and let's drive into it.

What's up friends, this is the NextByte podcast where one gentleman and one scholar explore the secret sauce behind cool tech and make it easy to understand.

Farbod: Alright peeps, as you heard today, we're talking about car diagnostics. Specifically, the onboard diagnostics tool. Now, you probably don't know what that is. I feel like the average driver doesn't really care about it much, but if you've ever done an emissions test in the United States, that's what the mechanic is using to make sure you pass or fail. Basically, it's this little port. They plug into it and it tells them if your car is running clean or not. Now, a little bit of history is needed here, right? Like, what is the onboard diagnostics besides what I just said, like, you know, in depth, and why did it come about? So, if we go back to the olden days where there was lead in your gasoline and your car was definitely not running clean.

Daniel: The good old days.

Farbod: It was a bad time. The good old days. It was not a good time. So, the government started passing regulation, bad was like, hey, we got to do better than this. And there was this idea of like, how do we make it more strict and somewhat more uniform? And before this onboard diagnostics tool, it used to be tailpipe tests. Like, you would bring your car in and they would connect to a machine to the tailpipe. You would run it for a period of time. Then it would analyze the stuff that you're putting out and they would pass or fail you based on that. The onboard diagnostics tool was brought about in the 1960s and 70s and what that allowed to do is you would have a computer on your car that was monitoring your engine, and that would tell the mechanic if it's running clean or not. Now, in the 1960s and 70s, when this first was coming about, everyone was apparently having their own flavor of this tool, and it wasn't until 1980 where General Motors brought about OBD-1, which was the first standardized version that everybody could abide by, and that had some of its own benefits. It was still pretty much just limited to your internal combustion engine's performance until 1996 when the state of California, which is probably a surprise to no one, had a much higher bar for what should be clean and what is good for the environment. For them, it wasn't good enough to just do the one-off check of the engine. They wanted real-time monitoring of the engine itself and the different statuses of the various systems. And then it could also get fault codes. So, if you've ever seen your check engine light come on or low tire pressure and all these different error codes, it could also understand those.

Daniel: Well, and that's what I was going to say is, I think there's a lot of, in this history that you're mentioning, there's a lot of mentions of like, oh, these regulatory bodies are forcing automakers to use this OBD system to find emissions-related issues. But I think my understanding of the history is like, actually the OBD system was built as a response to in the 1960s, Volkswagen was the first to put an onboard computer system to control fuel injection in the engine. They added the onboard diagnostic system as a part of the control system, basically a set of sensors that all communicate in the same language to let the computer that's controlling the car know, hey, is everything going, okay? It's like, you don't have to care as a driver as much about your oil temperature or the oxygen airflow coming into your engine or the battery voltage because you've got an OBD system that's connected to the computer and allows the computer to be smart enough to say like, hey, maybe my oil temperature is low, should I reduce RPMs for a little while to heat things up? I don't know but like it's allowing the computer to respond as result of the onboard diagnostic sensors. And it's funny you mentioned the check engine light. Have you seen check and check engine light memes? On the internet.

Farbod: No.

Daniel: All right, so there's a couple that…

Farbod: It’s a very niche set of memes.

Daniel: I don't I think I've just fallen off car, fallen off car Instagram accounts like car lover Instagram accounts. One of them being like me stands up really fast and then their response is my entire body and it shows like all the lights on, on a car, another one being check engine light. And then it shows someone who doesn't know what they're doing cracking open the hood and going like, yep, it's still there. But my favorite, I've actually included it in our prep sheet. You should scroll up to the top and read it.

Farbod: This little light.

Daniel: So, it's a check engine light and it goes this little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. Which is funny because I feel like almost every single Uber I've ever been in, there's a check engine light. And I'm like, why? This is telling you there's something wrong going on. Go get it fixed, especially if driving is your full-time job. Like, I just, so just to say, check engine light memes would not exist if not for the OBD computer, and for that, I'm grateful as well.

Farbod: For sure. And it's funny you brought up Volkswagen being kind of one of the pioneers in the early days of this, because with the digitization of these emissions tests, it opens the door for a “not so honest” feedback from a car if a manufacturer wanted to do that. And lo and behold, a manufacturer did. What was it, in like the 2010s, Volkswagen went through this whole controversy of detecting when there was a connection made to the bus, and then they would fake the results of their diesel cars. And it's funny because at the time, I remember people being like, there's no way they got a diesel car with such a low initiative, it's just impossible. And it turns out it was because they were lying about the report, they were giving out from the OBD bus. And it's very fitting.

Daniel: I'll tell you, as an owner of one of those diesel gate era cars with the license plate diesel gate, I'm outing myself here a little bit, but with a license plate diesel gate, the way that they had to tune the car's performance as a result of this regulatory pressure they felt for like potentially faking the OBD results during the emissions test. It was like the car's a lot less fun to drive now. After they've had to make it as efficient as they said it was. Their gas mileage isn't as good because they have to run the engine in a different way to reduce the amount of diesel emissions. And it's also not as fast. It essentially capped the horsepower capped the miles per gallon efficiency. It's just not as fun. I don't know.

Farbod: Darn, darn. But I guess a testament to how reliant we are on this OBD port for literally anything that we do. And that's the general idea of what this tool is and why it was brought about and how it's used today. But speaking of today, because of how much data you can get from this thing, this port, and I think in our last episode, we talked about internet moving from an internet of information to an internet of things where devices are connected, we've seen a big rollout of these connected car devices from different manufacturers that allow you to understand the driving behaviors of someone that has a car where the OBD port is connected to a smart device. It allows you to understand the diagnostic issues that your car is having over a period of time. And probably two years ago? We did an episode with research coming out of Carnegie Mellon University. This student, I think PhD student at the time, had made a report where they used a machine learning model that kept track of different car models, the diagnostic codes it was running through to run the emissions test, essentially without ever having to go to a mechanic. And they did a trial run with the car data from like Colorado. And they were like, we are pretty much on par with what you would get if you would physically roll up your car to a mechanic. So that's the amount of data that you can get from these things and the power you can have by analyzing it in different ways. This is special.

Daniel: There's, what do you call it? Insurance companies, I think it's Progressive.

Farbod: Yes.

Daniel: It's the big one that does it where you can plug a tiny computer into the OBD port and the big new wave in insurance has been variable pricing based off of your driving habits. So, if you're a safe driver, you get a lower insurance rate. And if you're an unsafe driver, you get a higher insurance rate to kind of make it more fair for the good drivers to not pay as much. And then for the bad drivers, they do have to pay more. And they are doing the same thing. They're plugging a little computer into the OBD port and they're, I don't know if they're remotely tracking this through that computer, that if it's connected to a cellular network or if you remove this little computer and send it back to progressive and then they analyze the data, I'm not sure. But they're using a computer that's attached to this OBD port, which is a standardized plug to be able to access and understand what's going on in that diagnostic system on the vehicle. And they're able to use that to inform insurance pricing. So, there's just a whole wave of using this information. By the way, looked it up, episode 8 is the one you're talking about.

Farbod: Oh my God, four years ago.

Daniel: Yeah, so almost four years ago. If you're interested, folks, the audio quality is probably going to be way worse than what we're doing now. But you can go check out episode 8 and hear about researchers at Carnegie Mellon with a machine learning model that can do remote vehicle emissions inspections more accurately than the OBD tests work today. And it honestly would be interesting to try and follow up on that, because it's been four years. I wonder if there's anything that's come out into the real world.

Farbod: For sure, and I was gonna say, when we were shooting that episode, I was actually actively working as a part of a team that was developing one of these products. So, I can give a little bit of feedback. They are typically cell connected, so they're just passing data to a database somewhere to be analyzed. And what's been fascinating, like what you see popping up in the industry, is these things are now so powerful for fleet management. So, imagine you're like a rental car company. Right? Not only do you care about how the person who runs your car is driving, but you have thousands and thousands of cars that you want to keep track of in terms of their maintenance, right? Like how they're actually the health of those cars. This allows you to do just that. Then you have folks that run fleets of trucks, right? Via the OBD port, you can understand what path they're taking, how efficiently they're able to make deliveries. And again, the health of those machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So, this has opened the gates to so much more insight about cars that we've ever had access to before. So, it's gone from something-

Daniel: And cars are becoming smarter and smarter too, right?

Farbod: This is true.

Daniel: Not only do you wanna measure how hot is the engine burning? Is my tire pressure, okay? What's the mix of oxygen going into the engine and how dirty are my emissions? Right now, with electric vehicles, you care a lot about very specific measurements on the electric power train, on the battery health. There's newer components that are as opposed to a controlled explosion, which is what combustion is, that are focused on electronics, right? That allows us to get even more insight into how the system is working.

Farbod: Well, this is a good segue to talk about EVs, right? So, we talked about the origins of these OBD ports, and it's all about internal combustion engines. Now that we're talking about electric vehicles and hybrids and things like that, how is this carrying over? I mean, the short answer is just like the early days with OBDs, all these different EV manufacturers kind of have their own protocols, but that's not gonna cut it, right? Like we have to have a standard again. So here, perfect plug for today's episode sponsor SAE. SAE has come up with a new standard. It's the J1979-3 for OBDs of zero emission and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. So, this encapsulates pretty much every clean car that you see out on the road today. And with this new model, like you said, the goal is you get access to the battery. You get access to the electric power train. You get access to how the energy management system is working. So, all these things that you didn't care about before for an internal combustion engine, you now have access to with these EVs. And what's fascinating to me is, although the standard is like relatively new, starting with 2026 models, 40% of all cars that fall into this category are supposed to have it. And starting 2027 models, 100% of them are gonna have it. So, this is gonna be the norm moving forward in a year's time.

Daniel: Well, and if you're a professional working in the automotive realm or in the automotive adjacent realm, right? So, I would say I'm an automotive person. Farbod, an automotive adjacent person having worked on an IoT device for cars, right? Both of us would be part of this target audiences, like engineers who are interested in learning more. And we're going to link this in the show notes. I don't think I'm done, but I want to highlight, just because it's an awesome plug here for our sponsor. SAE is hosting an OBD symposium in Europe on March 11th through 13th in Porto, Portugal, where I want to go. Really bad. And they're gonna gather a bunch of leading professionals from the auto industry to talk about what's this future of OBD look like, what do advance vehicle diagnostics look like, and then how does it also look like from a regulatory standpoint? Because I think we've mentioned those two themes are really interesting in the history of OBD, and they're also gonna be really interesting in the future of OBDs. How are automakers using this to make sure that their vehicles run more efficiently? And then the other one is how are regulatory bodies using this data to make sure that we're not, that there aren't serial polluters out on the road ruining the air for the rest of us. So, kind of interesting, if you're interested in that event, there's more info linked in the article in the show notes, but there's more still I want to talk about, about OBD, before we wrap up here.

Farbod: The big one I wanted to say is this kind of levels the playing field, right? Like you could buy a car from a manufacturer like Tesla that gives you a lot of in-depth analysis about the various components of your car, right? And that's awesome. But what if you buy it from an up and comer manufacturer? What if they just don't have that built in? Well, that's frustrating, right? Like shouldn't you be able to get the same level of insight as everyone else about how your car is doing? Well, this is what that OBD port can provide, a baseline for everyone to get the necessary information about the health of their vehicle and even maybe access to those higher-level processing data output that you get from the Carnegie Mellon example that we were talking about earlier.

Daniel: Well, and there's an interesting conversation we have to have here. It's an ongoing battle, I think you and I usually sit on opposite sides of the table on this one, so it'll be interesting, around some big brotherisms. So, with OBD3, right, if they're all connected to cellular networks for real-time fault reporting, do you think government bodies are also gonna want to understand real-time emissions data on every single car on the road? In my mind, it's a plus, because I'm like, if I know my car is not bad, I don't have to go in for emissions testing every one or two years just to get my new registration stickers. Like I can just keep driving and driving and driving until my car tells me something's wrong and then I need to fix it. And then it's removed this bottleneck. I've got a car right now, it's delinquent on its emissions inspection. Cause it's just so annoying like for me to take time out of my day to go drive this over and get the test done. Even though I know I need to do it. In my mind personally, I'd be okay if the government is very transparent about how this data is being transmitted and what data is being transmitted. Like I would be perfectly okay getting a notice in the mail or an email saying, hey, your vehicle has failed remote emissions inspection, come fix it. Or continuing to get updates saying, hey, you don't need to go do your emissions inspection. We checked and you've been good for the last year.

Farbod: Well, that's the thing. That's the keyword. I would be okay, right? And that's, I think the option that should be offered to people is, do you want us to have data about your emissions and stuff in real time? If so, you get the convenience of not having to come in. If not, do the things you do as normal. And then I think it was this year that we talked about a research at a U Michigan where just having GPS data about how cars are moving through different areas could help them fine tune traffic lights, right? Which makes the life of a commuter much better. It gets rid of a lot of the inefficiency that causes heavy traffic. So that I see more of like a organ donor check is like if you wanna do something that's a net positive for society, you can opt into it. If not, that's also okay. No one's gonna force that data out at you.

Daniel: Maybe you get access to the express lanes by doing that.

Farbod: Ooh, maybe, yeah. But in general, that's my stance. And I think that's what my stance was in episode 8, four years ago, is that we should be able to give the users the ability to say “yeah, I want to share my data or no I don't.” And over time I feel like just generally what I've seen people be comfortable with, they're gonna be more into giving out that information about themselves. Heck, people right now are so happy to give you their email address if they get a chance to win a pair of socks. So maybe this is more lax than we think.

Daniel: I mean there are these apps that pay people for sharing their location 24 seven. Like there are endless opportunities for people to sell their data out. In my mind though, this isn't like for, you know, a couple cents a day, me sharing my location, right? This is something that is a thorn in my side and it doesn't make sense, right? If my car is good, why do I need to stop and have it fixed or inspected? And if my car is bad, I wanna fix it day one. I don't wanna wait 18 months till the next time I have an inspection to go fix it.

Farbod: I agree, I'm the same boat as you. I probably would opt into something like this.

Daniel: Wow, I'm surprised.

Farbod: No, not that surprised, come on now.

Daniel: I don't know man, you're anti-Big Brother. You're a little brother.

Farbod: This is true. I think that's about it. Daniel, you already mentioned that, but we're gonna have the link to this symposium that we talked about taking place in Europe in March for the folks that are interested. Again, it's surprising because we always think that the average Joe is our primary target with this podcast, but the analytics show that a lot of the folks listening or professional in the industry. So, if this is something that you're interested in, if you're in the automotive industry or tangential like I am, and you're gonna be in Europe, definitely check it out.

Daniel: Or you want to go to Europe.

Farbod: Porto, beautiful. Portugal, beautiful. Incredible people.

Daniel: I'm thinking about it.

Farbod: Yeah, you should sign up.

Daniel: All right, man, I think that's the pod.

Farbod: Yep, thanks for listening.

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The Next Byte: We're two engineers on a mission to simplify complex science & technology, making it easy to understand. In each episode of our show, we dive into world-changing tech (such as AI, robotics, 3D printing, IoT, & much more), all while keeping it entertaining & engaging along the way.