How to stop my Q7 from being robbed?

[muumipeikko]

Would they ever know? As long as you remove it before a service? To my knowledge there’s nothing on the car to log CANbus traffic. Once you disconnect it it’s gone. I’ve got gap insurance but that doesn’t mean your insurance won’t increase after a claim. £200 for a device that stops the car being nicked or >£200pa increase in insurance. Seems like a no brainier to me. I get why people are concerned about a device sending messages on the Bus but at the end of the day that’s all it’s doing, it’s not changing software/firmware. If it was to go wrong it’s highly unlikely to send a valid message to anything that would cause an affect. Audi just can’t be bothered to approve these devices. I really can’t see how they could ever cause any damage to anything else.


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I think if you are as technically minded as Andy then no but if you need to pay someone £200 in install it, you probably need to pay them to take it out and reinstall after it's been in garage and that will get expensive I suspect

[andyhud007]

CANBus traffic is logged on the MLBEvo but its not "user available"

Personally (and this is just me personally of course, nothing else). I would just install it myself but then I'm comfortable with that and I fully appreciate others are not and that is fine too. The car systems are clever enough and protected enough that its very hard to "toast" the car even if you wire it up wrong and ajtaylor82 is right, its not "changing" anything on the system. Its just intercepting traffic to stop the car from starting. One could argue that is "changing" something so I guess you can never satisfy everyone's thoughts.

I think its a great piece of kit. All modern cars work with a CANBus and there is even a good article on Wikipedia about what its all about.

Just my 2p

[anemeth]

I agree with Andy on this one.

Just to clarify, these can bus immobilizers in Q7 (4M) do not stop the engine starting, they stop the gearbox to be taken out of P (Park).

See the video how it works on our Audi:

Audi Q7 Autowatch Ghost Demonstration - YouTube

[ajtaylor82]

I agree with Andy on this one.

Just to clarify, these can bus immobilizers in Q7 (4M) do not stop the engine starting, they stop the gearbox to be taken out of P (Park).

See the video how it works on our Audi:

Audi Q7 Autowatch Ghost Demonstration - YouTube

I wonder what signal is modified on the CANbus for this... Brake pedal position sensor? If that’s the case then no amount of logging would suggest anything unusual should Audi milk the data.


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[ajtaylor82]

I still for the life of me can’t fathom why Audi wouldn’t install this sort of feature by default, even if you could switch it on or off. Do they just think most people don’t want the inconvenience? Or is there some other motivation whereby it’s good for business to have cars nicked... let’s face it, unless people stop buying VaG cars having thefts is actually good for business. Think of all the insurance write-off and the customer foots the bill in premium hikes.


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[muumipeikko]

I still for the life of me can’t fathom why Audi wouldn’t install this sort of feature by default, even if you could switch it on or off. Do they just think most people don’t want the inconvenience? Or is there some other motivation whereby it’s good for business to have cars nicked... let’s face it, unless people stop buying VaG cars having thefts is actually good for business. Think of all the insurance write-off and the customer foots the bill in premium hikes.


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I don't think they are motivated by repeat business, I think this sort of technology only works as people on the whole don't have it. These sort of gangs are like well oiled machines with a checklist of actions to perform to efficiently steal your car. Lets say tomorrow Audi fitted all cars with a Ghost Watch would that stop criminals? Hell no, that would just be another item on the checklist, while scumbag 1 is working on the alarms and coding the key, scumbag 2 is removing the GW device which as it's factory fitted and thus in a known location. Ghost watch only works as a anti-theft device as it throws a cog in the works of the well oiled machine which they were not expecting and haven't prepared for. When they can't engage drive, probably for the first time during the theft they panic, try a few brash things then think sod it, this isn't happening, time to move on to next car before we risk getting caught.