alt Hacker News"supply voltage to the electronic control system was purposely lowered and perturbed to simulate bad alternator and/or battery system. The result from the manipulation of supply voltage was rather astonishing. The control systems seemed to work even with the perturbed supply voltage but not correctly. As a matter of fact, it seemed to cause the sudden unintended acceleration repeatedly. The supply voltage to the ECU can be disturbed by minor mishap in the alternator output function and possibly by the overload of ever increasing use of electric devices in the vehicle by the driver. In any case, the current study showed the reproduction of the sudden unintended acceleration when the supply voltage changes abruptly by sudden drop of the alternator output voltage or by overload of the electric devices."
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03790...
Replies
So they drop the voltage to mimic an engine cranking, and they are surprised that the ECU behaves like it is cranking. When engine cranks, voltage drops below minimum voltage required by ECU to keep SW running (SW resets). To counter these, ECUs keep outputs to the max. Normally I would expect an electrical loop with the crank signal though.
Couldn't read the article, only the summary, but it sounds like glitching by the description. I expect the ECU lowers 12V to 5V or 3.3V by using a buck converter which includes a filter capacitor. To glitch the CPU, the 12V would need to drop well below 5V to have any effect. I don't see how this could happen. If the battery is weak enough to drop below 9V under any conditions other than a short, that car won't even start. My suspicion is that they glitched the ECU power supply directly, not the 12V input - the summary doesn't say.
My conclusion is that it's mosty (scientific) clickbait.