The First Automotive Easter Egg?

automandc writes "The October dead-tree issue of Popular Science is reporting that the new BMW M3 contains what they are calling the "first automotive easter egg" in its transmission control software. Apparently, the proper combination of commands to the electronically controlled manual transmission will cause the car to rev up to 4000rpm and drop the clutch (premitting burnout, which is normally impossible). According to the article, use of the feature more than 15 times voids the warranty in Eurpoe. Other limitations of the "acceleration-assist" feature are discussed in this Car and Driver article. According to popsci, U.S. laws won't allow the warranty limitation, so the U.S. version of the software only revs to 1500rpm, but dealers will install the european software if you ask. The only other mention I could find on the web is here."

Comments

manaul not

[djupedal]

Wanting a 5-speed sounds a bit like you're simply not up on recent (sic) automotive tech.

Manual shift transmissions went out long ago on high end race machines, aka F-1, as an example. Why try to enjoy an ultimate powerplant by shifting for yourself, when you'll be ignoring all that wonderful hp the engineers worked so hard to optimize. You and a manual trans cannot begin to take advantage of a modern engine. You're too slow and not connected to the car's computer. 5-speeds are old school.

I hate Easter Eggs, and now they get dangerous

[GrouchoMarx]

Good. So now if someone trips an easter egg by accident, instead of crashing the boss's computer, they total the car in front of them. Can I sue the manufacturer for this little gem if that happens?

Easter Eggs Bad, people. Easter Eggs major source of bugs. Easter Eggs source of strange, unexplained behavior. Easter Eggs source of the GDMF Doom clone in Excel. Sorry, I've got Doom alredy, I don't need another one taking up hard disk space.

Delete the automotive easter egg and put in something useful. Preferably something that won't raise my insurance rates (anymore than driving a car like this already will).