If The Problem Persists, Reboot The Car

prostoalex writes "Ever-increasing presence of high-tech devices in modern cars is a double-edged sword, the New York Times discovers. Software from different suppliers brings up to some peculiar bugs, such as a heater turning itself on during a hot summer day. In December last year ABI Research estimated that roughly 30% of all warranty issues with new cars were microprocessor- and software-related. The NYT article also quotes an interesting prediction from IBM, saying that by 2010 almost all cars will have the same mechanical systems (hardware), and the differences will be primarily on software level." (That prediction seems as accurate as the IBM prediction that there was a worldwide market for 10 or so computers.)

Comments

Paying

[Lord_Dweomer]

I don't care if I have to reboot my car. I understand that with advances in systems, there comes problems, and as long as I can reboot it as easily as my PC, thats fine. And it needs to have a lot of redundancy built in so that not only does it not disrupt my driving, but I can do it on the fly too.

I will NOT pay to bring it to some expensive certified dealership to get my fucking car rebooted.

That would be akin to bringing your computer to M$ and paying them to fix it every time it crashed.

The problem is misstated

[Weaselmancer]

Ever-increasing presence of high-tech devices in modern cars is a double-edged sword, the New York Times discovers.

The problem the NYT is describing here is not high-tech devices. The problem is crappy firmware.

The auto industry is driven by release dates. The release date for the '06 version of your favorite car is already determined by the industry. Doesn't matter if it's not 100%, it ships that day, regardless.

This is not the best environment to create software in. Hence, you get crappy firmware and that's where those 30% of service calls come from. Believe me, if the auto industry wanted to make bullet proof firmware, the tools are out there (think Mars Rover and VxWorks for example). But the service calls cost less than the development effort, and the end result is - crappy firmware.