Slashdot Mirror
Software Glitches Stall Toyota Prius
t35t0r writes "CNN/Money/Tech reports that 2004 and early 2005 Toyota Prius models have software bugs that cause them to stall while traveling at highway speeds. While no accidents were reported to have been caused by the software glitch, could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?"
...from Ford.
Toyota: The next Microsoft.
Like planes, and other vehicles, any software problem should failover to a tested, less automated system. If my car stalls on the highway and I lose power steering and/or brakes, there's a big problem. Instead of stalling the engine, it should just shut down and let the engine take over, maybe flashing some warning lights.
I was only trying to install the latest windshield wiper drivers....
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch.
This may be the saddest thing of all, but it was a little bit forecast. I think car makers should more rely on "old school" things to make sure cars just work.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
for my flying car. There will be a plumet, followed by a very sudden stop at the end.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Yes officer, I was trying to figure out how fast I was going but the speedometer was not refreshing and when I looked up "WHAM!"
...then... uh... i guess things would be just like they are now
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I guess blue is going to be the dreadest color for a production line....
Sounds very Familiar
More to the point. How does everyone feel giving up full control of thier car? What about the Mercedes digital brakes? There is no physical link between the pedal and the wheels.
We were promised self driving cars, and we're on the way to it.
--sig fault--
Yes.
"You have shifted gears. You must restart your car for these changes to take effect."
I hate that pun every time we talk about software and some kind of vehicle. Next, of course, comes the Microsoft jabs - even when MS isn't involved. *sigh*
More on-topic, Slashdot recently ran an article about some guys trying to infect a Prius via Bluetooth, and were able to accomplish a system crash repeatedly. Turned out to be low on battery power.
Didn't Microsoft team up with general motors recently? *snickers*
João Pinheiro
The 2001/2002 Ford Escapes have to have the EEPROM flashed as part of a transmission recall. The days of software fixes for cars have been with us for a while.
I drive a Prius and while the gas engine does stall out at times, even at highway speeds, it's never caused a problem. After the first few times of it happening in the city, you tend to ignore the switch over to solely electric power.
Oh. At red lights. Not at highway speeds. Never mind.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
video of the car-to-car worm via bluetooth/ wifi that stalls cars
you would watch it move like a wave through traffic: on one end, normal moving traffic, on the other, fender benders and honking horns and frozen cars
it would move under overpasses and propagate upward and spread in either direction, like dominoes
awesome and frightening and completely plausible in the next 10-20 years
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They meant:
It's a five minute software upgrade, but if we told you that, you'd be upset when the service dept made you wait for an hour.
And now, for your reading pleasure, a litany of BSOD and crashing Windows jokes.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of crashing Toyota Priuses...
What highway speeds ?
Cue the "Blame Microsoft" and "BSOD" jokes here
--------------
hhhahahahhaha!
You fail it, bitch. Better luck next time.
I fear a day would come when we have to pay yearly software license renewal fee to keep our cars running.
"Your vehicle OS license is due to expire in (insert date.) After which you may no longer able to operate your vehicle. Please contact (insert brand name) for OS license renewal."
Or for that matter, receiving the following message on the dash board LCD *AFTER* installing an upgrade...
"Your vehicle is incompatble with this version of OS, please upgrade your vehicle."
Stalling while going fast just means you'll start slowing down instead of having power. It would be dangerous if you were, say, passing a semi, with another semi coming head on... but you could probably slam on the brakes and pull back into your lane.
Unfortunately, if we're talking an automatic, or you were to depress the clutch, all your fancy power steering and power brakes might be gone... every try to use power steering without the engine running.. NOT EASY.
is still the world most reliable car
it has nothing to do with electronics
The problem is that the thing runs on Java and similar crap like that. That's just retarded.
How many medical devices use Java? How many flight control systems use Java? You think there is a reason for that?
Back in the 80s, I had an old beater 1971 Chevy Van with the usual Weird Chevy Electrical Problems. Every once in a while the engine would stop running while I was driving down the road (which is a problem for power steering...), so I'd put it in neutral and reboot, which would usually work. My current van is a 1987 Chevy, with a new engine installed about 5 years ago. The engine's not quite identical to the original, and every once in a while the monitoring system decides something's wrong and turns on the "Service Engine Soon" light, typically when I accelerate to pass somebody while going uphill on a freeway. There's no harm done, as long as that's the cause (as opposed to something actually being wrong with it), but to turn the light off you also have to reboot the car.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?"
Without putting too fine a point on it, yes! But there is no reason to go all chicken little. Standards of reliability for automotive software are generally much higher than for desktop PC software. No EULAs and auto manufacturers generally can not disclaim warranties. If a car breaks down due to crappy software, Consumer Reports will put out a report and people won't buy it. Additionally there are Lemon Laws and lots of eager lawyers to protect consumers. Unlike PCs where we have been trained to expect crashing software, people don't put up with that in cars, especially since there is the potential for physical harm when hurtling down the road at 80mph.
I drive either a Jetta or a Fiero. Neither of them have power windows, ABS, etc. The Fiero doesn't even have power steering. Both have a 5 speed manual transmission. I've never had any problems repairing stuff, mainly because of having things like a 5 speed, crank windows, etc. People don't really need a computer to run their cars for them. If 90% of people are running unstable computers (Windows), do they really need things to make them drive worse? Sure, having a computer with a DVD Nav unit is nice and all, but computers shouldn't be driving cars when half the people on the road can't even do it well.
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?
;)
It's been well known for a long time that parking a computer-equipped car (that is, one with at least electronic ignition and/or electronic fuel injection) under a high-voltage powerline can very well "crash" the computer or scramble the computer's memory to the point that it's impossible to start.
I first heard of that problem when I was a kid, and I'm not all that young
As for "software update", I've known rice-boys and other engine tuners program and replace the ROM chip containing the ignition timings in their cars to gain power, or remote the overrev safety, for the longuest time.
So, all in all, not exactly software, but still, cars without any kind of mecanical problem that won't start, or will stop because of buggy computers aren't new.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Do a search for "software" on this page
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Perhaps one way to ensure a more robust automation design a certification process should be formalized for more advanced vehicles. The process will not only make sure that the fail-safe path works, but also ensure the car manufactures did indeed test out all possible cause of failer and abnormal operation (under most circumstances, expect like someone pro intentionally rig their car to kill themselves).
"...could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?"
Yes.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Section 2.c. The Apple software is not intended for use in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control systems, life support machines or other equipment in which the failure of the Apple software could lead to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.
Maybe the Prius Kernel has the should have the same warning?
"Please insert your Prius into the original location from which the software was installed."
Operator, give me the number for 911!
13 unconfirmed reports from essentially anonymous forum postings.
Bloody ridiculous.
I have one of these cars and it performs flawlessly, as does most other peoples.
There are very VERY few issue's with this exceptional car.
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
From the actual article: The report said no injuries or fatalities have been linked to the problem, but it did not say whether there had been accidents due to the problem.
Close enough for government work, eh?
If OS's Were Cars If operating systems ran your car, and you needed to go to the shops... MS-DOS: You get in the car and try to remember where you put the keys. Windows: You get in the car and drive to the shops very slowly, because attached to the back of the car is a freight train. Macintosh System 7: You get in the car to drive to the shops and the car drives you to church. Unix: You get in the car and type 'grep store'. After reaching speeds of 200 mph en route, you arrive at the barbershop. Windows NT: You get in the car and write a letter that says "go to the shops". Then you get out of the car and nail the letter to the dashboard. Taligent/Pink: You walk to the store with Ricardo Montalban who tells you how wonderful it will be when he can fly you to the store in his LearJet. OS/2: After fuelling up with 6000 gallons of fuel, you get in the car and drive to the shops with a motorcycle escort and a marching band in procession. Halfway there, the car blows up, killing everyone. S/36 SSP: You get in the car and drive to the shops. Halfway there you run out of fuel. While walking the rest of the way, you are run over by kids with mopeds. AS/400: An attendant kicks you into the car and then drives you to the shops where you get to watch everyone else buying filets mignon.
I have a 1999 Volvo S80. The car basically runs on a server/client basis with all the systems. The steering is even drive by wire. I have had two incedents where scheduled maintenance included software updates to the car's systems.
I just type my sig in the reply form...
So we now get the reliability of a piece of software and self-control and predictability of a human with the current technology? Just great.
My friend has a Merc S500, and he mentions having to go into the shop for a "software update". Sometimes it takes days (tho he gets a loaner). I wonder why he has to... apparently his class of cars comes with a satellite modem to be able to apply patches remotely!
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
1.2 million people a year die on the world's roads. Yet whenever a one-off incident (even a non-fatal / non injury one) grabs the headlines because there was something unusual about it, people start to panic.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
What RTOS are they using in the Prius?
;)
I know that Steve "Woz" has several of them. Maybe he can talk to Steve J about putting OS X in it.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
or your 6 bit counter will roll over.
Someone need only put linux on it, and all would be solved!
Go ahead and call me unreliable; reliable is just a synonym for predictable.
*hic* ...But Officer, sorry I was driving like a drunk, I just upgraded to the latest version of Windows Vehicles Edition 2005! My car's supposed to run faster!
When will car manufacturers stop toying with software and just do it all by native hardware?
Think about it, today's phones just *HAVE* to have all these neat features and software, but look how vulnerable they are. I still have my old Kyocera Phantom and older Nokia phones. No worries about viruses or worms hitting my phones, nope, and they respond and react faster than any of my friend's fancier phones. Come on, I can bet money someone out there can just handle this problem by making a hardware board with everything already done on the chip ROM, with as few features as possible, but enough to make it functional and WORK.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
See what happens when you outsource your implementation to people who can barely speak, and read, the English specs?
And... As I'm an inqual opportunity hatemonger...
See what happens when you give CS degrees to people who learn to code on VB?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Gives a whole new meaning to Blue Screen of Death.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Reminds me of driving with my mother in a Hyundai Excel.
Going down the road, using only a change of the accelerator position: the lawn-mower-esque throttle comes apart.
It accelerates to about 90 mph (fortunately, this is a straight country road starting to climb a hill).
I'm a little agitated. Mother reminds me that, ultimately, turning the key to off within the ignition will stop any car.
Sort of a three-finger salute[1], if you will.
[1]ctrl-alt-del
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
they should provide alt-ctrl-del buttons just in case the computer crashes.
As we all know mechnical cars are perfect and without any defect at all. You never see one of those reliable things by the side of the road!
...but on the other hand I do wish they would design their software with something like CSP so that they could use a formal model checker like FDR2. Something like that should resolve almost all of these annoying bugs and race conditions.
Of course when a old-style mechanical car has a problem at least you can just connect it to a modem and get a redesigned fuel system dropped in without and cost or hassle!
Beep beep.
I live in SF Bay Area where these things have been THE status symbol ever since the revamped 2004 model came out. People pay ridiculous premiums to show how much they care about the environment.
;->
That's fine, but I've always wondered if these Prius buyers really appreciate how much extra they are paying (even when you factor in gas savings). They are buying a new model of car (in relative terms) but also a new TYPE of car. That means there will be plenty of glitches like this one, and there will be parts failing earlier than expected. There will be maintenence headaches and once people start having to pay for the fixes they could be pricey.
Toyota has earned a nice reputation for quality but there's only so much they can do in terms of quality with a brand new technology. Go ahead and buy your Prius but do so with both eyes open. And download the patches
I drive a 1976 TVR 2500M. No fancy black boxes, no computerized doodads, just one great big honkin' engine and a manual gearbox.
Wouldn't have it any other way.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I guess not everyone has seen this. I thought it was kinda funny.
(From Here
At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon.
In response to Mr. Gates' comments, General Motors issued the following press release (by Mr. Welch himself, the GM CEO).
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you'd have to buy a new car.
2. Occasionally your car would just die on the motorway for no reason, and you'd have to restart it. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, restart and drive on.
3. Occasionally, executing a manoeuvre would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this too.
4. You could only have one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a "Car 95" or a "Car NT". But then you'd have to buy more seats.
5. Amiga would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as reliable, five times as fast, twice as easy to drive - but it would only run on five percent of the roads.
6. Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars which would make their cars go much slower.
7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights would be replaced with a single "General Car Fault" warning light.
8. People would get excited about the "new" features in Microsoft cars, forgetting completely that they had been available in other cars for many years.
9. We'd all have to switch to Microsoft gas and all auto fluids but the packaging would be superb.
10. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
11. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
12. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.
13. They wouldn't build their own engines, but form a cartel with their engine suppliers. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it.
14. There would be an "Engium Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.
15. Microsoft cars would have a special radio/cassette player which would only be able to listen to Microsoft FM, and play Microsoft Cassettes. Unless of course, you buy the upgrade to use existing stuff.
16. Microsoft would do so well, because even though they don't own any roads, all of the road manufacturers would give away Microsoft cars free, including IBM!
17. If you still ran old versions of car (ie. CarDOS 6.22/CarWIN 3.11), then you would be called old fashioned, but you would be able to drive much faster, and on more roads!
18. If you couldn't afford to buy a new car, then you could just borrow your friends, and then copy it.
19. Whenever you bought a car, you would have to reorganise the ignition for a few days before it worked.
20. You would need to buy an upgrade to run cars on a motorway next to each other.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
The article summary misses the point. Software updates and fixes shouldn't be necessary for any software. Due primarily to companies like Microsoft teaching us that improperly tested software is OK, and using their paying customers as beta testers, we've now reached this point. Car manufacturers that do not properly test their software should be held accountable both civilly and criminally.
I do prefer if cars were to remain mechanically simple. How much tech is really needed here? And what's the average NJ greese monkey to do once all cars require a geek to maintain?
guess my headline wasn't funny enough...
Just gives it new meaning does it not!!!
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?
I think we are. New cars have more and more software, controlling more and more functions and I don't see that trend possibly stopping or reversing any time soon. Since no software known to man has ever been completely bug free there will sooner or later be a bug that causes a crash. There were aircrafts and spacecrafts that crashed due to software 'glitches' and I can't imagine car companies doing more extensive testing than Boeing or NASA.
What OS is the Prius Running? (Remind me never to use it for mission critical operations)
"Holy rusted metal, Batman!"
Regular devourers of world news will recall that a few years ago, Bridgestone/Firestone got sued for producing tires with a propensity for exploding. A few years before then, there were horror stories of malfunctioning cruise control that would activate itself due to a short-circuit, with no way to switch it off.
Actually, a similar fault to that last one even appeared on the Space Shuttle - the last launch window was scrubbed when it was realized that the attitude rockets could fire themselves, even when the power was switched off.
Engineering to build fault-tolerent systems (ie: systems that will still behave sensibly, even when something goes wrong) is expensive, difficult, time-consuming and requires enormous resources to cover every possible aspect.
Even when faced with the prospect of multi-million dollar lawsuits for death/injury, it is often cheaper to simply let people die a torturous, firey death in agony than to prevent such incidents from arising. Because we live in a competitive world, where success is measured in dollars, there is simply no incentive to get things right. Getting things affordably wrong is a far more profitable approach.
It would be possible to build a car that can do 100 miles to the gallon, be able to keep the occupants intact after a 150 mph head-on collision (F1 monocoques can handles 240 mph collisions) and have software driving every aspect of the system that is not only 100% free of bugs but is able to adapt to handle the natural degredation of the hardware. Such a car would cost about as much as a NASA Space Shuttle and don't expect the insurance to be any less, simply because of the theft value.
A company producing such a car might sell as many as one. The McLaren F1 road car would be much more affordable but is wtill somewhere in the low double-digit sales, and was reportedly still in single-figure sales at the end of the first year.
Having said that, I think that it should be mandatory that car companies produce the very best they can. Failure is not only an option, it's often so cheap that it's the best option. That should not be the case, ever. Bugs in software and failures of hardware are going to happen in the Real World, but they should not be encouraged. Good practices, good designs and thorough design reviews should be the norm.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Any other cobra owners remember the 2003 stall issue? That one caused several accidents and took a long time for Ford to release a fix for the problem, I personally only had it happen once and that was in a long sweeping turn at about 70mph, I was about to get on the brakes because of slower traffic ahead of me and it stalled out leaving me with no ps or vac assisted brakes in a turn moving faster than I should have been. Lucky for me I recovered with no problem, but it could have been bad.
Always remember to flash the BIOS on full charge and when stationary next time.
Growing up we did most of our own car repairs, changed the oil, etc. But with our newer car we cannot do a lot if something goes wrong, especially with electronics which is what fails 90% of the time.
The day my push mower won't start because of a faulty sensor is probably the day I really get mad. Why? Because with all this technology, I think many, especially engineers, might have forgotten that true genisus is making something complex simple. Too often I think we are making simple things way too complex.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Just beacuse you can shove a computer into something doesnt make it the right thing to do.
This is a great example. Ill stick with real cars.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
When you thought bugs splatting against the windshield was bad enough, now this. Next thing you know giant bugs from space will be eating the asphalt. Go figure...
but that's because they run out of gas between refuelling stops every few miles ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Don't you just close all the windows and restart the car...
There's also the potential to be able to "upgrade" your car. Say a software patch will give you an extra 5 or 10 miles/gallon. That could be pretty cool.
www.joshferguson.org
if it was a browser - and provided by a certain company - it would popup a window in front of your windshield informing you "Software upgrade available now! Click OK to continue driving!" and obscure your vision and lock steering until you clicked on it.
...
Now that would hurt
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"You now have 9 gear changes left before you need to re-register your copies of MS CarWindows 2009 SP4".
... was talking about steer-by-wire/drive-by-wire type of car, where there is no direct mechanical link between your steering wheel or brake pedal and the wheel. So, if software controlling THAT electronic link fails you can do almost nothing (I can only hope they would not come up with "parking break by wire" concept! ;-) ).
Paul B.
or just imagine the Blue Screams of Death ... or Red Screams one supposes ... when that happens.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Except there are confirmed reports...and Toyota admits they have a software bug. Obviously you love your car to the point you are irrational about it. My friend owns a Prius and he was happy to know there was a problem so he will be that much more careful when he drives up to Santa Fe on the freeway this weekend. Obviously there is some corner case that causes the software to do this or it would happen a lot more often...it isn't surprsing you haven't experienced it. But you do understand that even though you haven't experienced anything yet, something wrong could be just around the corner. And just becasue you haven't experienced any significant problems, doesn't mean that others are making problems up when things go wrong with theirs.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Bring on cars that don't let people be idiots.
I'll be happy to use such cars the day they make computers that are not morons.
I'm frankly happier with fallout from idiots than the spooky fallout from moronic computer systems.
And I am an early adoptor of tech. Just try to get normal people to use one!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... we have a Mazda MPV, 2003 I think. For a year it's been horribly jolting every so often when it changes gears (auto). The dealership told us it was the software, but it's been going on for awhile. A week ago they finally told us that they'd fix it, they hooked it up and redid the software, and it works flawlessly now.
=/
According to the organizations (JD Power, Consumer reports) who do objective studies of such things, the Prius has been more reliable, with higher owner satisfaction, that almost any other model.
Electronic systems are, in general, more reliable, with lower failure rates, than the mechanical systems they replace. They are also easier to service. (Though the repair bill may very well be higher, and specialized equipment may be necessary.)
This "software", as others have said, are not the same as the software we run on our PCs. The software quality standards are higher, and the testing is far more intense.
People lament the loss of simpler mechanical systems that can be fixed with know-how and a socket set. We publicize every example of a system failure we hear of. But the numbers don't lie: a 2005 model with a half-dozen embedded computers has a far lower incidence of problems than a corresponding 1970 model when it was new. You are far less likely to ever have to call a tow truck in your lifetime than your father/grandfather was.
Sensationalism is so much more fun than fact, though.
You were driving by wire before. The only difference is that the butterfly valve was wired directly by cable. The Throttle Position Sensor (TPS) told the computer what your foot was doing. All they've done is make the butterfly servo-driven instead of cable driven, so they can fine-tune its opening and closing for better economy.
When the TPS goes bad, your engine starts acting funny--my car started revving by itself and not decelerating when I took my foot off the pedal. The TPS was replaced under warranty. Good thing I had a manual so I could push the clutch quickly when it decided to act up.
My car, a 2004 rx-8, has a similar setup. It's my understanding if the throttle position sensor fails on a car with a manual tranny, it goes into limp home mode. The computer will try to keep the engine speed at 2k rpms. I would guess the automatics will limp home at 1300 rpms...
Maybe the problems are going from hardware to software to some extent, but they aren't new. My first car I bought new was an 87 Topaz. I was driving it southbound on I-5 in Seattle, when it started slowing down for no reason. I stepped on the gas and it slowed down more. I let my foot up, thinking the engine was just failing, and I sped up like crazy. Turned out that whatever chip was controlling the throttle got borked somehow and it got inverted.
Man, that was weird. I pulled over, and had to floor it to stop. It required replacement of a pretty expensive part. Maybe if it were in software they could fix it more cheaply.
Nahhhhh. Who am I kidding?
There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we create software. Contrary to conventional wisdom, unreliability is not an essential characteristic of complex software programs. The solution to the unreliability problem will require a radical change in the way we program our computers. I argue that the main reason that software is so unreliable and so hard to develop has to do with a custom that is as old as the computer: the practice of using the algorithm as the basis of software construction. I argue further that moving to a signal-based, synchronous (**) software model will not only result in an improvement of several orders of magnitude in productivity, but also in programs that are guaranteed free of defects, regardless of their complexity. For additional info on why algorithmic software is the werewolf that must be killed with a silver bullet, go to link below.
Look like robots will destroy us after all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Ecogeeks love the Prius, as does the press. No one talks about it's downsides. Stuff like this (overly dependent on software controls), front heavy steering due to battery weigh, shaving off steel for less weighty aluminum and magnesium in some areas (still over 200 pounds heavier than comparable cars), VERY expensive maintenance when specialty parts (there are a ton of them) break, replacement of main batteries after 18 months.
Prius is a horribly expensive car to own. It accelerates like a dog, too. Low emission diesel like in Europe is a better solution, or heck bio-diesel. Diesels get great fuel economy and provide lots of low end torque where you need it.
Software has it's place (electronic tuning of fuel injection) but not to the Prius / BMW levels.
And it's the real deal, not one of those H2 wanna-bes. If one of those Toy cars stalls in front of me, I'll just drop into 1st gear and crawl over it. Meh.
no no no no no
do not turn off the ignition until the car is stopped if you do that you loose your power steering and brakes, the engine will bounce of the rev limiter for a minute but shit happens.
1. shift to neutral
2. stop car
3. turn off ignition
4 . profit (sue ford)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
in 5... 4... 3... ...
Calcars
Plug-in hybrid = energy choice.
Kook Alert!
... because perhaps by then all the people repeating the tired jokes about "if microsoft made cars" will have given up.
Oh wait, this is slashdot, even the dupe is going to have tired jokes.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
(snip)
From: FreeCAR Security Advisories
To: FreeCAR Security Advisories
Subject: [FreeCAR-Announce]
Date: Fri, 13 May 2009 15:25:00 GMT
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
FreeCAR-SA-55:9.hpp Security Advisory
The FreeCAR Project
Topic: firing order disclosure when using 87 octane in acura models
Category: engine
Module: fire
Announced: 2009-05-13
Revised: 2009-05-13
Affects: All FreeCAR releases.
Corrected: 2009-05-13 00:13:00 UTC (RELENG_7, 7.4-STABLE)
0. Revision History
v1.0 2009-05-13 Initial release.
v1.1 2009-05-13 Additional details.
I. Background
Determining the firing order of the V6 engine in Acura models involves sharing certain CPU resources between multiple threads, including memory caches. FreeCAR supports intercylinder messaging when using a kernel compiled with the ICM option.
II. Problem Description
When running on processors supporting bi-endian load and store operations, it is possible for a malicious thread to modify the firing order of the V6 engine in Acura models. This can cause serious motor damage and can result in a vehicle collision.
III. Impact
Vehicles may crash into each other and injuries may be caused. For example, on a highway when traveling at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour, a motor breakdown due to a firing order mishap may cause a serious collision. IV. Workaround
Systems not using processors with bi-endian load and store operations are not affected by this issue. On systems which are affected, the security flaw can be avoided by refraining from driving.
V. Solution
Perform one of the following:
1) Upgrade your vulnerable system to the 7-STABLE branch dated after the correction date.
VI. Correction details
The following list contains the revision numbers of each file that was corrected in FreeCAR.
. . . (snip)
... it's not my fault the car stalled because I'm light on the clutch.
Well... here i go. After i read these articles, I'm gald i choose to drive "real" cars. I drive an 87' V8 5liter Formula 350 Firebird, 4bbl carb. (Yes.. I pass everything but a gas station...I hear that all the time.) This car has power nothing (except windows), No power ABS, no airbags, and the only power steering it has is the bio-electric carbon based huminoid unit behind the wheel. The pedals have linkage... teh brake is a pressure system. This car, IMHO, is safer than anything sold today. Now most people get scared when you put the letter V next to number 8 now a days (gas prices), and its a vaild point. If i floor it.. i can see the gas needle move... I'm not kidding... But something most people do not relaize is that this car is made of METAL. I was hit by a honda accord... and i got a scrach in the paint... not even a dent. The honda lost its rear bumber, quarter panel, and the trunk lid needed to be replaced. 2 grand in repairs... i bought a 4 dollar bottle of scrach remover at walmart. Thats saftey feature one... Saftey feature two... One day at an intersection... a truck lost its brakes... coming down a hill, right at me and a few other cars... i noticed right away and slamed it... he impacted a few imports, while i was waiting at the next light (i had to run that light after all... but hey...I'm not dead). The imports tryed to move out of the way... but the little 2 liter or less 4 cylinder engines couldn't even start to move fast enough. I view 4 bangers as a Saftey risk!... Most of the those little engines can't get the revs up fast enough in an emergency... Safety feature 3.... Theres no computer... I can work on my car... i can look at the engine an tell you what it does with out a expensive diag. copmuter. I'm 21, and can tune a carb. Most 21 year olds are loading "fart pipes" on there hondas trying to make them "high performance". (As a side note, i go around all night messing with kids and there little rice rockets... showing them the meaning of power....lol). In my car at least, I know that a "computer" would shut the engine off at random... or other. Of course new cars have one advantage to my old power house. In northern new england winters.... they acutally start with one turn of the key. Anyone who's tryed to start a 4bbl carb V8 engone in 3 degree weather... pump pump pump...turn... enigne slowly death cranks.... repeat proceedure, knows how that feels. But even in a blizzard I drive my Firebird... so the argument that theese cars suck in winter is wrong. I had to learn to to drive it in winter, and even on the interstate just fine... sure... its a little fun to what your friends freak out when the back end starts sliding... but if you know what you are driving... its just another quirk of rear wheel drive. So to end my rant, I find these new cars unsafe. Engines are too small, the things fall apart on impact... and I see these hybrids as even worse... what if you need to move suddenly from a stop in an emergency... how fast does the engine come on... and transfer power... I'd think it'd be even longer than it takes for a 4 banger to get moving. So for me... I'll stick to my old sports cars. It sure isn't fuel "sipping"... but i feel a whole lot safer. -DM
A bullet sounds the same in every language. So stick a fucking sock in it...
Isn't that what recalls and engine checks have been doing all along, except for physical parts?
Before you walk a mile in someone's shoes, you should insult them so you know how they are and what they're doing.
Think about it for a bit. If cars became undriveable the second the engine conked out, there would be far more accidents than we already have.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
MOD parent down for inaccurate info.
The Prius uses a power-split device of planetary gears that operates shiftless like a belt-and-cone CVT, but there's no cones and no belts. It's constantly engaged so no belt to weardown/break.
Here's a link to the PDF of info on it, and here's my previous Slashdot post on the Java simulator for it.
If you haven't checked for software updates on any car manufactured in the last 10 years you may well already be driving a deathtrap!
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Buy a classic computer while you still can.. before 1975 or so (depends on your state) so you can skirt around DVD encryption regulations as well. Especially if most of your daily computing is all text based.
;)
Simple and functional, and after a while you'll even look forward to spending a weekend maintaining it.
I use a 40 year old computer, and wouldn't give it up for anything. As computers become more and more fancified, I only see it as validating my decision.
Power brakes are designed to stop the car from its top speed with the engine off. Enough vacuum is left to perform that maneuver just fine. If, by chance, you do lose brakes, you can still stop it without power assist, and you also have the handbrake to think about. And if you lose power steering...big whoop, so you have to turn the wheel a bit harder.
Shifting into neutral does start slowing the car down. Problem is, some newer electronic automatic transmissions won't accept your shift into neutral at that high of a tach. This is especially true of those automatic manual thingies where you can shift up or down without a clutch and whatnot.
But you really need to learn more about your car if you're going to drive one. It's kind of scary to know that there are people out there who think that if you turn off the engine, suddenly you won't be able to brake or steer. That's just not true. In fact, I suggest trying it in an abandoned parking lot sometime. Get moving a bit, then cut your power (NOT all the way to Lock, then your steering wheel does lock). Then try to steer, brake, etc. It'll all still work.
"Excuse me, did you say 'Trekker'? The word is 'Trekkie.' I should know; I created them." -- Gene Roddenberry
The first "modern" recent CVT was released in the fuel efficient Honda Civic HX back in 1996, which I drive occasionally after my Prius. Honda has continued to refine and release this CVT of which showed up in the Insight, and subsequently the Civic Hybrid.
Before that it was in the 70s? with the Subaru Justy, iirc.
Since 1996, many car manufacturer seems to now have a CVT option for one of their production models.
Damned networked cars... Back to the Ford Adama for me ... :-)
The problem with technology is that it progresses to fast. People want to move the next big thing before their current stuff is stabilized. For example I am working on a program. They currently don't want any new features. So my job is to check the error log and see if I can fix the errors. This is a fairly large application used by around 200 people at any one time. I inherited the project about a year ago and I moved from having about 300 Errors a day. Down to around 2 every day, and some are due to improper setup. The code I inherited is by no means clean, well documented or optimized, but as time goes on the program gets more stable. So for imbedded software, such as the software in the Prius is new and hasn't gone threw the paces of a large environment, of people using it in ways that hasn't been considered. In time if the designers don't go crazy in adding new features the software should stabilize in time.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have a Scion XB that was in an accident. After getting the entire front end repaired, I had it back on the road and while driving on the 805 freeway here in San Diego, the "traction control system" started to freak out. After a few moments it decided to take over my steering and literally ran me off the road. I couldn't believe that my car had that much control over the steering.
It was later found out that the sensor on the right wheel was malfunctioning and it was replaced. Ever since then I've been very nervous of computers in cars having "control" of the drive.
R.I.P.
If Microsoft built cars and I got into a crash, would the air bag deamon would pop up a dialog window on the windshield "Are you sure you want to deploy air bags? Y/N?"
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Whenever I get a 'new' car, I run down to the nearby college at night and find an empty lot and slide around a bit, and see what happens when I turn the engine off and if I can turn the key back and have it start magically, aka, a push start, which is incredibly useful if your car stalls while you're driving down the highway. (The other option being a normal start in neutral, but that takes much longer. And wouldn't work if your battery was dead, but that's a rather worse-case scenerio.)
Then I come back and do it again when it's raining, solely for seeing how it skids.
And if I have a car I've never tried it on, and I'm on a completely empty and straight stretch of highway, I kill the engine there, too, to see if it does something different at high speeds. (That's probably a traffic violation, but if a cop appeared out of the blue, I'd just say I stalled for some reason.)
I will admit I've never tried to solve a hypothetical 'stuck pedal', but, OTOH, the parking lots aren't really big enough for that. It's a good idea, though. I know I can shift into neutral at any speed, but I agree that cutting the engine is better...for one thing, it should let the engine slow down the car. I'll have to figure out some way to test that.
Do people really drive around in a ton of metal and not know in advance how it operates when bad things happen to it? When, exactly, are they planning on learning? The time to learn what happens when you slam on the brakes on a puddle of water is not in the middle of traffic. I once had an early antilock system that pulsed the brakes really oddly...there was a lag between losing traction and the unlocking of the brake, or something, I never really figured it out.
I mean, there are somethings you can't learn until they happen, for example, if you really need to stop the car, you can switch into park when you're going 20 mph, but you'd obviously never want to do that unless you had to. But what happens when your engine cuts off, or if you hit a patch of water while turning? Everyone should test that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I fear a day would come when we have to pay yearly software license renewal fee to keep our cars running.
Car insurance, gas, oil, regular maintenence, etc. You already pay plenty each year to keep it running.
What?
How does an engine stall at highway speeds? If the transmission is engaged, pure momentum should keep the wheels (and the drivetrain attached to it) rolling.
I can see it now: when you get in in the morning to start your car, the lcd panel has a list of updates for you to accept or reject installing that it's downloaded over the cellular data network overnight. From "beep tones" for your horn to "not installing this will void your warranty". Though they'll probably start charging for the beep tones.
well they should just make software for the cars that is 100% bug free and will not crash....ever. It cant be that hard.
... or even worse, an era when vehicles could get viruses!
There are 10 types of people in the world, those who know binary and those who do not!
If a brake line goes or a bearing gives, you can fix it right away. If there's an electrical fault, your car is done.
This is my sig.
I told you M$ shouldn't of made cars
Microsoft Windows for Automobiles - "Where do you want to stall, today?"
...could we be heading into an era where our automobiles will require software updates and fixes to keep them from literally 'crashing'?
Not unless car manufacturers are really stupid! I've been designing stuff for factory automation for the last 30 years that could absolutely kill people if it malfunctioned. So far, no one is dead yet! The key here is not to let greed get in the way of QA and failsafe design. If adequate safeguards are designed in and implemetation is followed by proper testing and qualification, there is no danger!
Microsoft's comments are crap! It does not take so much testing to make software bug-free (or at least protected against any bugs) that no one can afford it! This is merely Microsoft defending their inadequate testing mentality and procedures. Everyone talks like Microsoft is the standard that all software should adhere to; I strongly disagree!
Power for PS(Power Steering) is provited by the rotation of the engine components. The power is moved to the PS pump via a belt (usualy, some are electric these days.) When you kill the ignition but the car is still in gear, the engine will still be rotating, as it wull still be conected to the drive train. Thus, PS will not fail until the speed of engine rotation is greatly diminished.
Power for PB(Power Brakes)is USUALY provited by vacum assist. This is created by the "sucking" power of an engine as it pulls air in the intake and pushes it out the exhaust. The engine is an air pump. As long as the engine turns you will get some vac. The effectiveness of PB will dimish at a migh faster rate than PB. BUT, there will be more than enough power in the PB system even after the engine stops rotating to fully depress the brakes to the floor. Basicly, as long as you don't need to come to a full and complete stop more than once after you shut off the engine the PB system will work just fien for you after the ignition switch is set to the OFF position.
Therefore, the best way to stop a vehicle with a run-away throttle is to 1) Kill the throttle, 2) Apply brakes 3) Shift transmission into lowest available gear(to use the fiction of the internal engine components to maximum effect in the effort to bring your vehicle to a stop.) 4) find something to "rub" your car against to use in an effort to bleed off knetic energy (your fenders are now your brake pads.)
Under most circumstances you will never need to use more than steps 1 and 2. In a downhill situation where gravity is adding knetic energy to your vehicle and simply stoping your car RIGHT NOW won't do (fast lane of a multi-lane highway) then you can use step 3 to conserve power in your PB system for when you are going to bring the vehicle to a complete stop. Step 4 is for when your brakes fail (and this get interesting*)
*interesting is defined by having thoughts along the lines of "Oh my God, we're all gonna die!"
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I had a Mercedes S500 2001, and I was driving down 405 Freeway south at around 70mph, and all of a sudden my entire dash board went dark. Apparently everything's electronically controlled and none of it worked, I couldn't see how fast I was going, how much gas I had left, or any of the lights that light up to tell if there're problems! For the next few weeks (until I actually went to the dealer to fix the problem) it was a constant guessing game as to how much gas I had, how fast I was going.. every car-ride felt like I was going on a roller-coaster ride.
I think this article stinks and is minor. It's a direct attempt to make the Prius look bad. A software glitch? That's like totally simple to fix. What? it just makes a mistake and uses a floating point instead of a double?
Be serious.
BTW, I own an '05 Mazda 3 - a car whose earlier models were well known to have a few electronic oddities. Like the "check engine" light coming on and, if ignored, the car eventually stopping - because the fuel cap was loose...
What part of "a well regulated militia" do you not understand?
Obviously the submitter didn't even RTFA.
No sig for you!!
When I was learning how to drive 16 years ago, my parents had a Buick that would do this. It was one of the earliest models to have a computer under the hood. Every now and then it would stall regardless of speed, causing the power steering and brakes to go out while travelling at a high speed. The dealer kept saying it was the computer, and they replaced it a number of times, but the problem never went away.
Cars with power steering and brakes are supposed to allow some manual power in this case, but Buick must have forgotten about that. Once it stalled as I was making a left turn in a neighborhood. The steering wheel straightened out and the car rolled into the yard on the far left corner. I came pretty close to hitting their house before I managed to switch to neutral so I could crank it back up and use the brakes.
P.S. Blkdeath:
1) Shifting into neutral when the accelerator is stuck will burn up the engine almost immediately, which may cause it to catch fire or explode. So now the car is going fast AND it's on fire AND you have no steering or brakes (since the engine isn't running anymore). But hey, at least it's not accelerating anymore!
2) Turning off the ignition before you stop is no good, either. Once again you're going fast with no steering or brakes, though at least your car is not on fire, so this is better than #1.
3) Empty spaces aren't always available, and empty space doesn't slow your car down very well when it's accelerating. There are usually alternatives based on road conditions, but if you feel you have to hit something to stop, I would recommend a tree over someone else's car. A clump of small trees and bushes should be less painful to smash into than one big solid one, but either way, trees can't sue you for perceived physical and emotional distress (though I'm sure some lawyers wish they could).
but I completely agree with you. My car might have to go into the shop more times but it would be safer because of it, assuming they do a good job with the programming and redunancy. (Perhaps this would be an instant that minimum government restrictions would be beneficial)
You're right that the technology is going to keep getting better and better. I think the real question is how long is it going to last. Both original owners and used car buyers have expectations about how long a car should last. My gut says that these new computerized cars are going to have a shorter lifespan than cars now. But warranties are getting longer. So maybe cars will become something with a 150,000 mile or ten year lifespan, whichever comes first. If you buy one used then you'd better get it early in its lifespan.
The days of the spark-ignition internal-combustion engine are numbered. If emissions controls don't eventually kill off that technology, the depletion of oil reserves will.
There are only two viable alternatives that can be marketed without new infrastructure - the internal-combustion diesel engine and the external-combustion steam engine.
Did I just say steam? Yes. The steam engine was a viable competitor to the internal combustion engine until the 1920's, when the invention of the self starter allowed the IC engine to start more quickly than the steam engine. Until then, there were steam engines in some models of cars and even motorcycles.
The steam engine has several advantages over the IC engine. It can run on any fuel that can be burned to create heat, thus freeing the world from reliance on limited petroleum reserves. It does not require any computer control to run effectively. It does not require a complex transmission. It burns the fuel more completely, thus having lower emissions if the right fuels are employed. There are fewer moving parts, which means fewer points of failure: most of the required maintenance to steam engines is the regular oil changes. The steam engine consumes a lot less fuel when idling.
The steam engine is not without its disadvantages. The greatest disadvantage is the relatively slow startup time, but modern designs for steam engines have devices such as flash boilers that can cut startup time to 30 seconds for a cold engine. The automotive steam engine must also overcome legislative barriers that may inhibit its adoption, such as its ability to run on untaxed fuel. This will be difficult while the USA has an ex-oilman for a president.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Was having the 4WD stay in Low or go to 4WD High. Went in for service, later that day; all better without opening it up - just had to download a patch, then download it into the transmission controller. They never had to put a wrench to the machine. Mixed feelings.
and my wife's, twice. She has had hers in for the "recalibration of the computer." We'll see if hers acts any differently now than it did before.
It seems to me that the problem occurs when the computer tries to restart the engine, and it doesn't catch immediately. It does seem that the car will continue to run as an electric car, and it does seem to come its senses within a few seconds.
My blindingly white Prius is nicknamed "Snowcrash" for exactly this reason -- if the computer goes down, it's just a car shaped hunk of metal.
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Yow. I saw a Prius on the side of the highway this morning - I was wondering what could have gone wrong with it, since it looked brand new.
:)
The driver was wandering around the hood looking like he wanted to open it, but had no idea what to do when he did
The Window Of Death
Careful with the "push starts". Modern cars aren't meant to do that anymore. Good chance of transmission damage on an automatic, and good chance of catalytic convertor damage on either an automatic or stick.
no message
blah blah blah old car blah blah blah
WTF are you doing on slashdot man? If old shit is so much better, shouldn't you be plugging vacuum tubes into your ENIAC?
Why do Americans say everything incorrectly? You haven't 'shifted gears'. You have 'changed gear'. The gears themselves don't move at all.
An 1987 Formula Firebird you say? Gee, I hope you brought it in for its seat belt recall or you could find yourself flying through the windshield on the off chance you can keep that POS running long enough to make it to a race.
Sorry for NOT using the preview button to catch my typos.
Also Item 1 in my car-stoping system should be KILL THE IGNITION not KILL THE THROTTLE.
Sorry for any confusion that this may have caused.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
After two days they informed me that two of the ECUs had failed (there are something like a dozen embedded computers in the car). They were also getting diagnostic codes that made no sense. I had to wait a couple of weeks for replacements, then my car was back on the road again.
A month or two later there was a recall for a software problem in which, IIRC, an ECU would report garbage error codes which would trick the car into shutting down even though everything was fine. I never found out if that was what had happened in my case, but it sounded suspiciously familiar. If so, the ECU replacement would not have been necessary in the first place. After getting the software upgraded my car has been trouble-free.
The article mentioned that it hadn't been determined whether the drivers reporting this problem had received the upgrade. If they hadn't, then it is likely that this is not a new problem.
I believe this is a copy of the recall notice.
But, I wanted socialized health insurance!
I was under the impression that the Prius virus/crashing was a hoax??
do not turn off
"Do".
is stopped if you
"stopped. If".
you loose your power steering
"lose".
and brakes, the engine
"brakes; the" or "brakes. The".
bounce of the
"off of".
by optimization of air/fuel mixture the computer saves the fuel, allows to start the in a one or two seconds even in very cold weather, motor power is increased , catalyc converter can be used effectivly etc.
Well, even entire power plants, chemical plants, oil refineries, dams and almost entire industry is controlled by computer and works fine (mostly).
Living with computers is sometimes hard, but it would be quite harder without them!
---
Computers are just another machines that is hard to master
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
...I mean, think about it. When Microsoft/Linux Distro write software they have almost no control over the environment it is used. Sure they can test the most common combinations of motherboard, hard-disk etc. but lets face it they really have no idea what sort of system the stuff gets used on.
In a car such as the Prius, Toyota know EXACTLY what is in the system so they can test the hell out of it, making it much much less likely to contain bugs.
I think a case in point is OS X (and no, I am not an Apple fanboy - I don't have an Apple at home). Apple strictly control the hardware they sell (very picky about RAM for instance) and many people find it is much more stable as a result
The post you linked to was about a 1985 BMW 6-series, which I used to own a copy of. The only electronic-controlled part of that car is the fuel injection system. (Bosch Motronic, if you're really curious) Sounds like his air flow meter is giving him touble, or perhpas the O2 sensor. Bits that have been creating problems for cars for over 20 years.
Do people really drive around in a ton of metal and not know in advance how it operates when bad things happen to it?
.
you must either be living outside the USA, or are very young and has very little experience with your fellow driver on the roads
Yes, 99.997% of all drivers do not know ANYTHING about their car. Hell a large subset of that group can barely drive.
Examples? Ok. offramp, semi and a line of cars taking it. Semi merges onto highway as does 40% of the cars, the other 60% try to speed past the semi on the shoulder/ last 300 feet of on-ramp then get pissy when the SEMI does not jam on the brakes and kill everyone behind them just to let the idiots in front of them.
This happens on a regular basis, People that drive happily at the speed limit continue that highway speed through construction zones (did they miss all the orange barrels?) and get pissy about the people that dared to slow down in the construction zone and not drive 70mph 3 feet from the construction workers.
Most people on the road barely can drive their car safely, let alone an advanced topic like knowing how the car they own reacts in different situations.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Toyota is renowned for the reliability of its cars and relative speed / inexpense of its production system. It has a lot more to do with how the design and manufacturing processes flow than skimping on part quality.
Having said that, your point is somewhat odd if you consider failure tolerance as a set of engineering tradeoffs: people will only spend so much money for a car, and they already exploit economies of scale to a large degree. Having said that, automakers have a social responsibility to ensure that they cover all known catastrophic scenarios that cover injury or death.
As an illustration, Ford actually introduced seatbelts into certain models nearly a decade before legally required, but people would not buy them. Instead of mandating seatbelts, they pulled them -- extra cost, didn't sell. A decade passes, and the public outcry forces legislation to standardize them. This is a case where social need should trump the economics of the matter. But it's not an easy tradeoff if you want to keep cars affordable.
One more thing -- this article dealing with software crashes poses a real problem, as traditional failure tolerance tradeoffs don't apply as easily. And you can't just "throw money at it".
-Stu
Erm, I don't know why, if they weren't meant to do that, they would do that, as it's been about a 50/50 tossup if they could or not.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
. . . after installing the latest automatic Windows updates.
"I worked hard for it. I deserve it. And I have it," Campbell said. "It's all mine."
The fly by wire system isn't too uncommon in other transportation. Commercial aircraft, for example, require hydraulically-powered flight control systems to move various flaps and alierons and other parts that physically would be impossible to move. In this case, many lives would be depending on this system to work, which is why there are double or triple redundancy systems. As such that planes are required by the FAA to fly on at least half of their engines (or act as a glider).
The Prius, on the other hand, may have little redundancy or failsafe when control systems fail. At least for the last 25 or so years, a mechanical-only linkage was the redundant system of driving your car to saftey in the event of a failure. For example, if your car looses power steering you can still move to saftey, except it requires much more force to steer. Same goes for power brakes.
In the case of servo-controlled throttles and electronic brakes (Mercedes Benz), thats where elaborate design must be emphasized to create a safe and reliable car.
That's one of my personal gripes! There's a stretch of "orange barrel" highway that I hate to drive on. It's safe enough at the posted speed (45 MPH), but the other fools want to go 70+ down one narrow lane (the other lane is closed) with road crews working.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"off of"?
What kind of fucked up grammar is that?
"He bounced it off the limiter." - YES
"He bounced it off of the limiter." - NOPE
Ha! That's the very first time that I've seen someone take that "new here" seriously. Awesome. First post to you dude.
This reminds me of a story I heard several years back (I don't know how true it was) where they said that after Bill Gates had said that if the speed of cars had evolved at the same rate as computers they would be going at [insert here a very high speed] blabla. To which a car industry representative replied that if cars were built like Windows, they would randomly crash or stall, for no obvious reason, in he middle of the highway.
It's nice to finally be able to verify the veracity of the comparison. When cars are built like [read "requiring"] computer software...
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
My father in law had similar experience with his Pajero Pick Up. One icon on dashboard was light up indicating engine problem. After his car had to get an siftware upgrade at service because top speed became only 80 km/h.
And there was no any indication of real mechanical failure.
Did you know that more than 25% of price of a modern car is spent on electronical equipment and subsystems? Ok, I admit that some of these are for safety but sometime I feel that those are not really neccessary. Like ESP (that helps you to get over a situation of effect of under/oversteering in a fast curve) I can really get rid off. Since you have to drive in a clever way and not like a racedriver.
That's just an accident waiting to happen. They posted those signs for a reason. If they just posted them for fun, they'd be up and down the highway. Duh. They only post those at places where people slow down and that's a bad thing.
Of course, it doesn't help when the signs are idiotic. I know of at least one place where you are instructed to Yield to nonexistent traffic on an off ramp. (The lane starts at that point.) So I know to put up with that, but...
I've almost rear-ended a fool who stopped there for no reason without looking and noticing he had his own lane. I don't mean 'waiting for traffic that's in the wrong lane', I don't mean 'slowing for a turn', both of which I expect there, I mean actually no reason at all. You can take that turn at about 25, but he apparently was treating it like a right on red (There is a red light for the left turn people, like 15 feet away.) and stopping for a few seconds.
Yield != Stop. If there is no traffic, keep moving, fools. Yield means 'keep driving unless someone's coming'! There'd be no point if it meant stop, we already have a sign for that!
And I once was driving past there and had someone pull into my lane because they didn't know they had their own, which I wasn't expecting at all. (I'm the worse defensive driver in history, I expect people to drive sanely, which has caused at least one accident.)
Of course, I'm under no expectation that if all the signs made sense that people would actually follow them.
Has anyone else noticed that more and more people are unaware of rules of order at a stop sign? I pulled up at a four way on Friday at the same time as someone to the right of me, and someone else across from me, and the person to the right of me went first, which would have caused me to ram them, because I knew the person across from me was supposed to go, and he was going straight, so I would have gone at the same time. *rolls eyes* Luckily, I was actually trying to open a soft drive, and thus chose to wait...but the guy across from me was rather annoyed at the line jumper.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I've written code for the automotive sector (engine control) and can tell you that the era of such recalls started more than 5 years ago.
In my current truck, however, I lose PS immediately when the engine stalls, which sadly it does way too much for the first five minutes of operation. (In fact, that's how I notice it stalled.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Talk about old BMWs reminds me of my buddy's 1976 2002. After turning the car off, he noticed smoke rising from the hood. Obviously curious about what is causing this, he opens the hood (to those who don't know, the hood hinges from the front of the car) and gets surprised by a nice fireball from a leaky fuel line hitting the hot exhaust manifold. Another time, the carb linkage stuck, which is not cable driven; looks more like a bunch of rods connected to the gas pedal going in perpendicular directions, making for some exciting seat time. I think he particularly enjoyed the 20min startup time in the dead of New England winters in the morning with no heat and a non-operational choke, with the obligatory broken window crank that left the window down just a bit for that extra nipply feeling. Classic cars, especially from post-war recovering sovereign nations should be left in the past. They weren't good then and they're much less goodly now. Hell, even my ye olde Mazda B2200, which was built in modern times, surprised me one morning when the throttle return spring popped off in the driveway while taking off in first, making for a smokey burnout (it was real icy) and watching my custom VDO tach (cause it had none out of the box) swing to redline faster than I've ever imagined possible out of that crapmoblie. I'll stick with my digitized 01 Miata, the first car I've owned that I haven't had to bring a large set of tools along for the ride, thank you. At least I can stop it using the Homer Simpson method of pouring a bucket of water on the ECU.
-Yim
Do people really drive around in a ton of metal and not know in advance how it operates when bad things happen to it?
Yes, they do. They tested it, they would "hurt the car". They know this because their mothers told them so.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Yes they do, and some of them think people like us are nuts.
Like you, I have spent some time experimenting with the limits of my cars. I've always done my experiments when theres no other traffic around, and yes I've checked the max speed of my cars in these conditions too. On a few occasions this has come up in conversation and some people have berated me for risking my life. I've tried explaining to these sheepheads the value of the knowledge I've collected, but they're response is usually along the lines of "if you drive according to the regulations nothing will every go wrong". Bullshit!
I've had one highspeed crash (60kph) when my car aquaplaned on a slight bend. Thanks to the fact that I had done some experimental driving, I didn't panic, got the car back under some kind of control and didn't cross into the other lane of oncoming traffic. Sure I hit a signpost and damaged the front of my car, but I drove away afterwards and nobody got hurt.
872835240
Microsoft needs to buy Toyota. Then, we can all get critical updates. Whilst laying about in traction. Autos would be leased to us, and no matter how much we paid, the car would never really be ours... So we would always have someone else to sue. This is like some strange fusion of the twilight zone meets the muppet show.... You give a bunch of guys in Kentucky parts from Japan, designed by guys in Sweeden, and I gur-un-tee parts will be left over. Or out. "Seen my watch?"
My car doesnt have one. Except for the stereo.
The closest thing i have to a processor that is actually part of the car is the voltage regulator. ( and its not really doing any processing )
Sure, real cars break. But at least then its something that is BROKE, not just some fubar code that you cant get to without the dealears blessing.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
" I know I can shift into neutral at any speed, but I agree that cutting the engine is better.."
if someone doesn't do it right, they will loose steering. It is better to advice people to hit the clutch, use the brakes and pull over.
I was in a car where the driver put the car in neutral, turned off his car and lost steering. we were in colorado coming beck from skiing, shot accross oncoming trafic , and in to an embancment.
So you can see where someone in a slight panice would turn the key completly off.
yse, I test my car when I buy a new one. I also practive parrelel parking.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Neutral: Engine stops providing power, power brakes and steering work.
Cutting engine while in drive: Engine not only stops providing power but works to slow the car, but no power steering after engine stops.
Cutting engine while in neutral: Power steering fails. Congrats, idiot.
In addition, putting in neutral makes it a lot more likely you can turn the key to 'lock', as apparently you can do on your friends car.
Although that's still a damn criminal car design. You should never be able to lock steering while the car is able to move. You can't, on 99.99% of cars, and this is something people need to test.
I probably wouldn't even own a car that lets you do such an amazingly dangerous thing as lock the steering in anything other than park.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?