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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'?"
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
I hate it.
My car (2004 Mazda 3) has a fully electronic throttle body. It's all servo-driven, no linkage between the throttle and the gas pedal at all. If I had thought to check stuff like that I wouldn't have bought it.
It hasn't given me any trouble yet (it's a 2004, it had better not), but just wait until the sensor shorts out and tells the engine that I want to floor it, or vice versa.
Imagine if in 10 years, when there's a minor fender-bender, once the accident is off to the shoulder, traffic picks back up at a regular pace. Now, everyone gawks and traffic stays backed up for miles thanks to that.
Or even better, when someone misses an exit, they don't slam on the brakes in the middle of the expressway and back up to the exit.
There was an 8 car pileup with numerous fatalities last year on the Baltimore beltway thanks to someone in the middle lane cutting across 2 lanes of traffic at top speed to turn into those "Emergency turnaround" digouts between expressway lanes. If he literally was prevented from doing something that stupid thanks to his car, those people would still be alive. Sure, he'd be 5 minutes later to where he was going...
Bring on cars that don't let people be idiots. The rest of us who do a good job of obeying traffic laws will be that much safer thanks to it.
As far as software controlling much of our cars, we're already mostly there. Power locks lock you out of your car if they fail. Power steering makes your car nearly unturnable if that fails. Power breaks provide so much extra breaking power that if they fail, your car is basically going to be nearly brake-less anyway.
Buy a classic auto while you still can.. before 1975 or so (depends on your state) so you can skirt around smog regulations as well. Especially if most of your daily driving is on local streets.
;)
Simple and functional, and after a while you'll even look forward to spending a weekend maintaining it.
I drive a 40 year old vehicle, and wouldn't give it up for anything. As vehicles become more and more drive-by-wire, I only see it as validating my decision.
Among us for some time indeed. A friend of mine had a similar problem two or three years ago with a Peugeot. I do not rememember the model, but it was one of the first batches out of the factory.
She had problems with the engine shutting down sporadically while driving (at any speed). This happened one or twice. She went with her car to the garage, and the mechanic told her, blank face, "Known problem. Needs a software upgrade. Come back in two weeks time, we have place in our schedule by then".
Of course she told the guy to give her a replacement car for two weeks - you must be mental to take a car like that into the Dutch rush hour traffic.
The problem is that historically, cars have had real mechanical transmissions that were easy to fall back on if the Power Whatever system failed
Actually, that's not the problem. The problem is that we're now starting to see more and more cars using "drive-by-wire" technologies. The gas pedal is no longer a lever controlling an engine aperture directly; it's a rheostat feeding a variable voltage to a computer, which then decides how to adjust the aperture.
If that computer gets into an irrecoverable state of badness somehow, you could be SCREWWWWWED.
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.
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.
All the more reason to drive a manual transmission car. I had a Honda CRX that the dealer misinstalled the air conditioner in so that the the cotter pin came out and jammed the throttle advance (needed to keep the engine from stalling at idle when the A/C kicks) wide open. Cars starts accelerating across parking lot, I simply push in the clutch. Car pegs RPM gage, I shut off the engine. The other point is, you don't need drive-by-wire in order to have a throttle stick wide open!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
After pulling into a Denny's parking lot, I hit the power button to "reboot" the car... fortunately, most of the lights disappeared, and the gas engine kicked in, but there was still a few alert and check-engine lights on. I was able to drive the car another 15 or so miles at full highway speeds to the dealership, who were able to pull the problem codes (P3191 P0A0F) and reprogrammed my computer... and all is great again!
While I agree that the problem is alarming, it wasn't as bad as the article claims... the electric engine still gave me all the power I need to pull over safely. And this was the only problem I've ever encountered with the Prius, after 13 months and 18000 miles!
Actually (at least on the Prius) it's not a rheostat on the gas pedal... the interface is redundant hall-effect sensors to ensure that it's not getting false readings. Systems can be designed to be redundant...the mechanical linkage could easily jam or break...either which could have catastrophic effects.
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!
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Computers are just another machines that is hard to master
I'm not insane. My mother had me tested.
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.
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