New Jaguar XJ Suffers Blue Screen of Death

An anonymous reader writes "CNET UK is reporting that it crashed a £90,000 Jaguar XJ Super Sport — one of the most technologically advanced cars on the planet today. It's not the sort of crash you'd imagine, however — An unforseen glitch somewhere within the car's dozens of separate onboard computers, hundreds of millions of lines of code, or its internal vehicular network, led to the dramatic BSOD, which had to be resolved with the use of a web-connected laptop."

Comments

Not a BSOD

[localman57]

If you RTFA, there' no mention of Windows. The Car just wouldn't start. They disconnected the battery, and reconnected it.

Re:Not a BSOD

[davmoo]

Not only is there no mention of Windows, there was apparently no actual "blue screen". The car simply didn't spring to life and the displays were blank.

Somebody obviously needed to sensationalize by using "blue screen of death" even where it wasn't.

Re:Not a BSOD

[richie2000]

I swear, the next person who tells me they're "Literally on fire" gets sprayed with a fire-extinguisher as an object lesson. Power or CO2, I haven't decided yet. We'll just see what feels right at the time.

Much too lenient. Halon gas.

Re:Not a BSOD

[md65536]

Unfortunately, "literally" can literally mean "metaphorically." It's in the dictionary.

I believe this is a little trick linguists have snuck in, almost as if to say "Language is not mathematics (and this will really piss off the slashdot crowd, who like both and will go nuts trying to reconcile the two!)"

"Literal" meaning "metaphorical" is also a literal irony, which is another thing that excites linguists. I think once you get the joke, it won't be so bothersome.

Re:Not a BSOD

[X0563511]

Which is why, on all for walls in one of our halon-protected DCs, there's a big red mushroom switch that aborts the system.

You'd think that would be the EPO, but that's actually a small button with a glass molly guard (and big steel hammer chained to it) that's next to it. Unexpected, but it seems the right way to go about it :)

Re:Yay!

[Fwipp]

They're not, though. The car didn't BSOD, and TFA makes no mention of them running any Microsoft software. They did, however, mention Linux.

Re:Not that surprising.

[TJamieson]

Three words -- Body Control Module. I don't know a damned thing about Jaguars, but with GM vehicles in general they all have a Body Control Module installed. Anything that isn't directly related to the powertrain is controlled by the BCM (incidentally, the powertrain is controlled by the Powertrain Control Module). In many GM vehicles, the BCM can be communicated with via the radio; this is to set certain user options like how long the headlamps will remain illuminated after exiting the vehicle. In the event that something goes wrong with the BCM, the radio will lock because it gets put into an anti-theft state, and typically the car will not start. All because a single capacitor on a shitty little Motorola board got cooked, for example.

Then, even if you get a used BCM with the same option codes as the one you're replacing, the radio will remain in an anti-theft state because the thinking of the designers (I guess) was that people would start swapping BCMs just to steal radios -- dumb.

GM, of course, has a tool to reprogram BCMs, but even they say there's a 50/50 shot their programming will render the BCM unusable. From my limited research of the boards they use, it seems there is little if any CRC done in any shape or form, so it sounds like the board will happily write bad or invalid data to the PROM.

Again, I don't know how a Jaguar design works, but there are vehicles where the radio does indeed affect other parts of the vehicle, much to the dismay of owners and dealers alike.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Diagnostics is the first reason. The amount of information you can get on any car the past 10-15 years is absolutely amazing. Acceleration levels, fuel usage levels, break levels, even tire pressure levels, and logs of many of these functions. It dramatically reduces the cost and time to check a car for problems and unusual behaviour when you have very small very simple computers monitoring all the essential systems on your car. The software also usually permits altering a lot of parameters - useful when finetuning the car in question. The logs in particular are frequently used to assess crashes - which is for example how we have discovered that vast majority of crashes the driver either does not brake at all, or only applied a small amount of braking force. This information is why a lot of manufacturers are now looking at into installing systems into cars that will automatically apply the brakes if a crash is inevitable (to get down the speed and reduce the damage and danger of the crash).

Re:Why?

[hcdejong]

Engine management is a lot more sophisticated than a mechanical carburettor can ever hope to be. Between environmental regulations (cleaner air), diagnostics (cutting down on repair time) and performance (getting more from a smaller, lighter engine without compromising reliability) it's gotten quite complicated. Then there's the chassis, with ABS, ESP and other electronic driver aids. Miles of wiring have been replaced by a lighter, more reliable bus system for all electric functions in the car.
Some of this is down to ever-tighter regulation (emissions, safety). Others are due to the competitive nature of car sales: ever more features get tacked on.
Thanks to electronics, cars have gotten a lot more reliable over time. The last few years, car companies have overstepped, though, offering new features before they were ready, and not doing enough testing for proper integration.

Re:Not that surprising.

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

For instance, before GM had the Passkey system the Camaro was the most stolen car year after year. Once Passkey was introduced it completely dropped off the list.
GM also stopped making the Camaro from 2002-2010, that will help reduce the number stolen.