Slashdot Mirror
Why Your New Car's Technology Is Four Years Old
Lucas123 writes "While you can buy a 1TB hard drive for your computer for less than $100, Ford today offers 10GB. Don't expect much more anytime soon. Apart from the obvious — a car's development process can be four years long — the automotive industry also tends to be behind the tech curve because of a lack of equipment standardization. And, while it's possible for the industry to build modular infotainment systems that could be upgraded over the life of the car, there are no plans to do so. Instead, car companies intend to offer software upgradable vehicles through 4G connectivity and data storage and entertainment streaming through the cloud, which means they have to worry less about onboard hardware reliability and standardization."
Or, it could be that older technology is more reliable, and that's needed for the service of the vehicle. Much like how SCSI drives have never been up to the same spec for capacity as their IDE counterparts because SCSI was using tried & true technology to maintain reliability. Imagine having a rash of failed 1TB HDs in vehicle infotainment systems. Backlash galore.
Flash will fill the gap eventually, if not already happening.
the tech I care about is safety related...I can't wait until all this stuff is standard equip
blindspot detection
lane departure
collision detection
adaptive cruise control
electronic brake distribution / ABS
navigation
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
Yes they are. The local warehouses are unheated and they stack laptops in them all winter, for weeks at a time.
Yes they are - the four laptops baking in my car right now have been there for a month now. I fully expect them to work when I eventually pull them out - I know people who use generic, non-hardened laptops year-round in completely unconditioned environments. For at least 15 years now I have routinely subjected Dell, Micron and Thinkpad laptops to 120+ fahrenheit by leaving them in locked car over a weekend, never had a problem.
Yes they do - all the cops around here have plain-jain Dell laptops mounted on arms in their cars, which actually increases the vibration they endure.
OK, you got me on that one, but I don't really get your point - I keep both my cars and my laptops running longer than ten years, it's just a matter of good maintenance.
not so.
there is indeed an astounding amount of shielding and grounding that go into an automobile. the alternator for example is quite possibly the loudest RF emitter onboard (direct coil ignition a damn close second.) car stereos are manufactured to explicitly withstand this condition, adn they do it very well despite having unbalanced speakers to drive. hard drives and wifi may fall under the Federal Communications Commission Radio Frequency Interference Statement, but that is not stringent enough to make them an approved part of a car. the ECM encounters a tremendous amount of electromagnetic noise and crosstalk, but is entirely capable of continuous performance under this condition.
other conditions for your consideration: did you know certain electronics in the car are wired with cables that are impregnated with capsaicin? this prevents chewing by mice and rats. some data cables explicitly requre proprietary shielding applied at the factory because none exists to date for the application. other cables must be capable of withstanding hundreds of degrees of temperature changes or must operate in the presence of condensation (which does occur inside the dashboard, this is normal.)
and to answer the question, we mark up the car by selling luxury models. $1100 more in shocks, struts, engine mounts, tail lights, and what we term 'livery' inside the vehicle (shit like a 10 gig drive in the first place) mean we can charge $20,000 or more on top of whats basically just a 'base model'.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Everything is becoming integrated... no modularity.
My Fiat 500 has a problem with the clock... it runs slow (a few minutes a month). This is a known problem and they are going to fix it.
However, in order to fix the clock, they have to replace the entire dashboard electronic unit (speedo, tach, all the computers, etc.). The real problem is the odometer. The dash unit has the odometer so they are replacing the odometer with one that has the same number of miles as the old odometer so it has to be specially ordered and programmed and then it has to be replaced at the exact right time.
Major hassle and expense for a lousy clock timer unit... they really shot themselves in the foot on this one.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I've actually tried to build a replacement computer for my Chevy Volt with as much integration as possible. So far I can:
1) Control AC, including "remote start" feature that doesn't suck.
2) Get information about fuel economy, battery charge, temperature, heading, GPS coordinates.
3) Use my own hacked voice recognition system though bluetooth.
4) Send directions to the in-dash navigation system.
5) Use the forward collision alert sensor for crude (but useful) adaptive cruise control.
All of that simply by spying on GMLAN CAN bus and a bit of RE. Some parts can't be replaced easily - for example, rear parking assist camera is completely analog and wired directly to the video processor. But most of the car's computer functionality can be pretty easily replicated by a third-party.