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Software is eating the car

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Re: Software is eating the car

#291

Post by judge2020 »

crooked-v wrote: post #167
vannevar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wants a dumb car. Unfortunately, the idea of electric cars has become bound up with the notion of software-driven cars. I want an electric car with analog controls, no touch screens or over-the-air updates, and minimal software. A car that I feel like I own, rather than one I'm getting a click-through license to use.

Mazda has been actively removing touch screens in new models. The screens are still there, but the touch part is replaced with physical controls for cabin features/radio and a puck controller for other stuff.

Note that backup cameras are now a mandate for US cars: https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/new-backup-camera-rule-c...

Re: Software is eating the car

#292

Post by kube-system »

scythe wrote: post #100
jkepler wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't t 3D-printing metal appliances be more and more widely feasible in coming years? And, at least here in the EU, right-to-repair [1] labeling gives consumers the ability to more efficiently vote with their wallets. Its also happening in the US [2] [1] https://repair.eu/ [2] https://fr.ifixit.com/News/8748/right-to-repair

Liquid steel requires enormously high temperature and magnesium/aluminium require an argon atmosphere. Titanium requires both. So unless you're going to make everything out of zinc (assuming we don't run out of zinc!), this may not be the cheap fix you're hoping for -- and zinc isn't very strong.

There are also many types of steel that have widely varying properties.

There are some (expensive) printers that print powdered metals (including steel) that is later sintered in an oven. They're certainly not large enough to make a car, and even if they were the properties of the material are likely not ideal, and the process would be prohibitively expensive.

Re: Software is eating the car

#293

Post by slim »

romanovcode wrote: post #112
mthomasmw wrote: post #6

Serious question - what alternatives are left for those of us who want a dumb car? I've spent the last three months finding out I can't get solar panels installed without a high-fidelity power-monitor tap connected to the provider's cloud, logging every appliance I use and what it's doing. Same deal with cars - they are on the internet and they generate evidence used to convict, and geofencing is coming. Other than s…

You can always get a lada

+1 that car was first produced in 1977 and it's still in full production with the exact same design.

Re: Software is eating the car

#294

Post by slg »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #225
GuB-42 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... The problem with that dumb car is that it is missing that very convenient feature. So you want a dumb car but with feature X, because feature X is really great. But the other guy will not care about X and will think it is bloat, but Y is really important, while for someone else, it will be al…

> So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... I think an extremely small minority of people who want a "dumb" car don't want those features. I feel like you're just making up a strawman here. It's pretty clear (at least to me), that the people who want a dumb car are talking about things integrating with your phone or being displayed o…

I think you are missing the point. The problem is what do those features mean?

Is the stereo just an AM/FM radio? Does it have a CD player? A CD changer (how many people even buy CDs anymore)? Does it get satellite radio? Does it have AUX input? Does it have Bluetooth? Is there an interface to communicate to the the Bluetooth device (people driving around controlling their stereo from their phone is more dangerous than people doing the same on their car's touchscreen)? Can it stream music without a Bluetooth connection? Does it have Spotify? What about Apple Music? Does it offer handsfree control? And so on.

There simply isn't a universal definition of what a "dumb car" would be and not everyone is going to desire the same set of features.

Re: Software is eating the car

#295

Post by judge2020 »

vannevar wrote: post #7
SavantIdiot wrote: post #3

Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wants a dumb car. Unfortunately, the idea of electric cars has become bound up with the notion of software-driven cars. I want an electric car with analog controls, no touch screens or over-the-air updates, and minimal software. A car that I feel like I own, rather than one I'm getting a click-through license to use.

The 'commercial-oriented' F150 Electric is slated to have a smaller 8 inch touch screen on the base model with dials underneath it, probably similar to the current gen models: https://www.wheelsjoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/2021-...

Re: Software is eating the car

#296

Post by HellDunkel »

amelius wrote: post #270
HellDunkel wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frightening. My friend had a similar incident (but he drives like a complete nutcase). Is there no „code of conduct“ what automotive software must not do in any case?

Probably these companies ignore any existing legislation to have more disruption powers. Lawsuits from fatal accidents are just the cost of doing business.

I work in the field and never had this impression. There are a ton of standards, safety related procedures and so on. But many of those are at least questionable. At the same time management is asking for more and more „features“. Many are just gimmicks or diluted by too many cooks. No one ever asks for GOOD software. Folks at the top have ABSOLUTLY NO idea what that could mean other than the absence of bugs.

Re: Software is eating the car

#297

Post by drivers99 »

Jtsummers wrote: post #145
arpyzo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a 2014 Subaru Impreza and my brother in-law a 2017. I've driven both extensively. Sometime during those years, Subaru switched from knobs and levers to a touchscreen and the controls are so much worse! 1. The controls on the 2014 are obvious, easy to find, and my choices are readily apparent. In the 2017 I have to search for them and often guess their meanings. If I'm actively driving, I just give up because it…

Re (3): It's still an issue in the 2018 Impreza. I've gotten used to it now, but it's still frustrating. Especially if I ended the drive with a phone call. On phone calls I have to really crank up the volume (nearly max) whereas for music and other things I have it very low (10-15? The numbers mean nothing to me, not loud). So when I turn it on after a call I get blasted by NPR for about 5-10 seconds before the audio…

I have the same problems with my 2019 Impreza. It responds sooner if I'm not in reverse, but I am usually in reverse first because I need to back out of my garage. It usually doesn't respond to the volume knob messages until a second after shifting into forward. I say "messages" because the turns of the knob appear to be queued up somewhere, but it doesn't have as much time to process those while it's displaying the rear-view camera on the screen.

Re: Software is eating the car

#298

Post by judge2020 »

jonplackett wrote: post #216
bayindirh wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't touch bar is at the edge of vision, so theoretically isn't that distracting? Neither of my Macs have one of these. This is why I'm asking.

It's not that it's visually distracting that's the problem - it's that you can't feel where the buttons are without looking. And if you aren't looking you'll accidentally do things you didn't mean to, like press escape, or turn your mac off when trying to hit back space.

To be fair, I don't use my function keys on my laptop enough to where it became muscle memory, especially for the alternative functions they provide (screen brightness, media, etc).

Re: Software is eating the car

#299

Post by waiseristy »

aidenn0 wrote: post #246

What worries me the most is the usage of flash storage backing huge swaths of the functionality in the car. I suspect 10 years from now we will have cars where everything between the dashboard and glove-box does not work because the flash has worn out.

Luckily the only dynamic part of most of these ECU's are their diagnostics and logging mechanisms, nowhere near "huge swaths of functionality". Every other bit of flash is written once at the factory and is never touched again. Now that we are seeing widespread adoption of OTA, it'll increase the amount of writes to program flash maybe 100 times over the life of the vehicle, but still within reasonable bounds.

The issue is if OEM's ignore this limitation and tie mission critical portions of their systems to the memory partitions their diagnostic and logging mechanisms use (e.g Tesla).

In reality if we are deploying OTA capabilities to these vehicles, there is absolutely no reason to be hammering your flash with logs, just upload them to the borg cube and be done with it.

Re: Software is eating the car

#300

Post by rm445 »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #3

Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…

Well that's two different things. Intrinsic versus extrinsic complexity.

The user experience may get simpler again, but the technology inside is likely to get more complex. Electrification might mean simpler mechanisms and fewer moving parts, but the software will get ever more complicated.

Now in a way it's usually a good thing, if all the complexity of something is hidden and users can treat it as though it's simple. But we'd probably all agree that extra complexity in software that can kill us if it goes wrong is worrying. The only way we know to write safe software is to make it as simple as possible, and write it slowly and expensively. SIL-rated software has already reached the automotive sector. But it seems like the sheer demand to make cars more complex (especially for self-driving) will outrun our ability to make them safe.

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