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Software is eating the car

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Re: Software is eating the car

#451

Post by ocdtrekkie »

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.

I want a smart car. I just don't want the smarts determined by the manufacturer. I really want a car that can more or less run arbitrary software/features I want. I understand why companies do not want to provide that, because people can go the very wrong direction with it. But I'd like both my house and my car to be smart, and neither beholden to Apple or Google to do it.

Re: Software is eating the car

#452

Post by wolverine876 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #405
majormajor wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people actually took them to court they won every time. But people settled out of fear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Thoma... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum These were widely covered because most people just settled, and there were high hopes for something putti…

As I remember those times, they didn't go after people for simply downloading music, they were going after the people who were actively distributing music on file sharing services. There's a much harder burden of proof for the RIAA when they sue people over simply downloading songs or albums when the user can easily make the case for fair use. I mean, how many albums, 8-tracks, cassettes and CD's did you buy of the s…

> As I remember those times, they didn't go after people for simply downloading music, they were going after the people who were actively distributing music on file sharing services.

As I remember, at least some cases were complete BS. Some people hardly knew what file sharing was.

Re: Software is eating the car

#453

Post by fomine3 »

northwest65 wrote: post #289
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…

> mechanical door lock Power central locking doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a touch screen, or updates. > manual windows Electric windows doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a touch screen, or updates. > no car stereo Car stereos do not need a microcontroller, code, or a touch screen, or updates. > no power steering Power steering doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a touch screen, or updates. Hel…

> * doesn't need a microcontroller,

Really?

Re: Software is eating the car

#454

Post by giardini »

temporallobe wrote: post #82
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…

Car guy here. Yeah, I’m with you. My favorite car was a ‘96 Tercel with mechanical steering and a 4-speed manual. It even had manual roll-up windows. It had less than 100 HP, but it was simple as hell to operate, very fun to drive, cheap to maintain, and extremely reliable up until I sold it with nearly 400k miles on the odo. I put an aftermarket stereo and speakers in it and I was set. Only reason I sold it was beca…

The mid-90's Toyotas were wonderfully reliable vehicles but the plastic parts are failing.

Maybe I'll give up and dive into retro cars fully with a post-war Citroen 2CV? Naah!

Re: Software is eating the car

#455

Post by kfarr »

eaa wrote: post #370
geonic wrote: post #361

150 million lines of code in a Ford F-150? How is that even possible? A Volvo with 100 million lines including 3 million functions. This sounds like generated code to me. I can’t believe this is handwritten or even necessary.

Easily. There are lots of MCUs, and the "infotainment" unit contains big amount of code including an OS like linux or qnx or android.

Yeah they must be including all underlying os and libraries in that LOC not to say that it's all official Ford created code. Still insane tho

Re: Software is eating the car

#456

Post by fomine3 »

galangalalgol wrote: post #20
MengerSponge wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mazda doesn't get nearly enough respect for their work identifying and correcting this issue. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur... Touchscreens/touch panels are shiny, futuristic, dangerous, dumb, and cheap. Manufacturers use them because they lower BOM costs, at the expense of usability and safety. Vote with your wallet folks.

Mazda would make a great EV, but that is sadly not on their roadmap for the foreseeable future. I have been told this is probably an influence from Toyota's large share ownership, not wanting competition in that space.

MX-30, Mazda's first EV but also ICE model, features touch panel A/C control for unknown reason. I tried it and found that it's difficult to adjust while driving. The decision really weird since Mazda avoid touchscreen for navigation and also avoid for A/C on other cars.

Re: Software is eating the car

#457

Post by fomine3 »

iagovar wrote: post #76
MengerSponge wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mazda doesn't get nearly enough respect for their work identifying and correcting this issue. https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-pur... Touchscreens/touch panels are shiny, futuristic, dangerous, dumb, and cheap. Manufacturers use them because they lower BOM costs, at the expense of usability and safety. Vote with your wallet folks.

Does mazdas use rotary engines for ll their cars?

They now developing rotary engine for EV with range extender because of RE is smaller.

Re: Software is eating the car

#458

Post by TwoBit »

ketralnis wrote: post #256
jedberg wrote: post #241

The problem with this is that auto companies are not software companies. They may have good engineers there, but they are hamstrung with a culture that considers software as an add on cost center at best. Perfect example: I have no way to report software bugs to Honda. I've found a few and collected detailed reproduction data. The best I can do is give it to a sales rep in the service department and hope they send it…

On the other hand, having seen the software industry I don't really want its values applied to cars. Games used to be shipped on chips to customers with the assumption that they could never be updated, but now the expectation that that's possible results in multi GB release day patches. Games used to be shipped to consoles without network access but if Blizzard goes out of business tomorrow, Starcraft II will just fa…

OK but with the complexity of games today there is no way such a game could be released bug-free. Could games be released better than they are though? Probably. We needed game software updates in order to allow the 10x complexity increase, but developers took advantage of that to also give them a couple more months of development time.

Re: Software is eating the car

#459

Post by oldgradstudent »

jacquesm wrote: post #181

Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse than the systems they replace or augment. The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors. Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming o…

Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) can be dangerous, but these systems are being put into cars with the flimsiest data to support them.

No serious trial has been performed to test whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

Re: Software is eating the car

#460

Post by pjmlp »

waiseristy wrote: post #144
pjmlp wrote: post #31

Best of all, it is all written in C and C++, with all the security it entails.

Well, sort of. It's all written in MISRA C and a very special version of the C++14 standard https://www.autosar.org/fileadmin/user_upload/standards/adap... Definitely still possible to write buggy MISRA code, but its the best we got unfortunately

Thankfully, the problem is the adoption, as proven by Toyota's breaking system example.
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