This Car Runs on Code

[CivicFan]

The beauty of software in the cars is two-fold:

1. There is very little marginal cost per additional car produced as far as the software is concerned;

2. You can simply add or modify features with modifications to the software.

We are not there yet as far as point 2 goes (except maybe for the navigation maps). But with large LCD screens as the interface and a knob to navigate through the system, you are really not confined into a box forced by hardware limitations.

Longevity is an issue here because of obsolescence as technology develops like what we see in the computer hardware but that, too, can be upgraded if there is desire.

Most people do not like to keep cars for too long so the longevity issues are part of the design.

 

[Kestas]

Originally Posted By: wapacz
The question you have to ask how would that 92 grand am with the technology of the time do if it had to meet the same emissions and safety standards of the 02.

Cars were pretty darn clean back in 92. The auto industry already advanced leaps and bounds with emission control back then. Just how much more advancement do you think we need with emissions? We've already reduced tailpipe emissions to the point where cars are now NOT the primary cause of urban smog. The money spent to chase the last few grams of emissions is phenomenal. This money could be better spent elsewhere.

Even back in '74 the auto industry reduced pollutants 95% over '60 levels.

I have an article written 20 years ago talking about the incredible amounts of money that were spent chasing a few grams of pollution and how we have swung so far into the absurd on the cost/benefit curve. It was written that we were spending $2 billion to meet an EPA mandate to reduce tailpipe CO emissions some tiny incremental amount, which was calculated to prolong two lives around ten years... a rather ineffective use of society's money.

 

[PT1]

Originally Posted By: Kestas

Cars were pretty darn clean back in 92. The auto industry already advanced leaps and bounds with emission control back then. Just how much more advancement do you think we need with emissions? We've already reduced tailpipe emissions to the point where cars are now NOT the primary cause of urban smog. The money spent to chase the last few grams of emissions is phenomenal. This money could be better spent elsewhere.


You aren't kidding...which always makes me wonder why the UAW supports all the greenies who make these ridiculous rules to begin with that take away all of their jobs??? If you figure that one out...please let me know.

 

[Nadir]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
I haven't seen one reason for additional electronics in any automobile.

Try firing a diesel injector several times in a few hundred milliseconds without electronics. It can't be done. You might be surprised at the number things that cannot be done in a modern engine these days without computers and electronics. The problem is you cannot envision what is going on because your perspective is rooted in decades-old technology.

I'd be very interested to know the counting methodology for the lines of code and number of processors. Even suggesting it eclipses the F22 fighter is absurd.

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
Originally Posted By: wapacz
The question you have to ask how would that 92 grand am with the technology of the time do if it had to meet the same emissions and safety standards of the 02.

Cars were pretty darn clean back in 92. The auto industry already advanced leaps and bounds with emission control back then. Just how much more advancement do you think we need with emissions? We've already reduced tailpipe emissions to the point where cars are now NOT the primary cause of urban smog. The money spent to chase the last few grams of emissions is phenomenal. This money could be better spent elsewhere.


The reason for the continued chasing is the numbers added to the equation. That's how it works here. I guess the other forms of air pollution are fixed or less alterable. Here when the new registrations are added up, the sniffer spec's get tightened. They merely add up the tonnage.

..but the ROI is really in the factional margins. I'd say that the secondary pollution of producing the units, and the consumption that they enable on the secondary and tertiary level, is much more.

 

[Nadir]

Pollution is only one of the three big drivers of automotive electronic technology. More a subset or byproduct of efficiency/power, but gets more attention due to how the media and govt. sensationalise it. More efficient engines in lighter vehicles equals less pollution, generally speaking. The design capabilities engendered in CAD and related technologies take efficiency and safety to higher levels through lighter, stronger builds. How many lives have been saved by airbags? It's a continuous cycle of improvement with Federal impetus for better safety and efficiency standards along the way to keep pushing it to higher levels.

It is interesting to note how media manipulates the public with stories like this. All spin. Ironically, the Toyota accelerator problem is a mechanical design flaw - not electronic.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
Originally Posted By: wapacz
The question you have to ask how would that 92 grand am with the technology of the time do if it had to meet the same emissions and safety standards of the 02.

Cars were pretty darn clean back in 92. The auto industry already advanced leaps and bounds with emission control back then. Just how much more advancement do you think we need with emissions? We've already reduced tailpipe emissions to the point where cars are now NOT the primary cause of urban smog. The money spent to chase the last few grams of emissions is phenomenal. This money could be better spent elsewhere.


I agree. And not only that it's not EFI and OBD that I think is really over-complicating things. I think GM had a winner with their OBD1 and I think it does a pretty good job of detecting and identifying faults. I can to some degree even embrace OBDII. But it's the Body Functions controllers with their propietary codes and every thing being controlled by micorprocessers and serial data, where you can't even change out the radio is when it gets ridiculously complicated.

But even with OBDII and SEFI, sure there was some gains in efficiency and emissions. But at what cost and complexity? As that link I posted showed cars in the early 80's were getting as good mileage as now and were a lot less expensibve and complicated to repair.

 

[Kestas]

Originally Posted By: PT1
You aren't kidding...which always makes me wonder why the UAW supports all the greenies who make these ridiculous rules to begin with that take away all of their jobs??? If you figure that one out...please let me know.

The reason these rules continue to be made and that emission requirements get tighter is because the EPA has grown into an overly large empire and they can't stop their original function. They don't know what else to do, i.e., no new agenda. They did a good job in cleaning the air over the last number of decades by putting mandates to the auto companies. Now they really need to disappear or at least downsize into an agency that will simply maintain and police what has been achieved.

I'm not sure how you dragged the UAW into this.

 

[ZGRider]

Always trying to bend the laws of physics........

 

[oilboy123]

Originally Posted By: Kestas
The reason these rules continue to be made and that emission requirements get tighter is because the EPA has grown into an overly large empire and they can't stop their original function. They don't know what else to do, i.e., no new agenda. They did a good job in cleaning the air over the last number of decades by putting mandates to the auto companies. Now they really need to disappear or at least downsize into an agency that will simply maintain and police what has been achieved.

I agree with your thoughts on the EPA, good summary.

 

[Paul56]

Originally Posted By: oilboy123
My Brother sent me this, pretty amazing:

http://news.discovery.com/tech/toyota-recall-software-code.html


Fantastic!

Forget the wrenches... bring your notebook and fix the code in the event of breakdowns. Anyone with an IT background and coding experience should be happy.

 

[440Magnum]

Originally Posted By: SaturnIonVue
100M lines of code? What would it take to de-bug a monster like that?



Obviously more than Toyota spent debugging it....

I don't have a problem with software in critical applications- its the way the world works now and it brings far more good than bad. But look at those code line numbers- the fact that a "premium automobile" has more lines of code than the JSF tells me that the airplane manufacturers are doing a much better job of CONTROLLING the software that gets put in the airplane and making it testable. I get the feeling that automotive software is going much the same way as commercial computer OSes- thousands upon thousansds of lines of un-reviewed legacy code, patches, and updates creating something that isn't guaranteed to be reliable and stable. There could be very rare events that trigger an unexpected behvior that just would never get caught in testing. Which is why consumers can tolerate their PC occasionally throwing a blue screen of death. But losing an hours' work in Excel isn't nearly as bad as having your car "blue screen" at 70 mph. :-/

 

[Kiwi_ME]

Some of you technical types might find this interesting. Noting that Toyota is a core partner.
Automotive Open System Architecture
AUTOSAR - A Worldwide Standard is on the Road

 

[Nadir]

From the Toyota Corp. Website FAQ:

"The issue involves a friction device in the pedal designed to provide the proper “feel” by adding resistance and making the pedal steady and stable.

This friction device includes a “shoe” that rubs against an adjoining surface during normal pedal operation. Due to the materials used, wear and environmental conditions, these surfaces may, over time, begin to stick and release instead of operating smoothly. In some cases, friction could increase to a point that the pedal is slow to return to the idle position or, in rare cases, the pedal sticks, leaving the throttle partially open."

How disingenuous for the media story cited in this thread to lead off with a premise of the Toyota recall. Then go on to make all sorts of unsubstantiated, unreferenced invectives to computer code and computers in cars. Pure hogwash.

But hey - at least it inspired a good session of EPA bashing!

 

[pcfxer]

Terrible article. Having said that fuzzy logic drives a lot of the vehicle controllers today and that typically expands the code base quite nicely.

Of course we get finer grained control of the metrics that we receive from sensors.