OTA “recall.” Sucks that there was a bug like this, but the headlines try to make these out to be bigger than they are.
Physical or otherwise “bring to the dealer” recalls are bigger news because direct owner action needs to be done, often meaning their car is unavailable for some period of time. OTA just means people will drive their car like normal and it’ll be passively fixed, which is hardly news-worthy.
I understand that airliners have separation between the computer systems used for entertainment and life-critical systems. That permits a less costly, lower reliability/testing standard to be used on the entertainment systems.
Unfortunately, current automobiles don’t seem to have that separation:
In a statement released today, the Sweden-based car manufacturer says EX30 vehicles can accidentally throw up a “test screen” on the center monitor, obscuring the normal driving statistics shown there including the speedometer and infotainment features. The exact cause of the bug has yet to be disclosed.
They definitely do. The vast majority of cars (Tesla being a notable exception) run their critical systems on CANbus with AUTOSAR and QNX or VxWorks. That’s why their entertainment system can still crash while the car drives on just fine. That doesn’t mean one can’t obscure the other; on VW group cars, for example, the reversing camera is run by QNX on CANbus but shown on the entertainment screen as an overlay. Occasionally you’ll see QNX starting to show the camera before the entertainment system has had a chance to draw the frame around it.
Your honor, a software bug prevented me from realizing i was speeding.
How is this news? I have recall work done on my Honda almost every time I get an oil change. This is a Volvo software update.
Because it obscures the speedometer which could be dangerous and shows why we shouldn’t have screens for everything. They’ve still got regular gauges on airplanes for backup. I don’t see the need to change away from analog gauges.
Really wish there was more regulation on this. Everything core instruments should not require software to function.
Everything is integrated into the computer network for every function… so if you want an old style analog speedometer how analog do you go? Cable on the gearbox (no software, no bugs, no electronics if you choose a mechanical gauge)? Separate sensor near the transmission (basic analog electronics)? Analog readout from the multiplexed network on an electronic gauge?
Cars are already incredibly complicated and expensive to meet current legal requirements.
I think there’s a reasonable amount of digital that can be incorporated. Going back to my original example, Airbus is fly by wire and very safe. However, there are still analog gauges for the important backup functions, or at least single purpose digital displays such as the ISFD. I don’t think it’s wise to have the multimedia display and speedometer display running off the same device.
I agree, people buy cars like this though, to me modern cars are extremely annoying because of this extreme cost-cutting without any thought put into it. They even lack basic functions like dimming the gauge lights that were standard in the 1980s on cheap cars, or turning off a screen completely and still having the steering wheel controls for the radio… turning off ESP for getting out of slippery places that it gets confused by is also a challenge on a lot of cars.
People have very different priorities from commercial users that need an impeccable safety record and no compromise on reliability, they’re buying a steel box on wheels to get from A to B, preferably in a fashionable shape.
If you’ve ever nearly died because the car decided a reflection was an imminent collision risk and braked hard on the motorway, you know that cars are way worse than Boeing.
car decided a reflection was an imminent collision risk and braked hard on the motorway
I had that almost happen once- it didn’t actually brake, but it did the very loud “omg we’re gonna die” alert, freaked out my wife & kids. Then there’s the fun of fighting with the lane keeping assist when it wants to follow the seams in the concrete rather than the painted lines… Fortunately that “feature” can be disabled.
