Most people including the author think more software = premium/better. But as software engineers, we know better. That's not the case at all. More software = more control by everyone else except you. Manufacturers. Governments.
For this reason, I always avoid cars with big flashy LCD screens that are central to controlling the cars accessories like sunroof, AC and other electricals.
The other issue is support. So many models stop getting updates after 5 years. So, if there is a bug in that big screen, you have to live with it for the rest of the car's life.
Finally, there's the issue of privacy. Most manufacturers contract with analytics vendors to send your data back to them. You can't even turn it off. For example, MG (now chinese owned) has Adobe analytics embedded into their big screens. The only reason chinese love using Adobe over other vendors is because they aren't blocked in China. So that's usually a dead giveaway that your data is being sent back there.
What kind of data? You will be surprised.
1. How many people are inside the car at a given point (measuring laden weight)
2. What are your favorite spots (your home, office, restaurants, etc)
3. How many people live in your family (average laden weight over time)
4. Your favorite routes, highways
5. If you are married/have kids
6. If you're having an affair
7. Your annual income, monthly spend, estimated net worth
And a lot more data points that I can list here. Remember, they have access to additional data brokers to stitch a complete user profile about you too.
There is also the issue of longevity. Most people don't expect 20 year old laptops to keep working, but they expect 20 year old cars to keep working. The software defined vehicle is a disposable vehicle, and that means it better be cheap or someone is taking a depreciation bath.
That's because cars are fundamentally hardware products, not software products. Yes, software powers the heart of it (ECU), but it is just another "part" in a million other parts, not the main central selling point of the car.
So, if I buy an expensive hardware product for something that can significantly alter my net worth, it is not unreasonable to expect it to last a few decades.
The analogy for this would be the same as buying a property/house. Just because it has a smart home module in it, doesn't make it the central USP of the house - people invest millions into it for the location and size (area), not for the software it runs on.
However, what's happening today is software is being pushed as the central USP of the car, kind of like how they did with phones - and that's not a good thing and which enforces my belief further that we need less software inside hardware products, not more.
And because we know cars do not have to have all that crappy software. We have cars lasting decades without it.
Agreed!
It might surprising to you, but most people haven't already locked themselves into the apple prison
My 20-year-old PC hardware will just about work, but a lot of projects are dropping support for 32-bit x86 these days.
If you brought the newly released https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonah_(microprocessor) in 2006 - no Windows 11 or later, no Debian 13 or later, no Ubuntu 20.04 or later...
Gentoo works and you can build or even cross-build it yourself. The next big problem is going to be, unsurprisingly, Firefox: glean component is exceeding 3GB memory during compilation (the 32bit user address space).
Cars are harsh environments with heat, moisture and vibrations. Automotive electronics are considered heavy duty compared to consumer electronics, but are still rated for about 8,000-10,000 hours of operation.
One way to think about it is that temperatures inside a car left in the Arizona heat can easily reach 160. Inside the engine bay, they can easily reach 200F.
Now, if you leave your consumer electronics inside a car every day during the summer, you can expect a significant proportion to fail. For instance, your lithium batteries in your laptop are going to have a bad time if you operate them over 113 and they will start getting damaged when operated over 100.
https://www.apple.com/mz/batteries/maximizing-performance/
But you expect your computer modules to take it, and they have been built in such a way to take it, as well as all the vibrations, moisture, and temperature swings of a car. You can leave your car in the street in the summer, walk back into it after it's been sitting in the sun, and apart from needing a steering wheel cover you can start the car and drive away, with all your modules working. And you can do this for a decade. It's pretty amazing. How many people have gotten the "phone is too hot to operate message" when leaving their phone in the car in the summer, but their infotainment screens continue to work? It's happened to me all the time.
If you drive 2 hours a day on weekdays and one hour on weekends, so 12 hours per week, then that is 6240 hours of operation in a decade, so expect your car electronics modules to start dying around year 13 of use, and by year 16 of use, you are past the point for which these modules have been rated.
The infotainment screens will last 7-10 years. Sensors in the engine bay will last 5-10 years.
The problem is that people expect their cars to last 20 or 30 years, and they should be able to, but cars weighed down with electronics are going to last only about 10 years. That's a huge problem for people who will get saddled with massive depreciation. If you paid $70K for that car, you are going to lose it all over 10 years, that's $7K depreciation per year (on average) but of course it is front loaded as you will lose 40% of that in the first 3 years.
So the software defined car, is going to radically change the economics of car ownership, and how much automakers can charge for cars, or equivalently it will dramatically shrink the pool of people who can use a car.
Now, you may think "I will escape this and just lease the car", but that is just a financing arrangement does not allow you to escape depreciation, as you pay for the depreciation in your lease cost. You can say "I will escape this and take an uber or taxi" but here, too, the depreciation costs will be passed onto you as a customer. You may think "the automaker only cares about the first buyer" but the first buyer is the one that absorbs the vast majority of the depreciation. There is no escape.
I don't think people have internalized the financial horror that is the software-defined car. The average age of a car on the road is now 14 years. You are talking about transitioning to cars that will only last 10 years. It's going to completely shock both automakers and car buyers.
What will happen to your iphone-defined dash in 10 years, when iPhones use completely new protocols and are not usable with your car anymore? It's one thing when it was just infotainment, and people could install more modern aftermarket units, but when the entire thing is integrated into the dash and controls critical functionality, then this will turn into a nightmare.
Cars with 20yo computers do work tho.
The older modules were more durable, but even those start to fail after that much use. In the past, you could go to a junkyard and pull a new module, but now everything is vin-locked to the car, so you need to buy a new module from the manufacturer, but oops, they are no longer selling them. Now what do you do? It's a real problem.
Some shops try to reverse engineer the modules and create clones, and that works a little bit, but it's a real problem. But that was for modules made in the early 2000s.
Now fast forward to today where the electronics is completely different and much less durable. You have basically PC motherboards being inserted into cars. I think people have not yet understood the implications of this in terms of their car's durability.
I've been talking to a guy with a 2007 Volvo and the upper electronics module failed -- it's in the rear-view mirror. Now, you can still drive that car, but he pulled one from a junkyard and tried to replace his -- now the CEM wont recognize the module. OK, with Volvo, you can crack the CEM pin and get it to accept the new module since the reverse engineering community has managed to figure that out.
But with modern cars? With the "software defined vehicle"? You are S.O.L.
When a mechanical part fails, you can fabricate a new part, and aftermarket vendors come and make replacement parts. But with software? The vendor isn't releasing the code. You can't make a replacement.
At least in places with strong consumer rights I imagine there could be regulation to force vendors keeping their old cars repairable.
>>I imagine there could be regulation to force vendors keeping their old cars repairable.
Yes, but what does that mean in practice? That Manufacturer has to keep making parts for 20 years after production ends? How does that help if your entire infotainment system runs on Google's AOSS system and google just pulls the plug on it or the built-in modem stops connecting to the internet because your country decided to switch off all 3G networks(which is a real problem happening everywhere). Is the car "working" but with all apps and satnav completely blank still functional or does it need "repair" - if so, what does that repair even look like?
As a basic example - I have a 2020 Volvo XC60 with Sensus OS - all the maps are preloaded on the internal drive and they will continue working until the hardware breaks - they might get outdated but they will work. But I drove a new Volvo XC60 with AOSS and I was in the area without any signal coverage - in that case all the maps were just blank, the middle of the driver display was blank, it literally looked broken because nothing would load and the screens didn't have a good fallback for such a scenario.....which will inevitably happen to all these cars, either because they lose connectivity or because google/volvo decide to stop supporting them on their network.
You mean, ensuring repairability would be hard? I bet. And exceptions could be made where a change of technology makes aspects of the car non-functional (3G vanishing). On the other hand, the choice of contractors/suppliers, contracts with those entities, and so on would work differently with a repairability law in place.
This could be but in practice it doesn't work.
Both the governments and the manufacturer benefit from you driving a newer vehicle instead of keeping your old car running. Topics like environmental impact safety etc. are higher priority compared to repair-ability. Additionally most people don't care.
Additionally there is the issue of licensing and regulation around the hardware and software of a vehicle. The regulation in my country is written around "type approval" and this means you can not change the car significantly beyond what is approved during the car "type approval" process.
On top of that this market is ripe for abuse of planned obsolescence as the product is very technically complex and there is no real regulation against it.
This is why I drive an old car and a simple modern car, most modern smart tv's with wheels strapped to them will become bricked the moment the manufacturer doesn't support them anymore (after the 10year lifespan).
In my experience, it does actually work. Tesla model s had an issue with the flash memory endurance, and the NHTSA made them replace it. Which they did, and upgraded the 3G modem to LTE while they were at it. My 2013 Model S is still going strong, still gets software updates.
> the NHTSA made them replace it
They forced them to replace it because it was recognized as a manufacturing/design defect. This is a very different scenario from "normal wear" replacement.
Additionally the Tesla model S is still in production with only a facelift. Therefore the parts that are produced are not unavailable (or not supplied).
I think you can't replace/upgrade the flash and modem yourself without the assistance of a Tesla dealer.
AI in a box, look at the signals coming in, look at the signals going out. emulated and clone them.. you have a acceptable and a reject state button. Blackbox blackboxed car.
Cars with (double) DIN units are ok. When the built in GPS is missing half the roads in your area or Carplay/android auto stops working you can just buy a new headunit for a few hundred dollars. But cars with everything "integrated" aren't ageing as gracefully and it's not easy to upgrade the built in systems. 20 years old is fine, 10 years maybe not.
I own a 2019 VW egolf. It does not work as intended and its only 7 years old.
When they shut down 3g nobody thought about what it would do to "smart cars" that only had 3g modems.
Mine lost the ability to update and is now stuck with an out of date map, no remote start or preheating, no ability to check charge levels remotely, and a ton of bugs that will never be fixed.
When the software stops being supported it basically ruins the car for many purposes. For example, as someone who lives in a cold climate the ability to remotely preheat the cabin and turn on defrosters is an absolute necessity of most folks.
VW doesnt care to fix the issue so owners are stuck, forever.
Yeah but those were primitive (as in simple, more reliable) and hardened electronics, and you had tons of knobs to set most important things directly even if the screen would die completely.
Now its just a tablet glued to some annoying location and no physical controls. Do you expect a tablet to last 20 years battery notwithstanding, the touch to be perfectly sensitive for so long? Most people don't, for good reasons.
It's not only bug fixing. It's what happens to phones too: updates for a fixed number of years.
I don't see the point to pay a premium for a new car (it's not a tool for my work) so I always buy second hand. My Citroën C3 from 2016 never upgraded to the new backward incompatible Android auto from the late 2010s. I bought it in 2020 and I wasn't able to connect to it with my phone from 2019 which came with the new Android auto. BTW iPhones could connect. Last time I checked was 2024.
This particular problem is not important because I put my phone in a holder close to my wheel and I get a better navigator than my car could ever be with its 3 colors LCD panel, but cars can last much more than phones and stopping support at any time during their lifetime could be a problem. I understand that supporting a 2016 car in 2036 could be a problem too, so just give us the mechanical part with the firmware of engine, brakes etc and the usual knobs and buttons. Each passenger has a personal infotainment system in their hands and spend their time liking at it with earpieces in their ears. No need to duplicate that in the car.
I'm past 130k km now so I'll be looking for another second hand car a few years from now. I'm afraid that it will be from the middle of the worst period of the car dashboards. Maybe I'll be partially saved by looking at a low price point.
I don't understand how they can get away with this even. Imagine if they discover a root exploit in whatever old version of Android they're running.
Now if there's no update, people can just hack your car via the internet or Bluetooth. While your infotainment can't access the ICU usually, they're connected via Canbus which has zero provisions for security, and taking over your whole car is usually quite easy from this point, as many have demonstrated.
And even if there's a fix, you have to drive to the service center who might not even update your car for free.
I'm just surprised how this hasn't ended in disaster already.
I think that parties can win elections by pointing fingers at what people do with their phones, but they can't create enough concern by pointing fingers at the Canbus and at hacking cars.
> Finally, there's the issue of privacy. Most manufacturers contract with analytics vendors to send your data back to them. You can't even turn it off.
You absolutely can. Pull the fuse of the cellular modem aka "telematics unit" or even completely remove it. Some vehicles don't have a separate fuse, in which case you will need to physically unplug the modem. Do your research and don't buy any car where this can't be done more or less painlessly.
Yeah unless its integrated into another module. Or you remove or unplug it, and suddenly it throws an annoying error because a module is missing. Or even your car goes into limp mode because of some kind of weird cascade failure.
There might be some cars this works on now, but it's going to be harder and harder to do over time as things get more integrated, and the more they realize they want that sweet location data money.
If it comes to that, an alternative hack would be to replace the LTE antenna by a dummy load.
Well thats a nice theory but do you yourself give guarantee to all models that they will keep working after such potentially destructive 'hack' ? I don't think so. Its trivial for manufacturer to make it stop working because of ie some security blah and just having a big warning on the screen to go to the repair shop.
So a typical internet advice - don't listen to it uncritically, or not at all.
> Well thats a nice theory but do you yourself give guarantee to all models that they will keep working after such potentially destructive 'hack' ?
The mod is reversible, I don't see how this could ever be an issue. But as I said, do your research beforehand.
Pull the fuse during your test drive maybe.
Any sites which describe this across models? What else do you lose out on?
Not that I know of, but I have seen tutorials on Youtube for popular makes and models, and the issue is frequently discussed on car forums.
I was told by a car dealer service guy that if the touch screen went on the blink, the car would be totaled. (Since replacing it cost more than the car was worth.)
I've often thought the touch screen should be replaced by a socket that accepts an iPad, and put the auto custom software on that. Why reinvent the hardware?
> I've often thought the touch screen should be replaced by a socket that accepts an iPad,
The last thing I need is Apple spying on me when I am driving.
Do you have a car now? A phone? If you are wearing pants you are being tracked right now!
So why all this hysteria about cars tracking us if we already carrying phones with us that has been tracking us for almost 2 decades now?
I'm being a bit sarcastic but also not. I understand the sentiment of people here but also the 2 standards applied.
Because you can choose to leave your phone at home and are travel everywhere by car if you don't want to be tracked. But you can't leave your car at home and travel anywhere.
It is true that we don't need cars sending telemetry to track us since there is a conveniently placed identification number on the front and rear of the car, the number plate (used by government), but this is physically broadcasted and that limits its reach.
So why should the manufacturer of my car have access (and the right to sell) a lot of my personal data like location, weight, age indefinitely just because I own a product manufactured by them?
It is an unnecessary overreach on very sensitive data and I can't really opt out (if buying a modern car) since all manufacturers are doing it.
Yes I also carried a phone everywhere the last 20years, but that doesn't make the tracking right (also on phone I think we should be tracked less).
I understand and agree in general, but the root issue is in the laws and what's permitted to companies. Giving your data to car manufacturers and 3rd parties should be mandated to be disabled by default by law and only enabled with proper informed consent.
> we already carrying phones with us that has been tracking us for almost 2 decades now
Speak for yourself. Also, lack of equivalent for "airplane mode" where it keeps functioning without remote connectivity makes it fundamentally worse.
Because you can leave your phone at home? Because I hate my phone and I'm not happy about that either?
My car does not have a cellular modem in it, and my phone runs GrapheneOS. I use airplane mode extensively and rotate SIMs regularly. Data brokers aren't getting any anything from me.
2005 Toyota, baby! No fucking internet connection or touch screen.
Funny that you say that because of all the big tech companies, Apple has the best track record at fighting for consumer privacy. And you certainly cannot say that for any of the car makers that currently have an EV lineup.
> Apple has the best track record
Best track record compared to Google on phones and Microsoft on PCs. Anyone can be better than that.
Apple has a terrible reputation if you don't cherrypick news. Most of their 'security' stuff is PR work. Its just that rest of competition is even worse.
Your touchscreen is already spying on you.
The principal is there though.
The power of a tablet is far more than is required for an infotainment system. Make a standard, like we used to have for radios and regulate everything to expose all the controls via a standard connection. Standard parts for replacing and sizes for fitting.
The only way we can have nice things is by regulating. I don't want proprietary tyres either.
€1500 or so for Tesla to replace the screen, cheaper in many other cars.
That’s nonsense. Tesla screen for example is $1800 Australian + GST.
Cheap? No. But not overly expensive all things considered.
How much does it cost to replace a broken physical a/c button?
Asked Claude for cutting down research time:
- the button is integrated in the A/C dashboard? Everything needs to be replaced. Part cost: 250-600€ depending on car model and brand
- some dashboards can be stupid annoying to disassemble (Claude mentions VW, BMW, ...), 2-3h work at the dealer: 240-540€
- diagnostic fee they'll charge before they touch anything: 80-150€
Total cost: 550-1300€
"...With a premium German brand and a complex dash, breaking €1,000 for what is functionally a single button is entirely realistic..."
Yes, you can save money if you go used/aftermarket and DIY, but the same applies to Tesla.
Tesla:
- 1300€ touchscreen (e.g. for my old M3 2019): https://epc.tesla.com/it-IT/catalogs/34f82bd6-90fb-417c-8a06...
- probably 45m tops disassembly and reassembly: https://service.tesla.com/docs/ModelY/ServiceManual/en-us/GU...
Lots of used parts available, since they have the same parts for 10+y now.
And if you can't find said factory button available anywhere, you can usually replace it with any cheap-ass generic button or switch.
It doesn't have to be that way though. There's a bigger scam in the tech industry in general that says the path we're on is the only path we can be on.
More software doesn't have to mean less value for the customer. More software doesn't have to mean your tools and devices are spyware machines. That's just the lie we've been told.
Exactly! There's vastly more software available for Linux than there is for Windows and the Linux experience is vastly superior. It's a real-world example of "more software == better".
> It doesn't have to be that way though
I see this being repeated for years, yet it is that way. And it is because technical possibilities doesn't matter.
> But as software engineers, we know better.
As users we should also know better. All too often software is used to remove functionality from your things, or add unwanted ones. Even just adding ads. It's used as bait and switch and can make the thing you bought unfit for the job.
Car software comes with so many locks and it's intentionally made to not be serviceable by the user in any way. You can't tweak it, replace it, take one from another car. It's your car, the hardware part that does the same job is yours, but the software that replaces it isn't.
And at the end of the day almost no buyer buys a car for future promised software features. They buy it for existing features and new good ones are just welcome. If anything, the software is just used as an excuse to deliver a half baked product and have it bake over the years in the owner's hands, so at the end of the ownership maybe it's what was promised in the first place.
> Car software comes with so many locks and it's intentionally made to not be serviceable by the user in any way. You can't tweak it, replace it, take one from another car. It's your car, the hardware part that does the same job is yours, but the software that replaces it isn't.
This is such an underrated comment.
Telling that to normies would usually give me blanks stares and "nothing to hide" or "don't care" arguments.
My "but your situation my change" and "gov can turn bad" arguments never hit. People are terrible at projecting themselves. That's why climate change is so hard to fight. It's too far and abstract.
Humans need to feel concrete and awful pain to realize their mistake and learn.
But I'm hoping the Trump situation is going to cause that. Now that the US is at the brink of dictatorship (some might argue it's already there), maybe American citizens will realize that putting their entire life on a centralized platform, having non encrypted communications and spying devices everywhere is a terrible idea.
I'm not very optimistic though.
And even if they do, in 3 generations, they will have forgotten. I have no idea how to fix this.
That's why I have a dumb car, but added a tablet with maps and can bus connection (OBD-II) via bluetooth. All in my control. The OBD-II adapter is not visible. Did cost my about 50€.
Maybe that's because software that we use every day (websites, saas, etc) generally get better over time and it's still relatively cheap. Meanwhile cars still rely on things like an archaic check engine light rather than just tell you what's wrong with the car and an infotainment system that's worse than a circa 2012 iPad.
People feel that cars haven't really improved much in practical terms over the last 20 years. At least to the layman, they don't feel smoother, safer, more comfortable to drive. They just got more expensive, more cameras and crap like auto-start that no one asked for.
So at least the hope is to take some of the best parts of modern software manufacturing and apply it to the car. Tesla did this and is why it was the first successful car company that's been started in the past 50 years or so.
Cameras and auto start are both godsends and way better improvements than anything else including computerized features
Auto start is pretty much universally hated especially since it's ubiquitous and can usually only be turned off for a single ride. But cool, I'm glad you like it.
Cameras and electronics make the car much more expensive to repair.
But I'm confused, are you pro-technology in car or are you one of those that say "this exact level of technology is perfect, any more or less would be bad". I see this weird tech hater sentiment. For instance some are worried about technology taking blue collar jobs but if you suggest removing technology to create more jobs, they would be against that. Consider how many jobs the washing machine has taken. We could create millions of manual clothes washers if we got rid of them!
https://www.newsweek.com/automatic-start-stop-technology-new...
>>Auto start is pretty much universally hated especially since it's ubiquitous and can usually only be turned off for a single ride.
Which I absolutely don't understand. It's a fantastic technology and I wish I could retro-fit them to some of my older cars too, it's literally fantastic. Like, who likes sitting in standstill traffic and listening to their 4 cylinder rambler working when they are just standing still???? Even in my V8 LR3 I wish the engine would just shut off when in traffic, it's extra noise that's not needed or welcome inside the cabin. Especially since the advent of integrated starter generators, all the old arguments against it, how it's slow to start or how it wears out the starter motor have literally disappeared. But you still see people rabidly complain about it on forums, for no reason that I can see anywhere, other than "I just don't like it".
Great. Leave it on. I want it off, and I want it to stay off when turned off.
The start delay is not a big deal in traffic that's stop-and-go. But I have a poor-visibility situation at the end of my street, for which the only solution is "move away". There was a light indicating if a car was approaching over the hill, but when it was damaged the city didn't replace it. So when I hit the accelerator, I need the car to go right then. Not half a second or a full second later, when there might be a car that wasn't visible before coming at me.
>>I need the car to go right then.
And again, in modern cars with IGS systems the engagement is literally instantaneous. I really recommend trying it, it's pretty neat.
In a 2023 Mercedes it is most assuredly not instantaneous. Maybe it's just their implementation that's unpredictable. But that's the car my wife owns, so it's the one I've tried it on.
Still, keep using it if you like it. I don't hate that it exists. I hate that I can't turn it off and leave it off.
Yeah I'm just saying try it in a car where it works well. In my XC60 it's paired with an electric motor on the rear axle so even with the engine off the car accelerates from standstill like an EV - instantaneously and with plenty of torque.
> paired with an electric motor
Then you've changed the whole issue. I wouldn't have an issue with it in a hybrid at all, but in a pure ICE car, it's not always a good thing.
I suspect the hatred comes from the inability to leave it off. I don't have to turn my radio off every time I start the car. I don't have to turn off the climate control. I don't have to turn off the automatic wipers. If I turn them off, they stay off until I turn them back on.
The key word there is disappeared which means engineering effort was put into vehicle design to make it a non issue. more robust/new starter design, more expensive battery tech required, simulations to validate no carbon buildup and real world testing, software calibration to make sure if engine is too cold or turbo too hot doesn't auto stop. All driving up costs to consumer thus consumers would liek to have something for that added cost. For many rural drivers a typical commute may be 15 miles with 2-3 stoplights and 1-2 lights. this effectively negates the fuel benefitsand often is annoying when coming to a stop at a stopsign to have car turn off momentarily for no benefit and possibly detriment to fuel economy if the ratio of stop sign initiated auto stops is higher than stop and sit at a stop light. I do appreciate personally the moments of quiet when not moving but is it worth it the added cost to my vehicle ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>>often is annoying when coming to a stop at a stopsign to have car turn off momentarily for no benefit
The benefit is that it's nice an quiet. I don't care about the fuel saving.
>>it worth it the added cost to my vehicle
I'm not sure what that cost is, even if there is one. My XC60 got rid of the starter motor and just uses then ISG which it would have to have anyway being a plug in hybrid. The engine obviously has to start and stop at any moment to allow EV running too, so that engineering had to be done anyway.
But I had one of the early S/S systems in a 2013 Nissan Qashqai and I never had any issues with it in my 7 years of ownership, not entirely sure if it added anything to the price of the vehicle as the previous model year with the same engine but no S/S cost exactly the same.
I thought more software meant I could write a little Lua and get the seat in the second preset position when I pressed the key fob in a particular way...
> More software = more control by everyone else except you. Manufacturers. Governments.
Also more unreliability, because software engineers often aren't real engineers.
> The other issue is support. So many models stop getting updates after 5 years. So, if there is a bug in that big screen, you have to live with it for the rest of the car's life.
The problem here is (probably) the internet, which gives management an excuse to slack on QA. If there was no chance to ever update the software, they'd probably do a better job. But now with the internet, they can say they'll just fix it in a patch later, but then never actually get around to doing that.
There ought to be a law that says car software may only be shipped on console-style non-flash ROM carts.