General: An interesting article that answers lots of questions.

[deepsix]

https://spectrum.ieee.org/amp/softwa...car-2653906711

[Tannaton]

It is indeep.... I remember reading a Volvo press release a couple of years age where they explained they were investing in software engineering as they believed software would become more important in a car then mechanical engineering....

[The Thong]

Three years in from Covid you would have thought all this would have ironed itself out. It went from a shortage of semiconductors to a glut of them and now due to a global slowdown some industries are sitting on a stockpile they’d bought after Covid so the manufacturers are now seeing a drop off in their sales etc etc. Sane old same old stuff as always.

TT

[Moose Test]

It is interesting at a high level to note that the quoted lines of code count for the Ford F-150 is three orders of magnitude greater than that of the onboard systems of the Space Shuttle.

However, LoC isn't a hugely useful measure of actual complexity and thus neither the probability of errors or the effort required to maintain it. For those with an interest in such things, there are others, such as monitoring the amount of refactoring over time and how it is distributed throughout the codebase and also functional measures of what is actually being done in that code e.g. Halstead volume.

"Can the auto industry cope" - Yes, why wouldn't it? The same set of problems are being encountered and remediated in all other technology-led industry sectors. There's nothing really unique going on at Ford et al.

"The success of a car depends on its software much more than the mechanical side.” - No, I'm not buying that one. There's much more to the commercial success or failure of a car than its firmware, including a design that addresses needs/desires of an addressable market segment, anecdotal reliability, and longevity.

[Ulrikas PA]

Originally Posted by Moose Test

"The success of a car depends on its software much more than the mechanical side.” - No, I'm not buying that one. There's much more to the commercial success or failure of a car than its firmware, including a design that addresses needs/desires of an addressable market segment, anecdotal reliability, and longevity.

However....you only need to look at the negative impact of badly designed or specified systems on car manufacturers'. Volkswagen Group (and its last CE0) took massive flak for the touchscreen system on the Golf 8 iD3 etc, and software certainly was involved in the emissions debacle.

[Tannaton]

Originally Posted by Moose Test

"The success of a car depends on its software much more than the mechanical side.” - No, I'm not buying that one. There's much more to the commercial success or failure of a car than its firmware, including a design that addresses needs/desires of an addressable market segment, anecdotal reliability, and longevity.

The aspects of modern cars common to both EV and ICE versions are very mature now. In 20 maybe 30 years time they will still have seats, four wheels, etc. As cars develop, the measures of reliability and longevity will be more about software and computers than bearings and suspension. Most people swap their phones now when it is too slow or doesn't have enough resources for the Apps they wish to use, rather than when it actually ceases to operate.

This was Volvo's view of the horizon back in 2021 - "Volvo Cars will take software development in-house as a car’s appeal increasingly becomes more defined by software-driven functions and features, rather than traditional automotive attributes."

https://www.media.volvocars.com/glob...pment-in-house

You may be proved correct, but opinion is divided at the moment. The vast majority of car buyers view them as an appliance and don't read forums like this.

I really don't know the answer to this but I get modern cars have more computer code, processors, memory etc. than the Space Shuttle but how efficient are they? I bet the systems in Discovery made far more critical decisions and actuations per second than the supercomputer by comparison in the FoMoCo....

[Tannaton]

Originally Posted by Ulrikas PA

However....you only need to look at the negative impact of badly designed or specified systems on car manufacturers'. Volkswagen Group (and its last CE0) took massive flak for the touchscreen system on the Golf 8 iD3 etc, and software certainly was involved in the emissions debacle.

Testing and aligning the user interface of modern system, where we have menus not buttons, is a real art. You've only got to look at how often SKY make subtle (and not so subtle) changes.

[don kalmar union]

Well informed and quite daunting article. Best stick with an older car that has been well maintained....

Thanks for posting.

Don.