Someday…
Software seems to be at the heart of the Toyota recall. And I confess to being surprised at how much software now runs in cars. You’d think I’d know. I’m a software guy. I sell software to software developers – the car makers are all customers, as are most other software developers that put software into other products (called “embedding”).
But I was surprised when I read this article:
These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-class automobile recently, ”it probably contains close to 100 million lines of software code,” says Manfred Broy, a professor of informatics at Technical University, Munich, and a leading expert on software in cars. All that software executes on 70 to 100 microprocessor-based electronic control units (ECUs) networked throughout the body of your car.
Factor in this article, where decades after software first started being written, software authors still debate if they ever will develop it correctly.
You will gain and you will lose, from software in your car. You will gain antilock braking systems, and smart airbag deployment, GPS, and smart engine monitoring among hundreds of other benefits. But you will be at risk too – because all software has bugs, often as much as 1 per every 10 lines.
So buckle up!