[sriram_sun]

Car manufacturers conduct recalls all the time. There might be the possibility that a million self-driving cars will be held hostage from a remote control tower simultaneously leading to injury or death to millions. However, in practice, as soon as an issue is discovered, there will be the equivalent of recalls (remote updates) and things like this will be fixed. People who are uncomfortable with self driving cars will always be able to drive manually or override the automated controls. At some point, technology will progress enough that the benefits will outweigh the risks and people will adopt.

[seanp2k2]

Car manufacturers are some of the last people I trust to be doing software updates. The recent Takata airbag recall is an example of the ensuing fecal tornado from large recalls: http://blog.caranddriver.com/massive-takata-airbag-recall-ev...

In some cases, people are having to wait months to get new airbags because they just don't have them in stock. In the computer case, would you want to keep driving until they can get you scheduled for a software update? Remember that many cars can't update critical software OTA.

[dpark]

> Car manufacturers are some of the last people I trust to be doing software updates. The recent Takata airbag recall is an example of the ensuing fecal tornado from large recalls: http://blog.caranddriver.com/massive-takata-airbag-recall-ev...

>In some cases, people are having to wait months to get new airbags because they just don't have them in stock. In the computer case, would you want to keep driving until they can get you scheduled for a software update? Remember that many cars can't update critical software OTA.*

So I assume you don't own a car and you avoid them at all costs? Otherwise your paranoia becomes hypocrisy. If you cannot trust the car company to deliver software updates, you can't trust them to write the software in the first place, and modern cars are full of safety-critical software.

I also don't know why you're equating the a manufacturing capacity limitation with a software update limitation. It's not as if Toyota is going to have trouble shipping bits a million times vs a thousand times once the software update is written.

I think we can also safely assume that self-driving cars will generally be updatable OTA. But yes, you could drive it to the dealer if needed, and worst case the dealer could send people on-site to do the update.

[coredog64]

Allegedly, Honda is offering rental cars to customers who are concerned about their safety and there are no parts available to repair their vehicle.

I say allegedly, because my local Honda dealership told me to pound sand when I asked for a rental car for the day they needed to repair my CRV.

[creshal]

A friend of mine works for VW's engine computer division. Yes, those engine computers. After all I've heard of their development methods (or lack thereof), I'm surprised the engines even start more often than one time out of ten.

[72deluxe]

My VW Golf has a bug where the driver's side door will be completely unresponsive after starting the ignition, with all the lights on the door being off too. After 5 to 10 seconds it will become responsive, which is a bit annoying if you're trying to open the windows to clear the damp mist on them, as you can't....

Also, if during normal routine you run through all four electric windows to close them (so passenger, driver, passenger rear, driver rear) in that order, you hear the solenoids click in a COMPLETELY different order. I am not sure if it is prioritising the messages in some way but the order that the windows "click" is not the order I press the buttons.

Also, I can get the CD player to crash.

Such minor noticeable issues make me think about the quality of the more important bits somewhat.

The breakdown on Toyota's safety code was interesting; and frightening really.

[qaq]

Care to elaborate? Kernel developers are not practising SCRUM or TDD yet are shipping a fairly stable product.

[creshal]

But they do know what a VCS is, and they don't re-invent lint because they want to ship broken code and need to only check for 2-3 minor issues while leaving the rest alone, as they need to rely on "magic" code exploiting undefined behaviour in certain hardware+compiler combinations.

[xiphias]

People won't be able to override a buggy software: they can't even do that now, just look at the remote Audi and BMW hacks that can brake the car on the highway.

[seanp2k2]

Or the jeep: https://blog.kaspersky.com/blackhat-jeep-cherokee-hack-expla...

Auto mfgs seem to be about 20-30 years behind when it comes to computers. Not really surprising that Tesla is whomping them on this front, given how SV people are scrambling to work there. You don't see that with the Big 3 or really any other car mfg.