| >Is anyone making reasonably well-appointed vehicles without throwing everything and the kitchen sink in there? No. Honda, Toyota, Fiat, GM, everyone seems to have the same problem. For what it's worth, FiatChrysler and GM have at least had the sense to set higher requirements for vendor/suppliers than Toyota. Specicially, after Toyota's "unintended acceleration" issues (mostly floor mats, some APPS/Pedal issues) it was discovered that their ECU taking accelerator pedal position (I'm not sure if it was the PCM/ECM specifically) had over 12,000 GLOBAL VARIABLES! Let that sink in for second. After a code audit by iirc UPenn the bug was not found, but that wasn't a glowing review, it was ad admission it was impossible to prove/disprove. Edit: I take that back. There are Chinese brands I drove in Malaysia and export-only Nissans that while being wholly illegal in the US or Europe are still barebones vehicles. |
What if i tell you that a pretty big chunk of the cars on the road are running software which are using global variable as means to exchange data between modules ? Well, that's how it is done and it isn't less safe. The last SW i worked with had 20000 global variables and 60000 parameters that the calibration guys could fiddle with.
Serious suppliers are applying safety standard and methodology and are not rushing the FMEA. Countless times my customer cursed at the safety guys for postponing the SW because they were not finished with testing, but this very same customer never had to stand in court for a safety issue with the SW, and so are many other carmaker.
When the Toyota pedal issue came out, we just could not believe that Toyota did not have the gas pedal override by brake safety in their SW.