| There’s a level of detail frequently missed when discussing this topic. Most manufacturers fill their cars with dozens of ECUs (electronic control unit) distributed throughout. Each of these needs a separate microcontroller and runs it’s own custom firmware. As they come from multiple suppliers, these are very hard to integrate and it is nearly impossible to upgrade the firmware. Teslas’s approach is different. They have 2-3 Large PCBs, each with a single PowerPC master controller and a ton of discrete components which drive the various functions of the car directly. For example, instead of having an ECU controlling the wiper motor, they drive it directly with a 3-phase circuit right from the main controller board. This is why Tesla can alter the functionality of nearly anything in their cars with a software update—-all they need to do is rewrite the code for their few PowerPC microcontrollers. It is brilliant and very unlike the mess the OEMs have, with over 100 separate ECUs all running black box firmware. This YouTube channel, Ingineerix (https://youtu.be/AVCHC2cw0v0) covers this in great detail. It’s inspiring… |