[nradov]

In the general case it's impractical for electronic sensors to accurately measure the mechanical state of the vehicle. How do they tell us the suspension is rusted out and about to break? (In theory you can play some clever tricks with eddy currents or something but that's not going to be feasible for real world sensing.)

[outworlder]

That is not much of a problem in practice. A 'rusted out' suspension doesn't happen overnight. There could be regulatory requirements for self-driving cars to be considered 'streetworthy'. Out of compliance, robotaxi disabled.

The tricks you mentioned are already used for some aircraft inspections.

What the software needs to worry about would be other types of failures. Software is much more likely to detect issues before the driver. Say, brake performance is outside the expected range, or appears to be degrading too quickly.