[hghid]

I'm all for improvements to pod startup times etc, but the general idea of putting more software into cars is not that appealing. I recently broke down in the highlands of Scotland in a fairly new car with the family - it was a horrible experience. It was made worse by the fact that there was nobody close that had a clue what to do with the car. The breakdown service arrived promptly, plugged the diagnostic tool into the car, proclaimed it broken, called a tow truck and left - two days later we arrived home. Had I been in a less complex car, a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem and sent us on our way. The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong then they fail hard. Small local garages that used to be a life saver are next to useless now as they don't have the tools and knowledge to fix a mobile data centre.

[ilyt]

More software is fine IMO. More software on critical path ain't.

Have the ECU only do the engine thing. Have the AC control just do AC control. Decouple dependencies and make it as simple as possible. Old cars already do it. Blinker switch send signal directly to light controller, not to some central box deciding what it should do with it.

If something needs config in addition to control signals, have it keep it own config and only be updated from the "config manager" (inforatinment box). If infotainment box dies, everything else still works.

Cars already are basically "microservices on a message bus". Let's just use what works with that - minimal coupling and maximum independence of "services"

> Had I been in a less complex car, a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem and sent us on our way. The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong then they fail hard. Small local garages that used to be a life saver are next to useless now as they don't have the tools and knowledge to fix a mobile data centre.

Out of curiosity, what was the issue ?

[hghid]

According to the car, the stability control system wasn't working. Cause? Obviously a broken fuel injector. The stability control system talks to the engine ECU to control the torque if there is a lack of traction - it is notified of this by the ABS computer. Broken Injector=No ability to manage torque, hence traction control warning. Sitting here now, that makes perfect sense. In horizontal Scottish rain - less so!

[uriah]

Unless I’m missing something, it seems that this information largely invalidates the thesis of your previous post. A critical component (fuel injector) failed, the software in the car prevented it from running and causing catastrophic damage. Roadside assistance came, immediately determined it can’t be fixed on the side of the road and towed the car. Seems like a best-case scenario given the circumstances other than possibly the red herring related to the stability control.

[thescriptkiddie]

Assuming that the fuel injector wasn't stuck open, the car could simply disable the affected cylinder and continue to run (poorly) in limp mode. I had exactly this happen in a 20 year old VW and it turned out that the injector was fine and the connector had just come loose. The engine sounded awful running on 3 cylinders and wouldn't go past 3000 rpm but there was no permanent damage. The fault code in the ECU correctly identified the problem (fuel injector cylinder X open circuit) though it did also log misfires and disable traction control.

[ilyt]

Oh yeah, less computers in car wouldn't fix it.

Sure, old carbie with distributor might've just ran with 3 cylinders , but that also might damage something.

Also auto makers don't really want to give user sensible error messages or even just metrics because without experience they might just misinterpret it as different problem.

For example if car have oil pressure gauge it is either nearly fake or heavily filtered. Oil pressure changes according to load but gauge going up and down might cause user to think something is wrong with car...

[ClumsyPilot]

> Sure, old carbie with distributor might've just ran with 3 cylinders , but that also might damage something

A car is not an iPhone - if the car can move at all, it must move.

The alternative could be freezing to death. What if I am driving in rural Siberia, or Canada, and there is no phone signal to call for help?

[pas]

Not all cars are made equal. Just as you don't go to a cross-Sahara race in a car you don't know you, you don't buy a Prius to go logging in Alberta or Yakutsk.

Sure, that doesn't necessarily invalidate your argument, after all this increase in car complexity (through "electronization" and smartification of more and more components) without the increase in debuggability/repairability is IMHO a bad trade-off for many consumers.

Case in point, our second-hand 2011 Ford Focus has a problem with the electronic steering assist. Apparently it somehow experiences some kind of over-voltage and the internal system shuts down. It's likely due to humidity. (So probably it's simply a design/manufacturing/QA issue.) Okay, but there's no way to get the actual data from the integrated electronics from the steering system, but it's possible to reflash a different firmware on it. Which resets the internal data. Which basically clears this error state, and the car will happily use it.

But there's clearly a mechanical error, there's a new "bad" noise when turning the steering wheel. But it's a 10+ year car, rarely used, and replacing the steering system is about ~1000 EUR, doing the firmware flashing was ~30 EUR. (Finding the guy with the laptop, who can flash the firmware through the good old ODB port was the challenge.)

And it's basically a big (market) information asymmetry problem. The car industry wants to sell more cars. Sure they sell some parts, but the more repairability a car has the less parts it really needs, as consumers can make their own tradeoffs.

[hinkley]

My car has a button for traction control. If it’s not working I would expect it to turn itself off and ding, not just halt the vehicle.

[BenjiWiebe]

A bad fuel injector should usually be a reason to stop driving. Depending on the type of damage it would likely damage the piston and/or cylinder fairly quickly if you attempted to keep running it.

[jsmith45]

That would obviously depend on the failure mode. But there certainly are failure modes which could be quite damaging, and an ECU may have limited ability to determine what failure mode is occurring, and even if it has sensors that can indicate certain failure modes, it is not always clear if those can be trusted, as they there be additional failure modes that make sensors give misleading results.

So shutting it down certainly seems sensible.

[ClumsyPilot]

There are situations where you must run the car, even at the risk of damage, because waiting for help is dangerous to the occupants.

[Too]

Cars have a “limp-home” mode which they enter if sensors show odd yet not critical errors. Usually it restricts the acceleration and top speed to 30kmph or so. If it totally shut down it was likely a very serious error.

[danuker]

But what cash grabbing opportunity would the dealer have in that case?

[gnufx]

That sounds horribly familiar! (Old, relatively non-fancy, Ford Focus; it limped along with the failure.) The explanation makes sense, which it didn't at the time, and the traction control button didn't help. The specialist garage initially said "sensor failure", as I assumed, having lost my OBD device.

[bottled_poe]

You know what this car needs? Kubernetes.

[rurounijones]

I know you are joking but I am not sure if you are aware of how close you are to reality:

https://thenewstack.io/how-the-u-s-air-force-deployed-kubern...

[groestl]

Literally taking the software to the cloud

[cpufry]

wow this is terrifying lmao

[davnicwil]

That's a bit overengineered, come on, really it just needs docker compose.

[cztomsik]

Or Erlang... oh wait, that would actually work. We don't want that.

[yellowapple]

A car built on Erlang would break down every 11 seconds but would immediately fix itself so you never notice anything's wrong.

[hinkley]

Supervisors should set Check Engine.

[geodel]

Agree. I am not buying any car not running all software components as Spring Boot micro services in kubernetes cluster as a standard cloud native service.

If this setup can run my 95% uptime enterprise apps, I am sure as hell it can run my car too.

[ilyt]

Most infotainment is already shit code. If same people use more tools the result will just be worse, if they can't even handle a monolith

[djbusby]

Carbernetes. Now with reinvented wheel functionality.

[EntrePrescott]

and a few years later, we get Injecternetes … though I'm not sure if that will be the name of an improved fork… or the name of a security vuln exploit.

[gautamdivgi]

Lol. Reminded me of this - https://youtu.be/cfTIjuW6SWM

Fwiw - I am a kubernetes fan. Just not in cars.

[Spivak]

If you're a k8s fan but don't consider it reliable enough to do anything even next to but independent from safety critical systems then that's not exactly a glowing recommendation.

[gautamdivgi]

Different tech has different needs. I can see it being really great with server side distributed systems. I don’t really see it having any benefit for running stuff in resource constrained single purpose environments

[goodpoint]

And yet it's true. Reliability never comes from unnecessary complexity.

[kakoni]

Well Volkswagen/Cariad is certainly flirting with that idea. https://datatronic.hu/en/containerisation-in-automotive-indu...

[chubot]

Make sure to run at least 2 clusters in case one goes down

[hinkley]

Watch us slowly reimplement Erlang on top of OCI.

[Spivak]

Erlang but language independent is actually a solid pitch.

[alpaca128]

To be precise an incomplete, bug-ridden, undocumented reimplementation of Erlang.

[hinkley]

I keep having to stop myself from implementing an incomplete, bug ridden reimplementation if half of Erlang on top of NodeJS so I see the attraction there.

Worker threads have a garbage API and I keep finding myself wanting to have n processes sharing m workers and there’s just no easy way.

[birdyrooster]

I know you are joking but it’s actually not the worst thing in the world.

[vasco]

Can't wait to have to restart a kubernetes cluster to get sensor metrics from the engine to start again.

[yobert]

You'll need to replace your kubernator!

[LoganDark]

> More software is fine IMO.

A lot of software is created on powerful developer machines. But fill up a normal consumer machine with this software, and you start to notice that it maybe isn't so fine.

This is how things like Electron come to exist. I'm sure Electron works fine on developer machines, but once it trickles down to someone's cheap Celeron netbook, it runs worse than retro computers with 384KB of RAM.

Does it really have to be this way? Is more software "fine", if the same could be accomplished with much less code bloat?

P.S. As far as I've heard, one of the best ways for developers to combat this is to target your software for cheap netbooks proactively; test compiled artifacts there rather than on your powerful development machine. If you can make it fast in that situation, it'll be fast pretty much anywhere.

I once met someone who had optimized their DOOM clone using this method, and they claim to get millions of FPS on any vaguely modern machine, just through optimizing it for cheap netbooks.

[capableweb]

> More software is fine IMO. More software on critical path ain't.

Based on the story in the parent, it sounds like this was precisely a problem with software on the critical path, otherwise local mecs/breakdown service would have been able to fix it rather than give up.

[sidewndr46]

economically, this doesn't work. The cheaper cars will always be those that roll all functions into a single cost center. This is why cars wind up with a horribly awful touch screen in the center for controlling almost everything about the car's function.

[speed_spread]

The ECU wasn't doing the engine thing no more.

[Zaskoda]

graceful degradation ftw

[christophilus]

> The sophistication and gadgets in modern cars are great until something goes wrong

I'd go further than cars and say, "in most things". Smart-anything, washing machines, printers, sewing machines, thermostats, appliances in general...

My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?

I'm not arguing against electronics, here-- many of these things are no doubt improved by electronics to such a degree that the tradeoff is worth it, but it's good to at least acknowledge that there is a tradeoff. It's also good to try to minimize the impact of electronic failure. Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.

[ilyt]

If something like that needs to be smart the smart part should basically be extra interface. Old printers did it right - separate extra box for all the connectivity working as print server. That breaks ? just connect it directly.

But hey, feeding everything from single microcontroller is $2 cheaper...

[miah_]

I went to a "tech school" to learn computers while in High School in the 90's. The tech school also had classes for 'the trades', it was set up to prepare Michigan kids for careers (Careerline Tech IIRC).

Anyway. A big part of that class was learning to clean, repair, and manage printers. Again, it was the 90's, and we were high school kids. We came out quite capable with many computer skills but the printer stuff really stuck with me. I've done technical support throughout the years and have setup hundreds of printers.

The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.

[com2kid]

> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's. Pure simplicity and speed vs FULL COMPUTERS, with scanning, faxing, and every other imaginable feature crammed in with zero hope of doing anything other than replacing the toner.

The first Laserwriter in 1985 had more processing power than the Macintosh it was sold to accompany.

Printers have been full computers for a long time now. As we expect them to do more and more, the computers in them get more and more complex.

[alpaca128]

> As we expect them to do more and more

Who does? Who asked for updates blocking third-party ink, 1GB "drivers", full-color "test prints" each time you switch it on, ...?

Printing reliably doesn't sound too demanding, manufacturers reached that point long ago, and since then I haven't seen all that much groundbreaking innovation. Sure, things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago, and more reliably than the printers I've used. I also haven't heard of anyone being excited about NFC in printers, and from experience I can say it's not nearly intuitive or frictionless enough to warrant the integration.

[com2kid]

> Who does?

The majority of my printing happens from my smartphone, so my printer needs to be on wifi, and needs to be able to reliably print from Android and iOS.

Accordingly, it needs firmware updates because phones break how they work all the time.

> things like wifi were added but that doesn't require cutting-edge technology - consumer devices could handle that 20 years ago

Not just wifi, multiple protocol for connecting to printers. Also that wifi needs to be 5ghz so I don't have to switch over to a 2.4ghz legacy network every time I want to print (which I had to do with my previous 2.4ghz only wifi printer!)

The onboard touch screen + embedded OS means I don't need to set anything up through a computer or smartphone app.

FWIW I have a black and white laser printer from Brother, I've never had to install a driver, I just plugged it in, typed my wifi PW on to the touch screen, and after a firmware update on first use it has happily been allowing anyone connected to my wifi to print w/o any hassle.

[hinkley]

People used to buy HP Laserjet 4 printers at auction because they were peak stability. From the look of things the 4 introduced the direct predecessor to the wire protocol printers use today (PCL 5e vs PCL 6 variants)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_Command_Language

[ilyt]

Our helpdesk offered us to take our LJ2100 and get us something newer.

Many insults were thrown. He didn't try again

[outworlder]

> The printers of today are awful landfill fodder compared to the Okidata's of the 90's.

Maybe. But how expensive were they?

I can buy a good laser printer for under $200 these days. It will be more compact, lighter, mechanically simpler and use way less power than older printers. Something has to give.

Some older printers were really overengineered (which in many cases did make them more reliable), but that has a cost. Turns out, consumers didn't want to pay those costs.

[briffle]

My grandma had an original "Montgomery Wards" microwave.. they saved up for months to buy it when it came out. Complete with a rotary dial timer.

Never serviced, always cooked perfectly. She had to get rid of it around 2006 or so, when she got a pacemaker.. They didn't shield them as well back then...

[outworlder]

> My mother in-law has two sewing machines. One of them is one of the first electronic sewing machines (from the 70s) and one is much older. Guess which one still works like a charm?

There's a bit of survivorship bias and N=1 here.

I'm old enough to remember machines full of relays and discrete components that failed pretty often and required a lot of troubleshooting with schematics on hand. Modern appliances – if built out of decent components – have a much better shot at surviving long term. Less discrete components that can fail, more debugging capabilities, logic that's implemented in a rock solid processor rather than an unreliable mess of digital gates (or worse, analog logic).

There's obviously a point where there are diminishing returns, and probably another one where more complexity actually decreases reliability.

> Smart things would ideally just revert back to being functional dumb things (rather than bricks) if their electronics fail.

If possible, yes. That's only really an option for simple devices.

[Alifatisk]

You said it so well, cars have become too bloated with software that barely any local mechanic would want to touch it. Happened to me and this is the major reason why I am slowly shifting to older cars, they are way easier and cheaper to repair.

[miah_]

Its not just software though, even the lights on your cars now are not easily user serviceable anymore. New cars with LED lights built in have core charges/deposits attached to them, they cost multiple hundreds of dollars and if you want to get your core deposit refund you must return the light. Compared to 15+ years ago, you go to your local store, buy a new light for $10-30, replace it and you're on your way.

Ford apparently ended the core charge program for lighting in 2020, but other manufactures continue, and that is just one thing that was common for users to service themselves in the past. It's not going to get better.

[pas]

On one hand, it's okay. Cars are becoming a service, which they are anyway. Most people want to get transported, they don't want to drive, nor they want to maintain a car. Collective interests are pushing the whole industry toward this. (The goal of decreasing emissions through the whole lifecycle/value-chain, more safety for everyone involved, not just for those in cars; EV-ification itself pushes everything toward consolidation, as cars become simpler, but more one-time CapEx intensive, as the battery costs a lot, and then it just works for a million miles. AAaand then the whole need/goal of densification of cities, more public transportation, etc.)

On the other hand right to repair is very important. Walled gardens suck. Still hundreds of millions of people live in rural areas in the so called developed world, etc. And I don't want to subsidize the industry, I'm willing to pay more up-front, if it means I can just to replace the fucking light bulb.

[hghid]

Same here - I have owned an old petrol Vauxhall for years as my runaround car and it's so much easier to deal with. The big issue I have with newer cars is that the computers mask any developing issues until they get to a point when they just give up. A less sophicsticated car starts to just feel different a long time before it outright fails.

[doubled112]

The MkIV diesel Jetta I had seemed to fall into limp mode at the slightest provocation, but never left me stranded.

Trust me, it is a difference you can feel.

[hinkley]

IT people with mechanical sympathy aren’t exactly an endangered species but we are rare enough that it becomes a bonding exercise (leatherman knives or pocket flashlights are our shibboleths).

If you’re a kid and you also have IT skills you’re going to be interested in IT unless there are extenuating circumstances, like wanting to stay rural, or a family business, or friends and family with union influence. Easier on your body and pays at least as well. So a car mechanic with heavy IT or electrical skills is going to be in short supply. Which is a problem when all cars are electrified.

[potta_coffee]

I drive older Toyotas. These cars will never go into the landfill if I can help it.

[Alifatisk]

But cars from Japan & Korea have always felt reliable no matter the age.

At least from my experience.

[VBprogrammer]

Heh, we were stuck in a carpark for 3 hours because the 2025 battery cell in our key remote went dead on a cold walk around a local lake.

It's supposed to have a backup but, like most backups, I hadn't tested that it works and for some reason the RFID reader part wouldn't connect with the car.

[tough]

Are 2025 battery cells batteries from the future?

[xarope]

assuming this is a cr2025 then most likely 20mm diameter and 2.5mm thick => 2025

[bookofjoe]

this is the most useful thing I've learned so far this year

[jsmith45]

Yeah almost certainly talking about a CR2025.

Use of a 2025 cell would be rather irritating to me, because in my experience CR2016 or CR2032 are both more common, and it seems like it should not be hard to fit a 2032 into most keyfob designs.

[amrb]

A type of battery the small round one.. not the year

[tough]

Thanks, that makes much more sense

[emacdona]

Hmmm... maybe this thread will have an answer to the question that has been on my mind for a while. Sometime in the next 5-7 years, I think I'm going to be in the market for a new car. Are there any manufacturers out there whose niche is "dumb cars"? If so, they can have my money.

[dockman]

I for one am very happy that RedHat is putting in these efforts to improve startup time of podman. This is extremely necessary if our industry has to survive. Last time we tried using podman in our product, it was such a performance mess. We had to completely abandon our product. Our product would have disrupted the entire juicer market if podman was efficient at that time, our's was the only juicer which had containers running in it.

Hoping to get back to it once this version of podman is released. Thank you RedHat team; we'll send you one of our juicers as a thank you gift.

[dtx1]

That's imo a right to repair issue. We can build easily diagnosable and easily fixable hardware. Big Corps just don't

[carlmr]

It's also a liability issue. If a company allows tinkering with the software in the car it opens itself up to massive lawsuits.

If we have a right to repair here, we also need to see how to handle liability here. If you flash your own software on the motor controller and subsequently mow through a group of people because you forgot to do a plausibility check on the accelerator pedal value who takes responsibility then?

Even if you just get the original software, how do we ensure you flash it correctly?

If you get the schematics, how do we know used the right parts that are rated for 125°C temperatures.

[anaganisk]

Lol, this is absolute funny, every example you came up with has already been there for years. Aren't cars being modded every day, ECU tuning, engine mods, etc? Go ahead sue the company, companies aren't some innocent babies, they can afford to quickly dismiss the claim by just pointing towards the mod. Auto Companies have never been held liable for a car that has been modded. Does it waste money to be sued? Yes! But does it save a lot of money for consumers and is much better for the environment? Yes! If companies are greedy/selfish about their profits then consumers don't need to think about how right to repair hurts those companies.

[bluGill]

The EPA has suggested they will hold companies liable in the future. It hasn't happened yet, but they are hinting. If it is just one hobbyist they don't care, but there is a whole industry of chip your diesel truck and those chips clearly increase pollution. A modern diesel truck doesn't emit black smoke, but a large % of the diesel trucks you see are "rolling coal" which is a sure sign that someone has disabled the emissions controls.

[yellowapple]

> The EPA has suggested they will hold companies liable in the future.

The EPA can suggest all it wants. Holding one entity liable for the actions of an entirely different entity beyond the control of the former's is asinine, and I can guarantee you these automakers will gladly sic their armies of lawyers at a Supreme-Court-bound case and/or their armies of lobbyists at legislatively castrating the EPA if the EPA made any such attempt.

On top of that, the EPA is virtually irrelevant for EVs, and yet EVs are just as locked down (if not moreso), so I don't buy the "EPA might punish us" argument for that reason, too.

[Gordonjcp]

Not disabled the emissions controls, but deliberately remapped it to grossly overfuel at large throttle settings.

Why people want to trade off power for a big cloud of black smoke is beyond me, but there we are. If they want to get 50bhp from a nine litre engine, that's their concern.

[Gordonjcp]

"ECU tuning" is just fiddling about with some values in a lookup table, though.

[overthrow]

The liability excuse is a lie told to you by companies trying to increase their profits.

Who is liable if you tweak the software on your 2023 Mercedes? The same person who is liable if you tweak the hardware on your 1987 Chevy. There's plenty of precedent on how to deal with this.

[yellowapple]

> If you flash your own software on the motor controller and subsequently mow through a group of people because you forgot to do a plausibility check on the accelerator pedal value who takes responsibility then?

I would, obviously, for making the unsafe modification. In what multiverse would the manufacturer be liable for something entirely outside the manufacturer's control?

[bluGill]

It should be, but right to repair is mostly not about diagnosis and repair. Instead you are seeing a bait and switch where someone wants to disable emissions controls and claims that is a repair.

What can a mechanic not do to a modern car with the standard scan tools and training? Most old school mechanics still lack the training to work on computers, but those that have that training have no problem fixing cars.

[dtx1]

> It should be, but right to repair is mostly not about diagnosis and repair. Instead you are seeing a bait and switch where someone wants to disable emissions controls and claims that is a repair.

Well first of all that happens even under the current draconian anti repair setups already and secondly thats a felony. Just because you can do sth illegal doesn't mean we should child proof our whole society so you can't do anything anymore just because someone MAY do something illegal.

We still allow you to buy knifes, in some places even guns.

[import_awesome]

If you had a little more software in your car it could automatically remediate the issue and you'd be on your way with no repairman involved or at least tell the repairman exactly what to fix. Maybe you could fix it with the step-by-step workflow on your console.

[goalieca]

Half the time there’s a light on my car, it’s a damn sensor! More components mean more points of failure.

[bookofjoe]

Check Engine Light being on comes standard

[bityard]

Mechanics call this the money light. :)

[bookofjoe]

Indeed. When I took my car in last winter because the light had come on for no apparent reason, as the car was running fine, they charged me $140 to take it out on the road to try to find the reason. No reason was found. Two weeks later, the light came on again (towards the end of 2022). The car was and is running fine. The light will remain on until July when I take it in for a scheduled oil change.

[bityard]

Sounds like it was an intermittent fault? If so, those are notoriously hard for any mechanic to diagnose. Cars _usually_ store code history but it's up to the manufacturer and often the data they provide to the mechanic with a scan tool is misleading or an outright pack of lies.

[generalizations]

Or you could buy a $20 code reader and see what's causing the light yourself.

[ClumsyPilot]

> it could automatically remediate the issue and you'd be on your way with no repairman involved or at least tell the repairman exactly what to fix

Nah it would figure out what is the best time and place to break, order you an uber, and Uber would psy you manufacturer for the order flow.

It would also show you ads while you wait

[Gordonjcp]

You take out your picnic basket

'cos the car has blown a gasket

in the middle o' a place called Rannoch Moor

https://l-hit.com/en/143370

[hghid]

Haha - that summed up my day perfectly!

[pixl97]

>a local garage could most likely have fixed the problem

So, what was the problem?

[judge2020]

Supposedly the electronics were too complicated for a shop to diagnose and fix the car on the spot, but I imagine the real problem is that diagnosing non-obvious problems is tough for anyone to do on the spot because all mainline service centers for the big manufacturers are weeks behind and can't just squeeze in the 4 man hours it might take to tear down and diagnose random problems. Older cars and systems were cheaper and easier to diagnose, but they also probably broke down once a year or more, while I had no issues with a 80k miles-in-2-years 2018 Honda Accord and still going strong with a 60k mile no-maintenance 2020 Tesla Model 3 SR+.