Intel Wants To Computerize Your Car 191
cartechboy writes: 'Google just unveiled its cute self-driving car prototype, and now Intel is the next tech company looking to get in on the rapid digital change coming in cars — a potentially lucrative area for expansion. Intel is releasing what it's calling an "in-vehicle solutions platform" — processors, an operating system and developer kits Intel is hoping automakers and others would use to build in-vehicle infotainment systems. From the developer perspective, there is a chance the Intel release makes building easier and cheaper. But is it good for automakers to be building these systems instead of Google and Apple? So far, no automaker has done so well on software, and some have seriously damaged their reputation (ex: MyFord Touch and Sync, Cadillac CUE).'
How did you guess? (Score:5, Informative)
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copyrigth trolls (Score:2)
and copyright trolls will join the **AAs to make such car not-street legal (even if it has nothing to do with the driving on street) ...so just after the Nth scandal of **AA making fools of themselves after issuing a C&D letter for reason of torrenting against the IP address of a networked laser printer, prepare yourself to read about a warning issued for reason of unlicensed washer fluid against the VIN... of a lawnmower.
and will sue presumed-fraudulent drivers automatic al.
Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? (Score:4, Informative)
As far as I can see, that solves my infotainment "needs." What exactly am I missing out on?
Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? (Score:4, Informative)
Closed systems that go out of date quickly and are incompatible with anything newer.
Want an Example? BMW 525 Iphone cradle system. doesn't work with the iPhone 5, 5c or 5s.
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Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? (Score:4, Insightful)
If it was all OPEN Protocols and well documented so that anyone can interface to this stuff, I'm all for it. But the automotive world had to be slapped with federal mandate to use ODB-II because the assholes at GM,Ford, and Chrysler were hell bent on their own secret sauce.
If I as a shade tree mechanic can not diagnose and change settings on a system, then it's a bad design. right now I can on any car with my laptop and interface box. ODB-II forced the hands of car makers to not be dicks. The problem is they started to separate the interfaces so they could be dicks again. BMW for example has two separate systems one requires a special device to talk to the main systems and the ODB-II is only used for engine management.
Luckily that has been reverse engineered and you can get an interface to their kBus.
Heavy regulation by HONEST people is needed for the automotive industry. Because you can not trust those scumbags that run those companies to do the right thing.
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Closed systems that go out of date quickly and are incompatible with anything newer.
Want an Example? BMW 525 Iphone cradle system. doesn't work with the iPhone 5, 5c or 5s.
Is this an argument against the parent? It seems like an argument for open I/O standards to me. All phones should be able to output HDMI video. All car entertainment systems should show up as input devices, and have sound I/O. These various I/O should be combined into 1 open standard wireless or wired connection. For wired connections, a standard input interface could be matched with a phone-specific dongle.
The problem historically has been that car stereo manufacturers have pandered to Apple, who ca
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None of those are really useful today. What would have been is a friggin' 3.5mm audio jack so I could plug whatever portable device in that I wanted. I still cannot figure out why what is probably the most standardized data exchange port is not standard on a car radio. I used to think Alpine was in cah
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I wonder if this is a "this hotel is so nice, they make you pay for the internet" type of situation
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What if you're in a city like Sydney, where there are mazes of roads underground? You phone GPS won't work there.
An in-vehicle navigation system has a much better chance of getting you to where you want to go, since it uses the vehicle speed sensor, a gyroscope and the map data to determine current position in absence of of a GPS signal.
How about countries like Japan, where they have the VICS network that gives road users helpful information like road works and traffic congestion via microwave, infra-red an
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What if you're in a city like Sydney, where there are mazes of roads underground? You phone GPS won't work there.
If you're phone cant get a GPS signal, neither can your car. It will be equally as stuffed. Also phones can handle the loss of a GPS signal. My Galaxy Nexus seemed to handle it just fine through the tunnels of Sydney using Google Maps for navigation.
How about countries like Japan, where they have the VICS network that gives road users helpful information like road works and traffic congestion via microwave, infra-red and FM radio data?
Phones are capable of picking that up as well. In fact, my phone can use applications that go beyond the functionality of these systems.
You cellphone can't do that, nor can it do automated toll road payments.
Actually it can and does. But most toll roads use your number plate these days.
It doesn't offer handy features like trip/fuel economy displays either.
I've used Torque [google.com] in cars that do not have fanc
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Who at BMW thought the knob to control iDrive was a good idea?
I remember that being announced on the 'net when it was just being released. Pictures and everything. It was being touted as very cool.
My reaction was: "WTF? How is THIS supposed to be a good interface for THAT?"
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Auto manufacturers supporting open standards? LOL
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For speed sensor data and trip/fuel economy display you just need an ODB-II Bluetooth adapter. Most phones have a gyroscope built in, although for navigation it isn't really used. All the data available on VICS and the similar EU RDS system is available via the internet too.
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It's not like your car has an actual INS. The speed is about the only actual useful information (for navigation) that the car can supply that a current model phone cannot obtain for itself.
Start shipping bluetooth capable ODB systems (yes, I am aware of the dongles) and now a phone really does have everything it needs.
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In which case, a TomTom will do a far better job than any factory-fit in-car system I've ever seen. I don't know why the car manufacturers don't either just copy TomTom exactly, or just license the technology. Instead, they insist on making crappy UIs that are either hard to use, slow to use, or outright dangerous or all three, crappy navigation that doesn't properly take into account reality, let alone that XYZ feature changed 5 years ago and still isn't right in this years maps, crappy/non-existent speed
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Google maps also works on Lower Wacker Drive
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a car maker is missing out on the $2000 extra option you're not buying but only using your USB port
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As far as I can see, that solves my infotainment "needs." What exactly am I missing out on?
This.
My car was made in 2002, the "in car entertainment" was also constructed in 2002, it was made by a company called Garrett and the model number is GT2540R. It's a turbocharger, attached to an SR20DE engine and six speed manual transmission. That's entertainment, the joy of the drive.
If you dont enjoy driving, it's time for you to start saving for the Google autonomous car which you can outfit with your garish curved, oversized 4K TV to watch Days Of Our Lives on.
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Re:Integrated Infotainment, why do I want it? (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed - this is not about what you as a customer want, or what a road user needs, it's only about trying to turn your car into yet another platform for selling crap that is tied to one vendor, like the iPhone.
If they really wanted to give people what they want and need, then cars would be made from interchangeable, generic and compatible parts, so you could build a car up pretty much like a PC. And the in-car computer systems would be open source. That way, if you are against all things modern and digital, you could have a fully mechanic car, but still choose a modern and efficient engine (it is, in fact possible to make efficient engines with no computer control; just not very easy) - and if you are a bleeding-edge hyper-nerd, you would be able to have something fully computerized. And it would a lot cheaper, because there would be far more competition in the market.
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A stable screen and buttons. Say there is an accident that causes a traffic jam and your sat nav offers to route you around it. You have to give a yes/no response some how, which usually means touching the screen. Cradles are never that sold, especially when you try to rest your finger on the screen to hit a button.
That's why I prefer a head unit with MirrorLink. Tuck the phone securely out of the way and have it's screen mirrored to the head unit, complete with touch control. All the hard buttons work too.
Damaged reputation? (Score:2)
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I'm just sayin'
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Several reviews of Ford and Cadillac models I've read, particularly models with older versions of SYNC/QUE, have been overwhelmingly positive with the exception of the infotainment system.
Every review of BMW models is overwhelmingly positive.... except for the *bleep* infotainment system.
All car owners want entertainment along the journey. Some get their entertainment from music, maps, and the like. The others get their entertainment by hitting the cloverleaf at 90 MPH. Intel can help the first group; Intel can do nothing but frustrate the second group.
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Several reviews of Ford and Cadillac models I've read, particularly models with older versions of SYNC/QUE, have been overwhelmingly positive with the exception of the infotainment system.
Every review of BMW models is overwhelmingly positive.... except for the *bleep* infotainment system.
All car owners want entertainment along the journey. Some get their entertainment from music, maps, and the like. The others get their entertainment by hitting the cloverleaf at 90 MPH. Intel can help the first group; Intel can do nothing but frustrate the second group.
Yes, I remember the dreaded iDrive that BMW forced upon it's customers years ago. I suspect it caused many BMW enthusiasts to become Mercedes owners. One would have hoped that the rest of the auto industry would have learned from BMWs mistake and not tread down this path.
Personally, I think the industry needs to re-think it's entire approach to electronics. A car is expected to give 10+ years of service whereas the electronics are still evolving at a rapid pace. I would like for it to be easy to retrofit
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I find it hard to drive a car without that type of system in it anymore.
I'd say that qualifies as a problem.
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It's probably fine as long as you don't upgrade your phone for the life of your car.
Seriously though, people keep cars for many MANY phone lifecycles.
I really think car manufacturers should standardize on some sort of mounting system. Imagine a 19" stereo rack, but for a car.
Do you know anyone with a 2007 car? It was built before the iPhone existed, which was announced in June 2007.
Re:Damaged reputation? (Score:5, Informative)
My 2011 Taurus' Sync interface is a Microsoft UI designed in hell. It starts out where the destination selection is as awkward as it gets: instead of entering a nice friendly address like 1234 County O, Wausau, Wisconsin, you have to enter an address according to computer hierarchy rules: "State: Wisconsin. City: Wausau. Street "County O". Number: "1234". The first problem is that the autocomplete kicks in late, but still takes the buffered touch as the next input: W..A..U..S ... up pops the WAU listings of Wauketon, Waunakee, and Wausau, and Wauketon happens to be located where the S was. Guess who has to start over again? The next problem comes if all you have for an address is 1234 County O. The auto complete demands that you specify which County O. Do you mean North (1-4799), North (4800-9999), West, South, or Southwest? Hell if I know, I'm from Minnesota and I was just reading an address off a web site. It turned out that only one of those four choices actually happened to be located in Wausau, but the damn machine felt the need to offer me all four.
For a machine with 40GB of hard drive, limiting the address book to 100 destinations is simply insulting my intelligence. I can't have a hundred and one places to go?
There is very poor integration with smart phones. The most it can do with an iPhone is play music, but only after spending minutes downloading the entire catalog of tracks before letting me even play a song. I can't send it a contact's address for navigation, nor can it dial an entry in my contact list.
The icing on the cake was the first time I really needed to use the voice interface. As a lifelong Minnesotan, I have a flat, boring, monotone Midwestern accent, yet the so-called voice "recognition" couldn't recognize common words like 'courthouse', 'capitol', or 'state capitol'. Instead it offered me really odd choices that were nothing like the words I spoke, such as answering my saying 'capitol building' by asking 'Did you mean pizza?' (yes, that really was its clarification.) Neither my wife nor I ever did get it to take us to the State Capitol building in Madison - (we ended up stumbling upon it because it's located at the center of a pretty small city.) At one point I gave up on the voice interface and said "exit". The machine had the temerity to ask me "Did you really mean to exit, yes or no?" A freakin' pop-up dialog box in a voice interface?!?! At that point we nicknamed it "Useless".
Thankfully my car is slightly too old to suffer from MyTouch, which was inflicted on the model year 2012 cars, and newer. The problems are as obvious as a cold sore: next to a touch screen interface, capacitive buttons are about the worst possible user interface possible in a car. When driving, you need to access controls by feel, as your eyes need to keep looking out the windows. And tactile feedback is a simple concept that people intuitively understand: when you reach for a knob, you feel if it's the twisty kind or the clicky kind, and you can easily adjust it without looking. But if you reach a touch-button by feel, though, you are by definition touching it - therefore you are also triggering it. If you would normally expect to run your fingers down the dash, feeling for the third button in order to turn on the defroster, you can easily trigger the air conditioner and the fog lamps before reaching the defroster. And it turns out they don't even work at all with gloved fingers (cf. Minnesota and Wisconsin in the winter!) When you hear "touch" and "driver", if they're not talking about the car's handling, you are listening to a very stupid person.
Consumers who hate Sync and the MyTouch interface are not alone: Consumer Reports consistently reduces the scores of Ford vehicles so equipped by 4-6 points, which typically drops them from a tie for a top-of-the-class rating to a middle-of-the-class rating. They are really, really bad systems.
Just What I Need (Score:3)
My car blue screening while hurtling down the highway.
Question about school zones (Score:2, Offtopic)
When a self-driving car enters a school zone and sees the "speed limit 25 when children are present" sign, how does it know whether a person it sees is a child? Does it always brake just to be on the safe side? And if no "end school zone" sign exists, does it keep on going 25 until it sees the next speed limit sign miles down the road?
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I don't believe that the Google self-driving car actually reads signs. That stretch of road is coded in its database with the speed limit.
I always thought that "Speed Limit X when children are present" really means "during school hours". With a little bit of logic ability, the car would know what the speed limit was for that time and date.
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It would be interesting to hear Google's defense in traffic court when the database doesn't match the signs.
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For the foreseeable future, it will be the driver's responsibility to make sure that the car follows all applicable laws.
Murphies Law hits calendar bugs (Score:2)
A couple of leap years back Zune's stopped working for a day and last time Azure stopped working. If a bunch as big as MS can fail in such an epic way that's a good sign to not be too dependant on date based software. Even if it's working perfectly local changes can make reality not match the database. When a school event is on a night or weekend the software is not going to be informed.
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If I can take a nap on the way to and from work, they can transmit my location directly to NSA headquarters.
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Yes. I'm FREE to voluntarily opt in to a system of my choosing. When things are required by the government, that's a different situation.
Do you grasp the difference?
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Yes. I'm FREE to voluntarily opt in to a system of my choosing. When things are required by the government, that's a different situation.
There has often been no real difference.
Many people freely opted in to have their data collected by online services. They did not suspect that later, the government would be demanding that data from those services.
So there you have a case in which voluntarily opting in, and the government forcing it from you, have exactly the same result. Do you honestly think it would be limited to such cases?
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It's so super secret that only genius mega-hackers like you know about it.
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This is about infotainment systems, not self-driving cars.
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This is about infotainment systems, not self-driving cars.
I would certainly hope that any car with an "infotainment" system is self-driving, so that the driver isn't looking at the fucking "infotainment" instead of the road.
Any bets on how much of the "infotainment" is going to be ads?
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TV's are common in Japanese cars for over a decade now, as both OEM and after-market equipment.
Japan has nearly 3x lower road fatalities than USA per capita, half the road fatalities per vehicle and fewer per km as well.
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Self driving cars are absolute nonsense. It requires intellect to decide whether an object is a plastic bear or a real bear about to enter the road, and has to be braked for. Any business/investment into this self driving car design field is setting themselves up for a major lawsuit because the basic principle is that you require artificial intelligence on par with a human to make the same correct decisions while driving, identifying objects and predicting their future behavior correctly. Even a dog's level won't cut it, as shepherds have dogs and sheep, and the trio exists well together, but dogs and sheep can't coexist, or at least wolves haven't figured out a way yet, and you need a human to decide things like we're gonna take that mountain pass yonder instead of the one over here. Alpha wolves and wolf packs make similar decisions, and a whole lot of wolf lives depend on a good or bad decision, in middle of winter, similar to the Donner Party back in the Oregon Trail/California Trail days. Even humans make horrible judgment calls sometimes which way to drive, or in an accident piling up in front of you which way to swerve, how are you gonna trust these decisions to a machine, or intellect less than a human? Driving is a matter of life and death. If anything you need a machine smarter than a human in comprehending the world around it, and predicting actions of objects like insane people as pedestrians, walking in the middle of the road. Saying you ran someone over "legally" does not fly far in court, just because someone crossed the street before you when they had red light and you had green, or stopped in the middle like Rain Man, you still have to judge for yourself what to do.
Well, I for one would totally totally feel better if you were replaced by a machine.
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alot more then just that with part time rules and (Score:2)
alot more then just that with part time rules and in can very state to state and city to city.
A database may work but who will pay the ticket / points / ect when there is a data mismatch? and who is the driver? some tickets go the other driver other to the car.
You lose in a school zone (Score:2)
The school zone thing is totally open to interpretation.
The road to a friend's house passes one of those elementary school-public park agglomerations, with about a half-dozen baseball fields. He tells me the cops love to pull people over on Sundays when there's a single game at a ball field 2-300 yards from the road and school.
Why? Children present. Sign says "School Zone: 25 mph when children present". Doesn't mean school in session, school kids coming/going, etc, it means any damn minor around.
As long as it's not the Pentium 4... (Score:2)
(I'm from the South, and it's already hot enough) I have no problem Intel flogging their kit to car manufacturers.
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A Pentium 4 would be great for electric/hybrid cars.
You need something to power the heating system.
I'll vote with my wallet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Get one with MirrorLink and use your phone. Bypass all the manufacturer's software completely if you don't like it. Toyota and Subara offer MirrorLink on their high end head units, as I'm sure do other.
They can keep th em (Score:3)
The *only* computer i want in my car is my phone, so i can listen to music if i feel like it.
And yes, i realize that means no fuel injection, or other modern garbage, that has no business in *my* car.
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Or safety features either. Or any hope in passing current emissions standards.
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I could care less about those trumped up rules designed to take away our freedoms.
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You mean the ones that take away your freedom to try and break your neck when the seatbelt stops your body in a crash but nothing stops your head?
Air bags aren't mandatory on new cars to take away your freedom.
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You mean that a well maintained citroen 2cv or a fiat 500 pollute more than a suv because of their no-electronics tech? The measure is not pollutants per gallon of fuel, but pollutants per mile, after all. Someone should do the math, under real conditions (because there are lies, damned lies and spec sheets).
I have no electronics in my car (mechanical distributor, carburetors, and the car radio is disconnected). But I am not averse to it, as long as it is documented, and replaceable. This is not going to ha
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A modern car in a polluted city has cleaner air coming out the exhaust than the air going in the intake.
(ps: carbon dioxide isn't pollution, unburned fuel and volatile carbon compounds are)
Learn burning creates excess nitrous oxides, you need a catalytic converter to remove them. rich burning leaves unburned fuel and other carbon compounds in the exhaust.
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So what you are saying is you want a car with shitty gas mileage, shitty performance and brakes that don't work very well in the wet.
Please no (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't want infotainment.. I don't want apps or wifi or cell network connectivity, or ads, or remote government tracking. I don't want large lcd panels or nagging proximity beepers either. Absolutely NO microcontroller driven functionality that might decide spurious negative values mean 'floor it', 'dont turn the radio on until the car is restarted', or 'the alternator needs replacing but really doesn't.' I want simple, tactile buttons and sliders instead of touch panels and tiered menus that require visual inspection. This way I can control the basic functions of the car without taking my eyes off the road. The HVAC controls should only have three knobs for the fan speed, direction, heat level, and AC button. Also, let me open the side vents to let fresh air in even while the AC is on. I am willing to tolerate a certain amount of complexity for the radio/sound system, but that's it. In fact, design the console so I can rip the radio out and put in one of my choice without making a bigger mess out of the offensively curvy and effeminate aesthetics of the interior and dashboard. It's a dashboard, not a catwalk for the sexually ambiguous.
Speaking of aesthetics, please stop overdoing it with the curves and folds and bubble look. Kia is the worst offender, but some of the other makes are pretty bad now. Just because you can mold that plastic into any shape doesn't mean you should. It's ugly. Stop. Also, I am an average height 5'11" male with medium/largish sized hands. Please stop modeling the ergonomics for a 5'2" soccer mom with tiny hands. I'm tired of bumping the signal/wiper blade controls randomly when I turn the wheel over.
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I suppose you don't want ABS, airbags or seat belt pre-tensioners either. All microcontroller controlled.
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Actually, I'd rather not have the ABS. Airbags? My parents rode/drove on the roads for 40 years without them, and I spent the majority of my childhood years without them in the cars I rode in. We're all still here to tell about it. If I'm hit, it'll be hard enough that an airbag wont' make the difference..and if it does, it'll mean life as a paraplegic vs death.. I'll take death. As far as pretensioners go, they existed long before computer-assist. It's not necessary, and ones designed around the laws
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So it's just a coincidence that road fatalities have dropped over time, even though more people drive now?
U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood today announced that the number and rate of traffic fatalities in 2010 fell to the lowest levels since 1949, despite a significant increase in the number of miles Americans drove during the year.
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I think it's more a function of how you learned to drive.. I find ABS counterintuitive. I realize most do not. As far as airbags go, I really don't care. I'd rather have them as options. Those who want them would then be free to pay for them. I'd like to knock 5 to 10k off the cost of the vehicle. Those multi airbag systems are expensive, and if they go off from a minor fender bender, it can push the insurance company to total an otherwise perfectly good car.
It's interesting that you bring up this sta
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That's an awesome sample size you have there.
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I actually agree with this. An attentive, contextually aware driver is the best safety feature, for himself and those sharing the road with him.
Re:Please no (Score:4, Insightful)
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Oh fuck that! Just make a standard that allows the smartphone to remain both the brains and connection point for the rest of the car via. Want a faster internet connection, more storage, or better navigation? Ok, get a new cell phone. Far easier to upgrade that than the rest of the hardware.
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Fine, get an aftermarket box and install it (or have it installed) into the double DIN slot in the car. Make sure it has gps, music, voice control and whatever else.. Replace it every 5 to 10 years instead of the whole car when the OEM computer is left in the dust.
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Of course I'm not. I bet if the average 5'2" woman they target understood the implied risks that come from the excess complexity, they wouldn't want them as part of critical component design either.
What about DIN and half-DIN ? (Score:2)
Many cars sold today are so integrated with the radio that it makes it very expensive to replace the radio (that is if you can fit a standard radio in the dash)
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Like I was told above, we're not part of the market demographic anymore.. Basically, if you're not a soccer mom or an aging boomer, you don't exist in today's market.
I JUST WANT A CAR (Score:2)
I want to get in, turn the key, drive to my destination, and turn it off. Later, I would like to repeat the process to get home.
Intel and others take note: I do not want to Tweet, blog, Instagram, or masturbate to some kind if computerized entertainment system while this happens. I want to safely arrive where I'm going.
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They could build in most of the reliability that comes with modern mechanical design without overdoing the plumbing. This is NOT about hipsterism..at least not for me.
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Quite a leap, no?
How long before we see a virus in a car? (Score:3)
I'm honestly curious is this is going to happen. Much like the Smart house story from a few days back I wonder what's going to happen when more of this rather useless crap gets wedged into a car and someone has a real serious failure that results in a crash. Well... actually we may have already had that. There was some rumors out there that the whole Toyota brake system fiasco wasn't actually caused by some weird problem with the floor mat but was actually a software issue.
Either way I'm really wondering if all this extra technology is really all that useful. Compared to just keep the systems in a car kind of 'dumb' and just sticking to hardened PLC style systems for engine management. Nothing flashy, just something rugged that won't fail.
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Don't worry, weekly recalls for firmware updates will totally fix the problem.
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..or just not have the unneeded complexity and avoid the costly recalls. A metal cable and spring prevents an out of control throttle much more reliably than a computer running complex software.
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autopilot software / hardware has lot's testing an (Score:2)
autopilot software / hardware has lot's testing / code review and fail back to off when some bad happens.
Autodriver cars will need the same level of testing.
Re:autopilot software / hardware has lot's testing (Score:2)
Yes, but airplanes cost in excess of 30 million USD. For that amount you can justify the high costs in testing, triplicate redundancy, and hiring code auditors, security auditors, every cable accounted for EM interference, etc.., etc...
You really think that your average car will have that level of redundancy and checks? Hell, the only reason airplanes have it is because it is mandated by the flight authorities. An Airbus or Boeing would not get type approval if they didn't produce certificates, and signed d
2003 called... (Score:2)
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I guarantee most of the media you consume on your little atmel cpu devices was created on an intel (or even amd) x86 based workstation. They are still quite relevant.
Car = driving (Score:2)
Why do I want this? Would it make my car drive better?
For everything else I prefer BYOD and to not be locked.
My Sunny Sunday convertible was made in the 80s, if it had integrated computer I'd still have to deal with DOS-prompt and keeping 64K clear. Today's cars and electronics will be 30 year old some day. Are you sure you want to integrate them?
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Most cars on the road today certainly aren't going to be on the road in 30 years. Especially not cars with out of date radio systems. This is on purpose you know? Automakers want you to buy a new car every 3-5 years, not every 20 to 30 years. They *WANT* the cars to feel outdated in 5 years. You don't make money selling reliable cars anymore. You make money selling an endless line of lemons that mostl
I don't (Score:4, Interesting)
I just want my car to be a car. Hell, I barely even use the plain old stereo in mine. Anything some bullshit infotainment system can do, a smartphone can do faster and better. And you won't end up with a two-ton, obsolete, glorified tablet on wheels a year later (or less).
At most, any such systems should be nothing more than a standardized interface for controlling your smartphone. It could even have hardware buttons with standard control mappings, which would be great.
With the latest witch hunt out there for v"distracted drivers", I'm surprised I've never seen a proposal to ban or limit these things. I'm generally against curtailing technology by force of law, but in case, I would say good riddance.
In a related news... (Score:3)
Tesla (Score:2)
What, a car story with no reference to Tesla?
Tesla has a pretty good system. If they were interested in marketing it for other cars, they could probably have another solid business. Of course, they probably want to keep it for themselves to keep their cars more exclusive.
"Wants to computerize"? (Score:2)
Is there a current model year car in the US that will run without computers today? Engine management, automatic transmission, RFID key systems, remote/button start, airbags, traction control, collision avoidance, backup cameras, auto headlights, the entire instrument cluster, the entire entertainment system.
I'd guess each and every car in production today in the US has at least 20 computers in it, doesn't that seem sufficiently "computerized"?
Understand that the processors in the computers are highly specia
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They made a lot of Porsches with K-Jetronic. (mechanical fuel injection), 1970s - early 80s, maybe into the 90s on some models.
Though surely the later ones had a computer for spark? Which isn't related to the fuel injection... and could be deleted if you were dedicated, I guess.
various jetronic types were common on all the euro marques before 1995 or so. K doesn't require a computer. L has an analog computer, etc.
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I have a bug with points too - and solid lifters, a carb, generator, no AC and basically no heat without the auxiliary, and various other bits of cave tech..
But you do realize why we quit using them, right? If a new car needed new points and valves adjusted every couple thousand miles, no one would buy the bloody thing. It's simple, but it's still a PITA, especially for people that can't wrench.