Today a thought crossed my mind, as everything is becoming so reliant on electricity. From your parking brake, throttle, and even your steering is being controlled by some thin strands of copper wire. Something as simple as to much juice on one of these wire can leave you with out steering or other important systems. Now I'm sure there is some safety measures taken when putting such important systems on electrics, and I know that the physical linkages can also fail but it takes some more work to break them. I personally will never feel safe on electronic steering. But thats just me. I would like to see what you guys think about this. Are the compony going to far with putting systems on electronics?
Throttle is the only drive by wire control. Clutch and brake usually have no electronic interaction. Power steering still has the mechanical link. Drive by wire throttle systems are usually wired so any fault causes it to default to closed throttle. You've then got redundancy in the control computer and millions of dollars in device testing to ensure reliability.
And as for the parking brake thing, I know that in some cars (I know VWs do) you can hold the switch and it will put all the brakes on fully. Like if the driver suddenly died or something the passenger could stop the car that way. My point is, cars are still a lot safer than they used to be. Not that I like it, I still love my Volvo for all its "purity" I guess.
If you would like my opinion, everything, not just automobiles have become too dependent on electronic and computer technology. Have you ever heard of the Carrington event? It was a coronal mass ejection from the sun that hit the earth around 1859, basically a huge EMP. It didn't do much, seeing as hand tools and steam power are not affected much by strong Electromagnetic pulses, but it did take down some telegraph lines. Can you even imagine what would happen today, in our plugged in digital world if another Carrington event were to strike? Most electronics more advanced than a telegraph would be destroyed, no more electricity, natural gas, water sewer, internet. . . That is a scary scenario, astronomically unlikely, but scary nonetheless. Aside from that paranoia, It does bother me that automotive technology is becoming more and more electronic, but not from a safety standpoint. I just appreciate older car design more than most people I know.
And leading on from the electronic reliance on cars scenario. Their is becoming way too much of it being implemented in cars as a safety feature which people with no driving skills, situational awareness or the ability to concentrate without being on thier phone believe gives them the opportunity to be laid back and the moment something goes wrong they either think. Oh ill be alright the car will tackle the problem for me or they have no idea what to do when something goes wrong because they do not have the useful experience that is needed on these situations. This is why i believe most people that drive new cars are not as skillful or capable behind the wheel as people who have cars that require more input such as a manual or something pre year 2000. Sorry if it went a bit off topic but it is valid to the thread.
I think they've gotten too reliant on electricity out of general principle. I especially despise throttle-by-wire, as it provides too much of an opportunity for manufacturers to soften the driver's inputs. With an old cable-throttle setup, a car, even a soft, spongy luxury car, could be counted on to lurch forward immediately if you suddenly stomped on the gas as hard as possible. There was no second-guessing because there was no way to make that work. Now, though, it's entirely possible to program the computer to second-guess the driver and only open the throttle at a certain rate no matter how fast the driver depresses the pedal, thus diluting the car's purity and responsiveness. Electronically controlled automatic transmissions, however, are even worse. If you've ever driven an automatic Nissan XTerra you know what I'm talking about. That thing has the most dimwitted gearbox ever. The lag between flooring the gas and actually accelerating can reach... well, I've never timed it, but it felt like a full second the last time. It's like being floored suddenly confuses the transmission and it has to think for a second to realize that you actually want to go faster and it should downshift. As far as I can remember, it takes time to respond to gear lockout abuse too, so you'd have to plan your downshift-forcing in advance. Not sure if it's got throttle-by-wire, but if it does that could partially explain why it's so horrible (wouldn't surprise me, it's a 2006 model and the gas pedal doesn't feel connected to much of anything).
Thanks for all your opinions, nice to here they haven't gotten rid of the physical connections. Thinking more and got to driverless cars. Now, yes they will have all these sensors and fancy saftey equipment but it's all controlled by a computer. And probably the computers are going to be state of the art stuff but what happens when they fail, because everything has to fail eventually. Will there still be physical connections to recover the car or will they have gone away with them? Plus will we still have the option to drive our older computerless cars on the same road as these driverless ones? I probably went a little offtopic but it's just weird to think about.
talking of electronics, say for example my jazz, i thought it used a microcontroller for the ac compressor control but it turns out that its just a circuit with a thermistor regulating the duty cycle of the compressor, the car is simple, and for example there have been people hacking cars through the cars cellular data, and that is a bad thing, im ok with ECUs but they should be connected to the engine only, and other circuits like the seatbelt be seperate, say for example the locks connected to the obd port, if i left a wifi obd scanner in there then someone could quite easily lock the doors on the car, or unlock them if they know how to. but if it is seperate then there is no way to.
The good thing about that scenario is that most cars have a physical connection to the locks on the inside of each door. Unless your car is a PD thief bait car, I doubt a hacker could entirely override those, and you only need your door unlocked for a brief moment to get it open.
Seatbelts, connected to ECU? Take a look at a seatbelt, they arent electronic. Most of those OBD scanners are also read only and there are regulations for the ECU firmware requiring the immobiliser to be correctly disabled (ie, the key present) before codes can be written over OBD anyway. Though yeah, it was BMW where a *theoretical* attack was documented over its cell connection. This has been patched. For the record: Modern bmw ECUs do have a cellular modem onboard which is used for updating the system firmware remotely. The attack was based on the fact that the ECU was updating via HTTP rather than HTTPS, it has been patched to be HTTPS and the update distributed (via that cell modem). The fear was essentially that you could set up a fake cell tower (less than 1000 dollars in hardware) with a fake update server, write a replacement software for the BMW to be downloaded that is full of other remote hacks. The BMW ECU has not been documented well enough for anyone to have worked out how to do that and the notes on how such an attack would have worked were not published until after BMW released the fix.
It's not as bad as it could be, I mean, what if all the wires holding the car together where 'Lucas'? We would all be dead (either on the side of the road, or in the ground)
Then how do you reprogram it for performance if BMW can just write more stock programming over it any time they want, just as part of normal maintenance? Also, even our computers (usually) let us set them up to ask us before they update remotely. Remote maintenance on a car just sounds scary to me. Oh. And I assume swapping to an aftermarket ECU would violate some sacred EPA diktat. Frickin'...
depends on if you can still read the OBD2 data over the new ECU, could drop a haltech in there as a result and be good. But yeah it is why the only modded *current* BMWs are from tuning companies that have BMW ties. Nobodys managed to reflash one and aftermarket ECU while possible just isnt always practical as most aftermarket ECUs are designed for engine operation only. A modern BMW ECU is tied into the entertainment system, the headlights, the interior light, dash cluster and all sorts. In theory you could disconnect the ECU from the engine, except then the ECU detects "oh the engine aint working right" and just locks up into fault modes and all sorts whereas you take something from say the 90s, the ECU just does the engine and sometimes immobiliser, you can rip it out no problem and the rest of the car doesnt care. In theory a cool part for BMWs cell linked ECU is that it could give you email/text alerts for service schedules etc, it doesnt, but it could. A sucky side to modern BMWs, some models dont have a dipstick, the ECU does have sensors for oil level that can be checked with an OBD scanner and there is a dash warning for low oil, but otherwise no way of checking the oil yourself....
No reflashing, ergo have to hire a (doubtless high-priced) "connected" shop if you want to mod yours, in other words, there's no way to hot rod one at home like with so many other cars... BMW THIS IS UNFORGIVABLE ON PRINCIPLE!
its not unique to BMW. Even my 2004 Vauxhall Corsa would have suffered similar issues. A fixed firmware ECU (as in literally cant have its code changed anyway) thats got a fair bit of integration elsewhere in the car.
Manufacturers that do this should have their computer workstations locked down so they can only install programs and hardware upgrades if Microsoft works with them (at a ruinous fee, of course).
the seatbelts are connected to the ECU in the Jaguar XF, as the auto stop start thing switches the engine off and when you take off the drivers seatbelt the car shuts off its electronics and closes the vents. Its true the immobiliser thing because on the Jazz it keeps power on the obd port but you cant read anything from the car though
incidents where losing steering is near impossible. the only ways it is possible is caused by tampering by someone or you have a really old car that has not gotten the wiring checked or replaced. so that makes incidents revolving steering issues little to none
