Modern vehicles have evolved from mechanical machines into complex networks of processors, sensors, and code.
Sure, if you consider every tiny microcontroller to be a computer, it’s probably more than 100.
Your computer has dozens of computers in it!
Right? This article is kinda a ridiculous take. A musical greeting card has a computer in it.
Cars are going to have tons of computers in them, from engine to battery management systems to driver displays to the audio system.
The computers that should be of concern are the “black box” and telemetry, one can brick your car with an OTA update and the other is uploaded to data aggregators, bought by your insurance company, and used to raise your rates if they see driving their metrics say make you a risk.
but I’m a safe driver so that won’t effect me
-average consumer …
My motorcycle, Harley Davidson Pan America, is a computer on two wheels. If I fire it up before the computer completes the start phase (~10 seconds), it will eventually throw error codes.
If you want an automobile that will survive an EMP blast, find an old manual transmission Mercedes-Benz W123 240D.
Wow, 10 whole ass seconds? Peak HD design.
My CB300R just starts as soon as the fuel pump is done priming.
And here I was thinking they are still gravity fed…
Yeah the human tends to be gravity fed to the bike, hard to stay on an upside down bike.
Can my mobile data center extract income for me somehow? How about a class action lawsuit from all vehicle owners to get a cut of that lucrative “selling your information to other predatory companies” gig?
I mean, strictly speaking yes, but that’s like saying your quartz watch is a computer.
Cars have been like this for three decades. The problem is that some of those computers do data collection & upload.
So then, beyond safety standards, what’s stopping someone from developing an open source hardware vehicle at this point?
Time, money. The usual.
there are 100 computers hiding in your car right now
Wow! I have a car?
My daily driver is a bicycle, checkmate.
You’re riding a data center on wheels
Oh yeah? Where’s my tax break then? And my subsidized water usage?
Not mine. My car was built in 1999. Going to drive it until they stopped offering fuel at gas stations and then just transplant a electric drivetrain.
My car has a cassette tape and no Bluetooth.
Well there’s still like 2 or 3 computers on it most likely if you go by the definition of computer automotive journalists like to use.
PCM for sure, but could also have TCM if auto, ABS if equipped might have a computer, potentially some kind of BCM…
When they say a modern car has 100 computers, most of those are actually fairly simple controllers and the reason there are so many is that you can just route canbus and power to them and then run the necessary wires to the sensors and actuators from the modules instead of running a bunch of wires from one single controller to everything. Keeps the harness simpler and lighter.
My own 20 year old car has 26 “computers”. 4 of them are door controllers that just actuate windows, locks and mirrors.
Thats right. The word “computer” in this article can mean anything with a microcontroller in it. Any car built after 1996 legally must have an OBD port, so it has a diagnostic computer at least. All cars with fuel injectors have an engine computer. All cars with air bags will have a computer that controls when they go off. Even some cars with cruise control in the 90s had a cruise computer that monitors and controls the speed.
I don’t know what my point is, just that I agree, having lots of microcontrollers in your car is not necessarily bad thing, they provide many facets of basic functionality and don’t collect your data. And journalists like sensational headlines and fear mongering.
I figured there was a lot of data tracking because it’s not uncommon for my infotainment center to crash my Apple CarPlay connection when a message pops up saying my truck is sending data to Ford. Like damn, chill out Ford. Let me live a little.
I don’t have good news for you about your Ford…
I looked up my truck and it doesn’t seem that bad.
Oh good
I hope so lol. A lot of the data they say they collect or don’t collect matches up with the purpose they tell me for why it gets collected. Whether it goes beyond that I’m not sure but at least it matches up there.
All I need is a baseline open hardware EV. Fat chance, of course. So I guess I have to buy something used, today older than 8 years and counting.
this civic ev swap kit looks promising: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VFNb139Nlc
aftermarket ecu should give pretty good control of all the data.
Not quite open hardware, but it’s minimal compute - https://www.slate.auto/
SUV and US only, hard pass.
