This is a design trade-off that comes up all the time in automotive engineering. I own a couple of 90's-era Honda vehicles and what's interesting is although t

This is a design trade-off that comes up all the time in automotive engineering. I own a couple of 90's-era Honda vehicles and what's interesting is although the cars are computerized, they also employ a number of semi-independent systems such as instrument gauges which directly connect to their own sensors even though a similar sensor connected to the engine control unit is right next to it, mechanical choke and coolant temperature modulators to intake air despite fuel injection, an "hydraulic computer" controlling part of the automatic transmission even though there is also a dedicated transmission control computer (which is itself redundant to making the transmission control an integrated feature of the engine control module). To me this seems to make no design sense; why not bring all of the inputs into one central box with one computer control, and drive all of the outputs from this central box? But then who am I to argue that the separate / bespoke approach is not better, given Honda's reputation for reliability?