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There are plenty of 90s era car electronics that are going fine. The sensors are going to be maintenance items after 20 years, but there's no reason to think t
by mywittyname 7y ago
There are plenty of 90s era car electronics that are going fine. The sensors are going to be maintenance items after 20 years, but there's no reason to think the solid state components won't normally last 25+ years.
Spare (electronic) parts shouldn't be an issue with major brands. I've seen the same sensor used on a dozen models from several manufactures produced over 10+ years. As Takata exposed, there aren't that many parts suppliers around the globe, so a lot of commodity components are shared across the industry.
For long-term part replacement, I'd be far more concerned with construction techniques like plasma-transferred wire arc sprays used for creating cylinder linings. This technique cannot be replicated outside of the factory, thus, they kind of make engine blocks disposable (they can be sleeved, but they won't perform the same and will require different piston heads).
- slg 7y ago> but there's no reason to think the solid state components won't normally last 25+ years. Except this article is specifically about solid state components failing in a much shorter timeframe.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- myself248 7y agoExcept most cars don't rewrite their flash every few seconds. Most modules with flash in 'em are programmed once at the manufacturer, reflashed once or twice during assembly, maybe reflashed once more at the dealer before delivery, and that's it. Maybe again post-sale if there's a recall or TSB or something that can be fixed in software. Flash quite happily lasts 25+ years if you don't abuse it far beyond any flash manufacturer's wearout specs. Go figure!
- t34543 7y agoAirbag control modules do constantly write data. The last 5 seconds or so of sensor and input data is recorded for crash investigations.
- cat199 7y agois this actually written to flash? concievably a big capacitor or watch battery could keep a 4 or 8k RAM going for quite a long time.
- beerandt 7y agoIt's got to survive a wreck, so I suspect power reliant memory is out.
- xfitm3 7y agoIf you look at airbag module teardowns there is a giant capacitor, but this is used to fire airbags in the event the vehicle's power system is rendered inoperable prior to deployment.
- leoedin 7y agoFlash isn't the only game in town. I wouldn't be surprised if airbags use FRAM - capable of more than 1 trillion write cycles
- cat199 7y agothanks - learning things :)
- dfox 7y agoMost manufacturers’ datasheets specify 20 or less years of data retention (even when powered on). This might seem like random sufficiently large number, but there really are devices made in mid-90’s (notably early FastEthernet cards) that do not work because they lost contents of their configuration EEPROMs.
- mywittyname 7y agoTelsa having trouble building reliable cars is not evidence of an industry-wide issue. There are tens of millions of cars on the road with decades old solid state components that are in perfect operation.
- anon73044 7y ago"tens of millions" and "in perfect operation" doesn't quite jive with me but the numbers are mostly there. For Toyota ~57 million vehicles from '02-'09 https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75years/data/automotive_business/production/production/overview/index.html https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75ye... For Honda ~23 million from '02-09 https://www.statista.com/statistics/267276/worldwide-automobile-sales-of-honda/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267276/worldwide-automob... Volkswagen group looked to be in between the two. Didn't look for Ford or GM.
- mywittyname 7y agoThere were 16 million new vehicles are sold last year in the US and there's 260 million registered vehicles on the road with a median age of nearly 12 years old. To say that there's "tens of millions" of perfectly operational cars on the road in the US is really an understatement.
- wasdfff 7y agoIf you have a used audi and the mechanic comes back and tells you its the wiring harness, thats probably it for the car. Unless you like spending 3k to fix a 4k car.
- brokenmachine 7y agoWhy is a wiring harness so expensive?