>there's still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing the

>there's still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. I disagree with this statement - at the very least for safety. Modern safety systems are leagues ahead of anything from even 10 years ago - and microelectronic machines (MEMs) and all the various sensors and processors are key to making that possible. It's not just the obvious things like pedestrian and car collision detection and brake assist - it's also things like sensors that can better time the deployment of airbags. Cars are only getting safer and safer. (Though there's obviously the problem with trucks and SUVs, but that's a side discussion) Another aspect is fuel efficiency. In the name of fuel efficiency, many new systems had to be developed and older ones made more complex. We can't just have fixed valve timings anymore - we need varible valve timing. We can't just shoot out exhaust, we use EGR. And again, these systems need advanced sensors and processors more often then not. This complexity hurts the reliability of cars somewhat. But it's worth it to not only increase power, but also improve fuel efficiency. Also, this isn't true at all: >The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. I guess finite state automata just don't exist. The rest of this article seems like a mess that almost doesn't deal with cars. There are some real, legitimate complaints with some modern cars. Some automakers have gone the route of touchscreens where physical controls would be far better for a variety of reasons. Subscriptions for features that don't cost the automaker anything after the fact is also awful. But the article rants on about (in my view) unrelated topics so much that it detracts from more concrete problems.