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Its not just Tesla. Recent Jeep models have a digital speedometer with no analog backup. From an engineering perspective these changes just introduce needless r
by ImaCake 3y ago
Its not just Tesla. Recent Jeep models have a digital speedometer with no analog backup. From an engineering perspective these changes just introduce needless risk of complex failure for no real gain. Surely the speedometer is not the make or break cost item on a car?
- macintux 3y agoFortunately I bought my Jeep with a manual; as long as I know what gear I'm in, I know roughly how fast I'm driving by sound. But I'd be surprised if Jeep is the only example of this (outside Tesla). Surely this is the way all cars have been going for a while.
- mannykannot 3y agoThings started going downhill when the physical controls became indistinguishable by touch.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> these changes just introduce needless risk of complex failure for no real gain Analog speedometers are more complex and can’t be patched OTA. Eliminating them from the fleet means one less part to procure and inventory for manufacturing and service. Given the downside is losing precise speed awareness (you should still be able to judge rough speed visually—that’s the back-up), this seems like a fair trade-off. Contrast that with e.g. brake lines, where digital systems can add redundancy. (That doesn’t mean they always do.) Or physical mirrors, which add critical redundancy to cameras.
- thereddaikon 3y agoWhy do cars need to be patched OTA? Why isn't the code for something as mission critical as a car not written right before it was shipped? I never needed an ECU update on a car before? And my infotainment rarely needed one to the point where the handful of times it did get a firmware update it was handled during servicing just fine.
- smolder 3y agoThey don't need to be patched OTA. It's ridiculous. The terrible product design practices from other parts of life have unfortunately seeped into automaking.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Why isn't the code for something as mission critical as a car not written right before it was shipped? We OTA spacecraft. We update planes’ software as part of maintenance. We have never written software once. We just accepted the bugs and defects as part of the product’s basket of tradeoffs, marvelling when the occasional manufacturer got it right in the first manufacturing runs. > never needed an ECU update on a car before? There were always weird bugs associated with models that you learned to deal with, or a tendency towards certain failure modes. In extreme cases we recalled.
- outworlder 3y ago> We update planes’ software as part of maintenance We don't OTA plane software updates. > We OTA spacecraft. Because we can't realistically bring them back and there's an incredible amount of work that goes into make those updates flawless. Spacecraft are not a mass produced consumer product driven by profits and are less likely to have corners cut.
- JumpCrisscross 3y agoSure. We still update the software. The tool which airlines use to create update blobs is even online [1]. > Because we can't realistically bring them back We couldn’t always OTA spacecraft. Back then we just lost them. The point is in even high-stakes games we don’t write flawless software. Now software in cares is doing more. There will be bugs. Pretending there won’t is delusional. What we can do is minimise safety-critical bugs by forcing standardisation and certifciation in those components, even if that slows down innovation, and ensuring timely patches. That’s easier with digital than analog, which in turn makes manufacturers more willing to admit they made a mistake. [1] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2010_q4/4/ https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2010...
- m463 3y agoNeed car tires patched OTA!
- aqfamnzc 3y agoDigital dashes have been a thing for a long, long time. They're objectively better in some ways (imho) and costs add up!
- mannykannot 3y agoWhile it is important for cars to have speedometers so that drivers can learn to judge their speed, with a little bit of caution, a journey during which the speedometer fails can be completed both safely and within speed limits.
- semi-extrinsic 3y agoOn the Volvo 240, the analog speedometer tends to get sticky after you've done a couple hundred thousand miles. Sometimes it will reset if you just hit the dash hard enough, sometimes you just have to guess the speed based on the RPM and gear and experience.
- bdavbdav 3y agoThe analog speedometer it replaced has been digital behind the scenes for ages. The cluster is just sat on a CAN (or similar) bus and controlling a servo for the analog gauge. The pure digital speedometer is significantly less failure prone (and indeed when it does fail, it’s obvious).
- oldgradstudent 3y agoA German professor of mine worked at BMW before grad school. He worked on the firmware of the tachometer. The behavior of the tachometer needle was dictated by the marketing department. A BMW engine accelerates smoothly and confidently. The tachometer needle never shakes, it rises smoothly and confidently.
- rootusrootus 3y ago> The pure digital speedometer is significantly less failure prone It sure is. I'm old enough to have had several cars with speedometer malfunctions due to that stupid little plastic gear at the transmission. One more nuisance I'm glad we don't have on newer cars.
- alphager 3y agoThe analog gauges have been digital for a long time; there's a signal processor that decides how far the gauge should move and a motor that actually moves it.