Survey Historical

“..'the company is spending on the car project roughly $1 billion annually’. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who's the Costliest Vanity Project of Them All?"

“..'Buyers should permanently disable the vehicle by removing the motor controller’, CPSF said. There are recalls, and there is Total Recall."

"..it truly seems that the blend of AI and EV makes up the hottest industrial sector of the moment. Actually hotter and more dangerous than the Prohibition Era."

"..The hardware is great, but the software is still missing.’ Is this the current decade’s curse?"

".. a captivating article on pedestrians safety, both in content and in format, with a catchy but profoundly misleading title, especially in a period of furious debate on the agency of semi-autonomous cars. Allowing for the usual strong dose of title rhetoric, it should rather read ‘When Streets Kill’."

".. a very generous definition of successful, as 'getting to the ISS was not trouble-free. Two of 12 aft-facing Orbital Maneuvering and Attitude Control (OMAC) thrusters malfunctioned during orbital insertion and two of 28 Reaction Control System (RCS) thrusters on the Service Module failed during approach to the ISS. During the post-landing press conference, Stich said another RCS thruster failed during landing’.  It’s a thin line between mission-critical and safety-critical.."

“So, recapping: potential faults in semiconductor components that might lead to collisions, apparently solved through a software workaround to be downloaded via OTA. 127,785 cars involved."

“Ecstatic reviews of the original 1985 'Back to the Future’ movie used ‘incredible’, ‘mind-blowing’, ’surreal’ to describe the retrofitted DMC DeLorean, the car who was indeed the major character of the blockbuster saga. It remains to be seen whether non-SciFi buffs and lawmakers are equally enthusiastic of such characteristics in everyday cars. Film fans and critics remember well that just about the same time another mind-bending American movie hit the screens, John Carpenter's ‘Christine’, about 'a strange car with an evil mind’..."

““The debate on Tesla Self-Driving is reaching unprecedented levels of controversy, sparking hacktivism and public petitions in favor or against. Politicization of safety issues is not a good sign, especially when guided by strong partisanship from both sides."

“Finally accustomed to smartphones with wheels? Get ready for PlayStations with pedals!"

“The plot thickens..."

“..We strongly reject the concept of car as a computer on wheels. It’s a heavy, fast-moving, untethered IT centre on wheels."

“..A happy user shares his experience with a fully autonomous vehicle, the Husqvarna 435X AWD. No safety issues reported so far."

“..(More or less autonomous) cars can kill, but they are not alone."

“Q: I’m a pedestrian, how can I opt out of Tesla Beta Tester program? A: Stay at home."

“fascinating, just expect the next autonomous fiery clash to be around, in the debate about the appropriate use of 'Auto-Coxswain'..."

“just when you thought that only reckless newcomers could be so cavalier on safety..."

“..Computers on Wheels is so nineties… new vehicles on the drawing boards are true Supercomputers on Wheels!"

“..'as extensively debated in exida’s recent 'Automotive and Process Industry Symposium 2021', Functional Safety is the toughest nut to crack for Linux and for OSS"

“..'The idea will be that we'll have plenty of fallback modes where, if part of the system fails, it'll fall back to a more manual flight mode. The user would have training to basically tackle any of those conditions.’ rrrrright. what could possibly go wrong?"

“..Reversal of fortune, reversal of policy, or what?"

“..Nightmarish bedtime lecture for aircraft pilots (and for functional safety experts alike)"

“..Bluntest summary: complacency kills."

"..It truly seems that testing the correct *interpretation* of data exchanged by interfaces is neglected… major mission-critical failures in space (among others) have been attributed to the same root-cause."

"..It’s a very Silicon Valley ethos to get your software 80 percent of the way there and then release it and then let your users figure out the problems.”  Alas, it’s a very pity that safety is always in the remaining 20 percent."

"..What if ‘autopilot’ stood for automatic pilot rather than autonomous pilot?"

"..Software update… safety risks… cruise-control system… accidentally activated... 93.7% of all locally made cars… How do you say ‘perfect typhoon’ in Mandarin?"

"..Brute-force approach to full self-driving features? What could possibly go wrong?"

"..A cheap title for an otherwise extremely informative - and somewhat terrifying - long read on SW complexity in nowadays cars, packed with some mind boggling quantitative data."

"..Truly, nothing can be verified/validated without knowing the requirements/goals. Autonomous vehicles may inadvertently kill passengers and pedestrians, as well as autonomous weaponized drones may fail to effectively annihilate enemy combatants. It would be intellectually instructive to compare the Safety Concepts of such categories of products.."

"..Automotive Safety Standards are for wimps. Oh wait..."

"..The auto industry is microcosm of the forces that will shape this decade: technological change, climate, the rise of Asia, reshoring and geopolitics’: an insightful view of the state-of-the-art and of the “paradigm shift” in the  car industry from one of the finest macro-economic commentators, Deloitte’s Chief Economist Ian Stewart."

"..As Baidu founder Robin Li told me back in 2016, autonomous driving releases an absolute gold mine’ or, maybe, of an even more precious but dangerous rare metal?"

"..All of AI, not just healthcare, has a proof-of-concept-to-production gap’, says AI veteran Andrew Ng. The gap exists throughout the machine learning world. He mentions ’showing safety’ as the culminating criterion for production readiness. Surely it rings a bell in the car industry?"

"..It looks like that congested road junctions and motorways are not as friendly as carriers’ decks to electronically heavily laden vehicles. Who would have thought that?"

".. It happens that an interview with a veteran pilot tester for autonomous cars looks more like a script for a new Netflix SciFi series than a technology state-of-the-art survey. It starts with a slightly sinister sounding Distronic adaptive cruise control to finish off with decapitated beta-passengers and killer robocars. Bets are open for series name… Rear Black Mirror? Autocrash? Altered Car? Brave New Traffic? .."

".. In 1991 Geoffrey Moore published his seminal book on technology marketing, “Crossing the Chasm”. Thirty years later, chasms are still with us, rebranded as "Troughs of Disillusionment”..."

"..It seems that two categories of things are particularly reluctant to be put under control in the land of the free: assault weapons and autonomous vehicles."

"..Requirements analysis? Who said requirements analysis?"

"..A gentle reminder that Over-The-Air is not a trivial SW delivery method (even where there is no air and nobody can hear you scream)."

"..Looks like a perfect mini-storm at the intersection of software Quality and Safety, causing the recall of 1.29 million vehicles."

"..It seems that, after all, Tesla’s Full Self Driving is just a "representative of SAE L2”. Not according to competitors or detractors, but to Tesla itself."

"..Safety and Security are becoming more and more entangled by the day."

..During his seminal Welcome Note at the Automotive SYS Conference in Berlin, in July 2014, Dr. Ulrich Eichhorn, then VDA Managing Director, announced that the car of the future would be: "electric, connected, autonomous”. Today, Molex’s survey of automotive decision makers reveals "electrification, connectivity, and passenger safety" as the top innovation areas. Spot the little change in the list?

"..It’s claimed that the autonomous driving system detects other vehicles and calculates their trajectories twice as far out as professional truck drivers. It’s hoped that many other good arguments build up the overall system's Safety Case."

"..in mission-critical environments such as aerospace, defense, industrial, medical and automotive, brittle software means a body count.” …not necessarily so: if you’re in unmanned mission-critical areas it might simply mean billion dollars count. if you’re in safety-critical areas, you’ll also count  casualties and penalties.

"..New suppliers coming from the consumer electronics world are simply not accustomed to meeting the needs of the auto industry” ...not that surprising that reliability, safety and software issues are plaguing EV ramp-up.

"..Ah, those pesky safety issues again."

"..Good to see that in the race to higher Automated Driving Levels safety is still actively pursued and not claimed as a by-product."

"..Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the rashest of them all?"

"..Predictably Tesla has attracted many commenters all over the world, over a full spectrum; from knee-jerk bootlickers to cautious admirers, from concerned specialists to harsh detractors. Then there is Elon’s nemesis, Michael DeKort."

"..From IP design to foundry’s physical signoffs, it seems that ASIL specific FuSa-guaranteed support is the new must for semiconductor marketing in the automotive arena."

"..software glitch” leading to "several cars losing power and stopping running even while driving” leading to “recalling all new Polestar 2 cars”… safety investigators’ wet dream, automotive producers' worst nightmare."

"..As Grady Booch, co-author of UML and legendary SW developer, aptly commented on Twitter: “Ah. The risks of having a single point of failure."

"..Almost half a century of evolution of technical jargon: from Young Frankenstein’s “AB-normal” brains (1974) to Microsoft Azure’s “B-latent” faults (2020)."

"..ARM turns 30 in November (Happy Birthday!). ARM is already an established player in Automotive with its Cortex-A Series Processors and Mali Graphics Processing Units. Now stepping up them both with native FuSa support."

"..It’s well known that there is no Safety without Quality, it’s also becoming increasingly clear that there is no Safety without Security."

"..Putin’s a wimp: Musk's testing Full Self-Driving personally, not giving it to his daughter."

"..The first aircraft gyroscopic autopilot was developed by Sperry Corporation in 1912. After more than a century, only drones are pilotless."

"..Yet another case of potential adverse effects of (cyber) security on (functional) safety."

"..Vehicles as “Computers-on-wheels” is no longer just a captivating marketing concept, it’s the hardest driver for top OEMs and TIER1 reorganization plans."