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Comment by com2kid | Hacker News Reader

> Tires pressure sensors, why is this silliness needed?

So I know when my tire pressure is low? Roads have hazards on them, I'd prefer to know something is causing my tire to slowly leak well before it starts to cause a problem.

Also TPMSs aren't critical path tech, if they break down the car still runs fine.

> ABS? Learn to brake.

Is this a joke? ABS has saved countless lives. In emergency situations higher order thinking goes out the window. ABS is a "do what needs to be done to save my life right now" system.

Heck even automatic climate control is pretty damn simple. While I don't prefer using it, a thermostat that turns a heater on or off is not exactly new technology. Setting up a feedback loop to narrow in on "how hot" the heater should be set to for the fan to kept continuously while keeping ambient air at a constant temperature is also quite simple. This is 40-50+ year old tech.

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Are you seriously under the impression most of the computers in a modern car have anything to do with safety?

My car has a full blown ECU for my seat memory. And a second one for the passenger seat memory. Another one for my soft close trunk. One for my HUD. One for my gauge cluster. One that exists entire for... playing fake engine sounds. One for the head unit, which is a separate ECU from the one for the amplifier, which is in turn separate from the DVD changer ECU. One climate control... but only in the rear! Front gets a separate ECU for AC. One for interior accent lighting (not lighting your dashboard, I mean dim lights around your door handle).

And if you think ECU is a stretch here, these are individually versioned ECUs all residing on a shared bus. If my amplifier ECU dies, the optical fiber ring it's connected to might go down. Things connected to that bus include 911 emergency dialing the headunit's RTC...

> Are you seriously under the impression most of the computers in a modern car have anything to do with safety?

I never said that.

I said the examples pointer out by the GP post were all terrible examples to demonstrate too many computers in a car.

Also ECU is Engine Control Unit. Your seat probably has a tiny microcontroller in it, MCU.

And yes, your examples are all great examples of complexity that can break.

Anti-lock breaks, bad example. Tire Pressure Monitors, bad example.

Computer controlled LED accent lighting, good example.

So you agree with their point and just wanted to nitpick?

I mean they're mostly right in their comment, a large number of people don't even know what the tpms light is (https://www.aftermarketnews.com/forty-two-percent-of-drivers...)

Climate control is a largely overcomplicated system in many cars, using everything from humidity sensors to skin temp scans and then refusing to work when any one part stops working

Adaptive suspensions have left entire generations of vehicles pretty much unusable as they slowly fail and essentially "total" perfectly good cars

Even if they're wrong on one or two counts, the point is clear enough...

Also anyone who knows cars knows when ECU is referring to an Electronic Control Unit from context...

It's been a few decades since anyone really got confused by that one.

The ECU in charge of the engine in this car is called the "Digital Motor Electronics" ECU or DME.

They are proper ECUs with a lot more complexity than a single MCU. Every single one is a node interconnected with separate firmware versions that need to sync up in certain ways.

The DME in charge of the engine is treated with exactly the same as the ECU in charge of accent lighting when it comes to manufacturer tooling, the tooling simply enumerates over these ECUs and provides an identical interface to them.

Also:

1. ABS is banned in Formula 1. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether humans brake as well as a computer

2. You only have one brake pedal. How can you achieve maximum braking effort without ABS if not all wheels have equal traction?

> ABS is banned in Formula 1. That should tell you everything you need to know about whether humans brake as well as a computer

Not at all. It tells you something about whether Formula 1 drivers brake as well as a computer. Most humans driving cars have a very different level of driving skill from a Formula 1 driver -- especially when it comes to handling extreme conditions that they don't often encounter.

I believe that is likely their point. Formula 1 racing frequently bans technologies which are advantageous/reduce required skill. In this case I believe ABS is being banned due to the improvement over even F1 drivers skills

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