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Comment by bbreier | Hacker News Reader

Also the infotainment. And real questions because I'm genuinely curious: do driver assists (ABS, ASR, TCS) and their adjustments rely on processors? What about in-car adjustments to suspension height, ride firmness, throttle response (e.g. eco vs sport vs comfort modes)? Lane keep assist, blind spot checking, adaptive cruise control all seem like things that would require processing power as well.

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> do driver assists (ABS, ASR, TCS) and their adjustments rely on processors?

If I'm not mistaken, microprocessors aren't the only semiconductor components that have been in short supply recently. Things like shaft position sensors are also solid-state devices.

Most current vehicles use separate embedded microcontrollers for those features. In principle it's possible to build a car with a single powerful processor controlling everything, but the engineering becomes far more challenging and you need a higher level of vertical integration on the parts supply chain. There are also safety risks: you don't want an LKA code defect to cause a TCS failure. And wiring harness would have to grow to carry all the separate data signals.

Tesla is partially going the integration route but they still have many separate processors in the car.

Even headlights and brake pedals (brake by wire) have ICs in them these days, I doubt getting rid of a PCM will make an EV less IC heavy.

The only infotainment a car needs is interfacing with CarPlay/Android Auto.

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