Cars are the most highly regulated consumer product on earth. Brake systems nor Tesla fly under the radar here.
I felt that way too, til I watched few of the talks from the people that were doing the testing of Toyota electronics after all of the unintended acceleration problems.[1]
Did you realize, for example, that while there are coding standards that one should adhere to while doing embedded systems-critical stuff (like MISRA guidelines), there are no requirements for automotive companies to adhere to any such software standardization, and that it's left up to the individual manufacturers to decide upon standards?
The US automotive industry is unique in that it doesn't have a rigor requirement for software. Planes and heavy equipment do have such requirements within the states.
Toyota didn't even use bug tracking or source management, and used their own software guidelines. That's scary given the complexity is so high that the entire system cannot be fully tested in a feasible way.
Atop the software issues, the hardware ECM was made in such a way so as to make the secondary 'cross-checking' processor basically useless. Both CPUs were checking the same I/O, if that was the fault then BOTH would read bad data, and the hardware was made in such a way as to make that impossible to work around.
An old Camry isn't anywhere near as complex as a modern electric car, and I personally have more faith in Tesla than I do Toyota, but it makes me want to push US legislation into requiring US auto manufacturers into following the strict software guidelines that are available to them.
Fun trivia: MISRA guidelines were originally pushed by the automotive industry in the early 90s/late 80s, and now they are one of the only critical systems groups to not follow them.
Those are pretty good points, and I didn't realize that auto manufacturers had the level of freedom in ECU software.
As far as Toyota is concerned, right now I'd trust them as much, of not more, than Tesla. Tesla has been doing great things and doesn't have much, if any, of a bad track record for failures. However, you have to realize that Toyota has also been making cars far longer than Tesla, produce more, and has one of the best reliability ratings in the industry.
I believe Tesla can achieve this or better. However, it's hard to compare when Tesla doesn't have the numbers that Toyota has.
I felt that way too, til I watched few of the talks from the people that were doing the testing of Toyota electronics after all of the unintended acceleration problems.[1]
Did you realize, for example, that while there are coding standards that one should adhere to while doing embedded systems-critical stuff (like MISRA guidelines), there are no requirements for automotive companies to adhere to any such software standardization, and that it's left up to the individual manufacturers to decide upon standards?
The US automotive industry is unique in that it doesn't have a rigor requirement for software. Planes and heavy equipment do have such requirements within the states.
Toyota didn't even use bug tracking or source management, and used their own software guidelines. That's scary given the complexity is so high that the entire system cannot be fully tested in a feasible way.
Atop the software issues, the hardware ECM was made in such a way so as to make the secondary 'cross-checking' processor basically useless. Both CPUs were checking the same I/O, if that was the fault then BOTH would read bad data, and the hardware was made in such a way as to make that impossible to work around.
An old Camry isn't anywhere near as complex as a modern electric car, and I personally have more faith in Tesla than I do Toyota, but it makes me want to push US legislation into requiring US auto manufacturers into following the strict software guidelines that are available to them.
Fun trivia: MISRA guidelines were originally pushed by the automotive industry in the early 90s/late 80s, and now they are one of the only critical systems groups to not follow them.
[1]:http://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/pubs/koopman14_toyota_ua_s...