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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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February 6, 2005 07:49 PM
Broken: Complex technology in modern cars
The New York Times reports that high-tech cars are so complex that "not only are glitches annoying, their root causes can be hard to find."
Oh yeah, microsoft licenses. Then when something is wrong with your car you get the blue screen of death and crash.. literally being the blue screen of "death"! :P
this is very similar to the problem linked to the gas cap on this same site
http://broken.typepad.com/b/2005/02/honda_crv_warni.html
they even mentioned a similar problem in the article
I've had to reboot my car a couple of times. On two occasions, I've started my car and got under way only to notice that although my dash is lit up (indicating it is powered) none of the instruments have moved. My tachometer shows zero revs regardless of what the engine doing. My speedometer shows zero even though I am clearly driving along the street. My fuel guage is reading as empty even though I just filled up the night before. None of the instrument needles have budged.
After pulling over; shutting the engine off; and restarting the car, everything is operating fine again. When reported this to the service advisor at the dealer, he jst shrugged it off and didn't bother to take down a report. We are so conditioned to rebooting computer systems that it doesn't even cause a second look when it's controlling automobile functions.
After installing an intake on my IS300, the check engine light comes on after about 800 miles or so. When it does the computer decides that I no longer need traction control or antilock brakes. Instead it just flashes Traction Off. The only solution is to pull the wires off the battery, wait a few moments and reconnect everything. Pretty annoying.
Actually, the 7-Series of BMW runs on a MS Windows version und if someone has a problem, he must reboot the car (Happened quiet often when they came out first, may have to go back to install SP2).
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Previous: MSNBC's lack of date | Main | Next: Single-headphone pad delivery
Sounds like car makers need to spend less time making pretty bodies and more time refining code. Maybe they could license something from microsoft.
Posted by: Maurs at February 6, 2005 11:02 PM