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Volvo recalls all of its 72K EX30 cars due to software bug that obscures speedometer
(www.theregister.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I understand that airliners have separation between the computer systems used for entertainment and life-critical systems. That permits a less costly, lower reliability/testing standard to be used on the entertainment systems.
Unfortunately, current automobiles don't seem to have that separation:
They definitely do. The vast majority of cars (Tesla being a notable exception) run their critical systems on CANbus with AUTOSAR and QNX or VxWorks. That’s why their entertainment system can still crash while the car drives on just fine. That doesn’t mean one can’t obscure the other; on VW group cars, for example, the reversing camera is run by QNX on CANbus but shown on the entertainment screen as an overlay. Occasionally you’ll see QNX starting to show the camera before the entertainment system has had a chance to draw the frame around it.
In older models the speedometer and the tachometer were analogue but new Volvos have them digital so more likely to be affected by software bugs even when the separation exists.
I don't actually know how the analogue versions work or if they could still be affected by software bugs in the onboard computer. UI wise probably sturdier than digital I suspect.