Fear of electronics
03/14/2024
Almost 30 years ago, I bought a British sports car, new from the factory. I was very proud and loved this car. But I was also worried, at the latest when I gained access to the battery, which was located in the passenger footwell. Above the battery were all the engine electronics, which had probably been placed there for "climatic" reasons. It felt like hundreds of cables led into the ECU and away from there. To get to the battery terminals, you had to pull the whole thing out backwards, and I didn't have a good feeling about that. And I began to worry whether all these electronics would still be serviceable a few years later. In the end, I decided to sell the British bike, only to buy it back a few years later. And to drive it again for a few years. And to sell it again.
My former car is still running today and the electronics haven't turned it into a grandfather clock. In general, the electronics installed in the nineties seem to have (become) manageable, whereas today's new car buyers probably have the same worries with their modern vehicles.
There is some evidence that many problems once considered unsolvable no longer appear to be "show stoppers". After all, many standard components were used back then and the overall complexity was manageable.
But since the nineties, more and more functionality has moved into the software. Seat heating, climate control and other features are now controlled by programmed displays and via a bus system shared by various software components. In such an overall system, troubleshooting quickly becomes complex and almost impossible without insight into the software or without additional diagnostic software. So it won't be easy in 30 years' time when a Lotus Emira or a BMW i8 suffers from electronic problems ...
P.S. The photo is a symbolic image, because I never actually photographed the open footwell back then ...
