Technology

59417 readers

2817 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

134

Volvo recalls all of its 72K EX30 cars due to software bug that obscures speedometer (www.theregister.com)

submitted 5 months ago by boem to c/technology

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 20 points 5 months ago (2 children)

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:

In a statement released today, the Sweden-based car manufacturer says EX30 vehicles can accidentally throw up a "test screen" on the center monitor, obscuring the normal driving statistics shown there including the speedometer and infotainment features. The exact cause of the bug has yet to be disclosed.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

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.