Is your car as reliable as your computer?

By: Drivers staff

Date: Wednesday, 04. April 2007

In the 2001 model year, electronics accounted for 19 percent of a mid-sized vehicle's cost, says a feature article on the SpectrumOnline Web site, and the percentage is going up. By 2005, it may be 25 percent for mid-sized cars and possibly 50 percent for luxury models.

But how reliable are all these electronics? It's a tough environment under the hood of a modern car, and things are packed pretty tightly in there. A 10-cent electronic part that gives out could immobilize a $30,000 car, and if the part is buried deeply in the bowels of the engine it could be very expensive to replace it. As cars become more complex complete reliability of parts becomes harder to achieve. Add to this the fact that many of today's owners don't pay as much attention to their vehicles as they used to, and you've got the potential for massive problems. Point-to-point wiring is giving way to electronic controls and power buses. A failure could affect the whole car.

On top of that, there is increased reliance on software in automobiles, which, as every computer owner knows, is a lot less reliable than the hardware. This raises more issues. It's hard to reboot in the middle of traffic or while driving on a downhill curve. Some of the hardware parts that need to communicate with one another may be located in very harsh environments. For example, circuits may be placed near heat sources, or a sensor may be in a fluid that's operating at a very high temperature.

As cars and their electronics become more complex it becomes ever harder to keep them reliable. Some car parts of the future may have to achieve space-shuttle reliability, but without the kind of maintenance space shuttles get.

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