Really? If the car contained no software, people would still buy it over alternatives that contain software at various levels for a better driving experience, comfort, and entertainment?
Crazy idea: make cars that don't rely on microchips and software. As a bonus, they'll probably last longer, be cheaper to repair, and won't distract drivers as much.
There is software in too many consumer goods, usually with very little benefit to the end user, beyond marketing and being able to justify a higher price tag (oooh, it's a "smart" toaster). I don't need the Toyota equivalent of an iPad on my dashboard.
Cars are nothing like software, they clearly deteriorate with time to the point parts eventually need replacing. You could argue there's a better case for a subscription model for buying cars than for software.
Car manufacturers try to hook you into their software when you really should never use any of it. Unfortunately these days you can't even buy a car without a pile of software in it. Instead you should use only the products that come with the phone and totally ignore the preinstalled crapware that comes with a car. We need to go back to the days where a car does only one thing and one thing well.
You don't need a software-free car (with all the complicated mechanical contraptions this then requires, like carburetors) to have a basic car that doesn't need updates. You just have to write software properly. This has already been done! Cars in the 1980s and 1990s all had ECUs running software, and they never needed updates just to keep the engine running. Later (late 80s and through the 90s) they added ABS brake controllers and SRS airbag controllers, all running software. They didn't need updates either.
The idea that computers need software updates is just insane, and clearly fallacious. Cars worked fine without regular software updates for decades.
What software do you mean? A lot of fairly advanced stuff is probably necessary for efficient battery management (which they all need), regen braking, electronic differentials etc (which replaces expensive hardware compared to IC cars).
Not including all the software in a given car is not likely to make it much cheaper as long as there's some car that needs it, since software is free to replicate. Of course there more to it than that; you might be able to get away with simpler computer hardware if you had fewer features. But if you need custom hardware anyway (like Tesla) then it's probably cheaper to just put that in every car.
Of course there's the self-driving stuff which is super advanced, but this is happening for high end cars anyway. I'm sure there are cheaper electric cars out there that don't have any fancy self-driving stuff, but they're probably still packed full of motor/battery software.
I know car software is an afterthought for companies because most consumers don't make their car buying decisions based on how good the software is, but if any company made truly intuitive car software, I would be won as a customer.
Our company recently purchased some Hardware I/O devices that came with software (both made in Germany). Lets just say, I'd much rather buy their cars than their software.
I'd love instead a car that has software I can fully customize. Not the life threatening stuff I can shoot myself in the foot with, but all the dashboards, button placement, sensor logic,entertainment system, live APIs, downloadable logs etc. That's where most of the annoying bugs are anyway. An "open source" car would be a dream come true.
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