Whats Bugging the High-Tech Car?
” New York Times (02/06/05) P. SP14; Moran, Tim High-end cars have generated a deluge of customer complaints that can be tracked in Internet forums, and experts say the culprit is complex technology that can be difficult to use and leads to software glitches. Often these electronic problems are hard to identify, even with sophisticated diagnostic technology or onboard diagnostic systems. IBM Embedded Systems Lifecycle Management director Meg Self says 32 percent of warranty costs are now attributed to service visits during which no problem can be found, while industry experts say new cars are loaded with so many electronics and software from various vendors that there will soon be a market for automobile systems integrators, similar to what PC brands such as Dell are in the computer industry. Self says IBM is aiming for that market, and that by 2010, cars will have basically the same mechanical systems and be differentiated based on their software, making software integration all the m
