
Toyota Prius software glitch forces global recall - monkeygrinder
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/software-quality-testing/quality-assurance/news/index.cfm?newsid=18732
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patio11
"With myself taking the lead and keeping to the genchi genbutsu principle all
of us at Toyota will tackle the issue in close cooperation with our dealers
and our suppliers."

If I were translating his statement I might have put an explanatory note
there: genchi genbutsu is a reference to the actual location and the actual
materials at issue. It is sort of a catch phrase for Toyota -- one of their
management principles is "genchi genbutsu genzitsu" -- roughly speaking, "Go
to the actual location and see the actual machine/materials and you shall know
the actual truth." Compare to delegating an underling to diagnose the issue
over a phone.

Obligatory disclaimer: I work in Nagoya, but not for Toyota, to the extent
that anyone in Nagoya can be said not to work for Toyota.

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lutorm
Speaking to the need for software to be open source in more than academia?

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statictype
Until cars have connectors to automatically upgrade their software without
requiring a vendor to do it, having the code to the software wouldn't help.

Still, would be pretty sweet to be able to mod the firmware to suit each
driver's tendencies.

Side Question: Doesn't BWM allow\encourage tinkering with the firmware on
their cars?

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Nelson69
Who has the liability when some one breaks in and puts bad code on the car
that causes it to misbehave? The code could maybe cause it to not properly
brake and cause a death or it could maybe alter the timings on the injectors
and cause it to be less efficient or maybe even ware out more quickly.

There has to be a certain allure to having a wifi chip in there and when you
pull in to your garage at night, the car could install any updates to the ECU,
the navi and any other systems that could need them, maybe sync against your
itunes.. At the same time, it could send in some information about how it's
performing, what maintenance has been done, etc.. It could almost be a
profitable feature.

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statictype
>There has to be a certain allure to having a wifi chip in there

Until some war-driving script-kiddie shows up and causes a buffer overflow in
the driver and gets root on your car. :)

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datawalke
I guess Woz was right.

