Do you controll your car or do the computers? Remember the days when the car was a marvel of engineering? Pistons, carburettors, the internal combustion engine with nary a computer in sight?
You stepped on an accelerator connected to several mechanical bits that opened and closed other mechanical parts and – bang – off you went.
Nowadays, while things like the engine still remains at the core of any automobile – some say the true heart of any car – practically everything that we take for granted in our well-oiled machine is made up of silicon chips and transistors.
According to a recent article in the New York Times, the average family sedan has more than 30 computers that it needs to move you from A to B in some comfort and safety.
Luxury vehicles apparently have as many as 100 of such electronic control units and it is said that the modern car has more lines of computer code than you would find in most modern fighter jets.
Why so many, you ask? Do we really need so many computers? It’s just a car.
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