I am mostly concerned by the ongoing maintenance cost of software. Cars live 20,30 years - how to keep the software running and in good condition?
Foss is no solution, especially due to regulations (totally warranted, I want your car to have working braking systems...) and that this also involves systems at the producers.
Safety critical software is in a totally different league of development process to say, the infotainment system. The thing is we are basically at the point where infotainment systems should be on the way out - because the correct solution is basically "interface with the consumers phone".
But any vehicle with software running which controls the brakes is either correct or unsafe when it ships - but you would never need regular maintenance updates to it.
Software is only subject to entropy when you touch it. In most practical cases these days not being able to "improve" the software is a feature, not a bug.
Safety Critical Components (ECM, ABS, etc) need to be certified. This is very expensive and modifications are done very infrequently. I doubt that auto-manufacturers will use Embedded Linux for them.
Yes, but what's about the components controlling speed, e.g. by detecting the speed limit from some map? Or the stuff implementing emergency calls?
Also there is a plethora of features I (charging station maps) which probably need all maintenance, too.
