Voice of the DBA

Tag: car update

  • The Android Car

    I’ve been a car guy for most of my life, admiring them, owning quite a few (20+), and enjoying lots of time behind the wheel of a vehicle. I’ve been lucky enough to own my dream car for a few years and even had the chance to drive a few unusual cards. While I haven’t driven a Tesla, I have ridden in one when the pedal was mashed to the floorboard (thanks, @GlennAlanBerry). That’s quite an experience, and one I’d recommend if you don’t have heart issues.

    This week I ran across a note that Volvo’s spin-off brand, Polestar, was unveiling an all electric car. This is their answer to a changing world where it seems every manufacturer wants to combat Tesla with an electric version of something. I might consider the Porsche Macan in an all electric version at some point, but the Polestar 2 is interesting for a reason besides the electric drive train. It’s the first production car that is build around Google’s Android system as the operating system for the car. There are entertainment systems using Android Auto, but this is a step higher.

    What I find interesting, and perhaps disturbing, is this move to more electronic integration for our vehicles, and the potential for issues if the operating system fails. I already think that we’ve built a few too many integrations in mechanical cars at times, where we can’t easily open doors, tow cars, or more if the electrical system fails. While I trust a plane or ship more because they are better maintained by mechanics, I worry about the durability and potential issues with updates for cars that are in daily use by users that might not take the best car of them. After all, people drive every day with small mechanical issues. I worry what this will mean for autos.

    There’s also the trust that we must have in both Google and Volvo to ensure that security is tight, patches are extremely well tested, and perhaps just as important, our privacy is respected. Google already gathers lots of data about us; do we want to give them more about how lifestyle? Will they sell data to insurance companies or others? I don’t know what other data might be captured, but I do worry that there are issues I haven’t considered, especially around security. Maybe even more disconcerting might be the charges for keys, updates, and more that will get added onto already expensive vehicles. What if systems become locked down to the point that only vendor mechanics can work on them?

    I like the idea of better designed and more efficient vehicles, and think that all electric is the future. This despite my longing for a manual transmission in my next car. However, I’m not quite sure I’m ready to trust a phone operating system to run lots of parts of my car. Already I think there ought to be open-source, embedded systems for any mechanical control  and security features that are completely separate from entertainment, without any access to the outside world. While I like DevOps and innovative software, what I worry about is the focus from many companies on features and costs, and not on security and quality.

    Steve Jones

  • Auto DevOps

    As much as I like DevOps, this scares me. There are a lot of employees (20%) at BMW that are software engineers. They want to increase that to a larger percentage, which I assume means that we’ll have more and more code in our automobiles, with more systems tightly integrated. We’re even gathering more and more data in modern vehicles. Maybe there are good database job opportunities for some of you with automakers.

    If there’s one thing we’ve learned in a few decades of writing software, it’s that large monolithic systems are a mess. They contain vulnerabilities, and more importantly, they are very difficult to patch and change. All of the DevOps success stories I’ve seen from large systems have either been a complete rewrite, or a long term refactoring that removes dependencies and tight couplings between modules.

    In cars, we’ve seen all sorts of hacking issues. Hackers can attack a vehicle remotely and a faulty (or hacked) update might leave you in trouble. Granted these things aren’t that likely, yet, though I think this piece understates the potential problems. I think that because once a hack is discovered, how sure are we that a) it will be reported to vendors (hackers might just exploit it), or b) that a fix will certainly be developed that works well and doesn’t cause any issues (remember 10s of millions of lines of code current year cars), and c) consumers will apply the patch. That last item worries me, especially if cars become more connected and share data about operation or as we move to autonomous (semi- or total) vehicles.

    Personally I’m not against code in vehicles. I’m not even against some connected systems. What I am against is a monolithic, tightly coupled system. I don’t want engine control or drive by wire sharing a network or code with a CD player or navigation system. I don’t want one computer controlling vehicular functions, entertainment, and climate control. I also want to be sure that there is some protection for all this data, to be sure it doesn’t overwhelm any system. I’ll also admit I like idea of upgrading or replacing parts from different vendors, some of whom might do a much better job of building systems.

    We’ve learned a lot about software and complex systems. While I don’t want all manufacturers to use one system or have tight regulations, I would like to see some mandates that separate critical systems from each other. Both in code, and physically. We don’t need to specify code standards, or encryption, or any details, but let’s ensure that a base bar of building software is being used in any of the mass produced vehicles, planes, trains,  automobiles, or anything else of substantial size that is operated by the general public.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and Libsyn.

  • The Bad Data Shutdown

    I’m a car guy. I like cars, I like driving, and I’ve spent a lot of time and money over the years on vehicles. I’ve swapped and enjoyed a few dozen automobiles as part of my life. If you are on Twitter, you might occasionally see @BrentO and myself go back and forth on some car topic, usually Porsche related. This usually results in an hour or so of life wasted on dreaming of a new car (including getting distracted while writing this piece and pasting that last link in, where I spent quite some time drooling over the Macan).

    Recently there was an issue with the navigation system in Lexus vehicles. Apparently bad data was sent during a software update, which is not exactly what you want to happen in a car. I’ve had a few modern vehicles, some of which would be quite handicapped if they onboard computer were frozen or rebooting. In my current vehicle, this would cause issues with climate, navigation, entertainment, and potentially other systems. After all, I suspect many things from door locks to speed control are all integrated together. Certainly the drivetrain is as an open door will automatically shift my car from drive to park, at least at low speeds.

    As we move to more drive by wire, bad data or bad software that disrupts the computer systems could be very dangerous. It’s not just updates, but this could even be some internal Denial of Service issue from a USB device or bluetooth connection. In this case,  Lexus acknowledged the problem, which I’m glad to see. The Internet ensures that problems can be reported from many users quickly and very publicly. That makes it hard to deny a widespread problem.

    Delivering updates across wireless links is great. It’s cheaper for everyone, saves time, and owners appreciate convenience. However, moving to this model often requires some sort of continuous delivery (CD) process, which should also allow for rolling forward, and releasing fixes for problems. However, if the updates you deliver cause the system to cease functioning, then this doesn’t help. At the last, your QA system needs work and you don’t have a well designed software delivery process.

    Various companies are getting better at delivering updates to our systems without downtime, but there’s still work to be done. The smaller your domain of clients, the easier this is. For many of us that work on small systems, an application server or two and a database, we can certainly get much better at ensuring our updates are tested, and more importantly, that we can quickly deploy a second patch if we find an issue. That requires engineering a process that is known and stable, with the ability to respond quickly. For larger systems, with many clients, you need a really solid engineering and deployment process.

    Above all, however, no matter what your deployment mechanism for updates, you need to be sure that any data you include is at the quality level you’d expect would be delivered to you.

    Steve Jones

    The Voice of the DBA Podcast

    Listen to the MP3 Audio ( 4.7MB) podcast or subscribe to the feed at iTunes and LibSyn.

  • First Look at Apple Car Play

    I rented a Buick recently, and when I plugged my phone into the USB port to charge, I was surprised to see the CarPlay icon come on. At first I was a little confused, using my phone to navigate to a hotel, but when I could only see written directions, and not a map, I suspected the CarPlay integration had taken over.

    At first I was a bit annoyed, after all, I could see the radio on the car screen, but no map on my phone and navigating was tricky. However once I realized how to change to CarPlay on the car screen, I could access the map there, which was much easier to see than my phone.

    Over a couple days, I experimented with CarPlay, getting and sending texts in the car with Siri, which was much easier than accessing it on my phone, especially for having messages read. Accessing music (native or Spotify) worked well, though there were some limitations with Spotify, such as not being able to easily pick a particular song in a playlist.

    Very few apps were integrated, mostly the native ones with Spotify and Pandora for me. I wish Google Maps were integrated as I like that one better than Apple Maps, but it wasn’t a big issue for me. I suspect that will change over time, especially as more companies put CarPlay in vehicles and developers incorporate the APIs.

    The ergonomics are good, overall, however having to reach and access a touch screen on the dash is a bit cumbersome when you’re driving. Especially when there isn’t tactile feedback. It’s too easy on a touch screen to hit the wrong icon and then have your attention leave the road. I really think that CarPlay will need some hard button integration to really be useful for drivers. The voice access is OK, but I’ve found with road noise and sometimes needing a stiff pronunciation from me, it’s not a great system.

    Overall I’m impressed. I didn’t think much of the idea when it was announced, but having used it, I like what I see. There’s work to be done, but this is one of the best car/phone integrations I’ve seen in terms of working well and also removing temptations for the driver to focus on their phone. I’m hoping that Android Auto works just as well and we find ways to remove some phone distractions in the car.