There was a story in the Financial Times the other month
which indicated that Microsoft wanted to be in every car.

We already have loads of computing power in cars and trucks,

but have you considered what would happen if cars really became significantly like

computers?

>Their power would double every few years.

>The price of a car would have gone down by about 60%
every decade.

>They would take so little energy to run them that it
would be difficult to measure accurately.
 

Sounds great and you’ve probably heard such comparisons
before.

But consider the rest of the picture:

>Your car would suddenly stop working several times each

week for no apparent reason and no one would know how to fix it, but sometimes

just turning if off and on a few times would do the trick. Other times you

would need to have it completely dissembled and then reassembled EXACTLY THE

SAME WAY and it would work perfectly.

 >The car would have to go to the dealer for regular

updates every week or two and for a major rebuild every couple of months –

otherwise your warranty would be void.

>It would take weeks and several training sessions even

for experts to learn how to drive a new car well and use all its features,

after which you would periodically have to spend several hours on the phone to

someone in India trying to learn where the gas gage was moved during the latest

update and how to get the brake and gas pedals back on the floor and the

gearshift out of the trunk.

An unknown (but large) number of keys to the car would be

hidden under the bodywork where the owner can’t see them, the manufacturer doesn’t

know about them, but every thief has a diagram pinpointing their location. At

every update a few more keys would be hidden, along with an occasional copy of

your credit history.

 The mind boggles.

Is it any wonder that my favorite cars are 2 240Zs, one 1973

Trans AM, and a Sunbeam (Carol Shelby)

Tiger? The only real common denominator is that none of them have any digital

computers.