|
|
Posted by D Sherman [72.47.153.24] on Thursday, April 05, 2012 at 22:59:57 :
In Reply to: new vehicles are people and stuff posted by mannyc [68.165.89.2] on Thursday, April 05, 2012 at 12:35:21 :
No vehicles produced today will be future collectibles because they all rely on electronics. They're all full of custom chips and/or components that are so tiny that no human can replace them even if they could find the part. I can't imagine any of it lasting 50 years like our old iron. Even if by some stroke of luck nothing breaks, there are built-in wear-out mechanisms in the non-volatile memory used in must microcontrollers. The memory can only be written to a limited number of times, and it's only guaranteed to hold its memory for a limited number of years, typically 10.
It's not just an ECU failure that would make a vehicle useless. These days they have separate computers to control the brakes, the body (lighting and wiper), the cabin climate, the air bags, etc. Some of that stuff is interlocked with the ECU to keep the engine from running if there's a failure in a safety system. Good luck trying to bypass it. Some current production cars might survive as static displays in collections 50 years from now, but nobody will be driving them.