What's Bugging the High-Tech Car?

[Marika]

February 6, 2005

What's Bugging the High-Tech Car?

By TIM MORAN

DETROIT

ON a hot summer trip to Cape Cod, the Mills family minivan did a peculiar thing. After an hour on the road, it began to bake the children. Mom and Dad were cool and comfortable up front, but heat was blasting into the rear of the van and it could not be turned off.

Fortunately for the Mills children, their father - W. Nathaniel Mills III, an expert on computer networking at I.B.M. - is persistent. When three dealership visits, days of waiting and the cumbersome replacement of mechanical parts failed to fix the problem, he took the van out and drove it until the oven fired up again. Then he rushed to the mechanic to look for a software error.

"It took two minutes for them to hook up their diagnostic tool and find the fault," said Mr. Mills, senior technical staff member at I.B.M.'s T. J. Watson Research Center in Hawthorne, N.Y. "I can almost see the software code; a sensor was bad."

Indeed, the high-tech comfort system was confused. The rear temperature sensor of the 2001 Dodge van had gone bad and was sending a signal that the children were freezing at 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The loyal van was doggedly trying to warm them up.

The minivan's problem was unusual only in the specific form it took. Owners across the country and around the globe have posted anguished cries to Internet forums about electronic gremlins that stop windows from rolling all the way up, that unexpectedly dim the interior lights, that drain batteries or that make engines sputter. While most automakers have had problems, quality rankings for some - particularly technology-intensive German luxury brands renowned for engineering - have plunged.

Not only are the glitches annoying, their root causes can be hard to find. Problems are often fleeting and may not be recorded by on-board diagnostics systems.

"It's these transient things that tend to drive people nuts," Mr. Mills said.

David E. Cole, president of the Center for Automotive Research, a consulting firm in Ann Arbor, Mich., says electronics may be the cause of a third of warranty claims.

"The complexity is increasing," he said. "There's just a lot more electronics."

There is more software, too, and it comes from many sources, noted Thilo Koslowski, lead automotive analyst in San Jose, Calif., for a research firm, Gartner G2.

"It's one of the biggest quality issues the automotive industry is dealing with," Mr. Koslowski said. "The problem is that most of these applications in the vehicle are being supplied by a lot of different suppliers."

Mr. Koslowski said the auto industry was not yet very good at integrating software, so buyers inherit systems that can interfere with one another - just as installing incompatible programs can make a personal computer malfunction. He said a niche might soon emerge for companies that integrate various software systems before they go into a vehicle, in the way that companies like Dell sell PC's with the operating system and programs already working in harmony.

Meg Self says I.B.M. is planning to provide that kind of service. She is the company's director of Embedded Systems Lifecycle Management, its name for a new business venture dealing with automotive software and electronics. Ms. Self said that 32 percent of warranty costs could be attributed to dealership service visits at which no problem was found.

I.B.M. predicts that by 2010, almost all cars will have essentially the same mechanical systems. What will make the cars different will be software that operates the systems in ways specific to the brand of car. With so much of a vehicle's identity riding on computer code, carmakers must get the software right.

That would be fine with one frustrated consumer, Stephanie Pavisic of Elmhurst, Ill., who works for a company that specializes in "information integrity" software that double-checks bank transactions for absolute accuracy. Since she bought a fully equipped Mercedes-Benz C230 in 2001, she has suffered through a string of hard-to-diagnose electronics problems.

She recounts episodes of her car shaking uncontrollably and sounding as if it's stalling. In October, on a freeway, it simply shut down. "I take it down the street and it just shakes," Ms. Pavisic said. "People are looking at me, wondering what I'm doing."

Ms. Pavisic has kept a log of the problems, which sent her to the dealership 14 times in three years. Despite all that scrutiny, technicians haven't found a digital explanation. "Probably I'm just not used to driving the car," she says she was told.

She has made friends online with five or six other C230 owners, including one in South Africa, who are trying to diagnose shared problems. While she has considered legal action, she says what she really wants is simply for her car to work.

"Everything is a sensor," she said, reading a list of attempted fixes: "They replaced the fuel-level sensor three times. Replaced the main fuel filter two times. Replaced crankshaft position sensor two times."

Among the electronic flaws on her car, the software-based service system that sends out maintenance reminders went haywire, telling her at 8,000 miles that the car needed its 10,000-mile service. At 17,000 miles, it requested the 20,000-mile service. There have been no more reminders, though the mileage is now 39,000.

As more electronics and software make their way into all sorts of vehicles, hard-to-diagnose problems have cropped up repeatedly. Late last year, Ford warned its dealers that software might disable the continuously variable transmissions in some 30,000 of its new Ford Five Hundred sedans and Freestyle sport wagons. The mechanical parts are fine, but a computer control meant to detect dirty transmission fluid was putting some cars into sluggish "limp home" mode. Ford had to rewrite software to fix the problem, which it says was caught before any vehicles reached customers.

But luxury cars packed with electronic features suffer more because they adopt new technology earlier, said Chance Parker, executive director for auto quality surveys at J. D. Power & Associates. And the gremlins may be especially galling to luxury buyers who expect their cars' pricey "surprise and delight" features to delight them, not to surprise them in unpleasant ways.

Some complaints turn out to be not failures, but features that are difficult to use, said Brian Moody, road test editor for Edmunds.com, the auto information site. Systems that combine many tasks into a single controller, like BMW's iDrive, draw lots of complaints in Edmunds's online forums. "It feels broken to them because they can't figure out how to use it," Mr. Moody said.

BMW says it takes an ordinary driver about a month to become comfortable with iDrive. To help new owners, the company suggests that they bring their cars back to the dealer after two weeks for an intensive training session.

Mercedes-Benz had to replace many of its early Comand integrated control systems because of failures, and has since worked to simplify the controls. Stephan Wolfsried, vice president for electronic systems in Germany, told Automotive News last year that the company had eliminated 600 electronic functions in its cars, starting with the 2003 models, to improve quality and make the remaining functions easier to use. Mr. Wolfsried was quoted as saying these were features that "no one really needed and no one knew how to use."

A spokesman for Mercedes-Benz USA, Robert Moran, said it was important to distinguish technological leadership in safety features from high-tech convenience features. "We are not in a race to out-tech the competition, but do embrace new technologies" that result in better cars, said Mr. Moran, who is not related to this writer.

He said Mercedes had gained 10 points in the latest J. D. Power Customer Service Index, which measures satisfaction with warranty repairs and service, and also showed improvement in Power's Initial Quality Survey, which measures complaints about brand-new cars.

Complex systems that are hard to learn can frustrate early users, but are ultimately accepted. Other systems, though, tend to crash, just like computers. When that happens, drivers can be maddened by failures that force them to stop the car, then restart it; that illuminate the "check engine" light; or that send the car into limp-home mode.

One common problem comes not from software, but from pollution controls. On cars with second-generation diagnostics, a sensor often interprets a loose gas cap as a failure of the evaporative emissions system, tripping the "check engine" light.

Often, problems that seem like electronic failures are owner oversights, said John M. Robison, a BMW and Mercedes enthusiast who often posts to electronic forums.

"People don't read the owners' manual," said Mr. Robison of Vancouver, Wash., a retired manager of large scale computer systems for United Airlines and Bank of America. "When you've got all this complexity, the first thing you have to do is spend half a day with the book."

On the other hand, when he bought his most recent car, a 2002 Mercedes-Benz C240, he made sure to get one without a lot of extra features. It has fewer things to go wrong, he said.

Electronics problems are the bane of luxury cars, he said, and owners often don't know if they have the latest version of the software that runs crucial systems.

He mentioned the drivetrain software in his own Mercedes. "I know there are four different versions of the software," he said. "I don't know which one I've got. If I went to the dealer, I'd ask him to update it, because I'm sure I'm two or three generations away from being current."

[yenko]

When I finish reading that article I will tell you what I think! That is one long article! Kinda confusing to me!

[Bob D]

February 6, 2005

What's Bugging the High-Tech Car?

By TIM MORAN

DETROIT

ON a hot summer trip to Cape Cod, the Mills family minivan did a peculiar thing. After an hour on the road, it began to bake the children. Mom and Dad were cool and comfortable up front, but heat was blasting into the rear of the van and it could not be turned off.

Get a personalised plate entitled "Ilsenstein" maybe...

[TDK]

Thanks Marika, great article - almost too scary to be fictional.

I had hoped Caddy would be among the first to unharness their creations...

A single power conduit throughout the vehicle is utilized by all accessories for primary power. The "wiring harness" as we know it - would simply not exist!

The accessory is smart enough to do its own thing to some degree, but it communicates via the "secure" conduit as needed. For example; the outside mirror knows to defrost itself and what position to be in for the keyfob in use. It has its own mini-UPS, circuit breaker, redundant circuitry, fail safe mode and internal diagnostics.

All accessories remain in a low-power status-quo mode as part of an integrated security system. If a event is detected (in the above example - if the mirror is hit by a opening door in the parking lot) it is logged, the system alarm sounds, the perimeter video/audio captures the scene. All of this data is sent to the owner, the security firm and reported via the in-cab monitor on the first startup.

Sounds expensive huh? Guess which vehicle owners would be the first ones clamoring up to buy the techiest thing around...regardless of the cost (or maybe because this car might be unattainable for mere mortals).

However, until the Auto Industry as a whole is able to integrate electronics securely and does not have to take monumental back-steps - then we can look forward to massive-haystack wiring diagrams for the remainder of our lifetime.

Just my humble opinion <_<

[adallak]

What really irritates me (perhaps just me ) in contemporary vehicles is huge number of options and some of them you REALLY do not need. When trunk pull down failed I just disconnected the motor, readjusted the mechanism to make it work "manually". Sure I could fix it , but... do I really need that function? Or put it other way do I really need it failing again some other day?

[TDK]

Adallak,

I see your point and agree that we have all felt that way at one time or another.

How much would you "not-pay" to eliminate any specific feature? If this was an option...

Or, would you rather that they all work as intended? If so, how much more would you pay for specific insurance (which I believe is widely available).

GM probbly has hordes of "Actuaries" (AKA Life Insurance premium estimators) whose mission in life: is to strike a balance between build cost and product lifetime.

[cadillac_caddy_sts]

I know there is absoulutly no point to the trunck pull down its useless! Theres nothing you can use it for at all! I first got my car I thought whats the point to this and I looked for ways it could be useful for but came up empty!

[yenko]

I have never come across a real use for this pointless option! If any one has one please inform me! I would like to know how you got readjusted the mechinism to work manually because I have had noting put trouble with mine since day one? Thanks.

[cadillac_caddy_sts]

Just disconect it! Then you might have to give the trunk a little slam but its better than that thing acting up! When I got myn it didn't work and I just had to slam the trunk a little Lloyds oil made it work though and theres been no problems since! But I never minded haveing to give the trunck a little slam! Just disconnect the wires!

[yenko]

I dont like messing around with that kind of stuff! I think I will just leave it until it breaks on me again! I dont have much more patience with this thing! That is the same way my pull down was when I purchesed my car!

[adallak]

I dont like messing around with that kind of stuff! I think I will just leave it until it breaks on me again! I dont have much more patience with this thing! That is the same way my pull down was when I purchesed my car! 

if you disconnect it now (while it is working) you will not need any adjustment. But if it fails and your trunk is half-open in the rain (just like mine did ) you will need to take it off readjust and put back. <_>

[yenko]

Maybe I should do that now, while it is on my mind! Thanks!

[cadillac_caddy_sts]

Good idea!

[adallak]

Maybe I should do that now, while it is on my mind! Thanks! 

Guys, before disconnecting the pull down unit please make sure it is in down position.

I am sure you'll figure out the way to bring it down (by pressing a switch). Do not disconnect trunk lid release unit's connector (on the lid), it's a nice feature.

[maydog]

Many of these errors could probably be attributed to user error or improperly trained service staff, misinterpreting the data at hand.

Electrical, mechanical and software gremilins are present is almost all consumer and military products. I analyze reliability of medical devices, a new product in my company goes through years and millions of dollars in development and testing to ensure the most effective and reliable operation as possible.

Still, several units a day come back for us to analyze. I would say 1/3 are induced by user error, 1/3 are design related and we cannot determine wether the final 1/3 really had any problem at all. Of those actual problems, 80% are most due to mechanical issues. Electronic systems are generally more reliable than mechanical.

Extensive design verification and analysis can only find those errors that will occurr in a large percentage of cases. Random accelerated life tests, will find more - but some only seem to surface from real world use.

The auto industry has always been a good benchmark for quality control. Vehicles are highly complex, you really get a lot of technology for a small price. As electronics creeps into more functions of a car, of course more electronic related problems will occurr. This automation however does allow a greater deal of reliability in many areas however - 100,000 mile tuneup intervals anyone? Also, plug and play engine diagnosis greatly imroves technican efficacy.

Vehicles are pretty reliable control system wise, I am pretty sure that everyone who owns a computer has experienced at least several crashes - I have yet to reboot my car. Of course my power seats have a mind of their own .

Rambling....

[gygmy]

I like the electric assist trunk pull down. You pack your trunk with tons of stuff and then it acts like a trashcompactor. Snap!Crunch! Pop!---way cool.

[adallak]

I like the electric assist trunk pull down. You pack your trunk with tons of stuff and then it acts like a trashcompactor. Snap!Crunch! Pop!---way cool.

and there is nobody to blame for the damage.