Camry-soft? Toyota developing its own operating system
As any fledgling tuner knows, a car's ECU's are the little things that mean a lot, and the modern car has dozens of them. For Toyota, which is working with suppliers to create an in-house operating system that will rationalize the number of control units and the amount of code controlling them, fewer ECUs will mean massive cost savings, faster development, and increased efficiency.
Currently, new software is written from scratch for each ECU in each new model. By working with its suppliers early in the development phase, Toyota wants to integrate components into modular systems, making for safer, less complex, and less expensive (for Toyota, at least) vehicles. As part of Toyota's two-year-old Value Initiative program -- only the latest step in Toyota's ruthless drive to be a leaner car company and stay in front of its competitors -- in-house software development will aid in CEO Katsuake Watanabe's aim to cut nearly $9 billion in costs.
Software teams are in place now, but a working version isn't expected until 2015. With fewer ECU's and one OS to rule them all, the word "crash" could take on new meaning. We can only hope that Toyota will take its OS-writing lessons from Apple, and not Microsoft.
[Source: Engadget]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DPC 8:22PM (4/03/2007)
Saving $9 billion in costs is a huge number, I had no idea they spent that much on software paying other companies. I am surprised no other car company has come up with this idea until now.
http://www.dpccars.com
DPCcars
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Dan Kuehling 8:28PM (4/03/2007)
OK, so Engadget says (or at least implies) that this is about in car entertainment and telematics. This article says it's about ECUs. Which is it?
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Tony 8:31PM (4/03/2007)
Toyota American Innovation!!!
Toyota's astuteness and innovaton keeps them ahead of the crowd. Ready in 2015? Gees! I bet it will be ready before Chevy Volt(if the volt ever makes it the market).
Don't try to say the BMW idrive was the first....pls that thing wasnt an OS.
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paul34 8:52PM (4/03/2007)
Uh oh.
Autoblog, I don't know much you follow the tech world, but you may have just sparked off a heated debate with that last line =D
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Chet 9:18PM (4/03/2007)
Leave the OS ignorance out of Autoblog. If drivers download the crapplet-of-the-week into their Camry's engine because it's a required plug-in to visit some hurl-inducing cuteness their friend emailed them, you'll find Toyotas become about as reliable as a PC.
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moltenblogger 9:21PM (4/03/2007)
Hey DPC,
Why don't you take a break from trying to plug your stupid blog long enough to at least attempt to comprehend the stories that you are supposed to be interested in. For example, in this story it's clear that the desired 9 billion savings are not expected to come exclusivly from rewriting the software, but from all aspects of the the cost cutting program company wide. Please go spam somewhere else.
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TheRealist 9:53PM (4/03/2007)
Autoblog, please leave the biased opinions out of your blog. I GUARANTEE you it will have a negative impact of your hits. I can already tell you don't know too much about the tech industry.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=805&blogid=4
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PandaBear 10:02PM (4/03/2007)
As a firmware engineer, I will never buy such a thing that the car will go out of control if my CD player crashes. No matter what, the power train must be on a separate controller just for safety reason.
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Bert 10:15PM (4/03/2007)
If I put mags on, tint the windows, change the stereo and put a non-TRD blower will Toyota Genuine Advantage force me to reactivate my copy of TOS?
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Richard Warren 10:23PM (4/03/2007)
Uh huh and pigs fly, cheaper to make for them, more computing power in one box, replacement cost,also out of this world.
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titan 10:27PM (4/03/2007)
Why not just us the linux kernel, or BSD like Apple? It is madness to start from scratch unless they hope to license this to other companies.
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Travis Rassat 10:18AM (4/04/2007)
I wouldn't be surprised at all if it would be based on the Linux kernel. Linux is showing up in a lot of embedded applications because of the licensing cost savings.
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Barney 10:46PM (4/03/2007)
Are people just getting stupid or just want to post regardless of what they say.
A custom made CPU is the basics for running the car. The dozens of other components feed the CPU (motherboard) and Toyota is saying that all the process's can be done on one board. Any car made today has processors found n every nook and cranny. A simple plug in and plug out will replace all. No doubt, your CPU can be taken out and analysed while another is plugged in. The expense can't be to bad, since PCs are getting relatively cheaper every day.
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Jim Sanders 10:53PM (4/03/2007)
"OS" my ass.
It's just a unified reusable framework.
It's what they teach at all universities these days.
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CoffeeJones 11:12PM (4/03/2007)
#13 is correct
I'm surprised all manufacturer's didn't have something like that before.
And, for heaven's sake, this isn't a PC OS. It's more like the sort of systems that are used in fighter planes; fault tolerant, real time, etc
Now, it WOULD be nice if companies could standardize on an OS to drive the GPS and entertainment bits, but everyone is rolling their own or buying one from a vendor.
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moltenblogger 11:16PM (4/03/2007)
Realist;
If you would read past the first line of the article that you linked you would see that a lot of the rest of the discussion refutes your implication that MS Windows is more secure than the Mac OS.
If you would actually study the report from Symantec that the article is talking about you might realize that nowhere in it does Symantec come to the conclusion that MS Windows is more secure than anything else. In fact most of the report deals with Microsoft security issues, as one would expect.
If I were you in the future I would try and stay away from telling others how little they know about the tech industry.
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Jeff 1:27AM (4/04/2007)
listing security patches and time to fix is a little like JD Powers' "problems per 100 vehicles"... it fails to address the severity of each of the problems, and your article even acknowledges that. Its also a good point that being a minority, Macs are less likely to be attacked, so that might help make them seem more secure. Then again, there seem to be more than enough computer "enthusiasts" who seem to really get annoyed at the people who've decided to use macs, and especially those who talk about their macs... why aren't they waging a technological war on Macintosh computers?? I can just imagine a virus that spews out YouTube spoofs of the "Get a Mac" ads.
Toyota's really keen on taking care of absolutely every part of a vehicle's construction.
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chris b 5:22AM (4/04/2007)
Let's not forget that Formula 1 will run standard ECUs from 2008 onwards; ECUs made and developed by none other than Microsoft...
*comment cross posted to Engadget
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Jim Sanders 5:54AM (4/04/2007)
You crazy Microsoft bashing people.
The world will come to a halt without Microsoft products.
They got big, they got lots of money, and they got lots of money to spend so the products they make are overfunded, and are the best because Microsoft pours so much money into developing their products into the best, using their unlimited funds.
Microsoft also makes their products intuitive for a village idiot to use.
Anal competitor companies don't even try to make their products user-friendly for non-computer geeks, because they think they are so smart and computer literate, that they make better products than Microsoft. The competitors think if you don't know how to use a command line interface to manipulate their product, then you shouldn't even be using a computer.
That's why people choose Microsoft products. Even village idiots can use it no problem.
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FredGarvin 8:11AM (4/04/2007)
I think #18 proved the very point he was trying to make just by writing his comment:
"That's why people choose Microsoft products. Even village idiots can use it no problem."
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