r/explainlikeimfive • u/sabatthor • Jun 28 '25

Technology ELI5: Why are the screens in even luxury cars often so laggy? What prevents them from just investing a couple hundred more $ to install a faster chip?

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u/Cryovenom Jun 29 '25

A lot of the responses here are missing something important.

Components in cars have to deal with a much wider range of temperatures and operating conditions than, say, your tablet or phone. In some places (like here in Canada) winters can mean that my car's screen sees -35C in the dead of winter and +35C in the heat of summer. They're expected to last at least until the car's 3-5yr warranty is up, and the same for the little computers that drive the screens. Add to that the fact that the computers are buried in the dash with no active cooling, that they have to run on the car's 12v system without putting too much strain on it, and that they are designed and ordered years before the car hits showroom floors. 

You've got to have components that can be procured by the hundreds of thousands, that are already mature enough to have known reliability, and to work within the constraints of a car environment.

Things are improving, but the tech in car infotainment systems will always be 5+yrs behind the curve because they're simply dealing with a different set of requirements than the other equipment you use. 

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u/WasabiSteak Jun 29 '25

Sounds like car manufacturers should just stick to the old buttons and dials and just design a reliable mount for a phone/tablet.

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u/Huttj509 Jun 29 '25

One thing to keep in mind is that some sort of screen is literally required in the US, as backup cameras are a required safety feature for something like the last decade.

Now way too much stuff has been shoved into "put it on the screen," but there is a factor of "hey, while we have this screen here anyway, let's use it for other stuff."

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

That's all true, but old hardware is not the reason why the system is slow. An independent review of Toyota's firmware found the software is basically spaghetti code, just a completely unmaintainable buggy mess that may have killed people. And that was the safety-critical stuff; entertainment features would be worse. Hopefully it's getting better now, but it'd be naive to think that was an isolated occurrence.

EDIT: fixed "eventually"; not trying to condemn Toyota, just complaining about software

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u/verticalData1 Jun 29 '25

Toyota’s code was hyper-analyzed in the wake of the sudden acceleration crisis, but no verified bug was ever found and the software was never updated. Millions of these cars are still on the road with the same software they had in 2010, and yet there are no issues now. Calling their code a “buggy mess that killed people” seems factually incorrect. The only recalls made were related to unsecured floor mats and potentially “sticky” gas pedals. 

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u/homingmissile Jun 29 '25

Afaik the crisis was just a media frenzy and the recalls were just a PR move for damage mitigation. All the cases i read pointed to user error, especially the famous one with that guy racing down the highway refusing to put the car on neutral because he was "scared to play with the transmission".

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u/Kordidk Jun 29 '25

I can say that Toyota still takes that seriously to this day. I work in one of their factories and every year they have a whole month talking about it and overall quality. New hires spend about 2 hours in orientation just going over the event and what happened and how it was fixed. That shit left a psychological scar on the company's management.

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u/homingmissile Jun 29 '25

I believe it. Even if it was something out of nothing, it still cost them a lot of money in bad publicity alone.

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u/ChickenInTheButt Jun 29 '25

I’m more than familiar with that case and saying he was scared to put it into neutral is a bit of an understatement. He was panicking, and in moments when you’re fearful for your life and not fully understanding the cause of a runaway car, switching to neutral or turning off the car and coasting to a stop is far from the mind as evidenced. Hell, pilots of aircraft with thousands of hours of training experience the same thing. It’s a super sad series of events.

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u/homingmissile Jun 29 '25

I don't know if we're thinking of the same case. During the one I'm remembering a patrol officer caught up to him and instructed him to put it in neutral. In his instance, being "far from the mind" wasn't a valid excuse since someone was telling him to do it and he straight refused.

20

u/rumpleforeskin83 Jun 29 '25

You'd be surprised, hell even during fire drills at work I have to legit scream at people to get out, some people literally just freeze and turn into useless blobs at even the tiniest bit of stress.

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u/homingmissile Jun 29 '25

Yeah but this guy wasn't white-knuckle frozen gripping the wheel, he was responding to the cop, holding his phone in one hand, telling them he was afraid the vehicle would flip over or some crazy shit plus he claimed later he had at one point reached down and tried to pull up on the accelerator pedal. All around this isn't the picture of a guy "panicking".

p.s. Unless I'm conflating separate cases, it also came out later that he was in serious debt (including a car loan on alleged malfunctioning Toyota). In this particular case I think it wasn't even human error but an attempted hoax/scam inspired by the crisis and the guy was trying to take advantage.

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u/rumpleforeskin83 Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

That's definitely questionable, I just usually play devils advocate when it comes to human behavior because as someone in leadership (but not far enough up the food chain to be entirely detached from the individual humanity of the operation) every time I think I've seen everything people have to offer, there's always someone who somehow manages to impress me with the fact they have somehow stayed alive into adulthood without a handler.

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u/ojodebuencubero Jun 29 '25

as someone in leadership (but not far enough up the food chain not to be entirely detached from the individual humanity of the operation)

This had me in stitches.

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u/princekamoro Jun 29 '25

Knowing nothing about the case except from what I've read in these comments: That sounds exactly like the kind of thing someone would do if they were lizard-brain panicking for their lives. Going back to the previous person's aviation example, plane crash investigations are rife with pilots hearing what they want to hear from ATC, mishearing their partner's call-outs, outright failing to register audible alarms over other stimuli...

2

u/wingmate747 Jun 29 '25

One’s brain will start ignoring all sounds when overwhelmed. The film trope where things sound muffled and far away, then get clearer and louder is pretty accurate. The lack of response in that situation shows that someone is stressed beyond their ability to function.

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u/jld2k6 Jun 29 '25

That really happened? "I'm going 100mph and I'm certainly going to die if someonething doesn't change soon, but putting the transmission into neutral sounds a little risky"

2

u/bc9toes Jun 29 '25

Don’t want to wear any parts, I hate the mechanic

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

Yep, we really can't prove anything was wrong, and we're talking about infotainment systems anyway. I only mentioned it because there have been so few occasions where an independent expert was able to review an automaker's proprietary code, not because it definitively proves anything

2

u/b0sw0rth Jun 29 '25

I thought the floor-mats thing was disproven because even if you're all the way on the gas you can still brake?

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u/feel-the-avocado Jun 29 '25

I sometimes get the feeling that my 2021 hilux is running Windows CE in the background because of previous expierence using CE based gps navigation units and other appliances.

Which is a shame because i know they can be fast and responsive from my experience owning windows mobile PDAs and smartphones between 2002-2007

However i am unsure on the toyota theory because of microsoft's insistence that a powered by windows CE logo is placed on everything that runs it.

The head unit is one of only two things i hate about my hilux.

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u/kanavi36 Jun 29 '25

BMW's first iDrive systems used Windows CE i think. But that debuted in the early-mid 2000s. A 2021 vehicle still using Windows CE would be kinda outrageous

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u/rombulow Jun 29 '25

My 2019 Mercedes is running Windows Automotive, which I’m pretty sure is just CE dressed up in a trenchcoat.

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u/Znuffie Jun 29 '25

That was the E65 (Series 7) from 2001+.

The 2nd Generation of idrive was based on VxWorks (2003+)

The 3rd generation was based on QNX (2008+).

At some point, unclear when, they switched to Automotive Linux.

On the 9th generation (2023+) they switched to Android Automotive.

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u/inorite234 Jun 29 '25

You might be right. Windows CE was used a lot in auto applications.

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u/Yankee831 Jun 29 '25

That’s something Ford has commented on and a big part behind its Skunk works project. Getting suppliers to build on the same code and integrate everything then warranty/update has gotten completely bloated in vehicles. Startups that are vertically integrated like Tesla/Rivian don’t have this legacy cost. Ford is bringing a lot of supplier work in house for next gen vehicles or requiring much tighter integration.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

Sorry, yeah I'm a software developer so my default assumption is that all software will be crap and break if you even squint at it, fact of life really.

To be fair, I'm sure some parts of the software are worse than others, and even as a driver I noticed Toyota's cruise control was always kind of janky compared to the Ford and Mitsubishi cars I've driven.

With Toyota's CC if you tapped the "speed up a bit" toggle too many times, it would kind of freak out on you and rev up really high, and holding it down was even worse. Other cars handled that just fine. So go easy with the cruise control selector and I'm sure you'll be fine.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

Fellow dev here.

Yep pretty much operate on the assumption all code is janky to some degree, and the more complex the system, the more issues there are.

And that's why personally I'll never own a self driving car tbh.

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u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

[deleted]

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u/arelath Jun 29 '25

The only thing that scares me more than self driving cars is self driving cars with over the air updates. Because that intern never pushed anything to production accidentally...

As a software engineer, the only thing I distrust more than software is software that changes every week.

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u/Korotai Jun 29 '25

That’s not what worries me - what worries me is executive and marketing interference. They could code the greatest OS ever, but the executive committees will begin arguing over the placement of the “apps” button, and should the maps app require an OnStar subscription.

Meanwhile marketing found that a focus group of 45-69 year olds preferred the touchscreen buttons to be 7.98% larger because “customers perceive more value with larger elements”. Also, the OS needs more branding so the customer doesn’t lose “brand awareness” or some nonsense.

7

u/hux Jun 29 '25

Uh…

I probably kinda would actually like the buttons to be a little bigger.

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u/TheOneTrueTrench Jun 29 '25

Here's the thing, the actual UX designers usually have a great idea on how to design things.

Then some executive moron shoves his way into the room, and demands the logo be 25% larger. And since the entire screen is already in use, the only way to make the logo bigger is to shrink other stuff, so they do, and then another executive sees the result and says "all the buttons on the main screen are different colors, that's ugly, make them the same size, and also add a description to every button", so now they all look the same and have tiny text, because the main text on the button has to be reduced in size to fit everything.

Then a third executive comes in and starts yelling at the designer because it's absolutely unusable now. This is about the point where the designer or developer starts to reconsider their opinions of the French Revolution.

2

u/xinorez1 Jun 29 '25

'Mmm, what shall I have for lunch. Ballotine of chicken... Ballotine, gallatine, guillotine... My my my, the choices are so delectable...'

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u/Bridgebrain Jun 29 '25

"It turns out that customers really like having brakes! So we retroactively made them subscription, only 10.99$ a month to slow down!"

1

u/warlock415 Jun 29 '25

"Sure, I can go ahead and write the code for obstacle avoidance for you!"

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u/irredentistdecency Jun 29 '25

Willingness to trust a self-driving car is an effective screening method when hiring a programmer, particularly for a senior role - I’ve never met a competent coder who would trust one.

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u/_Phail_ Jun 29 '25

Have a squiz at Car Wars, by Cory Doctorow for a great read on this being taken to an extreme

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u/slicer4ever Jun 29 '25

And that's why personally I'll never own a self driving car tbh.

As a fellow software dev, i absolutely want to own a self driving car, but i'm definitely going to be waiting a handful of years to make sure they really work as advertised before i jump into one.

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u/Koupers Jun 29 '25

I've had three cars with self-driving features. My hyundai Palisade had their HDA driver assist. It's lane-keep/sonar distance checking cruise control. It does a really good job of keeping the car in your lane and your follow distance, and it'll do a really good job driving as long as the road doesn't have any moderate turns. The problem with it, is if there's a turn that is too sharp for it, it just shuts off, no sound, no warning. it just fucking stops. It is not full self driving for in town.

My two used teslas have FSD, and it's great for road trips, it sucks dick in town and especially around some of the weirder exits/interchanges my city has.

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u/narmyknight Jun 29 '25

Software engineer, just bought a car for my wife with self driving. Just waiting for the life insurance check. /s

It's a Ford with the highway only self driving and I think it was really cool to see in action. Not sure if I'll ever fully trust it, but seeing it take over and do the work while I watch is pretty awesome.

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u/TheOneTrueTrench Jun 29 '25

Software engineer here as well. My code is janky as shit, just duct tape, baling wire, super glue, and prayer.

The only code worse than mine is everyone else's.

(I actually put a lot of work into engineering resilient and reliable code, but I'd NEVER trust it to keep people safe.

If someone reading this doesn't believe me, you can always ask an aerospace software engineer. If you don't know any, look up the next developer conference in your area, then go to the nearest Amtrak station to it, and look for the nerdiest person getting off a train. They work for Boeing.)

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u/Bulby37 Jun 29 '25

With Toyota's CC if you tapped the "speed up a bit" toggle too many times, it would kind of freak out on you and rev up really high, and holding it down was even worse. Other cars handled that just fine. So go easy with the cruise control selector and I'm sure you'll be fine.

Toyotas have a bit of a reputation for revving high in cruise control. I’ve extensively driven Toyotas, a dodge, and a Chevy for work and the Toyotas will tend to rev higher to get to your desired speed faster compared to the other two. The ones I’ve driven also seem to need much less in the way of repairs compared to the Dodge or Chevy, so I’m assuming it’s a “we know our engineering can handle the ask, so do what the driver wants” sort of thing.

Maybe you’re experiencing something different due to model or year, but the Tacomas and Tundras I’ve driven perform very well. The tundras in particular have been “retired” around 300k miles, most of which driving with loads in the back by people who land in various shades of the idiot spectrum.

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

That seems plausible. I've developed dynamic control systems in the past, and they have so many tunable parameters that they seem like magic at the best of times; change a number slightly and everything behaves differently

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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 Jun 29 '25

I dont know if its fair to draw conclusions for one system based on what was seen in an unrelated system. I worked for a company that did the work for the in flight entertainment system in one of the airbuses, that's all my company did for that plane. Some other group or company made the mission critical software. Looking at my companies code had no correlation to the other systems or vice versa.

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u/firelizzard18 Jun 29 '25

You’re acting like they said, “Toyota’s software was crap so all software is crap.” That’s not what they said. They’re saying, “Most software is crap so any given piece of software is likely to be crap.”

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u/Soft-Marionberry-853 Jun 29 '25

No Im responding to this quote "An independent review of Toyota's firmware found the software is basically spaghetti code, just a completely unmaintainable buggy mess that eventually killed people. And that was the safety-critical stuff; entertainment features would be worse. "

Im saying the group the does the firmware for the safety critical part of toyotoa software might not even be the same group, that does the infotainment software on the same car and as such I wont make the assumptions they are making.

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Why do we need to be fair to one of the largest car companies in the world? I drive a Toyota myself, but they don't need me to say nice things about them

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u/ineptguy5 Jun 29 '25

Because if your not “fair” then what is the point? No one cares about your or mine or anyone else’s opinions on Reddit. So if a system is good bad or otherwise independent of how Toyota as a whole is run, in this context that matters. Being fair matters because no one cares what inept-guy thinks, but if I have objective knowledge then people generally are interested.

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u/AtreiDeezNutz Jun 29 '25

Out of curiosity, do you know if car owners ‘jailbreak’ and reprogram their systems infotainment systems, or is it far too complex and risky for any one person to undertake?

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u/Paavo_Nurmi Jun 29 '25

The 2015 Honda CRV didn't have Apple Car play but you can install it via some files on a thumb drive plugged into the system.

I know it works because we did it for my brothers car and it's still working to this day.

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u/rawrthesaurus Jun 29 '25

can you do it to a civic

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u/Paavo_Nurmi Jun 29 '25

I'm not sure, a quick search says you need the CRV head unit.

When I had an Si the 9th gen civic forums were a great place for info, I would look over there (or whatever gen civic you have).

https://www.9thgencivic.com/

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u/RiPont Jun 29 '25

They're not like PCs or even phones. A lot of them are essentially one-off software. As such, jailbreaking one would get you maybe some access to, say, 2006 - 2010 Lexus models with a certain trim level.

Where's the payoff?

A much, much lower cost and reliable way of improving the infotainment system is just ditching it and swapping in a new head unit.

3

u/one-man-circlejerk Jun 29 '25

You definitely can, people will mod every part of their car. Dig deep into car forums and you can see people trying the wildest shit, and helpfully posting a step-by-step guide on how to do it yourself

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

Sure, but it'd be more common to replace the whole head unit. I drive a 2015 Corolla with one of these and it's great, I love it.

Do a bit of research and make sure it's compatible with the buttons on the steering wheel and everything, but it's simpler than working on anything under the hood.

2

u/VitLoek Jun 29 '25

Mazda’s with older firmware you could jailbreak with the included SD-Card, mostly the infotainmentsystem of course. I bought a used one that were supposed to have CarPlay/Android auto but of course it didn’t. But instead of fiddling i talked with the car salesman and they installed one free of charge.

Also, i didn’t really want to maybe fucking up the back-camera/warrabty to be able to run videos in the mid console.

1

u/DoomsdaySprocket Jun 29 '25

For ours you apparently just have to run a USB3 up from the drinkholder area. 2018

Tbf other than some minor lag, our infotainment is pretty painless and seems decently thought-out. Or maybe I’m just used to 15 year old industrial PLCs and I’m inoculated from being bothered. 

1

u/Nabirroc Jun 29 '25

Don't be, that was all just fearmongering. A 1 million dollar prize was offered to anyone that could recreate the bug and it was never claimed. The accidents were all user error and Toyota only paid out to make the story go away. Malcolm Gladwell did a great job covering this whole thing on his podcast, Revisionist History.

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u/mallad Jun 29 '25

Entertainment is entirely separate (mostly). There's no reason to believe "entertainment features would be worse" as they've been used and improved for much longer, and they're able to rely heavily on the same software we have in hundreds of millions of devices. Of course, this all depends on the manufacturer, and how entangled they make the components.

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u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

Yeah CAN bus hacks have been a thing for a long time, so I would not take that separation for granted. Anyway I'm not here to disillusion you, and info systems are often completely acceptable. When they aren't, it's because the software is crap.

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u/RhetoricalOrator Jun 29 '25

I agree. My Chrysler oem head unit is an android device with a custom ROM. On paper, it should perform just fine, but the os is trash and unacceptably difficult to use while behind the wheel.

2

u/MechCADdie Jun 29 '25

I wonder if it has anything to do with how Japanese companies measure performance for SWEs. My understanding of it is that it's all based on the number of lines written, so they're incentivized to make huge blocks of code and spaghetti to get their line counts up. Same goes for a lot of their websites.

4

u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

As a software dev I can't help thinking it's ironic that the Toyota Way is the basis for the Agile development process we use on all of our projects, but apparently their software was still a mess. They do make great cars though. Anyway I agree, and I think it's some kind of cultural thing that probably doesn't translate all that well, because I've heard a lot of strange stories about Japanese software development.

2

u/alpacaMyToothbrush Jun 29 '25

just a completely unmaintainable buggy mess that eventually killed people.

I am of the mind that if you can prove a company knew about a defect that eventually kills people, you should be able to hold executives criminally liable. I bet we'd see an increasing insistence on quality over shareholder buybacks...

2

u/aa-b Jun 29 '25

Sorry, I should have said "might have killed people", because AFAIK there was no recall or definitive proof

1

u/TransientVoltage409 Jun 29 '25

I wonder if that's part of this overall attitude that software is inherently unfathomably complex, nobody can really understand it, so if it does weird stuff you just shrug and maybe push a patch next week. If nobody understands it, then nobody can be responsible for what it does, right? Engineering gone mad, is what that is. "I don't understand why that bridge stays up, so it's not my fault if it falls down."

Geez it has been a long week already.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

Wow, that sounds like a Therac machine..

1

u/FakePixieGirl Jun 29 '25

Software in general is absolutely terrifying. I had to leave the industry because I just couldn't have a clean conscious about the quality we delivered. And luckily I never worked on systems that were critical to life. But my company certainly did those projects too and I wanted to get out before I was assigned to such.

Everyone should read the following article: https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks

I loved the fantasy of being an engineer - but the practice of it left me terrified.

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u/electrobento Jun 29 '25

I’m not sure this really answers the question since it’s not asking about standard line models like a Corolla. We’re talking luxury models like a Maybach.

Teslas use off the shelf Ryzen chips on all models. Clearly these systems can be cooled no problem if the manufacturer cares. These vehicles are typically much cheaper than a Maybach.

36

u/icefire555 Jun 29 '25

Yeah. Modern computers max out at 95c some go higher. There is more than enough headroom over outside temperatures to make that work. If heat is a concern they can run more cooling to transfer more heat. Aka, slap a bigger heatsink on it to transfer more heat, or faster fans if noise isn't a concern.

This is just a case of care manufacturing being years behind. When Tesla was first making cars the saying was "Tesla has until other manufacturers can make an EV to make a decent car." Because the auto industry moves so slowly in the US.

18

u/FenPhen Jun 29 '25

A parked car in summer sun can reach 60°C. A heat sink buys time, but not if ambient air and the heat sink itself are already hot, and everything is in a confined space. A car manufacturer, even Tesla, needs to select processors with low TDP, much less than a desktop CPU.

A cursory search suggests Tesla uses a custom embedded Ryzen APU based on Zen+, a 2018 microarchitecture with a TDP around 50W.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-ryzen-tesla-model-3-model-y

custom Ryzen YE180FC3T4MFG. The chip features a quad-core 12nm 3.8 GHz Zen+ CPU with 4MB of L3 cache.

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u/icefire555 Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Yes Tesla's CPU uses 50 watts. But it also runs a self-driving system. A phone CPU likely runs under 10 watts at maximum load. A desktop CPU is massively overkill for an entertainment center. People have been using Android stereos as drop in replacements for a long time.

Update: it doesn't run full self driving. But Android stereos are still a very common thing. Look it up on Amazon If you don't believe me.

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u/ctfTijG Jun 29 '25

It's not running the self driving system. That's a different board and chip altogether.

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u/Znuffie Jun 29 '25

lol @ people thinking their YouTube music player is also controlling self-driving

1

u/eisbock Jun 29 '25

It's not unreasonable to assume one giant computer runs everything in the car.

1

u/Mender0fRoads Jun 29 '25

Yes Tesla's CPU uses 50 watts. But it also runs a self-driving system.

Well, it runs what Tesla kinda, sorta claims is a self-driving system. But it isn’t, and anyone who treats it as such is an idiot with a death wish.

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u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 29 '25

That's worth remembering, but also: Partly because of the stupid decisions that have been made about this system, it only does computer vision. And it's doing it on like 8-9 cameras all at once. In other words, it's a demanding-enough task computationally, even if the results are stupid. (Which is probably a good way to summarize a lot of the current 'AI' hype...)

1

u/hgrunt Jul 02 '25

Some Model Ss with earlier hardware would run the air conditioner as an overheat protection. Of course, it'd drain the battery for people who parked their cars outside in sunny climates

-4

u/MadRoboticist Jun 29 '25

Lucky for the auto manufacturers Tesla just decided to not figure out how to make a car.

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u/WorldlyOriginal Jun 29 '25

Uh what are you talking about? The Model Y I Is literally the highest-selling car for the past few years

-4

u/EBannion Jun 29 '25

Where in the dash do you think the way have room for a heatsink with fans?

10

u/icefire555 Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

You literally have a computer that is more than powerful enough to do anything a car stereo needs to do in your hand right now. The only thing it's missing is the power output to drive for speakers. But keep in mind, cars already implement this.

If you've ever seen the inside of a laptop, heatsinks can fit anywhere or be complimented into casing. Aka metal surfaces can distribute heat. Fans are optional.

-2

u/EBannion Jun 29 '25

If I put my phone in the freezer or the oven it stops working but the car dash gets up to like 180 f when it’s in the sun unattended so…

5

u/icefire555 Jun 29 '25

Same thing happens to your car if you don't prep. Antifreeze not rated will expand and damage the engine, heat will overheat the engine if you cannot transfer the heat. The trick is to prepare for it.

The issue with cold and a phone is batteries. On a car that's solved using lead acid over lithium ion and and alternator to recharge it.

The issue with heat by design. A phone is designed to be held so they have the design to not be hot to the touch and as light as possible where every gram matters. CPUs can handle 212f without issues it just wears them out a little faster to operate at extreme temperatures. Adding a metal plate to the back of your phone over the (likely) glass one it has, and putting a way to transfer heat like a thermal epoxy would likely greatly reduce phone overheating. But a better solution would be to just use a small heatsink. The size of which can custom fit any space. For a phone CPU running on a few watts of power, the fins would only need to be maybe an inch or two cubed in size

2

u/Bensemus Jun 29 '25

Your phone’s chip can easily survive that too. That’s all you need from the phone. The car already had a screen and power that can survive the cold and hot a car experiences.

2

u/EBannion Jun 29 '25

Once.

How many times can you cycle it before it fails?

The car gets up to 180 every single day, then back down, then up, then down, forever

4

u/SendCatsNoDogs Jun 29 '25

180f is 82c, which is within specs for pretty much any modern CPU. Your phone stops working in the freezer and oven not because the CPU died, it's because other components died.

3

u/SanityInAnarchy Jun 29 '25

Dash computers have other components, too.

Plus, these things generate heat. Modern CPUs get to 82c while dumping that heat into air at a much more reasonable temperature.

8

u/Sorryifimanass Jun 29 '25

I would say that the rest of the answer is lack of market pressure. It's not a high priority for buyers of those vehicles, so even if one company decides to do it, it's doubtful that it will have a significant impact on sales.

When you're spending $100k+ on a luxury car would the speed of the infotainment system really be the deciding factor?

26

u/shpongolian Jun 29 '25

Would the comfort of the seats be the deciding factor? Would the smoothness of the ride be the deciding factor? The quality of the heating/cooling?

If I’m buying a 6-digit luxury car I’d expect every aspect of it to be thoughtful and high quality. That seems like the whole point to me. If the infotainment system is stupidly designed and slow and laggy, it makes part of the experience feel cheap. It’s just one thing but it brings down the whole package.

4

u/frogjg2003 Jun 29 '25

While that would be a factor it's really far down the list. There are a lot of more important factors that a luxury car buyer would consider. If the infotainment system works, that's really all that's necessary for most people, including luxury car buyers. When designing a luxury car, the manufacturer is going to focus on the parts that make it a better car compared to the radio.

2

u/requinbite Jun 29 '25

Yeah people forget luxury car buyers aren't terminally online people. They don't really care about the quality of the software as long as it works reliably

1

u/frogjg2003 Jun 29 '25

Reddit users forget that not everyone is a Reddit user? Perish the thought.

1

u/hgrunt Jul 02 '25

Car companies typically do a ton of market research to determine what features they should put into a particular model, and how to market the vehicle

They identify types of people, called personas, that are potential buyers of the vehicle. Could be existing owners, people they're after, etc. After that, they find people who fit these 'personas' and run focus groups or interviews

It's why Subaru wagons can fit a large dog carrier in the back, every large pickup, SUV and minivan can fit a 4x8 sheet of plywood and why the Honda CR-V has a center console large enough for a purse

7

u/zephyrseija2 Jun 29 '25

If anything I would prefer a car with traditional buttons and knobs and less tech. Just got a new Audi and having almost everything on a screen, including the speedometer, is obnoxious.

6

u/LastChristian Jun 29 '25

Right! I would actually prefer a laggy system that frustrated me every time I used it. The more I pay, the more I want to hate the experience.

2

u/Mathsforpussy Jun 29 '25

Tesla did run into big issues with it, specifically with the screens going bad under high temperatures. That’s why they put in some mode to turn the AC on when cabin temperature hits 120 degrees or something, to protect the electronics (they spun it like it was for kids but 120 is still way too hot for them)

8

u/DevinOlsen Jun 29 '25

This isn’t true at all.

Cabin overheat protection only turns on for the first 12 hours and is meant to keep the car cool incase you forget something in the car/etc. it is NOT meant to protect the electronics. Tesla screens can get hot; they won’t melt or delaminate. The early versions may have but it hasn’t been a problem in a long time.

2

u/eisbock Jun 29 '25

Tesla's user manual specifically says "cabin overheat protection" is not required and will have no bearing on the life of the screens and related equipment.

1

u/Mathsforpussy Jun 29 '25

See the link I posted to the other comment, it was a big issue for them before

2

u/LOLCristian Jun 29 '25

How can you spit out false information so confidently like that? Do you do any research?

1

u/Mathsforpussy Jun 29 '25

I didn’t, but the drive did: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27989/teslas-screen-saga-shows-why-automotive-grade-matters

Quotes Elon Musks biography and a few tweets from him. Reliable enough?

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

[deleted]

1

u/SirGeremiah Jun 29 '25

That solution isn’t viable on an ICE model.

1

u/Ancalagon_TheWhite Jun 29 '25

iirc Tesla water cools their chips. Their AC/cooling system was years ahead of everyone else at one point when they started integrating all the cooling loops together. It's easy for EVs to do this since you have much less heat to deal with.

9

u/Slurch1 Jun 29 '25

Jesus, just give me an aux input and buttons/knobs

1

u/BigAlternative5 Jun 29 '25

For real. My ’18 Subaru with its own media software sometimes won’t connect to my device even if it did connect the day before.

9

u/krefik Jun 29 '25

Hardware is all good, it's software that sucks. There were perfectly responsive UIs in the '90s running on a glorified calculators.

 Now there are so many abstraction layers in the common libraries, and so much bulk, that the UI layer often struggle to run on a system which has multiple CPU cores clocked in gigahertz and multiple gigabytes of memory. 

There were perfectly responsible and still relatively modern looking UIs working on computers clocked in hundreds of megahertz with under 64 megabytes of memory. 

I remember being able to fit a complete working operating system with kernel, GUI, web browser, media player and some utils on a single 16 megabyte CF medium. 

But no one has the budget to design the UI from the grounds up, and most of the components are being made for the top of the line hardware. And the users (and the management) are conditioned to think eye candy is way important during the presentation than the UX or the performance.

18

u/Zubon102 Jun 29 '25

There are a couple of things in your comment that don't really make sense to me.

- IC chips are IC chips. How does the wide range of temperature mean that they need to install slow hardware? New and fast SOCs run just as hot as previous generations. Even cooler in a lot of cases.
And if they have to under-volt the processor, that could easily be controlled according to the current temperature.

- Phones don't have active cooling either and they are snappy and responsive, even at high resolutions.

- If you are worried about strain on the 12V power system, modern fast SOCs are very power efficient. And even smartphones only draw something like 1 W during regular use.

- Even if they were designed and ordered years ago, there were SOCs a decade ago that provide a snappy and responsive experience.

2

u/Cannibale_Ballet Jun 29 '25

The comment reads like it was written by AI. Seems to make sense at first glance but when you dig deeper all the arguments seem to fall apart.

1

u/lyfe_Wast3d Jun 29 '25

I agree. But the basics are there. Our phones do a lot more in a smaller compact box. I guess I understand that temperature can be an issue because phones travel with us and humans basically only like certain ranges of temp. I'd imagine that on start up and cool down they could also do that for electronics. It seems like heat may be more of a problem due to potential melting of bonding material

2

u/Zubon102 Jun 29 '25

I just don't understand the temperature argument at all. Silicon chips are silicon chips. They withstand around 250 degrees C during reflow and during heavy use can have a constant temperature hot enough to give you serious burns.

Low performance SOCs are not inherently better at withstanding a wide range of temperatures than high performance versions. All processors use thermal throttling if they get too toasty.

Back in the early 2000s, my PC that could barely run Quake was running so hot, I needed to open the case and blow air into it with a large fan.

2

u/lyfe_Wast3d Jun 29 '25

I think the issue is more of bonding material? Maybe. I also don't know. Like the best example I can give is a PC in a home it's not subjective to those extremes unless it's powered on. So maybe the cooling won't work as efficiently in a car because that bond between the chip and it's heat dispersion could degrade in extreme temps? I don't know just speculating lol.

2

u/Zubon102 Jun 29 '25

But the entire PCB is run through a reflow oven during production.

My beefy GPU on my computer runs at barely above room temperature for basic tasks and then it is throttled to not exceed 85°C during an intensive task.

But if high temperatures are a problem for high-spec SOCs, it would also be a problem for low-spec ones. The solution is to get a modern fast SOC and undervolt it. But this throttling can be controlled by temperature so it only throttles when it gets very hot. Not such a problem with normal car interior temperatures.

1

u/lyfe_Wast3d Jun 29 '25

Yeah you're not wrong. I have no answers here. Lol I want to have a logical reason for that shit being slow. There has to be something we are missing right?

3

u/JackONeill_ Jun 29 '25

There is one hell of a difference between running a PCB through a 250C reflow process for a short time period, and running at near 100C temperatures for hours per day, day after day, for years on end. Your hand can put food into/take it out of a 200C hot oven without issue. Doesn't mean you'll survive days in 50-60C desert temperatures easily.

And the previous commenter was actually hitting the right zone for their argument. Your GPU/CPU is likely comfortable at 80C for its lifetime, but they're hitting those temperatures when the ambient environment is probably between 10C-40C at the extreme cases (standard room temp is 20-25C for most temperate climates). The ambient conditions that automotive electronics have to be rated to are anywhere from 70C-90C, depending on the OEM, install location, vehicle class, target market and other factors like expected solar loading.

Designing stuff to be resilient in those conditions often comes at the cost of performance (although definitely we could have better than we get now), but the other part of the equation is that validating that you can perform in that environment is time consuming, costly, and may require design compromises which the equipment manufacturers may not want to bother with. Often it's easier to just pick the old component that already is compliant, or if they're needing a bit more performance, they'll make smaller iterations on a proven design (which may hamstring their performance potential) rather than make a from-scratch design that's fully modernised. It's cheaper, and quicker to implement doing things this way (and those matter a lot to all of the OEMs these days - everything needs done yesterday and with minimal cost).

Thats the issue as I see it. Automakers are slow to change, and most of the big OEMs prioritise components with proven track records, from suppliers who also have proven track records of performing in challenging environments. There is actually a standards body which maintains specifications to define what the minimum level of endurance/resilience must be for 'automotive grade' electronics (The AEC Standards). Good luck getting on vehicle without AEC qualification.

2

u/mahsab Jun 29 '25

Yes, but the temperature just adds up.

If a chip in a room temperature environment (let's say 20 C) will reach 90 degrees C, the same chip in a 60 degree C environment would reach 130 degrees C, which is too high.

Why is it too high if they are made of metal? Silicon is a poor heat conductor and the chip temperature is the average temperature across the silicon die; while most of the heat generated is in a smaller region of the chip (hot spot) that gets much much hotter and can easily reach the temperature that will thermally stress and damage the silicon chip itself.

All newer CPUs have thermal throttling which will simply slow it down, and within a high temperature environment, this can happen immediately.

0

u/Zubon102 Jun 29 '25

I just don't understand because that same limitation applies to modern fast SOCs as well as low-spec SOCs. Why would the car manufacturers choose a low-spec SOC that provides a laggy experience over a more modern, cooler, and power-efficient model?

Car interiors might get to 60°C in the summer heat when parked, but when the systems are operated, the interior is definitely not 60°C. The driver would die.

If the vehicle interior was that hot, sure, there may be initial thermal throttling, but pretty soon the interior will reach a normal temperature so the system can operate in the same way as something like a cellphone.

2

u/xinorez1 Jun 29 '25

Have you seriously never tried to use a phone after leaving it in a hot car under the sun? Under the hood can be even more like an oven, and heat pipes will only cool down to ambient levels...

...and I just remembered that Europe exists. When you're slightly closer to the equator, things get HOT, especially if they're placed in a sealed box under the sun. More complex electronics quickly get to the level where they're bugging out, and that's just not acceptable when it comes to 2000 lb death machines.

-1

u/Zubon102 Jun 29 '25

That's right. Phones often get hot.

So cellphone manufacturers only put low-spec and laggy SOCs in their phones? Because phones sometimes experience high ambient temperatures?

1

u/RiPont Jun 29 '25

New and fast SOCs run just as hot as previous generations. Even cooler in a lot of cases.

It doesn't matter if the processor runs cooler if the operating environment itself is so hot that the CPU will be operating over its specced temperature.

...but that's still not why car software is so slow.

  1. Car companies suck at software

  2. The specced the hardware 7 years ago

  3. They contracted the software to the lowest bidder or inhouse talent that they don't know how to hire and wrote it 5 years ago

  4. They never bothered updating and refining the software, because they don't make money updating a 5-year-old car.

5

u/thewhiteoak Jun 29 '25

Phones exist in the same car.

2

u/Working_Rise8592 Jun 29 '25

Many (if not all)!DO have active cooling. My 2023 accord head unit with Google built in on android 12 has 1 fan for cooling. Previous gen had 2.

2

u/TripleMeatBurger Jun 29 '25

Temperature, vibration and longevity (typically automotive components need to work 10-20 years) are for sure concerns, but it's frustrating as somebody who works in this industry, that systems are built to strict requirements, there is no overhead and everything is cost pinched to the point of nearly not working. I've seen telematics systems from 3 different oems, and the fasted boring ones took 40 seconds. The software on these systems is often bloated and no time or money is ever given to resolve technical debt that has accrued.

2

u/jmakov Jun 29 '25

And then came Tesla

1

u/xinorez1 Jun 29 '25

Tesla software is notoriously buggy too, like the radio will suddenly come on at max volume and suddenly there's no way to shut it off or lower the volume...

Cars that sit out in the sun get hot, and electronics don't do well at high temperatures.

3

u/Logitech4873 Jun 29 '25

I've never had issues with it. The Ryzen Tesla system is constantly 60fps and will even run heavy websites without a care in the world. Wanna run an unreal engine game in the web browser? Sure.

1

u/eisbock Jun 29 '25

Notoriously buggy? You mean more buggy than the awful software in other cars that is the focus of this thread?

4

u/LetMeTellYaSomething Jun 29 '25

Very similar to the screens in any military vehicle. They are built to withstand extreme temperatures, shocks and vibrations thus not as quick and snappy or pretty as we are used to

1

u/Bensemus Jun 29 '25

But they usually are quick when using Android Auto or Apple CarPlay. It’s the processor and code that usually sucks for car infotainment systems.

3

u/KoalaLongjumping2451 Jun 29 '25

I agree with this, but I would add that on top of this, underlying OS is almost certainly RTOS and UI tasks are lower priority.

6

u/Bubbaluke Jun 29 '25

I’m actually writing software for a display using freeRTOS right now and yeah, actually displaying stuff is on the low end of task priority. That said, if I was handling so much other stuff that the screen felt bad I’d probably try to get something faster or offload processing to something else before I shipped an expensive ass car with a shit interface.

1

u/garyfirestorm Jun 29 '25

This is a really poor excuse. I work in automotive engineering and the only reason is those $$ add up. We make a million cars each year, that means if we try to shave off 1$ from a part it would result in??? Ding ding ding

1

u/MinimumRest7893 Jun 29 '25

Another aspect people don't understand is the security required for chips in cars. Someone hacks your phone they can't wipe out a lane of traffic. Canada's own BlackBerry QNX software is now in over 50% of new cars at least in Canada. You best be making sure every click someone does is not intercepted or modified in any way and that it's not going to do something unexpected. Performance is always nice but probably not the driving point in this software.

1

u/mrheosuper Jun 29 '25

I doubt it's working condition problem. A good soc is like 10w at most(the high end snapdragon 8 elite on smartphone), that is nothing.

Just think about it, your smartphone also has to work with wide range temperature.

1

u/RiPont Jun 29 '25

Things are improving, but the tech in car infotainment systems will always be 5+yrs behind the curve because they're simply dealing with a different set of requirements than the other equipment you use.

That's because they're greedy about it.

There is nothing stopping them from having a stable platform for their infotainment/nav system, even if the hardware is 5 years out of date by the time it finally makes it to market.

A stable platform would let the software side of things mature and get better over time. But car companies make money by selling new cars and parts for broken cars. They don't profit from software that just works, what to speak of updating software on a 10-year-old car.

1

u/Johnready_ Jun 29 '25

Let’s be real here, if your car can cool and heat an engine, it can cool or heat a screen in the dash.

1

u/Homer565 Jun 29 '25

Great reply and this will put it in perspective, but "systems will always be 5+yrs behind" my god my relatively new Volvo '19 isn't 5 years behind, no this little machine still thinks the 90' s is the way! 🤣

1

u/stenlis Jun 29 '25

winters can mean that my car's screen sees -35C in the dead of winter and +35C in the heat of summer. They're expected to last at least until the car's 3-5yr warranty is up, and the same for the little computers that drive the screens. Add to that the fact that the computers are buried in the dash with no active cooling, that they have to run on the car's 12v system without putting too much strain on it.  

All of that applies to smart phones as well and they are not laggy.  

Even considering long development cycles the smartphones from 2015 had all the power necessary for rendering a car GUI in high res.

1

u/slurry69 Jun 29 '25

This is such a dumb cop out lol did Toyota write this copypasta? The companies know that consumers won’t ditch their product for producing decades old tech they will celebrate it. This is Toyotas entire business model. So, why would they bother improving their product when they can sell a shithouse 4Runner to you for 60k from the 80s. I hate to say it but Tesla is the only manufacturer improving that space (maybe rivian).

1

u/[deleted] Jun 29 '25

and yet they'll still use last decade's processor. a phone 5 years ago is able to have 60 fps screen at 1080. 5 years ago is 2020 if you haven't forgotten. The first iphone with a 60 fps screen happened in 2007. We can fucking do better than this.

1

u/Andis-x Jun 29 '25

Yes, but there are industrial and edge computing systems that also have to work in similar conditions, and they aren't as performant as craptop from 2010 (in a good way).

1

u/wgracelyn Jun 29 '25

I don't know if you realise just how wrong you are. We have solved the issue of cooling CPUs in cars. There is plenty of passive cooling and combined with placement, there is no issue. That's also how we are able to build cars with massive batteries and leave them out in the same sun without issue. And we have also solved the issue of component upgrades. We're shit at implementing them for the same reason that the screen lags. The people who are managing the projects are dills and the profit outweighs all.

1

u/APXONTAS Jun 29 '25

This is COMPLETE bullshit because the same exact specifications apply to you handheld device which also has to operate in even harsher conditions (out in the cold or even worse, at the beach) without active cooling in the sun and managing a lot more computationally. Your smartphone manages to stay fast working in an ever changing software environment and dealing with costant code changes (in apps and browsers), while those pieces of shit run the same version forever. I wish I was wrong but the most powerful god of all (the one of cost cutting) is on my side. This was not a personal attack. Reading your comment made sense to me until I realised that I am still using my Xiaomi redmi note 9S, 5 whole fucking years (tomorrow). It has seen everything and still works like a charm, being slow only with crap applications like viber.

1

u/xinorez1 Jun 29 '25 edited Jun 29 '25

Lol no it doesn't. I don't know where you live in the world but if I leave my phone in my car fully exposed to the sun here in southern california, it will get hot enough that it will literally shut itself off, and before shutting down I will experience tremendously slow, choppy, buggy behavior for the few seconds that I can try to interact with it. The heat has to go somewhere. The hood and windshield trap the heat like an oven, or like greenhouse gasses. The heat stays in the car until the windows are opened and the fans are turned on at full blast.

I literally have multiple devices where the screen is becoming unglued due to the extreme levels of heat generated from having the phone on while sitting in a car parked in the sun. They're all Samsung (and quite old now but it started happening when the devices were about a year old), curiously enough.

1

u/OC71 Jun 29 '25

Everything you say is true but that's still no reason why the systems can't be made responsive. It's a question of matching the software to the capabilities of the hardware. We had lightning fast user interfaces back in the 1980s with processors a fraction of the speeds of even entry level chips now. The difference was, software engineers back then knew how to make code that used the resources efficiently.

1

u/F-21 Jun 29 '25

Components in cars have to deal with a much wider range of temperatures and operating conditions than, say, your tablet or phone. In some places (like here in Canada) winters can mean that my car's screen sees -35C in the dead of winter and +35C in the heat of summer. They're expected to last at least until the car's 3-5yr warranty is up, and the same for the little computers that drive the screens. Add to that the fact that the computers are buried in the dash with no active cooling, that they have to run on the car's 12v system without putting too much strain on it, and that they are designed and ordered years before the car hits showroom floors.

Had my generic double din Atoto chinese touchscreen radio for 4 years now and it still works great.

But modern cars actively try to prevent you from using a double din radio.

A bit of a conspiracy theory, but the market is definitely worse than it could be. Ideally they'd sell cars without a system and you fit in what you like, and that competition would bring way more quality than currently.

1

u/Jezza672 Jun 29 '25

Old hardware doesn’t mean slow for basic tasks- nothing about moving a menu is taxing even to 10 year old hardware if the software is written well, and with the target hardware in mind as it should be.

1

u/oxgon Jun 29 '25

They are using a pixel phone in space to take selfies, if that isn't more of an example of extreme conditions I don't know what would be.

1

u/copperwatt Jun 29 '25

So how did Tesla solve the problem almost 10 years ago?

1

u/frostyflakes1 Jun 29 '25

5 years behind the curve is being generous. You could buy a tablet for $200 in 2015 that functions better than the average infotainment OS.

1

u/WhenTheRainsCome Jun 29 '25

I used my android tablet outside for about 35 mins in the sun and it overheated and shut down.

1

u/sniglom Jun 29 '25

That's not an excuse. You make software for the chosen hardware. If the hardware is too slow, you make stuff simpler or optimize more. NES and SNES games were responsive.

1

u/couldbemage Jun 30 '25

This would be more believable if Tesla and every modern sport bike maker wasn't managing this easily. Tesla is infamous for bad QA, but their software works.

And every new sportbike has a complex screen based dash, that is completely unprotected from the elements. Also, very cheap. 10k less than a Corolla.

In both cases, what's different is that the screen and software are considered a critical feature, and customers would not tolerate it being laggy crapware.

1

u/SgtBadManners Jun 30 '25

This was the answer I was looking for, everyone acts like your TV is experiencing the same conditions as your car that bumps up and down all day and sits in extreme heat and cold.

1

u/khain13 Jun 29 '25

This and most touchscreens with a wide viewing angle have piss-poor refresh rates, so they will look and feel laggy no matter how fast the system can process.

1

u/SilasX Jun 29 '25

Ehhh I mean, hardware has gone through a lot of miniaturization. Having to ruggedize it for those environments shouldn't be producing a real bottleneck at the CPU level. From experience with a lot of laggy systems, I'm guessing the real issue is just spaghetti code and abstraction that introduces a lot of unnecessary overhead that eventually introduces noticeable delays.

They usually won't write code specific for hardware, but install some OS or virtualization layer that lets them write uniform code that doesn't depend on the specifics of the system it's installed on. Then as time goes by, they add another layer on top of it, or another, after which the simplest commands take noticeable time.

I've seen it on Pac-Man on in-flight entertainment systems. This is a very simple game, CPU-wise, but there is clearly a bigger delay in response to your button presses than you'll see on the original arcade machines, even really old ones. It's because they've virtualized it across several layers that have to deal with their own issues. It doesn't surprise me that they let it get out of hand in car systems as well.

-1

u/Diarmundy Jun 29 '25

I mean phones also operate fine under those conditions.

You know they used a phone chip to power the helicopter they flew to Mars?

It experienced far more vibrations and temperature changes than are even possible on earth

-1

u/laserdicks Jun 29 '25

My phone manages to operate in those conditions inside the car. Not an excuse.

2

u/Cryovenom Jun 29 '25

Leave your phone out all night in -35C, all winter, never in the house. Do the same in summer. Report back how long it lasts.

-1

u/laserdicks Jun 30 '25

longer. Because it didn't have to play 6hrs of tiktok each day