In this interesting article ‘BMW and Audi Want to Separate Vehicle Hardware from Software‘ we can see that the automotive industry is taking a clear direction: re-engineering the view of the automobile as a system and changing basic assumptions. What Tesla is doing in terms of changing their car behavior by simple software updates is but the start of a revolution.
In a wider sense, the software and network capabilities of the Fourth Revolution will certainly lead us to re-engineer fully a large number of familiar hardware systems. This will create new hazards of course (like hacking) and also a large number of new possibilities that we can’t even envisage today. Changing the performance of what we considered to be fixed capabilities will modify significantly our perception of these familiar items.
In any case it will be a revolution for all of us involved in the design and engineering of these systems, and it just starts now, when we know that most of these items have a lifespan of decades. I can’t wait to see the changes unrolling.
