Maybe you will download a car (firmware)!

Mercedes is the latest manufacturer to lock auto features behind a subscription fee. A soon-to-be-released “Acceleration Increase” add-on lets drivers pay to access the full performance of which their vehicle is capable. 

Soon we will see the (further) rise of custom firmware for cars. We can only assume that most custom firmware will be written carefully, but what if malicious actors inject some subtle bug? 

For the record, this is not the first manufacturer, nor even the weirdest. Although pioneered by Tesla, BMW is most groundbreaking with a subscription service to use your car seat heaters…

It is not a stretch to see why the manufacturers’ behaviour leads to a very unsafe outcome. The thing about cars is they don’t work in isolation; a car drives on a street with other vehicles, pedestrians and cyclists. 

Systems Engineering and Safety Assurance are not just for public transport; we need to be mindful of everything that has the potential to affect the safety of the public at large. We wouldn’t accept a train or a bus with a paywall that could change its fundamental operation.

Systems thinking applies to any interconnected thing that simply has to work.