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Comment by rangestransform

7 months ago

The cybertruck steer by wire IIRC has dual redundant everything including power supplies (the redundant one is powered by a DC-DC converter from the HV battery)

That's great, but are they also running redundant, independently-developed software stacks? Because software failure seems to be the issue here.

  • Multi-version approaches to developing software aren't as good at reducing common-mode failures as many people expect[1].

    [1] J. C. Knight and N. G. Leveson, “An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming,” IIEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol. SE-12, no. 1, pp. 96–109, Jan. 1986, doi: 10.1109/TSE.1986.6312924.

  • Disregard me, I'm dumb.

    • All the electrical steering columns designs I've seen have used redundant sensors (often groups of them) specifically for that reason. The physical steering wheel to the shaft is still a SPOF, but it's also a "dumb" part where the only failure cases are mechanical. Eliminating failures there is straightforward engineering.

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