It’s been coming a long time of course, having little embedded computers in our cars, tuning the engine and monitoring systems for failure signs etc. Its really a great thing, until they start adding:
if ( age > 5 ) {
fail_and_charge ( $$$ );
}
In our car, the engine light turned itself on a few days ago and we noticed some jerking when switching gears. Just peachy .. a two year old car (and a Pontiac, during this uncertain GM time) with engine trouble, but since it ought to be under warranty (and it was), I took it into the dealership and they plugged her in for diagnostics.
I’m told the issue was they had to reflash the PCM software (whatever that module is), and also had to reflash the software on the transmission (which would explain the jerking while shifting.) The question I have is what went wrong with the old software, and wouldn’t this have been a widespread issue? Its not like the software is unique to my car, but it may have encountered some variables that threw it off.. in which case, reflashing doesn’t seem like the best way to fix it. Sounds like they may have hit the ‘ignore’ button. Hey, they’re going out of business, they might push a lot of those soon :)
It does make me worry where we’re headed though; people like to do good work and software guys are no exception (trust me, we suffer for our art), but _Companies_ .. we know are evil.
Edit: I should add, for completeness. Pontiac took care of me pretty well; sure I had the inconvenience of getting my car over there and all that, but I booked an appointment and they took me in right away; they taxi’d me back and forth and took care of the repairs under warranty. The tech mentioned they actually replaced the PCM module (and reflashed the transmission), so that sounds better. The PCM is the power control module (and I didn’t bother to investigate if that is power as in torque, electrical, minion controlling or dollar-extraction). All told, they took care of things. I like dealerships over little guys, when someone else foots the bill :)