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There Are 100 Computers Hiding in Your Car Right Now (You’re Riding a Data Center on Wheels)
(www.carsandhorsepower.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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Technology
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I didn't read the article but these days a turn signa,for instance, doesn't just connect to a flasher and a bulb. It connects to the network in the car and requests that the computer initiate the turn signal. This means the turn signal switch itself has to have a chip in it to communicate with the network that I believe they are calling a sort of computer. Virtually every component in the car operates like this. It really isn't the same thing as 100 computers..
Its not, but it does beg a lot of reliability questions. Cars today have many single points of failure in the electrical system, and have made things like the turn signal dependent on them, as well. The old turn signal had about as few components as an electrical circuit could have. Today's has all of those but one, then like 20 more in the form of the computer and CAN bus. This can be said for many, many functions in a modern car. If there were material benefits to the end-user, maybe there'd be an argument for the added order of magnitude in complexity, but there are not. You get a token amount more diagnostic information, wheelbarrows full of privacy invasion, dramatically increased cost, and poorer reliability.
This, multiplied by every system in the car that has been subjected to this Rube Goldberg, is why even the new shitboxes cost a year's pay.