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Not sure if automotive vendor Fiat has opened Pandora's Box or the gates to the future with its most recent move: The company allows drivers, thus end customers and persons inherently clueless in technical affairs, to do something hitherto restricted to the few enlightened ones in the car repair shops: They are allowed to install a software on their car they have downloaded from the internet. Well, we all know to which extend we can trust internet software sources, but at least the source in this case, Fiat's corporate web site, can be regarded as trustable. The software monitors the driver's behavior under aspects of environmentally-friendly and economic driving style; from these data it derives hints how to improve the style (see article).
Automotive OEMs hitherto have regarded the possibility of aftermarket software updates, upgrades and modifications with great caution — and probably for good reasons, given the fact that many safety-critical functions in today's cars are controlled by software (another reason for their aloofness might be that they have not yet found a business model how to market it profitably). In any case, the telematics platform in the Fiat case obviously can read out data from deep inside the system, such as gear and brake activities or engine temperature which means that there could be a potential to access the respective subsystems by the software.
The creators of this software certainly — hopefully — have made safety and security provisions. For instance, it runs in the Adobe Air environment — I have to admit that I do not know enough about this environment to render a judgment as to its security. But the mere possibility of running external software on an automotive platform could attract people that are not as clueless as the average driver, and perhaps even a bit malicious. Should we be prepared to see cars running havoc with helplessly yelling and waving drivers inside? And, to come back to my initial question, is the gate to the automotive software future even identical with the lid of Pandora's Box?
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