What Toyota Should Do
If you have read my posts you’ll know that I am a proponent of open source. Toyota keeps trying to tread water and defending themselves. I recently saw a post on Yahoo called Toyota disputes critic who blames electronics.
I’m usually one to blame the code in situations like this. I don’t know how many lines of code there are in a car, but I’ll bet it’s more than a few and growing every year.
I would like to make a recommendation to Toyota, do with it what you will. Release and Open Source your code!
This will do a couple of good things for you. Everyone will then know, for sure, if it is the software or not. If it is the software you’ll have an army of coders to help clean it up (you are going to have lawsuits no matter what). Second and more importantly it will turn the company from being on the defensive to being seen a leader in automobile technology again. Their software to run cars would become a world standard.
Why keep it a secret? In a word, service.
If your service departments are good you don’t have to lock your customers into them this way.
This is a situation where everyone will benefit from open standards, but I won’t hold my breath.
