> Today’s car has the computing power of 20 personal computers, features about 100 million lines of programming code, and processes up to 25 gigabytes of data an hour.
McKinsey doesn't cite any sources. But more importantly, processing 25 GB/hour is not exactly the same as collecting it. The later, in the context of this article, is definitely trying to imply that the data is stored in some sort of semi-permanent record. So, the piece is at least a little disingenuous. That said, I agree with the premise that to the extent data is saved, it should belong to the vehicle owner, not the manufacturer.
Tangent: "the computing power of 20 personal computers." What are they trying to say here? I've got a 2017 Chevy Volt and 2016 Mazda CX-9 and I'd be shocked if there were half that much computing power between the two of them. Maybe they are trying to say there's 20 CPUs among the various systems in a modern car? Still that seems like a lot.
7MBps sounds alrigth for anything consuming even a single source of video. it migth process that locally (lane departure, auto braking auto pilot, etc) and just upload the usage (e.g. how many times in the month you departed lane)
Processing also means it passed through the system. If I use the camera app on my phone, and it shows me a real-time video of what the camera is seeing, all that data is "processed" even if I'm not actively recording or taking a picture at that moment. It's not saved, it's just passed through and discarded. That's not nothing, because there's the possibility of it being collected, but it's not exactly the same either.
Also, no way in hell a car has even the computing power of one PC.
I used to do embedded systems for the industry on the software side (dashboards, door locks, keyfobs, etc). It's true that basically anything you consider a component has it's own integrated CPU, it's also an extremely weak CPU.
PIC-16s and similiar were the CPUs mostly used. We're talking 1MB of RAM, sub 50 MHz chips. There might be 100 of these, but that's still less computing power than a single mid-range CPU will give you these days. Sure, there are some more powerful CPUs in certain components, but none of them will even approach a desktop CPU.
I think it's a bit misleading statistic, as most of that data being processes are probably just all kinds of sensors and diagnostic readings, so pretty dull stuff.
Links to this McKinsey study as a source:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/...
Which says:
> Today’s car has the computing power of 20 personal computers, features about 100 million lines of programming code, and processes up to 25 gigabytes of data an hour.
McKinsey doesn't cite any sources. But more importantly, processing 25 GB/hour is not exactly the same as collecting it. The later, in the context of this article, is definitely trying to imply that the data is stored in some sort of semi-permanent record. So, the piece is at least a little disingenuous. That said, I agree with the premise that to the extent data is saved, it should belong to the vehicle owner, not the manufacturer.
Tangent: "the computing power of 20 personal computers." What are they trying to say here? I've got a 2017 Chevy Volt and 2016 Mazda CX-9 and I'd be shocked if there were half that much computing power between the two of them. Maybe they are trying to say there's 20 CPUs among the various systems in a modern car? Still that seems like a lot.