“
In 1977 GM’s Oldsmobile Toronado was the first production car with an electronic control unit (ECU) to govern spark timing. Four years later GM had about 50,000 lines of engine control software code in its domestic car line (Madden 2015). Now even inexpensive cars have up to 50 ECUs, and some premium brands (including the Mercedes-Benz S class) have up to 100 networked ECUs supported by software containing close to 100 million lines—compared to 5.7 million lines of software needed to operate the F-35, the U.S. Air Force’s joint Strike Fighter, or 6.5 million lines for the Boeing 787, the latest model of the company’s commercial jetliners (Charette 2009).
”
”