From pistons to Python
Today, driving feel can change through software updates, as throttle response curves can be recalibrated and regenerative braking strength adjusted.
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Today, driving feel can change through software updates, as throttle response curves can be recalibrated and regenerative braking strength adjusted.
ILLUSTRATION BY GLENZKIE TOLO
I could imagine walking into a car company development center today and finding the loudest activity inside software labs rather than in the engine testing room, where engineers sit in front of monitors refining lines of code that determine how a vehicle accelerates, brakes, charges, and responds to traffic.
Influence inside car companies is shifting toward software teams, which now shape more of a vehicle’s behavior than at any point in the industry’s history.
Mechanical engineers still design engines, suspensions, and crash structures and those foundations are not going away. Software teams now shape how those systems are calibrated and experienced on the road.
Tesla demonstrated this early, with vehicles that receive over-the-air updates that add features, refine handling behavior, smooth acceleration, improve driver assistance, and even adjust range estimates without hardware changes.
Mercedes-Benz is creating its own vehicle operating system, MB.OS, to unify infotainment, driver assistance, and other functions.
Xiaomi, known for its smartphones, has moved into building electric cars, a rare crossover from consumer electronics to full vehicle production.
BYD equips its vehicles with a proprietary software ecosystem that ties user interfaces and connected systems together.
Other manufacturers are making the same shift toward centralized computing, and this is not cosmetic. It is a structural change that allows vehicles to continue improving after they leave the showroom.
Years ago, once a car left the factory, that was it. Its character did not change, at least not without mechanical modifications (no offense to the tuners).
Today, driving feel can change through software updates, as throttle response curves can be recalibrated and regenerative braking strength adjusted. Range calculations can also be updated, and infotainment responsiveness can improve without replacing any hardware.
A brand that continues to release software updates can keep a vehicle feeling up to date for years. When those updates stop, the system can start to feel old, even if the engine and transmission are still in good condition.
Over time, that difference could shape how buyers see it in the used market.
Driver-assistance systems show this shift clearly. Cameras and radars collect raw data, but the vehicle’s response depends on software.
Lane-centering smoothness, adaptive cruise timing, and object recognition accuracy all depend on algorithms.
In heavy rain or on poorly marked roads, the system may continue operating smoothly, or it may switch itself off. That outcome depends on calibration quality.
Battery management systems control charging speed, regulate temperature, manage power delivery to the motor, and protect long-term battery health.
In a tropical climate like ours, where temperatures often rise above 30 degrees, thermal management software directly affects durability.
Two vehicles with similar battery sizes can charge very differently. The difference often comes down to how the software manages heat and how steadily the battery is allowed to accept power.
Modern vehicles process data from multiple sensors in real time. The decisions happen inside the car.
In technical terms, they function like edge-computing systems, which means it handles critical calculations within the car rather than relying entirely on cloud connectivity.
Mechanical engineering remains key to vehicle development. Structural safety, suspension tuning, and drivetrain reliability are critical to how a car performs and endures. But how a car behaves on the road and how it changes over time now depend heavily on software.
Steering weight, braking smoothness in traffic, driver-assistance behavior, and even dashboard responsiveness are software-defined traits layered over hardware.
The industry did not abandon pistons. It simply added Python. Production vehicle software often runs on languages like C or C++, but much of the development and AI modeling begins in tools such as Python, which underscores how software now shapes the modern vehicle.
That is the quiet transformation inside automotive engineering.
From pistons to Python.
