> Besides that: it should be fairly obvious that hobbyists are not going to 'accidentally bypass a safety mechanism', they can cut their brake lines as well and they don't generally do this.
I can already picture the YouTube videos on "how to gain 15% hp" explaining you how to "hack" your car with a 1s "it will severely reduce your engine life expectancy" message at the end. Thousands of people would run this patch without thinking twice
Also how would you pass the controls most countries do every other year on cars ? I don't expect people checking my brake pads to know how to review the random piece of code I deployed to my car
Well, that's sort of the point: this is already possible, so in that sense nothing would change. Changing the mapping (essentially the amount of fuel injected based on a bunch of parameters) is regularly done by 'tuners' (between quotes because they don't really tune anything, they mostly burn more fuel for questionable gains).
But that's really not what I would care about. I'd like to read that code to figure out what the failure modes are and what might impact my safety in a negative way.
I can go out to my late 80s truck truck right now, undo the lock nut on the fuel screw and wind that sucker up. It'll be a completely different truck. Will I half my fuel range? Sure. Will it be fun? Sure will be. If I care about the engine I'll attach an EGT gauge to ensure I don't melt the alloy head.
I can already picture the YouTube videos on "how to gain 15% hp" explaining you how to "hack" your car with a 1s "it will severely reduce your engine life expectancy" message at the end. Thousands of people would run this patch without thinking twice
Also how would you pass the controls most countries do every other year on cars ? I don't expect people checking my brake pads to know how to review the random piece of code I deployed to my car