Software considerations for automotive pervasive systems

The pervasive computing systems inside modernday automobiles are made up of hundreds of interconnected, often replaceable components. These components are put together in a way specified by the customer during manufacturing, and can then be modified over the lifetime of the automobile, as part of maintenance or upgrading. This flexibility means that system implementers cannot know in advance which of a wide variety of configurations they are programming for, and so the software system must be designed in a way that is agnostic of implementation details.