Code in the driving seat

How cars are evolving from mechanical systems to software-defined, drive-by-wire platforms

The modern car still plainly wears its mechanical ancestry. Turn the wheel and shafts relay motion to the tires; press the brake and hydraulic pressure clamps discs with reassuring force. These systems are robust and familiar. Yet they sit uneasily with a broader shift: cars are increasingly engineered not as assemblies of hardware, but as rolling computing power platforms.