The 1977 Oldsmobile Toronado is generally considered to be the first car to have microprocessor control.

But Ford's EEC was built around Toshiba's TLCS-12, the world's first 12-bit microprocessor, developed specifically for engine control, and might have been in cars produced prior to 77, but documentation is spotty.

So do you only drive cars built prior to the late 70s? Because sacrificing the enormous safety improvements just for a bizarre feeling of moral superiority is a really awful hill to die on. And literal death is a real possibility

Or do you not drive and never planned to buy any kind of car and thus your claim is meaningless?

You can get up to 1983 without computers if that's what you're looking for. 1984, they all had computers. Then if it had a carburetor, there was still a computer somehow controlling that carburetor.

TPMS (tire pressure monitoring system) is a coin battery powered computer inside each tyre of your car. They’ve been around for a couple of decades now. Even the lowest end cars have TPMS in each wheel. If you change wheels you need to go to a wheel shop and have them re pair (as in re pair wifi) the wheel with your car. I had to do this recently with my 2014 ford focus.

Anyway those are just four of hundreds of computers in your car these days.

Not exactly a great example as it's unnecessary and expensive to replace. Lots of other microprocessors actually make your car easier and safer to drive.

TPMS has been mandatory in the U.S. since 2007. It turns out riding on under-inflated tires is dangerous, and people don’t regularly check their tire pressure.

My car will not exceed a certain speed if TPMS is malfunctioning.

Conveniently it cost around $200 every 5-7 years to replace all 4.

Driven cars much longer than that without replacing TPMS.

It amazes me that people don't notice. I was driving with a friend once and had to tell them to pull over because they had a puncture.

A TPMS doesn't make your car easier and safer to drive???

You can buy a tire gauge at a gas station for $10 and check your tires when you clean your car.

But then again, I am old enough perhaps to have been taught to regularly check your tires before driving to begin with.

Did I just read an argument that it’s easier or safer to manually check your tire pressures rather than having the car do it automatically every time the car drives fast enough to “wake up” the TPMS units?

It's easier to do that than to pay to replace them when the battery dies. Just stop adding more unnecessary costs to my car maintenance!

That battery lasts longer than the tire. People sometimes try to say but I don't drive my car much and that doesn't change the math because tires are destroyed not just from the way of driving but also the sun and ozone in the air destroy tires it still needs to be replaced every seven years., it still needs to be replaced every seven years.

I’m totally comfortable going out to 12 years on tires. Beyond that, I’m replacing them. 7 seems excessively conservative for road use.

The $10 gauge is of dubious accuracy. Especially if I bought it at a convenience store that happens to sell gas.

Some cars use ABS speed sensors instead of that which is usually a bit less accurate, but also less of a hassle.

Yes. But in my car the downside is that it does not tell which wheel has a problem, just a generice message: check tyre pressure.

Real TPMS sensors inside the wheel give much more accurate information.

That's a software issue rather than an inherent limitation. I've driven cars with abs-sensor based TPMS that will tell you which tire is under or over-inflated

I don't think this is a useful stance to take for more or less any reason (any reason you can point to will have a different underlying issue). Cars functionally have to have microprocessors, if nothing else but to control emissions, and that's a good thing. I don't want society to smell of exhaust, so that's an obvious and gigantic benefit. There are many other good reasons to have them, like rear cameras, tire pressure sensors, infotainment, the lot.

There are downsides, but many boil down to 'manufacturers are knobheads' (data collection, pushing subscriptions) and lessened control (tuning computers can be easier than tuning mechanics, you just aren't given control, so this to is arguably a case of 'manufacturers are knobheads', or sometimes liability issues).

I mean, "no microprocessor" means no engine designed in the past 30 years, because the fuel pump needs one.

"No antenna/modem I can't readily remove" might be _slightly_ more achievable.

I'm guessing you mean fuel injector? The pump that pushes or pulls fuel up from your tank is not very sophisticated, afaik.

Fuel injector timing and quantity, along with ignition timing, is generally computer controlled, certainly on any modern vehicle.

50, as another commenter pointed out.

That was the first such car. Even though the automatic transmission was invented a long time ago, new cars are still made with manual ones

That’s a very hard line