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Its basically a leap of faith that the entire automotive industry is asking us to take. So much more electronics is coming in to play, and it is governing critical systems. But hasn't it always? Fuel injection, variable timing, active suspension... we take these for granted. Maybe some of these electronics were unreliable back in the 70s, but eventually they improve to the point that we don' t notice them.
An oil level sensor? I would imagine that is a pretty simple component. There could even be several redundant oil level sensors without much cost.
I admit this is speculation and as an engineer I would really love to see some test data and reliability numbers. A rocket engine has hundreds of critical components, each with a known failure mode, and an estimated mean time between failures (MTBF). But the auto industry doesn't share this data with the public, in fact I'm not sure it even exists. But there is much improvement in the overall quality of electronics in the past 30 years, it seems to me!
I suppose the cautious of us could take a digital photo of the oil level indicator, with a time stamp, and then use that as evidence to the dealer in case of a future failure! Fight technology with technology!
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