The problem, as far as I can tell, is as follows: top management is able and motivated to increase the size of the money bag. Developers just want to do a good job for a good salary. Middle management can't change the size of the money bag too much, so it just wants to grab as much as possible for itself. How does a middle manager expand their empire? Certainly not by leading a small, effective organization. The head count needs to grow, so the middle manager wants ineffective developers. It only works because no one above knows enough about software to fairly evaluate the work of these petty empire-builders.
One time I wanted to gauge how far the car industry has come from realizing the problem to implementing a solution, so I typed something like "automotive software crisis" into Google. Among the first few hits a presentation of a German CS professor stating that there is a crisis... and that the solution is model-driven development. It's the exact shit that they are already doing that is not working.
If good software is produced in Germany, it's despite subpar academic CS and dysfunctional large companies. Much of Germany's economy is medium-sized companies - fortunately, I guess.
I do expect the German car industry to fix its software but only when it's really suffering financially. Car industry outsiders will be heavily involved in the solution.