Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries?
1 Legacy corporation is warned that an integrated, consumer-friendly software architecture for [multi-billion product line] is needed, and failure to produce one creates an opportunity for an insurgent competitor and/or commodification by adjacent supply chain players.
2 Leadership laughs and ignores mounting evidence of just such a threat emerging for up to a decade.
3 Lo and behold, prophesied competitor finally emerges and finds immediate market success.
4 Legacy company announces that they'll bring a competing solution to market, promising investors that they'll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39 models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase product support infrastructure. They're starting today and promise to launch in 12 months.
5 Legacy company lights billion dollar bonfire to distract investors while CTO frantically tries to source a robust embedded operating system with consumer-grade interfaces and feature set.
6 Best case, no one who has such an OS will license it. Worst case, Google will.
7 Leadership jumps ship, legacy company craters or slowly slides into irrelevance, and CEO later gives interviews about how absolutely no one could have seen this coming, with a sidebar complaining about software engineering salaries.
Honestly, this whole narrative is becoming a bit boring at this point. VW is at stage 5. The fact that its leadership consists entirely of charlatans is self-evident.
No. Volkswagen is at the stage that four years after deciding to bet the company on going electric, deliveries of their new EVs based on their new EV platforms will start next year.
Their new software plan goes hand in hand with their EV push. Volkswagen is going to be the world's biggest producer of EVs because they're spending the most money to be it and they have the scale to execute it:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-volkswagen-electric-insig...
Your narrative doesn't match the reality.
Charlatans maybe but the real problem is that they are old men with ballpoint pens who proudly claim that they have "petrol in their blood".
The real tragedy is that most German automotive managers have no clue about the complexity of modern software and I'd bet most of them would answer the question: "What is more complex, the mechanics or the the software?" with "Mechanics, of course!" without a blink.
So they said screw it, let’s give engineers/hubs freedom to work with whatever technologies they feel would be best, structure themselves and control their output without micromanagement from above. Basically copy some trendy companies and see what happens.
One of the hubs adopted extreme programming, which I’m not sure about but perhaps has value in their industry. But all in all from what I’ve heard is it’s working well.
There is also a lot of non consumer facing software that compliments a car line. That all needs development and maintenance.
Probably because this is what any sane CTO would tell them. But it probably doesn't help much when the above management tells them their task is to build an operating system. Without first getting a whole lot of technical people's feedback first.
If they pull it off it could be pretty cool, but considering how much they already have to do to adopt AI, I doubt they'll have the talent or know-how to really pull this off.
An interesting question is would it be easier for a tech group to build a better car company, that now suddenly is all about technology and less about designing and running a cost-competitive manufacturing system, than a car company could build a better tech company. But it's clear there's quite a few laws and other barriers to entry to help out the entrenched car companies who have deep local gov ties.
And they would be right. Cars would be bursting into flames around every corner if they were built like software is today.
This is a great post, but it could really use a list of actual examples from other industries.
IBM is an example where the quick panic solution (original IBM PC) surprisingly was quite successful for a while but also bit them in the ass in the end (modularity and exclusive use of off the shelf parts).
Does a car manufacturer really find these things boring? Half are like the blood and oxygen of a car, and also includes some territory for unique selling points.
It'd be interesting to know if they even had the skills in house to build a ICE car from scratch themselves. You can't knock it though, Bosch products tend to be excellent.
This might prevent them from operating a wide variety of controls from the entertainment dash though.
Already, when looking for/at a car, my first thought is: "is their software engineering team up to the task?"
Yup. Sometimes the only way to make real progress is to burn it all down and start over.
Why do they do this? Because executives pay is tied to stock price and lots of things can fall apart really fast if the companies cost of capital skyrockets.
How? In 2017 Volkswagen said they'll be delivering the ID.3 in 2020: https://www.roadandtrack.com/new-cars/car-technology/videos/...
In 2018 they said production of the ID.3 would start in November, 2019: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/volkswagen-id-electric-ca...
Series production will start in November, 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB5AyAAytZc
They are delivering the ID.3 in 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ex28SVZXW0
Volkswagen is meeting the targets they set for the ID.3 three years ago.
What bugs me the most about the 'tainment' part is that not only do I find most of it irritating, but that you are binding technology that obsoletes quickly with an expensive product that should last 10-20 years. It's a shame that car companies have picked this as an area for product differentiation.
On the first paragraph, I thought I'd read this battle is mostly lost already, not with respect to Android, but car software in general is far more intertwined and less robust than you'd think prudent.
Who cares? Just ignore the "smart" part, don't give it any Internet access and handle the smart part yourself via so HDMI dongle like a Chromecast.
Also, how did you block it from displaying them? Is it completely offline or maybe you're using a pihole?
That said, the people who work on infotainment have to take safety very seriously too. Even just static visual imagery can cause distracting optical effects if it's high contrast or the right shape/pattern. Anything with motion or audio presents very real risks.
If you take the 30k foot view, tbh, the auto world seems kinda nuts. We buy objects that are a sizeable fraction of our annual income if not more, that very rapidly depreciate, and then 20 years later we toss them out as scrap metal to recyclers.
For an electric, I'm unsure on the long-term life of motors. Batteries are the main consumable, but are actually safer and simpler compared to hot oil and fuel separated by thin gaskets.
Still, even with the consumables exempted, I'm not sure that cars actually seeing road-salts in the winter and scorching sun in the summer last that long (40 years seems optimistic, and I know I HATE being behind any 'classic' ICE that no longer has to pass emissions).
Manufacturers want you to have reasons to upgrade. Manufactured obsolescence is absolutely a feature to them. Don't want to keep driving your sufficient vehicle after 5 because "it's insecure and doesn't run the latest OS"? That's a guaranteed revenue stream if they can get enough of the other manufacturers go to along.
So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 12 years, and with infotainment they’ll reduce it to 8 years. Same length as a Tesla warranty.
My family recently bought a new car (a Volvo FWIW) and for the first time we really didn't care about horsepower or fuel efficiency or anything really related to vehicle performance. It was all about the electronics and safety features.
...and they're giving it to them good and hard.
OTOH, EFI can be done as a modular (and replaceable) product rather than as part of monolithic whole-vehicle design, but that last bit of goodness or regulatory need is likely not met.
I just think of it all as being Peak ICE. The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.
My car-loving boss just got a hybrid RAV4, and he absolutely loves it; combines the best features of both with (presumably) the only downside of lower maintenance (but even then there's less wear-and-tear on the ICE side). I suspect we will see quite a slow, gradual transition through hybrids to battery-only.
Of course, this is Australia (and I'd imagine similar in the US and Canada) where it's more common to drive long distances.
that assumes that the failed part is even available.
I'd sure be irritated to have the controller board for a Cadillac XLR convertible top fail and have to shop junk yards, no doubt the wrecking yards are hip to small things of value that they can store on a shelf somewhere.
To be fair, I know more than one purchasing guy, usually in boutique electronic product companies, who spend a fair amount of their time tracking down obsoleted parts on eBay to repair or build one last batch of a metal box with circuit boards inside. It's just the nature of modern times I guess, but luckily we can often pick the era we want to live in in our personal lives.
I just need to stock up on old Thinkpads, avoid home automation, and carefully choose any car purchases.
That, and I hate car payments :-)
:O
This is not surprising, as the team structures, at least as of a few years ago, were traditionally set up with tradtional manufactirng in mind, around parts and control modules, while the functionality exploded (within 1 or 2 generation of cars) and crossed those boundaries without adequate processes in place properly architect the interactions from a bird's-eye view, creating major computing power, network bandwidth, and most importantly to OEMs, cost bottlenecks.
And as cost is king, nobody wants to budge on increasing cost on their own module, and critical architectural decisions aren't made as much as put off until there isn't any other choice left except to hacking in the most critical bits with one eye closed and hoping somebody else's jenga tower falls first.
That, I imagine, is how you get that GPS time thing, I can see how it all started: "Oh, I can save $.30 on my module if I don't put in an RTC, that'll get me a nice bonus for cost saving, GPS is going to have one anyway ..."
One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on the board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware.
Very much like testing. Incalculable if you need it (and you certainly do), but managers who don't understand, just assume that you're doing something wrong if you need to "waste time" reading logs or writing tests rather than adding features.
You answer that question with a question, how much is a one month delay in shipping worth to you?
In the business world there is a lot of room for BS so people get away with it. But in software, it can doom a project.
You feel that in today's infotainment and electronics integration in vehicles.
For example, ovens with clocks keep track of time through the grid frequency and if the grid frequency changes, the clocks diverge too.
Compare to a typical quartz oscillator which will gain or lose around 15 seconds per month.
Also, I guess that means my devices with clocks that drift more than two seconds, ie several full minutes, are actually using crystal oscillators? I guess it makes sense for a microwave which needs second level granularity, but that seems odd to me.
The crystal in your microwave's CPU clock circuit will drift, and so will the time-of-day derived from it until you set the time again, if there is no external reference. The benefit of using the incoming 50/60Hz AC signal as a timebase is that the power station is responsible for controlling the long term frequency to avoid drift so it can be used as a very reliable reference.
And that engineer who writes code might be a brilliant engineer and competent coder, but they just haven't been on many software projects before and they don't see how damning that decision could end up being.
It works and everyone is happy, but it's a wart that people have to build around for the next 20 years.
I deal with this stuff semi-regularly in my day job and wow.
It's a complete nightmare to integrate with the rest of the application.
Also, crystal oscillators aren't that accurate. You can make them more accurate by heating them to a given temperature, but this is something only done in expensive test & measurement equipment.
I don't disagree with you that grid frequencies are generally very accurate and they are a practical clock source for cheap clocks, I just found that interesting.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/serbia-kosovo-energy/serbia-...
But since the infotainment already dealt with time, they just used that as a "system clock" straight, so without infotainment there's no "system clock" to be had.
This is revealing. I'm glad my tractor GPS/guiding system does not run Android.
"We would like to buy/licence your maps"
"We will give them to you for free, but you have to install our software"
"k thx bye"
1 is an opensource OS, the other is proprietary services.
Don’t want to? Look up the numbers on how many global providers of maps data there are...
My 4-year-old car came with an infotainment system using HERE maps. It's laughably bad compared to Google Maps, and here's why:
1) The HERE maps aren't auto-updated. You have to go to some trouble to download updates twice a year, and then install them on the car with a USB stick. You only get 3 updates for free, and after that you have to pay a huge price for each update. Google Maps is updated constantly with new roads, construction outages, even when a street is going to be blocked for a parade.
2) The business data on the built-in system is sparse. With Google Maps, pretty much any brick-and-mortar business that exists is on there. And I can easily see the business's operating hours too, and it'll warn me if I'm going to get there too close to closing time.
3) Searching is far easier. Finding a destination on the built-in system is like something from the 90s, and you generally need to start with a state, city, etc. With Google Maps, you just start typing a name and it pops up suggestions, which usually gets you the place you want very quickly.
4) No traffic updates on the built-in system. It has no way to get traffic data; Google Maps has this by default unless you're in a "dead zone".
I could go on and on.
Would we have gotten all this without a near monopoly like Google? The only thing I've seen that comes close is Apple Maps, and that too is backed by a gigantic company with its tentacles in many things. Some company that only does maps isn't going to have access to all that data, so you'll just get a program that makes pretty maps that's only useful if you know the GPS coordinates for something, which of course no one does.
For a long time after Google Maps entered the market there were better products available from various providers.
If someone shows me a GPS navigation app that's really pretty, fast, and even shows me where speed traps are, that's nice and all, but what if it doesn't let me just type in a business name, and instead I have to actually know a street address? Then it isn't very useful to me. I'll go back to the app that lets me navigate to business names instead, because that'll save me a lot of time by not having to use a separate app just to look up a street address for every destination I want to go to.
This reminds me a bit about the debate between Google Maps and Waze (yeah, I know they're owned by the same company). The Wazers love waze because it's cartoonish and easy and shows speed traps. That's great, but to me it's too simplistic, it doesn't show alternate routes in real-time (GM will show me a gray route, saying "similar ETA", "3 minutes slower", etc. as I drive), and it's absolutely useless for public transit, so I stick with GM. And this is with two free products both owned by Google.
Finally, what "better products" are you talking about? I remember quite well when GM came out. I switched almost immediately from MapQuest. This was back when it was a PC-only (web) application, of course. At the time, MQ had a clunky interface, and then GM suddenly came out using AJAX, and I could click and drag the map around! It was utterly amazing compared to MQ that you had to use pan and zoom buttons for. Maybe the map dataset was better for MQ? I'm not sure about that, but let's just say for argument's sake that MQ had better map data. That's fine, except that there's more to using a map application than the dataset: the user interface is extremely important too. So this seems like a good example of ignoring how important the UI is, and then wondering why so many people suddenly abandon the "superior" product for the one with the easier-to-use UI, which is something we've seen over and over and over in tech over the decades.
Both of these were offline apps using maps from multiple sources, at a time when Google were still gathering data and mobile online access was expensive and inconvenient. At least when using iGO the iPhone and Android didn't exist yet.
I've been through a couple of those myself, it is always very interesting to see how your words come out once they've been interpreted by someone who is essentially clueless but well-meaning and trying to understand something that goes above their normal day-to-day level of complexity. And that's the good case, the one where they don't have an agenda to push.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
It isn't totally clear, but there is one fairly strong hint that there will be separation. They quote Singer (the person in charge) as saying, "What we are now doing with these so-called enabling functions is taking them out of customer functions, putting it in a middleware software layer." In context, it seems to be contrasting that against designs where the car's basic functions were too entwined with infotainment, so "taking out" seems to suggest separation.
Cutting out other suppliers will be huge cost savings for Volkswagen if the plan works out too.
Edit: Since I'm apparently I'm so wrong does anyone want to tell me why?
Maybe you should explain why you want to break CV joints so badly.
The Episode of Dirt Every Day where he takes a Jeep Compass off roading (it's on youtube somewhere) is a great example of what you can do with good traction control.
A low level system for all critical features, this should be coded as safely as possible and run on a slow almost unbreakable computer.
A selfdriving features module, doing all the computations that are too intensive for the low level system. The low level system must be able to detect malfunctions in this system and act accordingly.
An infotainment system, just assume that it has been hacked when designing the other systems. It should be simple to prove that this system cannot take over the rest of the car.
For the past 100 years, we have been developing better and better cars, with both breakthroughs and incremental improvements in the drivetrain, safety, comfort, reliability, etc.
Now though, cars are consolidating. Most car companies only have a handful of 'platforms' on which they build various models. For example: Volvo currently only produces 3 models of combustion engines. We have reached a point where numerous subsystems are just 'good enough' and require little more R&D.
During the past 20 years or so, the software had to keep up with all the new tech coming out in the automotive world. Now that development of automotive hardware is slowing down, it is time to focus on the software for the long run.
Tesla has been doing this for a while now. Their electric drivetrain is at point where there is more for them to gain in software than improvement of the hardware. For other car manufactures it is a bit harder to accept that, as they have been developing hardware technology for a long time.
Edit: fixed my wrong example about Volvo, thanks to C1sc0cat
What is really going on, is the improvements in the mechanical design are just not as flashy.
GDI on the other hand has basically taken over; I doubt there's any new gasoline car sold without it now.
Hybrids haven't been doing well, outside of the Prius. EVs are getting more adoption now than hybrids. The problem with hybrids is the cost: you have a gas engine plus a big battery pack and motor, basically two powertrains in one vehicle.
Turbos however have become very, very common as everyone is downsizing engines and using turbos to get more power, while improving fuel economy.
Sluggish, puddy garbage of an experience compared to pure joy I can experience with my own.
I would say improvements were done to make things more cost-effective to increase margins, but not necessarily better cars per se.
Other things are with furniture I obtained with an older apartment - amazingly well built, can still hold together well after 50+ years. It was not luxurious back then, but would be definitely be luxurious now.
2. Compare apples to apples. How does a new BMW 3-Series compare to your 15 year old one? My guess is, it probably compares favorably.
In a new 3-Series you can turn the steering wheel with your index finger, there is no manual transmission, you hear fake engine noise. The 15 year old car offers a completely different driving experience and he might prefer it over the bland, comfortable new car.
See those slim runflats? Runflats save space in the trunk for the spare, and them being slim means they are hard. So in order for the ride to be softer, the axle suspension changed, and much softer silentblocks are being used. The result is, that your drive doesn't feel like your car is sitting on rails, like E90 or E46 did, instead it is muddy and jelly.
Another disaster is the start-stop system. When warm, the needles in starter can break. Meaning, that you just went down from highway to the petrol station, refuelled, and you cannot start anymore. You are stuck there on the station.
But hey, those LED angel eyes look much cooler.
They didn't use electric steering thankfully. It went downhill starting E9x though, the materials used inside wear much quicker, the suspension and road feel is somehow less than E46 and the chasing of weight savings but increasing comfort through electronics and servos means the car is heavy still but you no longer get that satisfying door or bonnet thump like you did in E39/E38/E46, which were pinnacle of BMWs engineering IMO. Cabin noise insulation is also less than pre 2005, I assume because of weight savings. The post 2005 cars are so complicated that non-enthusiast ownership is most likely a bad experience.
/335xi N54 owner
Go back to a BMW of 1990, and it's not that much different from a new car today. Fuel injection, air bags, ABS. Internal combustion engine, exhaust, radiator, transmission. etc. etc.
Heck, even back then it was perfectly normal for a car to get better than 10L/100km (23.5mpg)
There have been incremental improvements for sure, but in all honesty it's the same thing, just tweaked a little.
A 1990 BMW 3 Series got 18 miles a gallon and a 2019 BMW 3 series gets 30 combined. 1990 had a 5 speed and the new one has an 8 speed.[1] The power and efficiency of ICEs are night and day vs the 90s.
You could literally same the same thing about anything and it would be a huge generalization.
“It’s just a CPU/RAM/Disk/Nic with a monitor and keyboard. We had those in 1980s and it’s only incremental every since.”
[1]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=41157&...
There aren't many noticeable improvements in cars from one year to the next, but over the span of a full model change, you usually get fairly significant improvements in safety, fuel efficiency per horsepower, and in-cabin features.
Also note that we haven't reached maximum ICE performance yet, either. For example, Mazda is soon to release their Skyactiv-X engine, which is a sort of hybrid spark and compression ignition system with a large fuel efficiency increase over traditional engines.
Then try doing the same with a 1990 BMW. Unless you are being deliberately obtuse you will miss the driver aids etc., as they make the whole experience so much easier. Old cars are simply nowhere near the latest cars for safety, comfort, ease of use etc.
If we look at power alone even though EPA regulations have only gotten stricter during the same time frame if we look at the same model of car (Ford Mustang GT) we see that it has gone from 310 HP [1] to 460 HP [2] in 10 years. The same power that was delivered by the V8 which powered the Mustangs that my friends and I pined over in High School (ca. 2004) is now delivered by a compact I4 turbocharged engine which also delivers 25 MPG [3].
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15147979/2009-ford-mus... [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/ford/mustang [3] https://www.edmunds.com/ford/mustang/2019/mpg/#style=4017572...
>Most car companies only have a handful of 'platforms' on which they build various models.
Yeah and VW just spent years creating a completely new platform for EVs. Everyone else is going to need to do that in the next decade or so as well.
> [Teslas] electric drivetrain is at point where there is more for them to gain in software than improvement of the hardware.
Tesla are continuously coming up with hardware changes. Models S and X moved to a completely new 'Raven' drivetrain just back in April.
Alongside that, they do try and find software fixes to improve the existing fleet, which I guess is what you're thinking about.
I would be scared if a software engineer would make the OS to confirm that I want to brake
edit: mainly I was thinking of Tesla here. obv there are exceptions
The Infiniti Q50 has been steer-by-wire since 2014[1], and hybrids like the Toyota Prius have been brake-by-wire since 2010.[2]
[1]: https://gizmodo.com/what-its-like-to-drive-infinitis-crazy-d... [2]: https://www.thedrive.com/tech/25563/the-audi-e-tron-brings-g...
The Infiniti Q50 has it, its steering wheel is not mechanically attached to the wheels.
Tesla is working on a new drivetrain for the Model S, Model X, and the Roadster 2:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/11/elon-musk-promises-to-take...
Consider not linking to TechCrunch directly, because they make it virtually impossible to opt out of data collection.
Saying it is slowing down was a mistake and I definitely stepped on many toes by doing so.
Even when people say “XYZ is approaching the laws of physics for how good it can get” they often turn out wrong, like with solar panels there are several theoretical limits which have been shattered by using multi-layer approaches and mirrored or stacked panels, or ways to excite 2 electrons from one photon, that ultimately push the technology forward in one dimension or another.
All I’m saying is, you’re in very good company.
Besides the core quality and variety of the scents, technology to prevent wick flare-ups, technology to alter burn rates, more economical mixtures of the wax, better composition of the jar to support cheaper shipping and less breakage.
That’s not even to mention all the new competition to the venerable candle; non-burning LED candles, plug-in oil dispensers, time release mechanisms, vaporizers, etc.
edit: its a misjudgement about the stagnation of technology. How about "mistagnatechment"?
Ah man, I've been and done a mistagnatechment!
The fact that Apple shut down its car division suggests there may have been some issues going the other way.
I wish they’d have moved towards standardizing APIs and “controllers” throughout the automotive world and just encouraged after-market infotainment systems to fill the functionality gap. I just really don’t like that Infotainment ends up having to be a complicating factor in buying a car. It’s hard enough to pick one out that ticks all the functional boxes and feels nice to drive. But then suddenly you get cars that feel great, but neglected the interface design or had a slow UI and suddenly they’ve ruined it.
Here's a standard climate control API, which doesn't touch the ecu stack.
And here's some mixins/ flexible RPCs so vendors can add custom functionality.
Alas, this limits vendor lock in, so that's precisely why I think it's unlikely to happen.
And I suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war designs the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's
Perhaps, but I'm not sure how relevant that is. The only pieces that remain somewhat as they were would be the block, crank, and rods.
Overhead cams, variable valve timing, aluminum heads/blocks, electronic ignition, fuel injection, ECU, etc...are all newish.
If some other design (rotary engines, for example) were better and made economic sense, they would have likely won out.
...and not used since 2003. Honestly, it's probably best to view an engine family like this as a form factor, not a design. It isn't like there were any 1955 parts in a 2000 engine, but the interconnects are (mostly) the same. Generally, any 90 degree V8 with a cam in the block is going to be the 'same', designers have pretty much standardized on just a few layouts.
An invariant SBC is like saying disk drives haven't evolved if they use the same mounting points and cabling/logic standards.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Volvo_engines
I thought they only produced the 2.0L 4 cylinder petrol in various configurations (turbo size, hybrid, non-hybrid). As it turns out they now also have a 3 cylinder engine.
Yes they have 4 wheels, wind screen, engine, but reliability is massively different, power is massively different, comfort, crash safety, price (for what you get).
Guess true variable valve timing and electrical turbo's and are no innovations?
Anyway, not mentioning AUTOSAR might be a sign that its days are numbered, perhaps?
In my case it was AUTOSAR in name only. Our higher bosses thought we were running AUTOSAR, but the lower you went, the understanding was firmer and firmer that what we actually ran was custom software.
Oh, the days numbered part - nah, I don't think so. AUTOSAR is for very low level stuff, I think unholy combinations will live on for a long time. AFAIK all the component (like hardware, Bosch for instance) vendors only provide AUTOSAR components for integration. Not sure, it was a few years ago I was in the loop.
I'd like but it doesn't seem so. We're having pending requests for working on AUTOSAR-based software, and a few are for brand new car models. Different opinion regarding EV: here I'm not aware of any single AUTOSAR based element but I may be wrong.
What's truly scary to me is that VW says they'll need 5-10 THOUSAND people working on this. Given that they're starting with Linux/Android, and have all the mature tooling in that space, why should it take that many people to adapt it to a car? That seems excessive.
Many of them already work in the Volkswagen Group, but will be centralized working on common platforms.
Over the air updates is vastly under estimated by many people. It is just as much of a revolution in the automobile industry as the electric drive train. As more cars move to electric and electrified drive trains the value of over the air updates that Tesla employs will become more evident.
it frees you from being forced to buy a new car to get new and or improved features. plus building a system like that allows Tesla to add new hardware to their cars with ease as the mindset is in place already.
A model S bought five years ago enjoys most if not all the updates a newly purchased model S has today. that is not something any other maker can claim and I doubt that any even want to go there because not only does it free the consumer from having purchase a whole new car for exciting features but obligates the maker to providing updates to an existing car.
My experience with user-facing Volkswagen software has been terrible so far, so I hope a new mandate might improve that area drastically.
As far as the underlying new operating system Volkswagen is developing for all their cars, seems like a smart move as long as the design by committee syndrome is somewhat curtailed.
"Well, I get Free Miles(tm) with the Chevrolet, but it throttles at 70MPH and the radio only plays Pandoa. Or I can get the exact same car from Crysler, with no throttling, but the miles come in bundles of 1000 and radio apps are $5/month."
> Senger also revealed that VW Group will be using Android for future versions of the MIB infotainment platform, in large part because of the robust third-party app ecosystem with that OS versus Linux.
Huh? Android is running on a modified linux kernel. But I get what he means...
Interestingly, VW just joined AGL:
I think this is the direction more automakers should go. I drove a friends Tesla the other day, and it shares some the same features, allowing you to make fairly specific customizations of certain things through the built in menu.
*Some items which can be customized via the VCDS - DRL's, Windows Auto-Up/Auto-Down/etc, and a bunch of other things I can't remember anymore.
One way out of this is for the major OEMs to band together and create their own standardized platform that works across OEMs. At minimum, that platform should expose a single standard interface to all third-party service providers.
This already exists, and it's why there's a slew of Bluetooth-enabled apps on the app stores that let you self-diagnose your own car. It's called OBD-II and it's federally mandated on every vehicle since 1996 in the US and since 2003 in the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics
Finally, OBD-II isn't a standard bus anyway. It's an interface to the end user or technician. The various modules on the car are interconnected with a variety of buses: CAN (high-speed or low-speed or medium-speed), LIN, MOST, etc.
I'll counter. In a world of electric cars (which I'm in favor of), how long until the politically well-connected emissions testing industry becomes repurposed into mandatory safety inspections at the same or higher price?
EDIT: I am, of course, referring to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
Yikes, can't they find an OS that isn't laden with adtech?
Who am I kidding? It's probably already happening.
And if that's not sufficiently capable perhaps VW can invest into making it so.
Actually, I was unable to find the answer to that question.
Edit: “Margaret Hamilton led a team of 350 people to design the software behind the Apollo 11 mission.” Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/underapp...
"The peak activity occurred one year earlier in 1968 with a manpower total of 350." [1]
I have a hard time believing the team was this size throughout the time the project lasted -- above quote seems to 2nd this.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
But the reason was not that it was needed.
The reasons were:
- The approach to developing software (pure waterfall, with lots of agile BS bingo terms as seasoning). As someone else mentioned: Old car companies do not understand software. I may add: At all.
- Upper management throwing more resources at missed deadlines (that were moving all the time anyway). Every seasoned developer knows that more developers will slow you down. Nine women can't have a baby in one month.
- Trying to understand the issues with the project getting pear shaped by looking at burn down charts.
Once I was on a way to one of these meetings in an elevator and someone said: "Gentlemen, are you also on going to our weekly 'Men who stare at graphs' ritual?"
Most senior engineering folks agreed that the work hundreds of developers, dozens of engineering managers, PMs, POs, agile coaches and god-knows-what-other-fancy-title people were doing could be done by a team of around 25.
I completely agree and as such parent is right. 5k-10k people is complete overkill. But then -- given how these companies work -- it is not. It is indeed an underestimation and the very reason this will go nowhere. A few cars will be released with this OS and then it will be replaced by something much better that someone else, not an old car company, was doing in the meantime.
Sometimes, I feel that infotainment products are more subjective than the other car functions. eg, Does that "ding" sound notification reflect the values of our brand vs Can the maximum power be transferred to the rear wheels in the snow within 300ms, subject questions vs objective questions. Subjective questions needs more study and analysis, leading to more engineers.
I developed the FW for a couple ECUs singlehandedly along with 1 HW engineer and an intern.
Maybe that's the difference between Tesla and the others.
This sounds like a smart move by VW. Essentially Tesla are showing the way forwards here, being the first automaker to take software seriously.
> And these users are, you know, driving cars around, so its kindof important to get the software right.
That's not something you achieve by throwing more engineers at the problem.
You did. Sure "coder" != "engineer", though that's the closest job title that companies are using.
Reminds me of when Renault bought VAZ, the first thing VAZ did with new money was to boast of making "the first Russian car with a computer."
Them adding a computer to a car that falls apart as you drive just made Lada a shitty car with a computer, from a plainly shitty car.
> Q: What's a Trabi [1] with a pocket calculator glued to the steering wheel?
> A: Knight Rider
Now multiply that by every component that has a CPU in it (every electronic component in the car) and getting to 10k software engineers as seems quite easy.
Throwing this many people at the problem will likely slow it down and lead to a host of issues.
Software is key!