Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

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I did some contracting for Mercedes in Germany and Toyota in Japan and learned why this is the case.

The people in car companies (engineering and management) are typically "gear heads". Not only do they care about the mechanical systems, they care enough that they'll make sure certain customer-invisible things (internal to engine, for example) or customer-subconscious things (in Mercedes' case how the hinge on the door works) are "just right". Kind of the equivalent of "I'll spin up another server when the load gets to X% just to have a good safety margin" or "this onboarding path could look like a dark pattern -- let's work around that just in case".

The embedded software developers for engine control are serious. Among the mechanical engineers the folks writing control software for steering stability or performance-vs-efficiency code were treated with respect ("I don't understand what you do but sure, happy to explain this mechanical system"). But the people doing the UI were basically considered marketing.

Seat must be comfortable. Visibility good (cough Prius).

Oh the audio system? Automatic seat adjustment? Bluetooth? Let's write a requirement document, or even just a requirement powerpoint and send it out for quote. It's not that important and cheapest bidder is fine.

> Oh the audio system? Automatic seat adjustment? Bluetooth? Let's write a requirement document, or even just a requirement powerpoint and send it out for quote. It's not that important and cheapest bidder is fine.

Ford Sync 2 (aka MyFordTouch) is exactly this. The interaction design is actually good, people clearly thought about how to go from screen to screen and it would be highly usable, except that the response time is god awful. Rumor is Ford outsourced to Microsoft who outsourced to someone's cousin who wrote it in Adobe Air or something. If it wasn't slower than molasses, it would be pretty neat.

Former Microsoft employee that worked on MyFordTouch for a little while.

> Rumor is Ford outsourced to Microsoft who outsourced to someone's cousin who wrote it in Adobe Air or something

That's actually pretty close. From what I understood Microsoft and Ford worked pretty closely on SYNC and that was a large success. Ford came back to Microsoft to have them do Sync 2.

Microsoft gave them a quote saying it would take $X and Y time. Ford said it needs to be cheaper and faster. Microsoft told Ford "We can't do that, here are some of our preferred contractors for Windows Embedded, maybe they can."

Some time later Ford came back to Microsoft saying "Please fix this" and that was around the time I joined. I actually heard a Ford VP say "This is the worst quality problem we've had in my time at Ford." He had been there during the Firestone tire debacle. (He was talking about cost in lost sales, obviously iPods not working wasn't as bad in the grand scheme of things as cars rolling over.)

The "backend" of the system was written in C++ on Windows Embedded. The user interface was written in Flash with some insane stringly-typed interface to talk back and forth with the C++ layer. And that's how I became an action script developer at Microsoft for a (very) brief time.

iPhones worked decently with the system. Android barely worked at all (Ford didn't care much about that at the time). Windows Phones actually worked pretty well since all the employees at the time had them and that's mostly what we'd use for developing.

It was the worst job I've ever had.

Ford Fiesta owners got this awful Sync 2 system and a poorly designed transmission. When I purchased, the Sync system seemed like something I could deal with at the time. It aged poorly. It seems like it is getting slower, but that's probably just in comparison to using newer systems with CarPlay.

I also have this added bug where sometimes (once every 6 months or so) the Sync system gets stuck on when I turn off my car and open the door. The screen goes off and the radio keeps playing. Only way to resolve it is to disconnect the battery.

You might try the engineering menu shortcut when the Sync get stuck. I haven't had that happen to me, but it's worth a try. Hold eject and next track for about 2 seconds; it may be easier than disconnecting the battery or pulling a fuse.

WARNING: The engineering menu starts a speaker test in a few seconds if you don't cancel it, and it's very loud. You want to cancel that.

Why not run Linux?

The OS wasn't the problem (although Sync 3 went to QNX, and I guess this Android thing is probably Linux). It was the front end that was so slooooooow

Did they regress on Ford Sync 3? Because I find it terrible. The UI design for simple things (eg, song playback) is not great. Targets are small. The weird 'FordSync' combo is weird and it seems like the addon-apps section is dead. Luckily it has AndroidAuto - but even that has weird issues with volume level.

Sorry, I don't have access to a Sync 3. From a quick look at the tutorials, it looks like Sync 3 refined the look of the UI, which looks nicer, but is probably harder to use, because the buttons looks like they have smaller borders, so it would seem easier to hit the wrong ones. Also, it looks like there's more buttons on the screen, which again makes it easier to hit the wrong ones.

Sync 2 looks like junk, but if it wasn't so slow, I think that would be fine.

Sync 2 had a hook for addon apps, but never got any. Also, they killed the thing to send directions to the car before I even got my car (it seemed like it was poorly thought out anyway), and the vehicle health report too. Still lets me use an app to find the car / unlock the doors / etc; but only if the car hasn't gone into deep sleep to stop it from killing the battery.

Sync3 was better than 2

Audi and Porsche contract Bose for the sound system. The decision is usually based on usually industry alliances, not necessarily the cheapest. The German automakers also have a stake in Here Maps, that's why you'll se it on their vehicles. If they don't have a stake they'll usually pick a German company or buy shares in one.

I remember seeing posted on here, someone trying to reverse engineer or reverse compile the code for a VW ECU unit. I would love a deep dive into, say a BMW or Porsche ECU, steering/suspension software, etc. Although I assume the likelihood is low, because I am sure they are closely guarded proprietary secrets.

Still, though, a decompiler that dumps ECU firmware into LLVM byte code? How cool would that be?

This is so very slowly changing.

Volvo has been really good in this case (especially as they target the luxury segment very prominently now).

The cheapskates at Audi suddenly released amazing A1 and A3 last year with big bright fast touch screens and CarPlay/Android Auto included by default on all models (and they kept the relevant physical buttons, too!).

I've seen VW slightly improving with new models, too.

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