If you have a company and refuse to take the crazy deadlines and low quality and low pay then don't worry, there is another Tier 1 supplier across the street who will do it for you. OEMs know that you need them more than they need you.
Well, that is evil by design irrespective of the particular implementation, no? ;-)
Another thing that happens is when there is a 50ms response time mandated and at the start of the project you have 30ms and it slowly creeps up until you get to 55ms. Then the blame game starts. Like I said previously, each component is usually won by a different tier 1 supplier. So everybody puts the blame on somebody else. One tier 1 is building the linux distro, the other is making basic system libraries and the applications are written by another 20 tier 1 suppliers.
Then the deadline hits and the car needs to be sent to the showrooms. So whatever 50ms was chosen initially is changed to whatever it currently is so to say they are within spec and can ship the damned car.
I guess it's also up to buyers: don't buy cars with shoddy infotainment.
Not much, but, there is some.
After working on infotainment, I'm doing my best to avoid purchasing a car with an infotainment system. I had to compromise and got a Civic with an infotainment system for my wife, but I'll probably stick to late 2000s, early 2010s for as long as I possibly can to avoid them. Seriously hate touchscreens, and there's just not enough value in an infotainment system for me to be OK with what I'm losing by having one.
They will not tell the customer this because either the customer doesn't care, so why waste time and resources
...or when the customer realises they will open a Change Request to fix the issue. Change Requests are how you make an actual profit on unprofitable, low-balled contract and probably gain an extension on the unachievable timeline agreed to win the bid in the first place.
The "customer" is the person that signs the contract not the user of the product. They probably don't care that it's a pig to use. It just has to look OK in a presentation to their boss (...who isn't going to ever use it either).
If Tier 1 suppliers didn't behave this way they wouldn't be able to pitch bid responses cheap enough to win bids. The responsibility for crappy products lies entirely with the product owners. Only they know what's good enough.
Källenius explained the current system to Ars Technica like this:
"So some engineer in Sindelfingen comes up with a concept. You have to write that down. You have to send it to the supplier that needs to be quoted. Then procurement people need to negotiate with each other. Then that supplier goes to some sub-supplier in Eastern Europe and wherever they do. It goes back up the chain again. It gets tested and nine months later, you have actually changed something in your infotainment system. Now you go into the ESH [Mercedes' electric Software Hub]. To say, let's change this and you just do it."