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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

It looks like VW Group have fallen fowl of trying to combine the transition to BEVs with autonomous driving. There is no reason they should have had to wait on autonomous driving software in order to add more BEVs to their range. I don't believe autonomous driving is a deciding factor in the majority of purchase decisions at the moment, and as people tend to be loyal to a brand it's more important to get a BEV on the market that fits the category of the loyal customers.

VW have a good BEV platform, perfectly satisfactory in car software, and adequate automation. It's ridiculous they haven't got an estate (station wagon) at all yet, or to have expanded those that are available to all of the various brands.

None of that is depended on automation tech.

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"perfectly satisfactory in car software" is arguable. ID4 still doesn't have OTA update in US. Navigation and UI software inside the car is OK only because of Android Auto (CarPlay). I've also witnessed a number of instances where Nav software would freeze and apparently the only way to reset it was to park, get out of the car, close the door, wait few seconds and then get back in.

Yeah I’ve owned VWs for years and have always been basically happy with the cars’ software. We recently bought an EV, and even though the ID.4 checked pretty much all of our boxes, we skipped it entirely based on the steady drumbeat of software complaints.

> Yeah I’ve owned VWs for years and have always been basically happy with the cars’ software.

Not trying to be snarky but I can’t understand how one may be happy with a gps unit taking 30+ seconds to boot up in a modern car. That’s my average VW experience. BMW is instant, for comparison…

Well by “basically happy”, I mean to say that there are some occasional little quirks that I don’t love but I’ve personally never had any major frustrations or showstoppers.

>It's ridiculous they haven't got an estate (station wagon) at all yet

I think it's because consumer demand in the last decade has shifted from estates to SUVs which is horrible.

My observation here in the UK is there may be a shift back to estates, or that may just be confirmation bias (having done just that).

I think it's just a fashion, and when people realise they get less efficiency or space for the equivalent SUV they will re-consider saloon/estates/MPVs.

I’ve wondered how much of this is a reaction to decaying road infrastructure. In the northeast, I’d be skeptical of sedan durability unless it had 6 inches of clearance. At that point, you might as well make an suv.

My parents' Ford Edge (mid-sized SUV)'s ride quality is much worse than most sedans I drove. I don't know if it's the big rims/thin tires or crappy suspensions; probably a combination of both. In any case, being an SUV is no guarantee of smoother rides, especially with modern SUVs trying to be more "sporty".

VW software is anything but satisfactory if car reviewers and car owners are anything to go by.

I think we've seen all the major automakers sandbagging their EV efforts for obvious reasons.

Attaching a nearly impossible requirement like self-driving to EVs is a convenient scapegoat for more delays while you continue milking your mature ICEV production from loyal customers...

It's rather caused by archaic approach of VW to car software. Tesla showed (almost decade ago) how should it be done. Years have passed and VW is not only behind the competition, but still in '00s. They were agile enough to fake NOx emission tests, but not enough to provide modern solutions for consumers.

I wouldn't say tesla's software practices should be emulated. Pushing random updates to prod OTA is terrible practice and look at the number of times cars have rebooted while driving

Honestly, i'm not a big Elon Fanboy, but as a german who has driven mostly newer VWs until 2021, the Tesla Software Quality since then is enough for me to outright say I never want a VW Engineer touch my car software again. Yes, their ID series is improving and even outperforming from the actual driving characteristics when it comes to assisted driving, but by god is the user experience horrible.

Driving and using a Tesla is fun in a way no VW ever was for me.

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