"It's so difficult for legacy car companies to get software right. You'd be surprised. Let me explain it quickly. To save probably 500 per vehicle, or let's say 350 quid a vehicle, we farmed out all the modules that control the vehicles to our suppliers because we could bid them against each other. So, Bosch would do the body control module, someone else would do the seat control module, someone else would do the engine control module, right? And we have about 150 of these modules with semiconductors all through the car. The problem is, the software is all written by 150 different companies, and they don't talk to each other. So, even though it says Ford on the front, I actually have to go to Bosch to get permission to change their seat control software. So, even if I had a high-speed modem in the vehicle and had the ability to write their software, it's actually their IP. We have 150, what we call, a loose confederation of software providers. 150 completely different software programming languages. All the structure of the software is different. It's millions of lines of code, and we can't even understand it all. That's why, at Ford, we've decided in the second-generation product to completely insource electric architecture. To do that, you need to write all the software yourself. But just remember, car companies have never written software like this. They've never written software. So, we're literally writing how the vehicle operates, the software to operate the vehicle, for the first time ever."
- Jim Farley