Comment by garyfirestorm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by garyfirestorm | Hacker News Reader

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I work in one of the big three - the culture here is more waterfall and less agile. They decided at some point ‘we don’t need to be experts in building systems, we should only be good at spec’cing them and putting them together’ This leads to a mindset of relying on suppliers for changing even one line of code and at their mercy. Talent leaves because they didn’t get to do any of the fun stuff. And you’re left with bunch of MBAs trying to wing it in what is available which is - no talent, bunch of admineers, and a long list of supplier bills. They go for cheapest component they can spec for a given feature cutting 4MB memory will save 5 cents per car, we sell half a million cars, that’s big savings! I can go on and on about this, but one of us even tried to be Tesla trying to build our own zonal architecture - and are currently struggling due to costs, tarrifs and turnover. Also you can’t overnight change this mindset - building vs assembling. But there has to be some way and I’m too about to walk out the door due to ~10yrs of frustrations.

Get out if you can!

Spent 7 years at the three pointed star within design and UX - one day, when i’m over all i had to witness and experience i’ll write a book about the downfall of the german automotive industry.

It’s all politics and due to constant battles and changing ownership throughout departments they won’t ever have a solid foundation. And i dare to assume that this goes for most of the automotive industry.

It’s sad to see that a once driving force of innovation is stumbling over its own arrogance and ignorance.

A major factor contributing to this are cost saving measures from the early 2000s where most of them stopped in-house research and development giving most of the work to contractors - a very expensive cost saving measure long term.

We’re down to them using “technology” as a seasoning for consumption like a fancy restaurant - very little long term thinking.

Yeah, and then those contractors (like Continental) has sub-contractors (like Akka) and they have sub-sub-contractors (some random Indian software company) working on the side mirror winding logic.

In German cities with automotive industry, you’ll find thousands of these satellite companies.

And in Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Slovenia, etc.

> downfall of the german automotive industry

I hear that kind of statements all the time but if you take like real important car things germans are (still) pretty good: their cars handle really well, powertraian usually works perfectly smooth (or sporty), ergonomics is good to perfect, it will not rust for decades, list goes on ... The real things killing germans I think: cars are expensive and unreliable

Agreed, Germany still makes some of the best cars in the world. Who is making them better?

Huawei,Xiaomi,Xpeng.

For example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maextro_S800

The main topic is software and it is still treated like a part you can just outsource and plug in.

Since cars are primarily being bought by sculptural aesthetics of the exterior and above all their brand they continue being bought for those who feel the need of a status symbol.

At the core there is still a lack of a long term strategy and above all stability to build on - not saying it is an easy task.

In the end the customer has to suffer with abysmal usability, reliability and ever changing mental models. And don’t get me started about the touchscreens everywhere situation…

It isn’t just software though - VW moving development and above all production engineering and planning to china since they failed coming up with an efficient solution in Wolfsburg is basically saying it all. [1]

Dire times ahead and i hope for the best.

[1] https://youtu.be/4AprfR8Xkio?si=xKXUdgt5BRyZKRNE

Given that the driving characteristics of most of the cars on the road don't match a BMW, what're the real "real important car things"? The revealed preference seems to be that the things you listed aren't actually that important. Long term cost is. Maintenance cost is. Not having to bring your car to the dealership for service is. Having the car have a long lifetime is. Handling well is nice; sporty drivetrain is nice; but that sort of stuff is clearly just a luxury, and the bottom dropped out of the luxury market recently (see: LVMH restructuring). If you're going to buy a sporty luxury car, why not get a Porsche or something with more cachet? Obviously there are reasons, but BMW's in an awkward position.

> what're the real "real important car things"?

A good design from engineering standpoint. You feel it just instantly when you use the product. Interior is nice and will accommodate just about every possible driver comfortably with every control reachable. Suspension just works frkn great no matter how it was tuned (sporty or comfortable) and no matter how simple the design is. Same for drivetrain, you will acelerate/decelerate precisely how much you'd expect. And it's not a luxury it's a norm, even cheapest german or french cars have all this things sorted out. I'm speaking for the EU market though)

> They decided at some point ‘we don’t need to be experts in building systems...

So they've just chosen death. Fantastic, great to hear.

Well, yes. The legacy car companies are ossified. They want to keep churning out minute variations on the same cars, and regard software as a thin layer for the entertainment system. They don't want to adapt to EVs, which force a redesign of the car as a whole. They're going to get run over by Chinese companies unless they can beg for tariffs to prop up their un-innovation.

Isn't the trouble that agile is not compatible with things that has to be thoroughly made, 'finalized before release', like in every mission critical production? Casuality and the dyamic free spirit primised has much much less space here.

This is not sexy. This is important.

Needs different mindsets than the software folks grew up along in the past decades. Yes! Yes! There are much much more sexy topics to focus on for an agile software maker, that yields better looking results seemingly instantly. Compared to the boring finalization and coordination - oh, you devil bastard, coordination - heavy activities.

Don't take me seriously, speculating heavily.

> They go for cheapest component they can spec for a given feature cutting 4MB memory will save 5 cents per car, we sell half a million cars, that’s big savings!

I'm tired. Been out in the sun all day. Explain this to me please.

When I do the math I get 500000 * $0.05 = $25000

That's a small drop in a large bucket of their gross income or net profits.

EDIT: Harsh sun must've burned a few of my processors. I see now that this would only be one small change that saved an inconsequential amount of money. But each group is incentivized to produce minor changes like this that save small amounts and that those amounts do add to substantial savings and help complete the process of enshittification of the ownership and driving experience for those who choose to buy one of these vehicles.

That is one component in one model. Car makers have several models with maybe hundreds (or thousands?) of electrical components. Plus "cost-saving" has always been a surefire way of ensuring bonus.

Yes but you make this small 5 cent change to 100 components and it adds up.

Rinse and repeat across hundreds of components and your team "pays for itself"

"We found $X cost savings" is the easiest path the promotion. It's measurable, cleanly attributable, and immediate, while the downsides are not. Maybe perform is bad bc they skimped on memory, or maybe it's because the software team sucks. Maybe it means future updates are hamstrung, but who cares the bonus checks cleared years ago. Besides, you probably got promoted to a bigger / better role by now, and who can remember who decided what when?

And with the help of software your get: this algorithm works well to recognize signs using 2 cameras. We can alter it a little to make it work with 1 camera (huge savings) and losing like 10% accuracy. With a cheaper camera we lose again some accuracy but even more savings.

Now you get a shitty feature for savings while the people who implemented it can go cry in a corner thinking about their good version.

"We asked one of the software guys if we 'could' use a single camera, and they said, 'uh... possibly?', so we pushed through!"

It’s very obviously a rhetorical exaggeration.

Yes sometimes it’s a dollar or two and it really adds up quick. Sometimes 10’s of dollars. That door speaker can be few dollars cheap - you may get 2% more THD in a frequency band… the conversations can be really reduced down to ‘meh subjectively not noticeable’ but will save us a million. Add few of these things and now you have a shitty radio system but 5 mil in bank.

Speakers are a bit of a funny one, because, with the important condition that the amp needs to not be crap, they’re pretty straightforward to upgrade for the end user.

Penny wise, pound foolish

Not just the owners, but the other engineers.

I have never worked in the auto industry, but I was an embedded software engineer at an F500 company that loved to just throw hardware "over the wall" to the SW engineers.

I had come from a very small company and working like this made no sense to me. After a particularly annoying discovery I was talking to one of the EE's and he explained it to me. "You see, the guy who designed that controller knows nothing about software. He just has a list of specs to meet, and he gets a processor, wires a bunch of peripherals to it, and releases a circuit board. If you're lucky, the SW guy who sat in the design reviews made sure to get a good enough processor to make your job easier. If not, you're SOL because as long as the hardware meets all the requirements they gave him, no one is going to want to change anything."

In this case, the engineer was incentivized to save a whopping $0.50 on a machine that cost around $2,000 to build. And for lack of that $.50 part, software spent hundreds of hours adding code to find a way to implement the behavior that it would have provided. Not to mention all the Test hours needed to verify that it worked as expected.

Paradoxically, I also saw the opposite behavior on the same project: people adding extremely complex hardware to solve simple problems because the company paid very well for patents, so of course everyone had an incentive to produce patentable designs.

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