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Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

arstechnica.com

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Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#81

Post by taneq »

mrtksn wrote: post #76
castratikron wrote: post #60

>some models simply won't run if the infotainment system is broken; the navigation GPS provides the vehicle's master time counter, and without that, the powertrain won't function :O

This sounds like a swoftware written by an oldschool electrical engineer or something. I mean, in electromechanical systems that do not have computers, engineers find interesting ways to do more advanced things. For example, ovens with clocks keep track of time through the grid frequency and if the grid frequency changes, the clocks diverge too.

Any time you get cross-disciplinary stuff done by people significantly lacking in experience in one of the disciplines, you get stuff like this. Programmer art (shudder), artist code (double shudder), EE software, software engineer circuit board layout, mechanical engineer wiring... Smart people will figure something out but it always looks janky to specialists in the figured-out field.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#82

Post by oblio »

saiya-jin wrote: post #74
vgoh1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly disagree that automotive progress, on the mechanical side, has slowed down. The ride quality, handling, fit and finish, noise & vibe, chassis rigidity, fuel economy, reliability, have all been improving. Go back 10 years, go back 10 years before that, etc., and you will see incremental improvements. Beyond that, look at how much more "stuff" comes in cars today, but for the same amount of money. That…

Yeah, I cry every time I have to use some cheaper new rental car compared to my 15 year old bmw 3-series (not even m-series, just regular one with diesel engine on top of that). Sluggish, puddy garbage of an experience compared to pure joy I can experience with my own. I would say improvements were done to make things more cost-effective to increase margins, but not necessarily better cars per se. Other things are wi…

1. Making things more accessible is not a crime, instead it's one of the biggest enablers of our age. See Henry Ford and Ford Model T.

2. Compare apples to apples. How does a new BMW 3-Series compare to your 15 year old one? My guess is, it probably compares favorably.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#83

Post by pingyong »

taneq wrote: post #81
mrtksn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a swoftware written by an oldschool electrical engineer or something. I mean, in electromechanical systems that do not have computers, engineers find interesting ways to do more advanced things. For example, ovens with clocks keep track of time through the grid frequency and if the grid frequency changes, the clocks diverge too.

Any time you get cross-disciplinary stuff done by people significantly lacking in experience in one of the disciplines, you get stuff like this. Programmer art (shudder), artist code (double shudder), EE software, software engineer circuit board layout, mechanical engineer wiring... Smart people will figure something out but it always looks janky to specialists in the figured-out field.

Even just between different SE fields this can happen to a degree. Let a C++ programmer write a website with PHP and Javascript - it will probably work, but I'd guess for a web dev the code would look a quite weird.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#85

Post by dx034 »

solidr53 wrote: post #22
skc wrote: post #13

And by new they really mean Linux, right?

The article mentions they will use Android as the base platform. > Senger also revealed that VW Group will be using Android for future versions of the MIB infotainment platform, in large part because of the robust third-party app ecosystem with that OS versus Linux. Huh? Android is running on a modified linux kernel. But I get what he means...

Android for the infotainment system, not necessarily the whole car. I'm not sure if they'll base everything off Android.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#86

Post by aeyes »

oblio wrote: post #82
saiya-jin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I cry every time I have to use some cheaper new rental car compared to my 15 year old bmw 3-series (not even m-series, just regular one with diesel engine on top of that). Sluggish, puddy garbage of an experience compared to pure joy I can experience with my own. I would say improvements were done to make things more cost-effective to increase margins, but not necessarily better cars per se. Other things are wi…

1. Making things more accessible is not a crime, instead it's one of the biggest enablers of our age. See Henry Ford and Ford Model T. 2. Compare apples to apples. How does a new BMW 3-Series compare to your 15 year old one? My guess is, it probably compares favorably.

Depends on what you are looking for.

In a new 3-Series you can turn the steering wheel with your index finger, there is no manual transmission, you hear fake engine noise. The 15 year old car offers a completely different driving experience and he might prefer it over the bland, comfortable new car.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#87

Post by grecy »

vgoh1 wrote: post #20
LeonM wrote: post #6

I think this is a result of automotive technical progress slowing down. And I don't mean that in a bad way. For the past 100 years, we have been developing better and better cars, with both breakthroughs and incremental improvements in the drivetrain, safety, comfort, reliability, etc. Now though, cars are consolidating. Most car companies only have a handful of 'platforms' on which they build various models. For exa…

I wholeheartedly disagree that automotive progress, on the mechanical side, has slowed down. The ride quality, handling, fit and finish, noise & vibe, chassis rigidity, fuel economy, reliability, have all been improving. Go back 10 years, go back 10 years before that, etc., and you will see incremental improvements. Beyond that, look at how much more "stuff" comes in cars today, but for the same amount of money. That…

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. haha

Go back to a BMW of 1990, and it's not that much different from a new car today. Fuel injection, air bags, ABS. Internal combustion engine, exhaust, radiator, transmission. etc. etc.

Heck, even back then it was perfectly normal for a car to get better than 10L/100km (23.5mpg)

There have been incremental improvements for sure, but in all honesty it's the same thing, just tweaked a little.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#88

Post by castratikron »

dognotdog wrote: post #77
castratikron wrote: post #60

>some models simply won't run if the infotainment system is broken; the navigation GPS provides the vehicle's master time counter, and without that, the powertrain won't function :O

Balkanization is about right. In my experience developing driver assistance systems, there are enormous efforts spent on political turf wars instead of proper design and engineering. This is not surprising, as the team structures, at least as of a few years ago, were traditionally set up with tradtional manufactirng in mind, around parts and control modules, while the functionality exploded (within 1 or 2 generation…

I've worked in that environment before. It doesn't help when upper management has no software or hardware background whatsoever (e.g. MBA or "sales" or whatever) and in that case the only way they see things is in terms of dollars.

One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on the board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#89

Post by PorterDuff »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #28
LeonM wrote: post #6

I think this is a result of automotive technical progress slowing down. And I don't mean that in a bad way. For the past 100 years, we have been developing better and better cars, with both breakthroughs and incremental improvements in the drivetrain, safety, comfort, reliability, etc. Now though, cars are consolidating. Most car companies only have a handful of 'platforms' on which they build various models. For exa…

Volvo appear to have 3 main engines and multiple versions of the same engine. And I suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war designs the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's

" Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's"

...and not used since 2003. Honestly, it's probably best to view an engine family like this as a form factor, not a design. It isn't like there were any 1955 parts in a 2000 engine, but the interconnects are (mostly) the same. Generally, any 90 degree V8 with a cam in the block is going to be the 'same', designers have pretty much standardized on just a few layouts.

An invariant SBC is like saying disk drives haven't evolved if they use the same mounting points and cabling/logic standards.

Re: Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system

#90

Post by oblio »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
Onanymous wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers might well be aware but not the managers who make decisions

Contrary to popular belief most managers in industry are not 100% clueless. No manager in a car company would be so incompetent that they would off-load time critical functions to a phone. My money would be on incompetence of the writer long before I'd suspect the people on the other side of the interview. I've been through a couple of those myself, it is always very interesting to see how your words come out once th…

On top of that, there's also this funny thing aspect: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann#Quotes_about_...

> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

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