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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

#171

Post by r00fus »

magduf wrote: post #166
spanktheuser wrote: post #152

I'm also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the same thing. From my understanding it's unlikely to succeed because manufacturers view suppliers as commodity producers of components they find boring like brakes, steering systems, sensors, transmissions, safety systems, fuel pumps, etc. Not as anything resembling a true partner. Not to mention that it would require competitors to collaborate…

>That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries? This is a great post, but it could really use a list of actual examples from other industries.

Pre-Apple cell phones?

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

#172

Post by ryacko »

spanktheuser wrote: post #152

I'm also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the same thing. From my understanding it's unlikely to succeed because manufacturers view suppliers as commodity producers of components they find boring like brakes, steering systems, sensors, transmissions, safety systems, fuel pumps, etc. Not as anything resembling a true partner. Not to mention that it would require competitors to collaborate…

The irony though is if they allowed their cars to be modular, they would be able to just mount a tablet flashed with their own operating system.

This might prevent them from operating a wide variety of controls from the entertainment dash though.

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

#173

Post by PorterDuff »

alexis_fr wrote: post #128
PorterDuff wrote: post #105

It's just my own ignorance speaking (probably), but I can't say that I like the idea of Android getting near/intertwined with mission critical systems. Hopefully 'infotainment' implies something that is well clear of 'stopping' and the like...although I'd just as soon that they dropped the 'tainment' part and simply provided an interface for diagnostics, HVAC, &tc. What bugs me the most about the 'tainment' part is t…

The same was probably said 15 years ago about the computerization of the car engine and their rapid deprecation. Did the average lifespan of a car decrease since then? How ridiculous is it to drive a 4WD into the desert, full of electronics that can’t be repaired and where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America... So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 1…

"where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America..."

that assumes that the failed part is even available.

I'd sure be irritated to have the controller board for a Cadillac XLR convertible top fail and have to shop junk yards, no doubt the wrecking yards are hip to small things of value that they can store on a shelf somewhere.

To be fair, I know more than one purchasing guy, usually in boutique electronic product companies, who spend a fair amount of their time tracking down obsoleted parts on eBay to repair or build one last batch of a metal box with circuit boards inside. It's just the nature of modern times I guess, but luckily we can often pick the era we want to live in in our personal lives.

I just need to stock up on old Thinkpads, avoid home automation, and carefully choose any car purchases.

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

#174

Post by magduf »

ivanhoe wrote: post #98
taneq wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And the same applies for people criticizing the fields they know little about. I'm pretty sure that not all electrical engineers in the world are idiots and that there's a solid reason why they've chosen the grid frequency as a standard way of doing it. One thing that comes to mind is that the crystal oscillators frequency is very temperature sensitive, so probably not ideal solution for using in ovens?

It's because of cost and because grid power is generally very accurate (at least in the US). No one cares if their oven clock loses 10 seconds per year, and "white goods" (appliances) are generally designed to minimize costs as much as possible. The electronics in a typical oven are very simple, and using the power line as a frequency reference is very easy and cheap to do.

Also, crystal oscillators aren't that accurate. You can make them more accurate by heating them to a given temperature, but this is something only done in expensive test & measurement equipment.

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

#175

Post by PorterDuff »

jobu wrote: post #158
alexis_fr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same was probably said 15 years ago about the computerization of the car engine and their rapid deprecation. Did the average lifespan of a car decrease since then? How ridiculous is it to drive a 4WD into the desert, full of electronics that can’t be repaired and where a single chip can cost 300$ and has to be shipped from mainland America... So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 1…

There has to be a balance. Electronic fuel injection (EFI) is far more reliable and adaptable than even the best carburetors. Electronic safety systems may have reduced some of the longevity of a vehicle, but the alternative is higher chance of injury or death.

I think that the EFI argument is something of a red herring, no one is suggesting a return to the Quadrajet.

OTOH, EFI can be done as a modular (and replaceable) product rather than as part of monolithic whole-vehicle design, but that last bit of goodness or regulatory need is likely not met.

I just think of it all as being Peak ICE. The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.

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

#176

Post by magduf »

oblio wrote: post #90
jacquesm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Well, you do know that the newspaper isn't written by a single person, but by a large team, so I guess the hope is that the journalists who wrote articles about far-off Palestine were more competent than the journalist trying to write an article about physics.

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

#177

Post by magduf »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #25
Etheryte wrote: post #7

The key takeaway for me here is that they want to build an Android-based OS that will run both user applications and, say, your traction control on the same stack. Given the very mixed history of Android security, updates, and more, I simply can't see how this would end well.

I greatly look forward to being able to root any 10yo car and put the traction control in "go forward no matter what" mode rather than "we're cutting throttle so the CVs can outlast the warranty" mode. That said, per the article it sounds like android is just for the infotainment system, not the actual drive-train. Edit: Since I'm apparently I'm so wrong does anyone want to tell me why?

>Since I'm apparently I'm so wrong does anyone want to tell me why?

Maybe you should explain why you want to break CV joints so badly.

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

#178

Post by magduf »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #153
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…

There have been significant mechanical improvements under the hood. Dual clutch transmission enabling things like (very quick) paddle shifting has trickled into a lot of cars over the last decade. Gasoline Direct Injection has also seen rapid adoption. Hybrids were a small niche not too long ago, let alone EVs. Turbos seem a lot more common as well.

Dual-clutch transmissions have had a lot of reliability problems, and not many automakers actually use them. CVTs are probably used much more often.

GDI on the other hand has basically taken over; I doubt there's any new gasoline car sold without it now.

Hybrids haven't been doing well, outside of the Prius. EVs are getting more adoption now than hybrids. The problem with hybrids is the cost: you have a gas engine plus a big battery pack and motor, basically two powertrains in one vehicle.

Turbos however have become very, very common as everyone is downsizing engines and using turbos to get more power, while improving fuel economy.

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

#179

Post by tonyedgecombe »

codeulike wrote: post #15
skc wrote: post #13

And by new they really mean Linux, right?

Yep and the source code will be a printout in the trunk.

I was quite surprised when my new oven came with a sheet of paper listing all the open source software.

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

#180

Post by theseadroid »

asdfman123 wrote: post #120
dognotdog wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think you described exactly why writing good software is hard. Not because writing good software is an intractable problem, but because politics often takes precedence over it. In the business world there is a lot of room for BS so people get away with it. But in software, it can doom a project.

Writing large scale software is more of an organizational/social problem rather than an engineering problem.
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