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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

#191

Post by detaro »

incanus77 wrote: post #159
Zhenya wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and Google services are 2 different things. 1 is an opensource OS, the other is proprietary services.

Want to run Google Maps on this system? You must use Google services as a whole. Don’t want to? Look up the numbers on how many global providers of maps data there are...

Buying map data is not a problem for a big car manufacturer. They already have their partners for that, they sometimes partially own those partners, and they will port to whatever platform chosen. Google is the weird one in that case, who insist on selling online services, is from what I've heard generally unwilling to commit to long-term setups, ...

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

#192

Post by anamexis »

magduf wrote: post #174
ivanhoe wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 accur…

There was a really interesting anomaly last year where, due to a political dispute, Serbia and Kosovo refused to synchronize their grids, causing the entire European grid to drop from 50 Hz to 49.996 Hz, in turn causing grid-based clocks to run 6 minutes slow by the time the issue was resolved. [1]

I don't disagree with you that grid frequencies are generally very accurate and they are a practical clock source for cheap clocks, I just found that interesting.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/serbia-kosovo-energy/serbia-...

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

#193

Post by Zhenya »

incanus77 wrote: post #159
Zhenya wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android and Google services are 2 different things. 1 is an opensource OS, the other is proprietary services.

Want to run Google Maps on this system? You must use Google services as a whole. Don’t want to? Look up the numbers on how many global providers of maps data there are...

Correct. VW is talking about the platform, not Google maps.

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

#194

Post by AJ007 »

castratikron wrote: post #183
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…

>Legacy company announces that they'll bring a competing solution to market, promising investors that they'll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39 models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase product support infrastructure. They're starting today and promise to launch in 12 months. Yup. Sometimes the only way to make real progress is to burn it all down and start over.

The big red flag is when companies pre-announce products that will allegedly be released, long before they are real, but well past the due date they should have already been on the market. This whole thing also sounds a lot like VW’s electric vehicle promises.

Why do they do this? Because executives pay is tied to stock price and lots of things can fall apart really fast if the companies cost of capital skyrockets.

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

#195

Post by losteric »

hobofan wrote: post #184
bo1024 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, especially on the second paragraph - just like how 'smart' TVs ship a long-lasting high quality panel with an obsolete/user-hostile operating system. On the first paragraph, I thought I'd read this battle is mostly lost already, not with respect to Android, but car software in general is far more intertwined and less robust than you'd think prudent.

> just like how 'smart' TVs ship a long-lasting high quality panel with an obsolete/user-hostile operating system Who cares? Just ignore the "smart" part, don't give it any Internet access and handle the smart part yourself via so HDMI dongle like a Chromecast.

You're still paying for the garbage you don't use

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

#196

Post by ytwySXpMbS »

hobofan wrote: post #184
bo1024 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree, especially on the second paragraph - just like how 'smart' TVs ship a long-lasting high quality panel with an obsolete/user-hostile operating system. On the first paragraph, I thought I'd read this battle is mostly lost already, not with respect to Android, but car software in general is far more intertwined and less robust than you'd think prudent.

> just like how 'smart' TVs ship a long-lasting high quality panel with an obsolete/user-hostile operating system Who cares? Just ignore the "smart" part, don't give it any Internet access and handle the smart part yourself via so HDMI dongle like a Chromecast.

It can be quite hard to ignore the smart part. For example, my TV can't even display the input selection menu properly. It moves about as it tries to load an ad, then can't.

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

#197

Post by stefanoco »

molteanu wrote: post #124
stefanoco wrote: post #106

My two cents: - I'm asking myself why there's no reference to Autosar ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR ) which is not an operating system (whatever this means in this context), but yelds a sort of a standard architecture in the car and among third parties. It's a real mess, but it works in this sense. - rumors exist about VW and other manufacturers pushing for using ADA (more specifically Spark), anyone aware…

Yes, it is a mess. At over 15.000 pages, AUTOSAR specifies not general utilities, libraries, battle tested data structures used in the automotive field or whatnot, but actual automotive components that in theory can be developed independently and combined to build the whole car. XML being the medium of choice for this standardization doesn't help either. You're left with tools upon tools that modify XML files and gen…

> Anyway, not mentioning AUTOSAR might be a sign that its days are numbered, perhaps?

I'd like but it doesn't seem so. We're having pending requests for working on AUTOSAR-based software, and a few are for brand new car models. Different opinion regarding EV: here I'm not aware of any single AUTOSAR based element but I may be wrong.

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

#200

Post by qznc »

hobofan wrote: post #33
codeulike wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one said they were all engineers.

> So 10,000 coders You did. Sure "coder" != "engineer", though that's the closest job title that companies are using.

You can be a {system,function,requirements,hardware,electrical} engineer without producing code.
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