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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

#221

Post by ryacko »

dmitriid wrote: post #209
ryacko wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The cars are already modular. Internally. There are up to 150 different CPUs (meaning different modules) inside a modern car. All from different manufacturers. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR

Cars are modular, but manufactures want to abolish the aftermarket like Apple.

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

#222

Post by b112 »

elbrian wrote: post #207
Spare_account wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which TV? It has adverts in the system menus? Also, how did you block it from displaying them? Is it completely offline or maybe you're using a pihole?

2019 model-year Samsung QLED sets come with ads baked into the UI.

Good grief! Thank you for the heads up, I'll make sure to steer completely clear of Samsung TVs, at a minimum.

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

#223

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

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…

I immediately searched about this connection, and saw a PDF announcement from 2017 where AutoSAR announced that VW was going to start using their latest, greatest version. I can only assume now that either VW found that it just wasn't up to the task of future proofing the platform, or they're trying to negotiate better deals in the AutoSAR space. (I know very little about this market.)

What's truly scary to me is that VW says they'll need 5-10 THOUSAND people working on this. Given that they're starting with Linux/Android, and have all the mature tooling in that space, why should it take that many people to adapt it to a car? That seems excessive.

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

#224

Post by taneq »

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?

Also they know the incredible effort that goes into keeping the grid synchronized and that if any generator is out by any significant fraction of a waveform then a few fast oven clocks are the least of their problems.

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

#225

Post by taneq »

bdamm wrote: post #147
asdfman123 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But often times the "good reason" is that the engineer can quietly solve a problem in their cubicle without fighting an epic political battle that affects multiple departments. From that engineer's perspective, it's a perfectly rational choice. And that engineer who writes code might be a brilliant engineer and competent coder, but they just haven't been on many software projects before and they don't see how damning…

As a software guy I have to point out that often software "engineers" overbuild and abstract the wrong stuff, doing stupid things like making everything a layer. There is way more bad code written by professional software engineers than by EEs, who tend to be more results oriented.

I partly agree, but also, have you seen EE code (from EEs who are not also software devs)? It's not terrible in a "uses php instead of lambdas", it's terrible in a "absolutely zero consistency in variable naming, indentation, or in fact anything, also any comments will consist entirely of broken code or cryptic half-words."

I deal with this stuff semi-regularly in my day job and wow.

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

#226

Post by MegaButts »

TN1ck wrote: post #205
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 because you mentioned smart TVs - I had the same opinion, but was then blown away by my new LG OLED TV. It's so freaking fast with Netflix / Prime / YouTube and the UX is really well made (others are probably similar by now). For now I'm really happy with it and I can't see how the software will detoriate the TV so much in the future, that it I will hate the smart stuff.

I adore my LG OLED TV. I cannot recommend them enough.

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

#227

Post by orf »

weinzierl wrote: post #206
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 fact that its leadership consists entirely of charlatans is self-evident. Charlatans maybe but the real problem is that they are old men with ballpoint pens who proudly claim that they have "petrol in their blood" . The real tragedy is that most German automotive managers have no clue about the complexity of modern software and I'd bet most of them would answer the question: "What is more complex, the mechanics…

I disagree. A lot of large German auto companies are opening tech hubs here in Lisbon, and from what I’ve heard after speaking to people who work there is that the company is well aware they know absolutely nothing about software and are years behind.

So they said screw it, let’s give engineers/hubs freedom to work with whatever technologies they feel would be best, structure themselves and control their output without micromanagement from above. Basically copy some trendy companies and see what happens.

One of the hubs adopted extreme programming, which I’m not sure about but perhaps has value in their industry. But all in all from what I’ve heard is it’s working well.

There is also a lot of non consumer facing software that compliments a car line. That all needs development and maintenance.

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

#228

Post by Gibbon1 »

castratikron wrote: post #88
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'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 cos…

> I was asked how much the log was "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware.

You answer that question with a question, how much is a one month delay in shipping worth to you?

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

#229

Post by tonyarkles »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #203
jobu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have a car with EFI and it's 28 years old. We can the best of both worlds. Simple and reliable electronics, instead of a full computer running Android.

I’ve got a 91 Ranger (EFI) kicking around here and have the exact same experience. It has been nothing but reliable in the last 5 years I’ve had it. A couple small mechanical things that had to get changed, but electronically there has been zero complaints.

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

#230

Post by photojosh »

PorterDuff wrote: post #175
jobu wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dese…

> The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.

My car-loving boss just got a hybrid RAV4, and he absolutely loves it; combines the best features of both with (presumably) the only downside of lower maintenance (but even then there's less wear-and-tear on the ICE side). I suspect we will see quite a slow, gradual transition through hybrids to battery-only.

Of course, this is Australia (and I'd imagine similar in the US and Canada) where it's more common to drive long distances.

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