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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#41

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

-Toyota is rather conservative with regards to new technology, which IMHO is part of the reason they tend to score very well on all kinds of reliability barometers.

(An almost fanatical devotion to quality and process control being another major factor!)

Chances are you will still be able to buy that entertainment screen in 15-20 years' time.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#42

Note that the "we cannot do it" quote is not referring to the technology itself, but rather to the fact that to adopt Tesla's pattern, the legacy auto companies would need to ditch their supply chains. That's not something they can do without pissing off a lot of people.

The answer to this, I would think, would be to have a small part of the company whose soul purpose is to disrupt the larger company. Then Toyota and VW might have built Tesla in house without supply chain worries. When their in-house Tesla-like company proved a success, they could reasonably afford to upend their old supply chain: self-disruption.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#43

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

My car has a monochrome segmented LCD and physical controls that I can manipulate without looking. My friend’s low res color touch LCD is bad enough, I just know the people building these UIs now unconstrained by the physical DPI would include features that require long careful looks in order to resolve.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#44
post #39

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

I bet your C-HR didn't cost +$40,000.

£35,000... so yeah, it did

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#45

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

How often do you replace your phone? How often do you replace your car?

That works the other direction - because of this reason, cars need to have high-end components (in e.g. display resolution) in order to be future proof; because if your phone resolution is horribly obsolete you just replace the phone, but if your car built-in screen is horribly obsolete, then you're still stuck with it. It's unacceptable for a brand new car to use obsolete tech because it won't be replaced any time soon.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#46
post #13

Tight control of the hardware and software reminds me of Apple.

With Larry Ellison on the board it reminds me of Oracle.

Wait, Ellison is on the board of Tesla? That's one good reason to hate the company I guess.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#47
post #12

6 years ahead electronics here means AI ASICs. I thought that was weird, I know Toyota cars have radar and I’m not sure about Teslas. IMO as an armchair observer the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this. Personally, if I were to buy another car (and hopefully I don’t have to any time soon) I’d want the processing electronics to be off the shelf not weird custom stuff that’s going to have all kinds of…

> the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this.

8 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 1 forward-facing radar.[0]

[0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#48
This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind.

Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up.

Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect.

Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.

Its not the isolated parts of a car that makes it good, its the whole package. (yes that works both ways. )

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#49

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

Automotive grade components have to survive greater temperature extremes and vibration for 10+ years. Disposable consumer products don't operate in the same sphere. Tesla has been burned by using consumer grade screens.

This used to be a good excuse, but somehow it starts to ring hollow. Ipads are as near indestructible as any hardware I've seen - drop'em, scratch'em, give'em to toddlers to play with. By comparison a car screen kinda lives a sheltered life.
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