Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Seriously... it’s just some extra pixels?! The have picked cheap components, plain and simple.
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
#52> The computer powers the cars' self-driving capabilities as well as their advanced in-car "infotainment" system. Now I'm scared. I hope it is mistake of Nikkei and these two subsystems doesn't have anything in common, including power supplies.
Yep to put it a different way they seem to be saying that having Spotify running on the same ECU as the driving AI is what puts them 6 years ahead.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#53Note 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.
It’s still a big deal to the wider auto industry to have an entire supply chain disrupted. Even if that doesn’t mean much to the end consumer when the big car companies switch to off the shelf computing.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#54Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...
Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories.
Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#55My 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.
It has been burned, but the solution was to control the temperature of the car, not be behind by 10 years. Both have pros and cons.
It just usually sucks to pay a lot of money for a car that's so far behind all the cheap devices that I have.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#56>One stunned engineer from a major Japanese automaker examined the computer and declared, "We cannot do it." Ouch
Read further. It roughly translates to "we can't do it because we already invested in a different supply chain strategy that comes with considerable advantages".
Latecomer advantages.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#57The doubt is whether stopping reading the article at: >It could end the auto industry supply chain as we know it. or just on pargraph later at: >One stunned engineer from a major Japanese automaker examined the computer and declared, "We cannot do it."
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Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#58In other words, Tesla teardown finds remote bricking capability 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW. In seriousness, it's no surprise that older vendors will incrementally upgrade their hardware and work with suppliers rather than starting from scratch and obsoleting all suppliers. Likewise, I assume $startup_du_jour has a tech stack "6 years ahead" (whatever that means) of more established players. edit: s/de jure/du jou…
I agree, the article focuses on the "they built their own AI chip" thing a bit too much for my taste. It also doesn't explain why reducing the number of ECUs would upset supply chains to the degree claimed, there is a lot of other stuff that goes into making a car.
Off-topic, but I think you meant "du jour" (of the day) instead of "de jure" (by law) :)
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#59Note 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.
I think they could easily piss off a lot of people, if it was important for the company.
What they can't do is become another kind of organization.
If new nimble competitors working in a new way appear, old companies, with vastly more money but a settled bureaucracy, just slowly die, rather than adapt.
Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
#60Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...
Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories. Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.
Both problems could be solved with money, but according to the article it seems the giants are refusing to move due to historical relationships (which tesla does not have).