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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

asia.nikkei.com

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

#271

Post by rurban »

notlukesky wrote: post #2

Software with a battery pack (and no headache of a drivetrain). Luckily for Tesla, most of the other car companies disdain software engineering and see it beneath them and mechanical engineering. My friend had sold his software company to BMW in 2008 and they didn’t even ask him to join BMW. Even more shocking they used the same software for over ten years with NO upgrades and updates.

You are misleaded. VW sees itself as mainly software company now. They don't do engines nor drivetrains, but they do heavy SW. This way they think they can control the technicians.

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

#272

Post by AtlasBarfed »

pacaro wrote: post #131

It feels to me like there is a symmetry of arrogance here. Traditional car companies are finding that making an electric car is hard (emphasis on electric) Tesla is finding that making an electric car is hard (emphasis on car)

My view of the economics is that most recently Tesla knows how to make a car. The battery pack is still more expensive than an ICE drivetrain, but that is a matter of time.

My view of that is based on the rapid construction of the China gigafactory, and the sooner-than-expected Model Y deliveries.

The only company with proper prioritization of EV development outside of Tesla is VW. GM would be next, but they still are going too slow and clearly don't have full C-level executive buyin

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

#273

Post by weregiraffe »

rurban wrote: post #271
notlukesky wrote: post #2

Software with a battery pack (and no headache of a drivetrain). Luckily for Tesla, most of the other car companies disdain software engineering and see it beneath them and mechanical engineering. My friend had sold his software company to BMW in 2008 and they didn’t even ask him to join BMW. Even more shocking they used the same software for over ten years with NO upgrades and updates.

You are misleaded. VW sees itself as mainly software company now. They don't do engines nor drivetrains, but they do heavy SW. This way they think they can control the technicians.

> VW sees itself as mainly software company now.

Emission-cheating software?

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

#274

Post by crocodiletears »

Kirby64 wrote: post #262
ciconia wrote: post #6

I'd really like to see a simple EV for a change. No screens, no AI, no Autopilot, just a 5-seat vehicle with a reasonable range (400+ km) and AC.

What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper? It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market has spoken and folks want more infotainment/screens/AI/whatever, so it seems that type of vehicle is definitely going to become less and less common.

I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages

Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down.

If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating it OTA, I don't doubt that their liability with respect to whatever you do to your car increases significantly.

Depending on how you like to drive, and where you drive, not fighting the smart driver 'assist' features of vehicles could be a feature as well. I read a commenter on HN some time ago about GPS-assisted headlamps preventing them from providing much needed illumination to something (wrecked vehicle, iirc) off the side of the road.

Personally, I've played enough Assassin's Creed and GTA to know I wouldn't trust a smart system to predict my intent in a life/death scenario.

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

#275

Post by LyndsySimon »

KaiserPro wrote: post #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…

> Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this.

Perhaps ironically, Kia has really upped their game in the past few years, to the point where I'd argue they aren't a good example for this comparison.

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

#276

Post by dmode »

t0mas88 wrote: post #191

This feels very much like a marketing fluff piece pushed by Tesla PR. Take this gem: "Young companies like Tesla, on the other hand, are not shackled to suppliers and are free to pursue the best technologies available." Try the automated windscreen wipers on any big car brand, they're mostly made by Bosch and they work, even on a 15 year old car. Then Tesla came along with their own approach, guess what, they didn't…

I used to be a BMW driver and then have been driving a model S for 4 years. I would say I receive WAY more things from Tesla that I ever did from BMW. My car today is actually better than the one I bought 4 years back. I remember when I bought my X5, the map was outdated the minute I stepped out of the dealer lot and needed a $200 CD based upgrade. BMW never improved a single feature in 4 years of ownership. The voice recognition sucked, the driver assistant didn't improve beyond basics, acceleration, efficiency didn't change, no new infotainment features were added etc etc. The story is fluff, but Tesla provides so much more to its customers than traditional branda

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

#277

Post by vardump »

t0mas88 wrote: post #191

This feels very much like a marketing fluff piece pushed by Tesla PR. Take this gem: "Young companies like Tesla, on the other hand, are not shackled to suppliers and are free to pursue the best technologies available." Try the automated windscreen wipers on any big car brand, they're mostly made by Bosch and they work, even on a 15 year old car. Then Tesla came along with their own approach, guess what, they didn't…

> Because I noticed I was accepting a lot of things from them that I would never have from BMW or Audi.

Could you elaborate a bit, please? I'd like to know what I'd miss if I chose Tesla.

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

#278

Post by Kirby64 »

crocodiletears wrote: post #274
Kirby64 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What advantages are you looking to get for a super stripped down EV? Less potential maintenance cost? Cheaper? It's pretty clear for more car buyers the market has spoken and folks want more infotainment/screens/AI/whatever, so it seems that type of vehicle is definitely going to become less and less common.

I don't think there are any strict advantages to such an EV with respect to day-to-day use. In fact, there are probably some disadvantages Mantainability is a plus. But the big feature would be not worrying about your car getting remotely bricked for some arbitrary reason, or losing some essential function because your OEM's servers are down. If a company is capable of constantly monitoring your machine, and updating…

If you really want to remove the 'big corp spying on you' aspect of Teslas, you can always pull the SIM card or ask for the non-SIM version.

It's apparently an off-menu option, but you can request one without a SIM card, so effectively all the cell network stuff is disabled. Then, if you are worried about updates bricking something... just don't update it and never connect it to the WiFi? Seems like that gets you most of the way there.

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

#279

Post by blacklion »

tyfon wrote: post #81
blacklion wrote: post #17

> 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.

No, the "self driving computer" is independent and it actually runs itself in parallel for redundancy and error checking. The infotainment system runs a custom linux distribution running on ARM (MCU1) or intel atom (MCU2). They talk to each other but they are independent.

Question is, how do they talk? For example, if they have shared memory on same bus, it is BAAAAAD.

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

#280

Post by blacklion »

ec109685 wrote: post #83
blacklion wrote: post #17

> 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.

Auto pilot still works when you restart the infotainment and display system (holding two buttons on the steering wheel down), so the systems aren’t powered by the same OS.

It is only half of the story. I was almost sure, that ECU and Infotaiment runs on different CPUs under different OSes. Question is, what do they share? Same bus? Some memory area? Or only something like I2C?

I could imagine situation, when hacked infotaiment system overloads power supply, and if power supply is shared, it takes down ECU too, for example.

I hope, Tesla's engineers better than that.

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