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Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

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Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#501
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be, but it wins because it's vastly better than all the alternatives, except tesla or a few other leading 'new car companies' like rivian.

It’s not as good as my dumb bmw “connected drive” from 5 years ago.

Is that why BMW is integrating Android Automotive?

https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T040187...

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#502
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I won't engage with "what people actually want" except to point to sales figures, I guess. I'd say that a person's first purchase of a Tesla only signals what they think they want. If they buy another one after the first then I'd agree it is actually what they want, or at least they like the other benefits of the Tesla enough to outweigh anything they don't like. I believe I fully understand the new paradigm. I had…

> If they buy another one after the first then I'd agree it is actually what they want Tesla is, I believe (and I'm too lazy[2] to try to look up where I read this) the most repurchased brand on the market today. The used market for these cars is literally priced above new vehicles[1]! Were you really not aware? Does that maybe change your opinion? [1] Which is to say, on balance Tesla owners won't sell their cars ev…

That's all great information for the case that people love their Teslas, I have no doubt about that. I'm still not convinced people are rebuying Tesla's because they prefer touchscreens over tactile buttons though. I believe there are plenty of factors that go into that loyalty decision. I'm sure some people do prefer touchscreens, and some don't -- but we don't know what that breakdown is.

This study just came out: https://www.vibilagare.se/nyheter/physical-buttons-outperfor...

The study adds another variable to the discussion -- even if users prefer touchscreens, touchscreens are less safe than real buttons.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for context, I'm in automotive on the FAANG side and work closely with people at traditional companies. There's some misunderstandings here. For one thing, there are obviously skilled people working at every salary level. What you're missing is that this is largely irrelevant. Relative compensation (in software) is a shockingly good proxy for all the associated support and people investments to support them. Emplo…

> OEMs are significantly less invested in their developers and the quality of the software they produce than any FAANG. We must be using different FAANG software because the ones I use on a daily basis are slow and buggy as all hell. The last few versions of macOS/iOS have been atrocious. Every version of CarPlay I've used has bugs. Amazon apps are full of glitches. Compare that to developing engine ECU software whic…

I think you’re conflating the UI of Amazon with the more difficult problem of getting a large distributed system to work at scale.

Conversely, if your ECU has minor glitches, will you notice? Unless it results in catastrophic failure, you will not even know if happens to result in the occasional 0.1 mpg increase in consumption.

And I’m sure VW and the other companies put a lot of resources into software engineering the exhaust emissions defeat workaround.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#504
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the general online sentiment, it's important to realize that the average American makes an absurd amount of money compared to their global peers. Even adjusting for PPP and other factors, average disposable household income for the US - a nation of 340M people - blows the doors off Luxembourg, Switzerland, Norway, etc. [1]. What's more though, median disposable income per capita ALSO places the US at the very…

That “adjustment” is really tricky to do convincingly. I’ve been trying to compare an offer in the US and one in Montreal. The raw number for the US blows Canada out of the water, obviously, but adding in healthcare and childcare really starts to close the gap. That’s at least sort of calculable, especially if you ignore their option values, but it’s harder to price in other intangibles, like living somewhere walkabl…

Kingwood is the closest thing, because you can at least go for a nice nature walk or have your kids safely bike to school, but there is zero 'walk to the corner store' infrastructure. It's a shame becausse my mother grew up in a much more walkable houston but now this was the best neighborhood she could retire in.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So for context, I'm in automotive on the FAANG side and work closely with people at traditional companies. There's some misunderstandings here. For one thing, there are obviously skilled people working at every salary level. What you're missing is that this is largely irrelevant. Relative compensation (in software) is a shockingly good proxy for all the associated support and people investments to support them. Emplo…

> OEMs are significantly less invested in their developers and the quality of the software they produce than any FAANG. We must be using different FAANG software because the ones I use on a daily basis are slow and buggy as all hell. The last few versions of macOS/iOS have been atrocious. Every version of CarPlay I've used has bugs. Amazon apps are full of glitches. Compare that to developing engine ECU software whic…

Want to know something terrifying? ECU code is often nearly as sloppily written as that JavaScript. They follow MISRA and usually have a couple "QA" teams to catch the most egregious errors of course, but the overall quality is eerily similar to what you'd get if half the team came straight out of a time machine from 1995. I've had to give informational sessions on why boot systems should have redundancy and what undefined behavior is, for example.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, in the industry Euro engineers are considered to be generally high quality and underpaid. A good value. The danger being there are awful ones too that are hard to fire. In my experience Euro devs are really good though if you interview well. Individual contributors from Europe are generally a great value. Euro managers however are generally thought to be of extremely low quality and unreliable as well as 20-30 y…

Sad to hear. What differences did you notice?

You see it everywhere but in general I see a lot of superficiality in Euro managers. They love to have direct reports, but because they need them but because it makes them feel more official. This is more frequent in Euro in my experience.

You don't see outside the box thinking as much. Very vanilla approaches to things that are generally dated approaches. A culture that lacks innovation.

You see a bit of gaming the system to meet KPI goals. Things that are probably not useful to the company but help them hit a defined goal.

Just not very aggressive in their approach to the business. A very conservative business culture that doesn't really understand scale and is obsessed with throwing lots of bodies at a problem rather than finding novel and innovative approaches.

Insistence that "this won't work here" when that's just not generally true. It's that they don't understand why the approach works and are stuck in older approaches to things that are not relevant to todays business world.

Secretive and inward looking.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#507

FWIW Ford was hiring around this area (southern Ontario) for software engineers to work on their in-car systems like this. Not sure if this specific one. From what I've heard they were woefully underpaying. A friend of mine talked to them -- very qualified; like me he worked on similar touchscreen, interactive display type systems at Google/Nest, and had a general background on similar systems, and on QNX, etc. They…

I see this sentiment everywhere outside the tech first ecosystem. In the generalization of 'workers'/'engineers' v/s 'supervisors'/'managers', programmers are often seen as just workers. For whatever reason, an MBA or even a BBA is seen as an officer/supervisor. Even product teams at tech first companies tend to represent this dogma. There are exceptions but the programmers are workers dogma is prevalent in this worl…

They touched on this in the video atop the article. Ford is heavily leaning on Google/Android to help them overhaul the in-car software experience.

It would seem Ford is aware they lack in this area and have decided to outsource to the experienced craftsmen.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#508
post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That “adjustment” is really tricky to do convincingly. I’ve been trying to compare an offer in the US and one in Montreal. The raw number for the US blows Canada out of the water, obviously, but adding in healthcare and childcare really starts to close the gap. That’s at least sort of calculable, especially if you ignore their option values, but it’s harder to price in other intangibles, like living somewhere walkabl…

Kingwood is the closest thing, because you can at least go for a nice nature walk or have your kids safely bike to school, but there is zero 'walk to the corner store' infrastructure. It's a shame becausse my mother grew up in a much more walkable houston but now this was the best neighborhood she could retire in.

Thanks! We ended up not making the move for other reasons too, but it's good to know that we didn't miss something.

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#509
post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they buy another one after the first then I'd agree it is actually what they want Tesla is, I believe (and I'm too lazy[2] to try to look up where I read this) the most repurchased brand on the market today. The used market for these cars is literally priced above new vehicles[1]! Were you really not aware? Does that maybe change your opinion? [1] Which is to say, on balance Tesla owners won't sell their cars ev…

That's all great information for the case that people love their Teslas, I have no doubt about that. I'm still not convinced people are rebuying Tesla's because they prefer touchscreens over tactile buttons though. I believe there are plenty of factors that go into that loyalty decision. I'm sure some people do prefer touchscreens, and some don't -- but we don't know what that breakdown is. This study just came out:…

Sigh. That link is not a "study", and it's not measuring safety. It's a single test of task completion time run by a magazine supported by advertising from legacy car brands (mostly Volvo, it looks like). It's designed to do exactly what it just did, get itself into conversations like this so people who don't want to believe that their advertisers' competitor[1] has a good product can continue to believe that.

FWIW: You don't need to go to Sweden to find that stuff anyway, Car & Driver and Motor Trend both hate Tesla too (and for the same reason: Tesla doesn't advertise).

If there are safety effects measurable with Teslas, we'd be measuring safety effects. There are millions of these cars on the road. They are safe. I know it, you know it, the time for hand-wavy hypotheticals is long past.

You need something more. Even Ralph Nader started with real accident statistics on the Corvair.

[1] Tesla

Re: Ford F-150 Lightning: Fast Truck, Slow Computer

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what exactly does The Verge think that a pickup truck is used for? I think that The Verge has a better idea of what most F-150s are used for than you do. There are a whole lot of trucks out there that are never going to tow anything.

Why on earth would you think that? The Verge is a link farm at this point, and Nilay (IMO the party most responsible for The Verge’s precipitous slide into irrelevance) is routinely one of the most out-of-touch sanctimonious personalities in tech.

I am in 100% agreement with you about The Verge in general. I used to visit a lot and have completely stopped. It's garbage now. I only see their articles if they pop up on top of HN or Reddit.

But that doesn't mean they are always wrong about everything.

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