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Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

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Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#141

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

astrange wrote: post #87
zizee wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are Australia and Canada doing in there? Australia has… Atlassian? There are plenty of wellknown tech/software companies originating in Australia. Xero, Freelancer, Canva, REA Group, MYOB, Airtasker, BigCommerce, Afterpay... Many foreign software companies have development teams in Aus as well. Google, Zendesk, Square, Squarespace spring to mind. https://www.smartcompany.com.au/technology/the-top-50-tech-c...

I’m a US-UK dual citizen but my partner is Australian. I’m collecting the whole Anglosphere. But when looking at living there, the wages/housing prices seemed like a poor trade off even compared to California. Although of course it’s a great place to live in many other ways. I’ve heard of some of those but haven’t looked up their pay bands, not sure Afterpay has a moat though…

Having recently looked at wages/housing in the same anglosphere, Canada was way ahead of Australia. I know several folks who have left Australia for Canada in the last five years because of exactly this.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#142

Post by softwaredoug »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

I had this experience in the US early in my software career. Supposed hardware companies didn’t see the value in software. As engineering leadership came up through hardware, they didn’t manage it well. Management pursued what they knew, and often the focus on hardware was at the expense of the user experience.

Now even in the US I think you see this with data. You see companies with managers brought up through software ranks that don’t understand how to measure and optimze systems and orgs with data (machine learning, but not only machine learning). They want to build complex software, often at the expense of the user experience, that just wants the thing that makes them think less…

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#143

Post by maven29 »

gumby wrote: post #99
kareemsabri wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft is in the same boat. Virtually no users of their products are actually their customers. Apple has less than 10% of the PC market. What do you think the rest of them are running?

The point is that the majority of their revenue comes from corporate enterprise. This is one reason Ballmer didn’t understand the iPhone: his customers (corporate IT) wanted the windows phone but no actual users did. Microsoft was taken by surprise by the “BYO movement”

>Microsoft was taken by surprise by the “BYO movement”

They did still eventually address the root cause with WSL/WSL2.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#144

Post by Nathanba »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #98
gumby wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the model for the tron/itron os in Japan. Most devices you buy from Japan run itron.

Yeah, I still cannot get over that answer. I mean, Fraunhofer is a major German research org and it should be in their business to promote such solutions. To fire something like this out, in front of the people who definitely attended those universities, that was shocking. To this day I don’t know if I was simply naive or if my question was stupid in any way.

It sounds like you were in a meeting discussing how to set up a separate organization and your suggestion was to give the work to people who are doing a poor job already and then you are hoping that they'll suddenly stop failing if you give them access to private company details, work projects, even research. I think the mindset in these parts of Europe is that the companies are where you do real work and anyone who is actually good will find their way into a company anyway. Everyone who attends these universities knows that they are bad, it would not be a shock. They are there not because of the university but because of their own work ethic.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#145

Post by TomVDB »

marssaxman wrote: post #91
gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

I think you have just convinced me to buy German cars exclusively from now on; I very much do not want a car which is "just a computer with wheels" - the less software in the car, the better!

If you don’t want a computer on wheels, you don’t want a German car, you want a second hand Toyota Corolla.

We had an Audi Q5 first and a Tesla second. My wife and I fight over who gets to drive the Tesla.

With a modern German car, you still get some the fancy features, but they don’t work very well (lane control comes to mind), and the electronic UI is much worse than Tesla. CarPlay is the only way out.

And let’s not even talk about the difference in driving fun.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#146

Post by softwaredoug »

There’s other successful hardware+software companies (Apple, Tesla) but they have had strong guidance (micromanagement even) from very strong minded leaders. Whereas a company like VW will get a new CEO every few years.

How can you really create deep organizational change without a strong top down leader that understands what needs to get done?

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#147

Post by rstupek »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #104
jws wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well worth any Tesla driver's time to spend two minutes reading the list of voice commands. Once you have a grip on the vocabulary and structure you can just tell the car to do what you want for dozens of common tasks. (Hint: It's a "seat warmer", not a "butt heater".) That's the good news, the bad news is that I still haven't figure out how to turn off the stupid cowbell when I accidentally bonk the right leve…

The idea that instead of turning a tactile dial I need to look away from the road to adjust temperature or volume if music, or I need to speak, is unacceptable to me. I consider ut terrible in terms of safety and UI.

My Tesla has two dials, one on each side of the steering wheel which allows for control of volume and temperature. There is never a need to look at the center console

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#148

Post by v0idzer0 »

TheJoeMan wrote: post #130
gibspaulding wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what really matters: treating their vehicle as a modern electronic device. I'd take clunky old software over "all sorts of fit and finish bugs, and ... above average in mechanical problems" any day.

I find it interesting how the marketing depts. have woven together EV powertrains and “lots of electronic gizmos”. Nothing’s stopping an ICE car from having pop-out doorhandles, nor an EV with crank windows.

I don’t think marketing departments have anything to do with it. I just think Tesla built the first commercially successful EVs and they happened to let software control as much as possible. Now everyone building EVs is mimicking their preference for software, because its simply better. Anything that can be done by software, instead of hardware, should be. Hardware is difficult to change. Software can be updated and upgraded without a mechanic or a visit to a service station.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#149

Post by prng2021 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #131
prng2021 wrote: post #83

I hate that auto companies are trying to copy Tesla’s awful product design philosophy of controlling everything via a screen and software. It’s the worst thing to happen to the industry since its inception in my opinion. 1. We’re now introducing so many brand new problems to automobiles or tremendously exacerbating existing ones. I’m referring to problems inherent to all complex software. Bugs, updates causing variou…

What people say they value and what they spend their money on are usually very different things. The reality is that Tesla is selling well and companies that are investing in similar products are doing extremely well currently. For all their flaws, these cars are way better than ICE cars. VW is getting a lot of criticism. Yet, if you try to order one now, you might be waiting until well into next year. They are selli…

I’m not criticizing EVs in any way. I’m criticizing the industry trend to use a touch screen to control everything. That trend applies to both EVs and ICE cars if you look at interior car designs over the last few years. I view it as a huge regression.

I don’t see EV sales as relevant here. It doesn’t prove that people are lining up to buy them because of touch screens. There’s a wide variety of reasons to account for sales numbers and for wait lists: great EV cash rebates, high gas prices, the awesome feeling of instant acceleration, supply chain problems with batteries and chips causing multi year wait lists, etc.

People can also get used to lots of surprising changes, even if they’re for the worse, as I’m arguing. If TV manufacturers all started replacing tv remote buttons for touch screens, I’m sure we would eventually get used to it despite it being annoying at first. Likewise, I’ve been forced to get used to the touch screen in my car.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#150

Post by petre »

brianwawok wrote: post #92
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team struggles to deliver valuable projects. And you can see this in their hiring. All full of interns. I remember when VW was advertising a “software school”. T…

And the US will continue to eat their lunch. How many high impact software companies are coming out of Germany?

SAP. But you wouldn't want to work with SAP anyway. Death by a thousand cuts.
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