Ok... What car brand has the least bad UI these days? I have been putting off getting a new car for about a year.
Tesla, I think
Maybe visually. Not practical
Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
291–300 of 398 posts
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#292I was recently an owner of a Merced-Benz commercial van, and the software was by far the worst part of that whole experience. It had obvious race-condition type bugs when it came to the user interface layer, but most frustrating was its tendency to succumb to some kind of memory leak on long drives where the entire head unit would just lock up and crash to a black screen after 6-7 hours of being turned on. Because th…
>couldn't always be solved by power cycling the vehicle.
From experience, I've found that turning a car off is akin to putting a computer to sleep. If the state is fubar, no amount of turning the car on and off will fix it.
The only proper way to "power cycle" a car is to momentarily disconnect the car battery (remember to turn the car off first) so all power to the computers are physically cut off and they /have/ to start from a cold boot next time you turn the car on.
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one unconscious bias from California-based self-driving companies: weather conditions worse than overcast skies exist in other parts of the world. Recently, I drove in a whiteout blizzard with huge flakes without much accumulation on the road. Road was drivable, but I couldn’t see road markings. The experience would have been less scary with some sort of augmented display to show the road borders.
> Road was drivable, but I couldn’t see road markings. That's a bit contradictory. If you can't see the road markings the road is not drivable.
Try driving on non major roads (and some major) roads in the UK. They often have no markings because they've worn away!
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big and well paid doesn’t equal quality. The fiasco of id3 is the best example. Or the whole Audi/VW drama. It doesn’t change the fact that their management just doesn’t get software. Pouring more money over that and hiring more “talent” isn’t going to change that.
> The fiasco of id3 Could you explain what specifically you refer to?
https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/11/21288572/volkswagen-id3-e... + general search for "software id3" shows that issues plague this car to this day.
Diess lost his job because of that: https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/26/from_beetles_to_bugs_....
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both Mercedes and Volkswagen have absolutely massive software divisions, easily 10k+ people. They pay really well for German standards and have access to a large talent pool of people that would like to live in Germany.
Do you think the talent pool of people that want to live in germany and don’t want to make substantially more working for american companies is large?
Have you lived in Germany? I would only consider going to the US for substantially higher pay. Also there are 80 million Germans, many of whom are fairly well educated and would like to work for Mercedes in Stuttgart.
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one unconscious bias from California-based self-driving companies: weather conditions worse than overcast skies exist in other parts of the world. Recently, I drove in a whiteout blizzard with huge flakes without much accumulation on the road. Road was drivable, but I couldn’t see road markings. The experience would have been less scary with some sort of augmented display to show the road borders.
> Road was drivable, but I couldn’t see road markings. That's a bit contradictory. If you can't see the road markings the road is not drivable.
Ontario has 10m people and most of us won't see the lane markings for the next few days in the middle of a 4 million metro area. Roads will be eminently driveable and some people will safely use a traditional cruise control.
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#297Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both Mercedes and Volkswagen have absolutely massive software divisions, easily 10k+ people. They pay really well for German standards and have access to a large talent pool of people that would like to live in Germany.
Most of their software is done outside of Germany. MBRDI, known for its engineering innovations, has grown to a team of over 6,000 employees and is one of the earliest technology and innovation center of a global automotive company to set up a strong presence in India. https://www.mbrdi.co.in At Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America, we develop and certify cars for the U.S. and the world in six locations…
Volkswagen planned to hire 10000 new people for their "Car.Software" division in Wolfsburg, Ingolstadt, Berlin, as well as Seattle und Peking until 2025. They are also building up their hardware division with plans to do cutting edge node designs in 5nm and beyond. I know that they have extensive recruiting efforts in both areas.
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anything, MB.OS is about as relevant to a consumer as QNX is QNX isn't exactly defining for an ecosystem, MB.OS probably will be.
I beg to differ with that. If you shut down QNX globally it would pretty much end civilization. So much stuff runs on that little core that it boggles the mind. The great gift of QNX is that it is so reliable that you forget it is there. But no mistake: it is still there and it still works and without it you'd miss it right away.
Yep QNX and VxWorks, for smaller stuff RTEMS and FreeRTOS are just everywhere.
Re: Mercedes-Benz previews its operating system MB.OS
#300throwaway account - the cheapest supplier/contractor gets the contract. Always! - the salaries in engineering are among the lowest on the market (at least in Germany). The headcount increased from 200 to 800+ in just a couple of years but so did the churn rate and focusing on the salary when hiring, means a lot of talent is skipped from the start (candidates should be happy with 20% less salary given that they work a…
My family had mercs since the beginning of the 90s and its very apparent when those problems started.
I used to say "life behind a star is different" and now they all look the same, feel just as badly engineered as the next VW and have more plastic in them then a modern store for drinks.
Your not bitter, its the truth.