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Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

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Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#401

Post by MostlyStable »

encrypted_bird wrote: post #249
teekert wrote: post #146

Just talk to Canoncal, or IBM, make a NixOS config, or just do something. How hard can it be? My father’s 5 yo Volkswagen van has an 80’s looking UI, the touchscreen is already failing. Going from the normal UI to CarPlay is just jarring, any 2024 Linux distro looks, feels and acts more modern. What are they doing over there?? I could probably whip him up something nicer if only there was just a Nuc or something in t…

While I don't dismiss your general point, I will say that anyone who says "how hard can it be" really needs to consider they are falling victim to the Dunning-Kruger Effect. In my experience, that phrase is (typically) a red flag for the latter.

This strikes me very much as one of the things where the answer is probably very simple but also very difficult.

I would also guess (completely un-informedly) that because the simple (and probably correct) answer is very difficult, a lot of companies are trying to avoid it by doing things that are more complicated but also easier. And because they are more complicated, it is not immediately obvious why they won't work....but they won't. Which is resulting in the repeated failures.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#402

Post by 0_____0 »

omega3 wrote: post #235
acheron9383 wrote: post #199

As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…

> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year. Why? A year is a long time and it's a solved problem. In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?

If you're curious why it takes longer than that, check out this primer on the HW dev cycle.

https://www.hwe.design/product-development-process/developme...

For components that have many components or complex requirements, or are part of more complicated systems, this takes longer. Cars have a design cycle that's many years long - 5-6 years would be a decent ballpark. That's due to the complexity of the product, complexity of the supply chains and tooling, requirements, and scale.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#403

Post by 0_____0 »

rapfaria wrote: post #286
omega3 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year. Why? A year is a long time and it's a solved problem. In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?

When I was working at $samsung_competitor, my NDA'd next gen android phone prototypes (a huge motherboard with a screen) were sent some years earlier. Like Samsung is on S25 now, and we would get boards for S27... It takes a long time for these things to evolve.

I feel like I'm on crazy pills sometimes when talking with people who deal mostly with software. I think SW engineers sometimes think that engineering generally looks like what they do, when in reality SW is a deep outlier wrt process...

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#404

Post by cryptonector »

ta1243 wrote: post #101
HPsquared wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are safety standards for automobile software: ISO 26262. Software for steering or braking systems is of high quality. It's not the same team that does the infotainment.

My car randomly braked today because it thought a car on a side road was pulling out. Not just sound the alarm but actually apply the brakes. Fortunately I didn't have a tailgater behind me. I disable the "land assist" every time (which often tries to steer me into wildlife or other cars and was clearly not built for use on a single track country roads with hedges and random verges), but this was the first time in 3…

This happened to me a couple of years ago where the car I was driving decided that one of those water-filled tanks ahead of a barrier on a road under construction was in front of the car just because the road was curving hard to the right. It was very scary. It almost caused an accident by itself. I don't remember how the brake assist cleared, but the fact that there's nothing one can do to make the computer not break is very scary.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#405

Post by catigula »

Car software is so thankless and opaque.

Look at the market landscape: literally nobody knows that Toyota produces the #1 system for automated driver safety aids (ADAS) and it isn't close - their current generation of vision/radar fusion sensors have the only car on the market that passes 2029 federal regulations for AEB (62mph to dead stop if an obstacle is detected being a metric that some other manufacturers called not feasible) on a 2023 Corolla.

Compare that to IIHS data for other brands/makes, even "safe" ones - many of them perform abysmally. The systems are awful. It took me a genuinely decent amount of digging to uncover that most cars, even lauded ones, are equipped with "compliance software" that meets bare minimum requirements, i.e. Honda, Hyundai, etc.

And yet every review and even poster on the internet calls Toyota woefully technically inept because Kia makes fancy screens. Alas.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#406

Post by 0_____0 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #348
potato3732842 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that might affect their market share in HN neighborhoods I assure you Mazda is making money hand over fist selling their boring non-hybrid SUVs to normal people. People love them and they sell.

They have a low single digit percentage profit margin. That is not making money hand over fist, that is barely surviving. https://www.mazda.com/content/dam/mazda/corporate/mazda-com/...

That doesn't seem unusual for automotive. What number were you expecting to see?

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#407

Post by analog31 »

acheron9383 wrote: post #199

As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…

>>> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year.

Naturally, there must be some scale threshold where this is true, so I don't doubt your experience. And my workplace doesn't make anything as elaborate as a car, or with such stringent reliability specs. But my experience is that hardware is always finished before software.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#408

Post by brightball »

acheron9383 wrote: post #199

As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…

It was encouraging to hear an exec from Ford recently say essentially this in an interview. The legacy manufacturers seem to realize that Tesla is eating their lunch because of their lack of vertical integration. It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve but will be interesting to see what effort achieves.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#409

Post by jmb99 »

sarchertech wrote: post #210
FrankWilhoit wrote: post #2

Embedded-systems programming is not taught, and no one is willing to pay for training. The result is that development is outsourced to entities that claim, falsely, to have the knowledge. Eventually the consequences of the fact that they do not have the knowledge surface in an undeniable manner, and the only way to cover is to make a great show of a fresh start. (This affects all industries, not just automotive, but…

My CS degree concentration is embedded systems. I love embedded programming, but it would probably cost me $200k a year to do it versus the backend distributed systems stuff I do now.

Admittedly I don’t know your salary or market, but it is possible to make decent money in embedded. Connections & market timing are both vital though, in my experience, as well as being actually good at your job. I’m in Canada so numbers are way different, but salary-wise I’m in the ~75th percentile software engineers in my area, my title is embedded engineer, and I’m fairly junior (3 years out of university, ~6 years full-time experience). I’m working with some other embedded people who are in the 95th percentile for software engineers in the country. The main problem is there are very few high-paying embedded jobs; conversely though, there seem to be even fewer highly-skilled embedded engineers looking for work. I recently interviewed at a company paying 50th-85th (based on experience) percentile trying to hire pretty much any competent embedded engineer, and their problem isn’t insufficient salary, it’s just a lack of applicants or any skill level. From what I’ve heard, the same seems to be true pretty much everywhere.

Now sure, if you’re looking for 500k+ jobs, embedded isn’t the area to be in, unfortunately. But I prefer low-stress, fun-environment embedded jobs, and don’t mind trading off salary for that. Different strokes.

Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

#410

Post by felineflock »

About a year ago the Ford CEO (who is also Chris Farley's cousin) explained why legacy car manufacturers could not make good software: each of their cars have 150+ modules, each of them from several suppliers, each of them writing their own software.

For every software change on each module, they have to go to a supplier to ask because of IP rights.

That is why Ford is/was trying to build a new generation of modules with in-house software which they never wrote before.

Also pertinent: "Why Ford decided to merge its next-gen architecture with its current platform" https://archive.ph/CR2Pv

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