441–450 of 848 posts
> Consumers have had it with clunky, slow automotive technology No. I don't want it. I want Not to have it. I don't want a touchscreen. I don't want a computer car. And I definitely don't want an internet-connected car.
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…
I’m in a loaner 2025 Volvo right now and I’ve honestly been pleasantly surprised with the Android Auto setup. I thought I’d never again use anything other than phone projection, but nope — I can install Google Maps and Spotify and sign into both, and then my profiles and everything are right there including search history, and it’s actually more seamless and integrated than switching between CarPlay and the native/ou…
My own car is too old for Android Auto, but I sometimes drive a car that's from 2017 or so, and Android Auto works just fine on it, it's a pleasure to use (with the caveat that the phone has to be plugged in the USB port, wireless came later). So to me it seems like it always worked well.
as a car guy and software engineer I just want to say car's need way less software, way more separation of concerns, more standardisation and more open platforms, but most of the money is made on service, so the manufactures are incentivized to make closed systems.
I want a 7-10” central display that spends 99% of its time showing CarPlay but also has a radio if I need it, the backup camera when I’m in reverse, and lets me change a couple of settings for convenience features like auto locking etc. Everything else can be dials, knobs, and buttons. My Mazda3 is perfect for this and I’m quite sad that I’m almost certainly not going to be able to find anything like it by the time I…
Fingers crossed that they can keep it up with an EV transition. In the MX-30 they did an HVAC touchscreen, but perhaps the years long gap between that and their next EV will be an opportunity to reflect on how stupid that was. (Ignoring Chinese joint ventures that just use someone else’s platform)
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Someone like Ford for example will have several software platforms, some for low cost vehicles, some high, some that are adaptable between trim levels. So as you go up in features on some model "the BigTruk" you might be going through variations of one sw platform, or jumping between platforms. Some have several platforms for high and low cost based on centralised vs distributed, so for example an s class will not ha…
Apple doesn't have different software platforms for low vs high cost phones. Why is a car different? It doesn't even have as much functionality.
And to support the differences high trim will have different sensors and differently distributed compute.
This means that the infotainment system will be running in different places on different cars.
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Car companies have to worry about regulatory compliance, certification, approvals, as well as warranties; aftermarket manufacturers do not have such concerns (at least to the same degree).
It’s a box that forwards a carplay / android auto UI to an LCD, and snoops the cam bus for button press events. The entire thing is $150, which is nothing compared to the rest of the warranty. If regulatory compliance for a car stereo actually costs $1B in the US, then that seems like a bigger issue than “unfair” competition from China, and I’d like one of their $10K EVs, please.
These companies fail because vertical integration, and even a monorepo, is needed to make these efforts successful. This is completely at odds with the existing OEM/Tier 1 business model and engineering process grown up around it. Also, neither OEM nor Tier 1 have software cultures up to the challenge. This is why the Chinese OEMs, Tesla, and Rivian are able to move fast.
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https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/smart-mobili... Can you explain why these protections are not sufficient for privacy? > 112 eCall is not a black box. It does not record constantly the position of the vehicle, it records only a few data to determine the position and direction of the vehicle just before the crash and these data are only transmitted to emergency call centers if there is a serious crash.…
>112 eCall is not a black box. It does not record constantly the position of the vehicle, it records only a few data to determine the position and direction of the vehicle just before the crash and these data are only transmitted to emergency call centers if there is a serious crash. That statement is factually inconsistent. Either 112 eCall incorporates a time travel device or it must constantly record the position…
It's not. It just stores the last speed/wheel position/brake state data that it receives when the "collision imminent" condition activates. In some cars this can be literally the same signal that deploys the airbags.
> Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked
Pretty much. It's just a normal LTE radio, that is normally inactive. It technically is hackable, but I'm not aware of any hacks of baseband firmware of this severity.
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…
I'm getting IG videos in my feed for a company that sells after market fixes because older Teslas have such poorly designed electronics, that they fail in common ways. The memory goes bad because they write useless logs to a chip, and it eventually fails. End users are beta testing... https://www.instagram.com/reel/DINADISyP0f/
The clear leaders here are the companies that weren’t already locked into the old-world approach to automotive software. Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and almost all of the Chinese automakers have built ground-up systems that work without legacy bloat."