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Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war

insideevs.com

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

#211
post #10

The author mentions "military grade firewall", as a must have in a vehicle. Genuine question; What's a military grade firewall?

Such a thing exists though usually not called “military-grade” per se. It is more similar to a data diode [0] than a classic firewall but has significant differences from either.

Data streams are converted into a sequence of objects that are required to have and satisfy certain formally verifiable properties as a pre-condition of forwarding. Any data or objects that cannot satisfy formal analysis requirements are dropped. Forwarding policies are only applied to objects that meet the prerequisite of being rigorously analyzable.

This behavior is bidirectional. It applies equally to data egress to mitigate internal threats and accidental data leakage. The internal mechanics can be pretty complicated and they necessarily operate on a store-and-forward basis. The data objects may be “laundered” by the firewall, what you send may not be exactly what the other side receives.

To make this work, the wire protocol, data representation, etc must be designed specifically to allow this kind of rigorous analysis and work well within these constraints. It usually won’t work on a random web stream and the data representation often sacrifices efficiency of storage for efficiency of verification and analysis at runtime.

In reality, virtually no one uses this type of tech outside of defense and intelligence because it won’t let almost any of the standard web stack slop through.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidirectional_network

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

#212
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mazda has done a great job at this so far, very minimal screen which automatically just shows CarPlay, and buttons for all the normal car stuff, which also isn’t overdone. The only flaw is the scroll wheel to interact with the screen, which is just slightly too clunky in apps with too many options

Mazda also managed to squander a huge brand and structural advantage by falling into lockstep behind other Japanese automakers in underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure. Now they have to rely on their JV partner Changan to lead the way in producing EVs, giving up the core structural strengths that Mazda previously had in designing and building their own components - including software and controls, which i…

Mazda's target market is quite different from the EV buyers one, at least here in Europe.

Its reputation is that of a brand for people who really like cars, who can appreciate the care put into proper engineering and a wonderful manual transmission; or people with an eye for a "conservative" kind of quality. It's basically the new Volvo, but sportier.

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

#213

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 understand the concept, but the question I have is why?

These companies have huge wallets, and can surely scoop up a smaller automative microcontroller company and bring it in-house? It seems like a problem than enough money could solve quickly, but they've been doing horribly at this for decades now.

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

#214

Remove the LTE chip and all functionality related to ads, support wireless CarPlay and android auto, and use physical buttons. You’ll win every award in the industry.

The Nissan Leaf is (was?) what you describe, apart from the LTE chip. The LTE doesn't seem to do much without NissanConnect (which was actually written by Bosch).

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

#215
There's another huge constraint that the article and a lot of responses do not seem to mention:

- Compliance and,

- Regulation.

In Australia, for example; we have very strict requirements for manufacturers - and it seems mostly out of regulatory incompetence that vendors like Tesla are able to deploy and bypass in the way they do.

I've been told, by stakeholders in industry, that the systems that facilitate the software of vehicles to align with such requirements historically were strictly controlled.

(The same applied to the hardware)

Whilst it's also over simplifying it;

- I am not excited at the prospect that `developer-a` can `git commit` functional changes to my vehicle.

I'm not sure you should be, either!

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

#217
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally yes, but I would buy a car that has no screen at all, just give me a phone holder on the dash.

And what happens when phone sizes change? I've certainly had phone clips that didn't comfortably fit a new phone with case.

You get a new holder. The one that came with our e-Up was too small for my S24 Ultra, so I just got an adapter on eBay for like £3 and installed a new holder(with wireless charging!). Where there's a market need someone will provide a solution.

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

#218

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…

>Tesla, Rivian, and the Chinese EV makers

The iPhone on wheels paradigm shift has been stated like a decade ago and as usually the incumbents just can’t cross it while at the same time the new companies are successfully exploiting it.

Not surprisingly it coincides with EV transition - both are enabled by cheap electronics and EV voids incumbents’ ICE tech moat.

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

#219

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…

This is only half the story, working for a major vendor, we sell both hardware and software, the whole way up to a full customisable well integrated platform. The manufacturers are deliberately choosing less capable systems, or taking thing piecemeal.

Most of our customers simply don't believe good interfaces are worth the money... They tend to either want either a set of features checked off (only for existence, not quality), or something along the lines of get as close to a rivian with thirty cents per unit more than we paid last year.

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

#220
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find router firmware sourcecode online and find pretty egregious vulnerabilities if you're really trying to learn. Alot of embedded stuff is outsourced and doesn't want to waste the computing power for stuff like stack canaries. I recall the following from making a tool for a dlink? router? //Reads a file name foo ReadFilePath() { // Get file name // TICKET 21321: Fixed crash by increasing buffer size char Fi…

The people who actually can do it are not underpaid. These days they are brought in to do cleanup. They can name their price and pick their assignments.

>The people who actually can do it are not underpaid.

The pipelines to create more such people are sorely lacking though

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