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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

#31

Post by ghaff »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #20
x0x0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a lot cheaper to pay one exec a couple million than to staff a medium-sized software engineering org: even 500 people at an average fully burdened cost of $250k is $125m/y.

One major issue has been that paying a developer market rates is practically unthinkable to traditional automakers. If you were to apply to a mid/senior job in Michigan, you might get offered $125k. The typical workaround has been to establish "software offices" on the west coast with separate pay scales and separate corporate structures that largely function as internal "external" vendors. The C suite are able to pr…

Well, it’s not just about pay scales. The developers just don’t want to live in Detroit (or even Ann Arbor) for the most part. And coastal East isn’t really that much cheaper for the most part.

I’d probably add that the pay scale for software vs. electrical/mechanical people probably wasn’t notably different in the 90s or so. And California rates didn’t compensate for CoL in general. Very different.

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

#32

Post by kjkjadksj »

Terrible mobile website for what its worth. Two sentences per in paragraph ad and I couldn’t fully read the article because it bogged my se2 down to a crawl. How I wish I could jailbreak this phone and install a real adblocker but alas not on magic version number.

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

#33

Post by encom »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7
tehjoker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is exactly the problem. It sounds like turning the car into a platform with changeable parts has caused both organizational and technical problems. To be fair, im still not sold that this is an advancement except maybe in simplifying the number of components. I'd prefer the car to work without "updates" and DLC. Why does my car need a firewall??

It's not practical to produce a car that never needs updates. That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible. Since they're going to ship updates anyway, a lot of focus is on minimizing the cost and hence OTA. For what it's worth, I work in this industry and the general rule of thumb is that every increase in validation from QM (standard quality) up to the various levels of safety critical code has up to 10x th…

>That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible.

Yes, but code that doesn't get written does not have bugs. And I don't want to control the rear window defroster, wipers, climate control, fog lights or whatever, on a touch screen menu buried 7 levels deep while going 130 km/h. It's bad enough that coffee makers, light bulbs and tooth brushes now have updatable firmware.

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

#34

Post by v9v »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7
tehjoker wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure this is exactly the problem. It sounds like turning the car into a platform with changeable parts has caused both organizational and technical problems. To be fair, im still not sold that this is an advancement except maybe in simplifying the number of components. I'd prefer the car to work without "updates" and DLC. Why does my car need a firewall??

It's not practical to produce a car that never needs updates. That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible. Since they're going to ship updates anyway, a lot of focus is on minimizing the cost and hence OTA. For what it's worth, I work in this industry and the general rule of thumb is that every increase in validation from QM (standard quality) up to the various levels of safety critical code has up to 10x th…

> That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible.

Why? If the rest of the car can function within design specifications for years, why can't the firmware?

I'm fine with updates to add compatibility with new protocols and such, but to me a bug implies there's a standing problem with the current system that's not due to some sort of wear/changing standard/component damage etc. While one can point to examples of cars with defective mechanical designs, I don't think anyone considers it impossible to create designs without such defects (where defects are defined wrt. specifications), why is this the view in software engineering?

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

#35

Post by egypturnash »

If you want to know the many ways this is going to suck, then think about everything you've ever heard someone bitching about in the modern video game ecosystem, then multiply it by "but instead of people not being able to play a video game, someone might die".

Is this how we get the Butlerian Jihad? Because part of me sure does want to learn how to identify cars built like this and learn ways to disable them when I see them parked somewhere around town, before one of them fails to recognize me on my bicycle as something that should be avoided.

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

#36

Post by rjsw »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23
rjsw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updating the software in the computers that control the car has traditionally been combined with providing diagnostic support for it through the dealerships, not done OTA. Having an OBDII connector has been mandated in vehicles for a long time, you plug something into it that lets you either listen to CAN bus traffic or reprogram an individual Electronic Control Unit (ECU). Now that all vehicles have entertainment sy…

> The first use case of connecting entertainment systems to a vehicle bus that I can remember was to read some engine settings and turn up the volume on the radio at higher speeds. Is anyone actually begging for this though? And why do you need a full bus? This feels like a luxury car problem that could be solved over I2C or something. I’m reading this whole SDV thing, and outside of using less ECUs, it seems like an…

One problem is that the ECUs are fairly dumb, they each have a limit on how fast you can send CAN frames to them without overflowing receive buffers. The protocol to reprogram them starts by asking the target ECU how much of a delay is needed between each frame then needs to keep to quite tight timing constraints when sending the new flash image, I have written a Linux network protocol module to do this.

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

#37

Post by api »

I am awaiting a hatchback or sedan like this:

https://www.slate.auto/en

Give me a car that is perfectly 100% autonomous, or give me a car with three gauges and basic controls only. Everything else is an uncanny valley: all the downsides of complex tech without being useful enough to justify it.

Until then I like my Nissan Leaf: physical controls, phone just docks with infotainment screen, and reliable.

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

#38

Post by nickff »

tcmart14 wrote: post #29
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…

I took an embedded course in university where we programmed the AVR AtMega 328p on the Arduino UNO not using the Arduino libraries and compiler. Make files and setting up an environment. But yea, a single class probably isn't sufficient and also I image a lot of embedded companies have a preference to hire someone already familiar with the chip they are targeting and the toolchain for the stack. I also see a lot of a…

RTOS-based development varies significantly from RTOS to RTOS, so I’m not sure how much it’d help to learn to use one. On the other hand, most fundamental OS knowledge is fully transferable to RTOS, so that would be helpful for embedded developers to understand.

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

#39

Post by blueflow »

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…

It is safe to say that Computer Engineering has a problem with enabling knowledge transfer.

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

#40

Post by vel0city »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #23
rjsw wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updating the software in the computers that control the car has traditionally been combined with providing diagnostic support for it through the dealerships, not done OTA. Having an OBDII connector has been mandated in vehicles for a long time, you plug something into it that lets you either listen to CAN bus traffic or reprogram an individual Electronic Control Unit (ECU). Now that all vehicles have entertainment sy…

> The first use case of connecting entertainment systems to a vehicle bus that I can remember was to read some engine settings and turn up the volume on the radio at higher speeds. Is anyone actually begging for this though? And why do you need a full bus? This feels like a luxury car problem that could be solved over I2C or something. I’m reading this whole SDV thing, and outside of using less ECUs, it seems like an…

I absolutely enjoy speed compensated volume. It's nice to have about the same apparent volume inside the cabin as road noise increases while not being very loud when going slow speeds or stopped.
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