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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

#451

Post by Thorrez »

gerdesj wrote: post #321
latchkey wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, I wish they would install tiny horn buttons on all the vehicles in Vietnam! In that country, the horn is a method of communication, much to the ire of literally everyone trying to exist.

Excessive horning (made up word) is not just a Vietnamese thing. Italy is probably Europe's worst offender, with Greece a close contender. I'm not so familiar with Asia, but I get the impression that the entirety of Indian and most of Chinese drivers feel the need to lean on the horn with gay abandon (fnarr). In Britain the horn is generally reserved for "fuck that was close: I think you are a bit of a tosser" or "yo…

Huh, I drove in Italy for a week and a half and didn't notice excessive honking. I did notice tons and tons of tailgating.

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

#452

Post by cosmicgadget »

mrheosuper wrote: post #389
smartmic wrote: post #30

So I have serious thoughts about driving “software defined vehicles” in the future. I mean, and the article has confirmed this sufficiently, the core competence of the established car manufacturers is not software. I don't trust the newcomers like Tesla or the Chinese manufacturers for the time being. In my opinion, the same standards should apply to software in motor vehicles as in the aviation industry. And there c…

Aviation standards allow boeing building their infamous 737-Max

That wasn't a malfunction but rather a flight control feature the pilots didn't know about. (Iirc)

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

#453

Post by lotsofpulp »

crmd wrote: post #430
lotsofpulp wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/...

Mazda’s operating margin is higher than Walmart’s (along with many others). I think hyper scalable sectors like high tech and finance distort our OM expectations.

Operating margin is irrelevant, only profit margin matters for this context. Walmart hangs out in the 2.5% to 3.5% range, not materially different than Mazda. Either way, any business with a low single digit profit margin is not making money hand over fist. It might be different if Mazda had such a huge and loyal market share that their low profit margins are offset by low volatility of expected future sales (such as with Walmart/Costco), but that isn't the case at all with Mazda.

Their expectation is that their sales will be stagnant at best, but probably decline for the foreseeable future.

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

#454

Post by megamix »

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…

Are the PM women or not qualified?

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

#455

Post by lotsofpulp »

0_____0 wrote: post #406
lotsofpulp wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not about unusual, just that a low profit margin in a volatile industry is (with a downward trend in sales for almost 10 years), by definition, not making money hand over fist. That is why their market cap graph looks like this:

https://companiesmarketcap.com/mazda/marketcap/

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

#456

Post by Alive-in-2025 »

brightball wrote: post #408
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.

Tesla was eating their lunch in terms of software, integration, capabilities, apps. Then rivian came along and a few other companies doing a much better job than the awful legacy companies.

Now of course tesla/musk are destroying themselves through various idiotic actions. Sales are dropping through the roof. But the technical quality of the software ecosystem (car, web, app) is still better than all the incumbents. Think about Rivian getting a billion dollars from VW for their much better ECU and and software integration, for example.

I feel like Rivian is almost as good as tesla. Tesla still has all that, even as the company is in awful shape sales wise. Lucid seems to be better than the legacy auto, but I haven't looked into it as closely.

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

#457

Post by gmueckl »

Sevii wrote: post #434
typewithrhythm wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's fair to say that the software in a modern car contains lot more functionality than an average smartphone. Drivers just aren't aware of how much is happening in their car each second.

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

#458

Post by therealdrag0 »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #48

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.

Hyundai is physical buttons and CarPlay. That’s why I got Kona EV, and Ioniq5 is well loved.

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

#459

Post by therealdrag0 »

neild wrote: post #258
deergomoo wrote: post #231

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…

I have a 2024 Kia EV6, and this is pretty much what it does: Central screen displays CarPlay, backup camera, and infrequently-used settings controls, dials and knobs for most things, one secondary touchbar (row of buttons, but it’s really a touchscreen so the buttons can change) for climate controls. Pretty much perfect, although only wired CarPlay. (The 2025 models apparently have wireless.)

Hyundai is actual buttons, not touch.

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

#460

Post by dingaling »

catigula wrote: post #405

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 calle…

ADAS is generally considered 'adverserial software', few drivers welcome it and many switch it off at ignition.

So unfortunately regardless of Toyota's possible prowess in the field it's unlikely to receive many plaudits for focusing its efforts there.

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