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Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

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Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#51

Post by haukem »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

Is this really a problem with European companies or more a problem with older companies which didn't need much software 30 years ago?

Are Ford and General Motors better at this than the European car manufacturers?

Maybe it is also caused by people staying very long at their employer in Europe. It is not uncommon to stay till retirement after you got into a big cooperation.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#52

Post by astrange »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

> IMHO the only countries that really understand software at both a technical and business value add level are US, AUS, Canada, China, with India less so but in that group and Japan just barely getting in.

What are Australia and Canada doing in there? Australia has… Atlassian? Besides that, I’ve only heard of developers in Aus/Canada/Japan being well paid if they work for US companies like Google or are parked there because of US visa issues.

Australians are well paid in general though, even if they don’t value software like FAANG does, because Australia is a petrostate pretending to be a service economy. Japan values software but doesn't pay anyone well because of the system where you earn salaryman virtue by suffering for the first 30 years of your career. (Hot takes.)

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#53

Post by the_duke »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

You are spot on.

I see this attitude in many domains, even among younger generations in startups where the majority of co-founders aren't developers, or after the original co-founders are sidelined by business people.

Software is just considered a necessary chore needed to do business, almost never a core part of the business with inherent value.

It's one of the reasons why Europe has almost no significant players in the IT space.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#54

Post by geodel »

ceeplusplus wrote: post #44
geodel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SWEs at companies like Walmart Labs make much more than SWEs in Europe. Good. Find out how Walmart retail workers are doing. And Housing in US is lot cheaper for majority of people. > ... risk tolerant culture with stronger work ethic Yup, from Uber to Wework and dozen more food delivery service did awesome job with generous money in creating enduring businesses with strong work ethics.

> Good. Find out how Walmart retail workers are doing. Plenty of other examples of well paid workers and US SWEs paid more than EU SWEs. UPS teamsters are unionized. AT&T technicians are unionized. Both pay their SWEs more than EU companies by a substantial margin. > did awesome job with generous money in creating enduring businesses with strong work ethics. You could name companies which are actually changing how (E…

> Not in any major city. Clearly you don't live in the US.

Huh, lived in upscale DC suburb for many years, now moved to different city. Housing seems lot cheaper here when I checked with some friends based in some London suburbs. Another one with house in Amsterdam almost sounded same price for half size house than I bought. But yeah, no public transport for me and I am like 10 miles from downtown :(.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#55

Post by dependsontheq »

tibbydudeza wrote: post #36
dependsontheq wrote: post #8

I wouldn't call it "woes". I have been driving an VW ID 3 since last year, it runs their custom Android OS System and should have all of the latest features. It has been quite an experience. The car is fine, basic driving functions are fine, even the driver assist features are generally fine if they are running. The software running all the displays and the "augmented" heads up display is ridiculous. The car one did…

"leave the car with all smart keys, go at least 50 meters from the car, wait for 15 minutes" Some engineer actually coded for this - LOL.

I think somebody coded for “no contact with the smart key in the last 15 minutes“ … which is even more ridiculous because the car could easily be standing at home and never leave the smart key range.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#56

Post by jliptzin »

tsunamifury wrote: post #23

I had a Porsche Taycan almost kill me and my entire family due to the absolutely negligent engineering team at porsche. An update was applied which killed the motor due to a stack overflow error — while driving! Porsche set up the error handling to kill the engine immediately with even the slightest error. I testified along with fellow owners to the NHTSA and got all Taycans recalled. The arrogance and denial that Po…

Wow, good for you and thanks for the warning

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#57

Post by ceeplusplus »

geodel wrote: post #54
ceeplusplus wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good. Find out how Walmart retail workers are doing. Plenty of other examples of well paid workers and US SWEs paid more than EU SWEs. UPS teamsters are unionized. AT&T technicians are unionized. Both pay their SWEs more than EU companies by a substantial margin. > did awesome job with generous money in creating enduring businesses with strong work ethics. You could name companies which are actually changing how (E…

> Not in any major city. Clearly you don't live in the US. Huh, lived in upscale DC suburb for many years, now moved to different city. Housing seems lot cheaper here when I checked with some friends based in some London suburbs. Another one with house in Amsterdam almost sounded same price for half size house than I bought. But yeah, no public transport for me and I am like 10 miles from downtown :(.

You're not serious? DC looks pretty expensive for an average worker, from a quick look at apartments.com. Housing is cheap in the South and in rural areas for sure, but any West Coast/northern East Coast city is very expensive. Suburbs used to be cheap but now are not so cheap after COVID+inflation.

Perhaps your expectations are calibrated based on European cities which also have housing shortages, like Berlin and London.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#58

Post by lacker »

gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important

In many ways this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. An organization thinks software engineers aren't very important. And it doesn't pay the sort of salaries you need to get the top talent. So it doesn't have any top-tier software engineers, and their software team struggles to deliver valuable projects.

Later management changes their mind and decides to pay better salaries. They go to hire software engineers, and how do they even tell who the great software engineers are? Often they end up just paying more to the same not-so-great team, and watching as what they thought was an investment in software quality does not pay off.

I don't think this is specific to Europe, either - it can happen to any organization that hires a lot of inexpensive software engineers, in the US too. It's hard to get out of the "cheap software engineers" trap.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#59

Post by gumby »

haukem wrote: post #51
gumby wrote: post #15

I've been following this debacle in the German press and I think there's a structural problem that they will struggle to dig their way out of. And by "they" I don't mean just VW, but much of European industry. Software is simply not valued in Europe, and not because there aren't amazing developers there -- there are many. But software isn't considered important Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just comput…

Is this really a problem with European companies or more a problem with older companies which didn't need much software 30 years ago? Are Ford and General Motors better at this than the European car manufacturers? Maybe it is also caused by people staying very long at their employer in Europe. It is not uncommon to stay till retirement after you got into a big cooperation.

Well I followed the Berlin startup scene until I couldn’t bear it any more. Most of the “startups” were actually just small businesses that did business on the web. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, but a startup and a small business are different animals.

Ford and GM seem to have had a “Come to $DIETY” moment but yes, it remains to be seen if they will get their act together.

Ironically it was Mercedes who was the first to open an office in Palo Alto back in the mid 90s. It was considered absurd at the time, but all the other car companies now have offices in the Valley. But none of them are integral to their parent companies. Mercedes squandered their lead.

Re: Porsche boss faces software woes keeping VW a step behind Tesla

#60

Post by i80and »

orangepurple wrote: post #14
mixmastamyk wrote: post #4

I don't want any of this in a car. I want analog/tactile nobs, zero connectivity, and at most a power cable and holder to plug in a smart phone. Anyone left that provides this?

New Dacia cars fit the bill and they use modern Renault drivetrains under license. Funnily they get poor safety ratings because they don't include many electronic driving aids (lol) Their structural safety is great.

Calling their structural safety great seems like an overstatement -- I can't find a Dacia model on EuroNCAP that doesn't have sketchy dummy kinematics, and one new model (Spring) performs startlingly poorly in crash tests

The best appears to be the 2021 Dacia Logan[1] which has a crash test littered with "marginals":

> [...] structures in the dashboard presented a risk of injury to occupants of different sizes and to those sitting in different positions, and protection for this part of the body was downgraded to marginal. Chest protection was also rated as marginal for both front seat occupants, based on dummy readings of chest compression.

> In the side barrier test, representing an impact by another vehicle, chest compression indicated a marginal level of protection.

> ...geometric analysis of the rear seats indicated marginal whiplash protection.

I think Dacia makes great cars for what they are and their price, but there are much better options for crash mitigation.

[1]: https://www.euroncap.com/en/results/Dacia/Logan/42505

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