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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

#501
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If I want to be driven, I’ll just book a waymo. So move to one of the 2 or 3 cities in the US that have Waymo?

To be fair: only small parts of those cities. E.g. no Waymo to LAX.

Not to AUS or, as far as I’m aware, SFO. They also screwed the pooch in Austin by making Waymo available only through Uber, with no way to ensure you actually get a Waymo rather than a broken car driven by someone with a serious BO problem.

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

#502
We really need the right to modify our vehicle software, with zero 'safety' or 'environment' camel noses to shoe-horn in the total lockdowns we see prevalent today. 'FOSS' hardware should be exempted from a whole bunch of regulations to make it enticing and accessible to technicians, home builders, and boutique bespoke builders. What we don't want is Tesla's/Apple's model, we want the GNU/Linux on Talos II model with no surprise NSA backdoor management engines.

Like... can we pleeeease have this already!??

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

#503
post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> customers simply don't believe good interfaces are worth the money I guess I'm in the minority, then, but as a data point: I own a VW ID.4 and I'd pay significantly more to get software that isn't such a burning dumpster tire fire. And no, the excuses provided in this thread don't cut it. To be clear: it doesn't even annoy me anymore that the infotainment is slow and crappy, I've gotten used to it and I just never…

I have a VAG ICE vehicle and had a problem with the navigation system not working. When I brought it in to get it fixed, they apparently put a completely new version of the software on the hardware.

Suddenly everything was fast. No slow lags anymore. System is ready even before I start the engine. Navigation now zooms smoothly. Voice recognition is finally working 95% of the time and only tripping up on hard words.

I don't know how many different software versions are out there but apparently they are working on system speed without changing the hardware. Maybe I got an early access version and they are waiting for data before they push it to all vehicles.

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

#504

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…

>Their model of integrating 3rd party vendor computers just doesn't really work for this kind of thing; Tesla, Rivian, and the Chinese EV makers all manufacture all their own electronics, which lets them achieve the outcome. But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year.

Maybe it's time for an 'OpenCar' project, where a "standard car" model is designed for (all cars have ECUs, light controls, HVAC, etc), and there's also a kind of natural demarcation that could exist like between drivers (engine performance characteristics, etc) and operating system (the overall "standard car" model). We don't write custom OSes for each PC make and model, why the flying f*** are car manufacturers all d***ing around doing their own things independently?

I think cheap China cars will finally kill the bloated US auto sector, and it will be a great time for the government to bail them out at a cost: they must design and manufacture parts to a national "open standard" in addition to any proprietary designs they choose to make. If they come up with a novel technology redesign for a part in the standards vehicle, the design must be open even if a patent for exclusive marketing of the improved part, as long as the part is not mandated. Automakers who don't participate don't get the competitive incentives. There should be a figurative x86/amd64 car, an ARM truck, etc. Think: volkswagens! There needs to be evergreen design in the standards cars: new parts made 30 years later should generally still fit, so it should have much looser regulations which would otherwise kill it off in a few years (like EPA regulations murdered the small truck).

It must be made much harder to put customers on the rentier treadmill. Planned obsolescence and proprietary design are two important tools to the rentier, along with copyright and DMCA. Look at China: better to strengthen your people and production even if it means chasing price gouging software houses off, because China demonstrated you can just steal the software in the future and improve upon it. What matters is the soil, minerals, metals, food, and production. People need materials to survive, they don't need frilly whirlie-gig flashy wazoo SaaS applications which cost monthly. Zynga's original business model should not be viable in an ideal world, but this is the world of the NPC and the cryptoshamanic advertising industry.

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try driving in Naples.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would pay more for a car where the software department is somewhat competent and knows what they're doing. I have a Tesla Model Y and I was thinking of downsizing to an ID.4 and you just scared the shit out of me.

The ID 4 is coming off a recall and sales stop because the doors would open when in motion if the handles got wet.

I can't recall any car that didn't have any 'teething problems'. Some cars I've owned had multiple recalls. Of course it doesn't look good, but often it's to fix the probability of a problem occurring: it's not that the doors instantly swing open when touched by a drop of water.

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

#507

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.

Don't know about the rest of the world, but the EU requires e-call (automatic emergency call after an accident) for all new cars now so you can't sell cars without an LTE chip.

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

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

When I was there (ages ago), the driver of the bus I was on overtook on a blind corner on a road cantilevered off a cliff. They did cross themselves before doing it.

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

#509
post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 memory goes bad because they write useless logs to a chip, and it eventually fails. I worked for a $ ~billions revenue software storage vendor who had the exact same issue (excessive logging wearing out under-spec'd flash drives).

The bane of every cargo cult cloud op. I worked with a company that had maybe 20 devs total, > 30 "microservices" in kubernetes and one of the most complex bits of the deployment was handling Greylog and Elasticsearch. Still they couldn't manage high availability, despite logging all the things. Go figure.

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

#510
post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Asia it's mainly used to signal your presence, like when you're overtaking someone. Just a little tap of the horn. Just the fact that you hear it say in the right corner behind you will make you not swerve in that direction. It's almost subconscious and really does improve safety imho. You can't possibly visually scan for all vehicles around you. The result of course is that there's a non stop cacophony, in places…

It's been a while since I've been to Vietnam but most of the traffic is composed of motorcycle and not cars, so honking is indeed a signal of presence that's needed compared to just having the noise of a single car that's behind you.

(crossing the street is also kind of surreal as it's more like going through a school of fish; the trick is to walk at a steady pace to maximize your position predictability)

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