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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

#641

Post by whstl »

namaria wrote: post #625
whstl wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once worked for a unicorn that got near-zero traffic during the pandemic, but nobody could understand why some services were struggling to stay up. Datadog was costing several thousand euros per month despite near-absent customer traffic. But the name made finally sense because all the data in there was absolute dog shit from reboots. So yeah too much logging can be bad.

Oh most definitely. Maybe my sarcasm was a bit too subtle. I definitely think that teams should think about what to log. Otherwise go with a live image kind of system like Smalltalk of LISP. The whole event sourcing paradigm and trying to just log everything and look at it later strike me as a poor reconstruction of that concept. There is a tragic aspect to the "Worse is Better" essay that I see play out everywhere:…

Oh I got the sarcasm, I was just agreeing.

And I also agree about worse is better. To me the most tragic part is that "worse" has become almost as costly as doing "The Right Thing", mostly due to the extreme flexibility and rush to the market from vendors and libraries. Our foundations weren't as sketchy when the concept was invented.

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

#642

Post by jameshart »

kev009 wrote: post #552
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…

This is weird because the microprocessor industry owes a lot of early success to automotive companies. Motorola 6800, Intel 8061 ( https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/history/virtual-vaul... ) etc. Quoting wikipedia: "the name "Motorola" by linking "motor" (from motor car) with "ola" (from Victrola), which was also a popular ending for many companies at the time, e.g. Moviola, Crayola" TI has some powerful automo…

Motorola were a car radio company originally

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

#643

Post by jve »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #251
omega3 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year. Why? A year is a long time and it's a solved problem. In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?

I’m not sure if you’ve worked around hardware but a year is not very long in these environments, and that 5 year plan is less like a sensible, let alone obvious step to take and more like a crazy leap of faith. You don’t know that vertical integration will guarantee that you’re more competitive, and the investment you need to make before you see a return is beyond 5 years. That’s not an easy bet to make. It looks obv…

Hm, reading this thread makes me realize that one of the reasons why Tesla/SpaceX/Starlink/Crew Dragon UI can move so fast is by using Linux all over the place.

Of course on itself it may not help, but along with other tricks like going agile with hardware does the job pretty well.

While others are doing their hardware iterations that last for years, software defined stuff may be easier.

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

#644

Post by colejohnson66 »

arkh wrote: post #541
tqi wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rinse and repeat across hundreds of components and your team "pays for itself" "We found $X cost savings" is the easiest path the promotion. It's measurable, cleanly attributable, and immediate, while the downsides are not. Maybe perform is bad bc they skimped on memory, or maybe it's because the software team sucks. Maybe it means future updates are hamstrung, but who cares the bonus checks cleared years ago. Beside…

And with the help of software your get: this algorithm works well to recognize signs using 2 cameras. We can alter it a little to make it work with 1 camera (huge savings) and losing like 10% accuracy. With a cheaper camera we lose again some accuracy but even more savings. Now you get a shitty feature for savings while the people who implemented it can go cry in a corner thinking about their good version.

"We asked one of the software guys if we 'could' use a single camera, and they said, 'uh... possibly?', so we pushed through!"

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

#645

Post by the8472 »

pbasista wrote: post #629
GenshoTikamura wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not safety addons, those are surveillance ones

Please do not intentionally conflate the two concepts. Connectivity is one thing. Using connectivity for surveillance is another. If a car is connected to the internet, it does not automatically mean that it is also collecting car data and sending it somewhere.

Is the modem always on or does it only get activated on an accident? If it's the former then cell towers log your location.

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

#646

Post by mlrtime »

0xFNaaNg wrote: post #623
whiteboardr wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get out if you can! Spent 7 years at the three pointed star within design and UX - one day, when i’m over all i had to witness and experience i’ll write a book about the downfall of the german automotive industry. It’s all politics and due to constant battles and changing ownership throughout departments they won’t ever have a solid foundation. And i dare to assume that this goes for most of the automotive industry.…

> downfall of the german automotive industry I hear that kind of statements all the time but if you take like real important car things germans are (still) pretty good: their cars handle really well, powertraian usually works perfectly smooth (or sporty), ergonomics is good to perfect, it will not rust for decades, list goes on ... The real things killing germans I think: cars are expensive and unreliable

Agreed, Germany still makes some of the best cars in the world. Who is making them better?

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

#647

Post by cameronh90 »

pixl97 wrote: post #264
cameronh90 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it about price or reliability? I never had a manual window winder fail to work, but electric window buttons breaking or the motor getting stuck (e.g. in icy conditions) has happened at some point in every car I've owned. The convenience factor hugely outweighs the rare failures for me, but I could see why someone buying a Wrangler for its intended purpose might actually prefer the manual option.

>I never had a manual window winder fail How old are you? Back in the 70s-80s these manual ones would break all the damned time. Of course US cars from that age we're commonly crap.

Old enough to have owned multiple cars from the 80s, but not from new!

However I do live in the UK so they were European/UK cars - Vauxhall, Volvo, Citroen, Renault.

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

#648

Post by CelestialMystic »

teekert wrote: post #146

Just talk to Canoncal, or IBM, make a NixOS config, or just do something. How hard can it be? My father’s 5 yo Volkswagen van has an 80’s looking UI, the touchscreen is already failing. Going from the normal UI to CarPlay is just jarring, any 2024 Linux distro looks, feels and acts more modern. What are they doing over there?? I could probably whip him up something nicer if only there was just a Nuc or something in t…

It isn't just the UI. You need to (re-)read the article. They have a bunch of interconnected systems that need to talk to each other, the existing methods are fit for purpose.

These systems also have to work correctly (100% of the time) in a range of conditions and it needs to not drain the battery while the car isn't being used. They also need to start up quick on relatively low end hardware. The car creates a very hostile environment generally for electronics. There is lots of dirt, muck etc that will literally work its way in everywhere. There is also a bunch of regulations that have to work almost internationally.

Car companies are not software companies. If you are a software developer not in a software company, things are much more difficult as the organisation just isn't geared to deal with software development generally. Combine this with it being a massively complicated product (modern vehicles are complicated) you are setting yourself up for failure.

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

#649

Post by oarsinsync »

DanielHB wrote: post #551
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…

I worked in similar systems and you are 100% right. 80% of the time was spent on communication protocols between the different boards and microcontrollers. QAing and solving issues from short-sighted dozens of unique custom protocols that worked in non-standard ways (every time a component needs to talk to another component a new protocol was invented). When you have dozens of communication lines required between dif…

> every time a component needs to talk to another component a new protocol was invented

> We actually spent considerable amount of time just developing our own custom protocol

Not only is this unintentionally hilarious, it’s a real life example of an xkcd comic (https://xkcd.com/927/) that will never cease to be true.

> eventually all our data communication would use a single unified protocol from micro-controller to IoT Linux to cloud data-ingestion pipeline to database.

This, however, is remarkably impressive, that you were able to build a single protocol that fit this end to end use case.

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

#650

Post by tomaskafka »

pydry wrote: post #599
DanielHB wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in similar systems and you are 100% right. 80% of the time was spent on communication protocols between the different boards and microcontrollers. QAing and solving issues from short-sighted dozens of unique custom protocols that worked in non-standard ways (every time a component needs to talk to another component a new protocol was invented). When you have dozens of communication lines required between dif…

This makes it sound like the problem is that they either lack a person with architectural responsibility for the cars' electronics as a whole or that person lacks the skills necessary to do their job.

No, it’s the org and incentives structure - maybe the only people who have all parts that need to make change under their command are the board, and until now, the software was an unimportant part for them.
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