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Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

bloomberg.com

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Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#81

Post by jwr »

raphael_l wrote: post #55
jwr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a VW EV owner (ID.4), I can attest to this. The software is a burning dumpster fire, usability is terrible, the most common workflows break or simply never work, the car forgets even basic settings like whether you want to charge to 80% or 100%, and even the bare basics like the windows going predictably up when you press both "up" buttons sometimes fail (race conditions, apparently). It's an absolute disgrace. I…

We drive an ID.5. Apart from the UX, the outdated visual design language – is the interface also horrendously slow in yours? I have very noticeable lag when interacting with it, sometimes it takes even a second to respond to input. If it weren't for the insanely good driving experience (coming from a VW Polo before), the software would have definitely convinced us to go for another car.

> is the interface also horrendously slow in yours

Yes. But I consider this to be the least of its problems — if it were slow, but actually worked, I'd be OK with it. The problem is that it is quite simply broken in a number of ways.

It looks as if no management at VW ever used the car. It should be mandatory for management to use any new car design as their home/family car for a month or so. I'd imagine some problems would be fixed in no time. Things like the car forgetting charging settings, the car being unable to link driver profiles to key fobs (!) and distinguish between drivers, the fact that some settings are per-driver, while others are per-car, or the fact that the phone app doesn't display any useful information, especially if you have two drivers. I mean, I could go on and on. It's mind-boggling that software of this quality has ever been released.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#83

Post by constantcrying »

kcb wrote: post #78
constantcrying wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you mean? Where did I even come close to doing that?

Sorry, I meant as a response to your question. But point is, software at European non-software companies gets grouped in with IT. Treated as a support team rather than a revenue team, with salaries to match.

But this can't be true for VW, which set up an entire company to do software for cars, which has nothing to do with providing IT or was ever viewed as a "support team".

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#84

Post by constantcrying »

ajb wrote: post #80
constantcrying wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. That isn't how you can buy VW, the market cap is totally misleading. VW Group has a bizarre structure, it is actually directly controlled by some Porsche Holding company, which is directly owned by the Porsche–Piëch family.

Oh it ended up owned by Porsch? So confusing. I remember the short squeeze, but usually I don't follow this stuff. I wasn't really quoting $58B as the price Apple would pay - just an indicator of the size of VW. But probably the wrong one I guess? I know that a merger doesn't involve paying the market cap. It's more about convincing the shareholders that their final shares in the merged company would be worth more th…

>Oh it ended up owned by Porsch?

No, VW Group owns Porsche, the car brand. There is also Porsche SE which is a tiny company, which owns controlling shares over VW Group.

The short squeeze happened because there aren't actually that many shares around which you can buy.

>I know that a merger doesn't involve paying the market cap. It's more about convincing the shareholders that their final shares in the merged company would be worth more than the sum of whatever shares they have in each part.

Shareholders opinions are totally irrelevant. The only thing that would matter is the family who owns Porsche SE agreeing, which isn't going to happen.

Market cap is the product of the number of shares and what the market thinks a single share is worth. So the market cap matters as it puts a bound on what the price could be. But in this case the price at which shareholders would accept such an acquisition is irrelevant, as their is a single shareholder who holds controlling shares and gets to make the decision.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#85

Post by lostlogin »

morbicer wrote: post #79
lostlogin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?

Apple makes stellar HW but their software is kinda meh. Crippled ipadOS, lagging Safari, abysmal window management of macOS, total disaster of XCode, dumb Siri, degrading iTunes and iCloud isn't spotless either.

Most of my issues with their software are on the Mac. For things they really care about, they can pull finger and make them good. Quite why they can’t find the resources to fix up more of their software is a bit mystifying.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#86

Post by constantcrying »

morbicer wrote: post #79
lostlogin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?

Apple makes stellar HW but their software is kinda meh. Crippled ipadOS, lagging Safari, abysmal window management of macOS, total disaster of XCode, dumb Siri, degrading iTunes and iCloud isn't spotless either.

Have you recently used a Windows PC? Or an Android phone? It is legitimately terrible.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#87

Post by morbicer »

constantcrying wrote: post #86
morbicer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes stellar HW but their software is kinda meh. Crippled ipadOS, lagging Safari, abysmal window management of macOS, total disaster of XCode, dumb Siri, degrading iTunes and iCloud isn't spotless either.

Have you recently used a Windows PC? Or an Android phone? It is legitimately terrible.

Windows is terrible but that's a low bar. I am currently on iphone but have some android devices and they are fine.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#88

Post by n_ary »

sveme wrote: post #73
n_ary wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leader…

Leadership at Cariad also seems to have a background in mechanical engineering, so those processes translate. You need people with hands-on software engineering experience to create a new culture that works for software development.

Am not sure about Cariad leadership, but the three failed projects I have been part of, the leadership was adequately technical(some mechanical, some aeronautical, some electrical, some material and many other, but they had been removed from the ground for so long that they mostly forgot how the actual engineering works and start hiring expensive consultant-management to insulate themselves from all liabilities of dealing with the actual people.

I kid you not, one of the failed project had only 1/7th of actual engineers building the software(and partially hardware), 4/7th were mostly leadership and management and rest 2/7th mostly HR, finance, regulation, legal, supply chain etc. And out of that 1/7th, only 10% were inhouse engineers, rest were expensive rented consultants, who were mostly busy doing politics.

The other two were slightly healthy ratio but managed to burn out the hardworking people by not understanding the actual requirements and introducing 200 steps of red-tape on everything.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#89

Post by moogly »

piva00 wrote: post #67
moogly wrote: post #52

Good news for both companies. I'm a bit surprised, because I thought VW would be pissed at Rivian that the R3 basically looks like a 1991 VW Golf[1] Country[2]. [1]: VW Rabbit for the North Americans [2]: https://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/49087163666

The R3 looks much more like a Range Rover than a small and nimble 90s VW Golf.

I really cannot agree at all. Maybe, maybe you can make an argument for the R2, but even that is more diminutive than most Range Rovers.

Re: Volkswagen invests up to $5B in Rivian

#90

Post by piva00 »

moogly wrote: post #89
piva00 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The R3 looks much more like a Range Rover than a small and nimble 90s VW Golf.

I really cannot agree at all. Maybe, maybe you can make an argument for the R2, but even that is more diminutive than most Range Rovers.

So perhaps Land Rovers are a better comparison? It surely reminds me a lot of the design of the Evoque which is quite small by Land/Range Rover standards.
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