[HN Gopher] Porsche Boss Faces Software Woes Keeping VW a Step B... ___________________________________________________________________ Porsche Boss Faces Software Woes Keeping VW a Step Behind Tesla Author : belter Score : 44 points Date : 2022-09-03 20:25 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com) | adventured wrote: | Producing really good software is really hard. | | Here's a tip for all the backwards big companies in Europe: pay | your software engineers _a lot_ more. Whatever you 're paying | now, increase it by 2x-3x. If you want the best, you're going to | have to pay for it, or you're going to suffer the predictably | mediocre results indefinitely (to the benefit of Tesla & Co.; | Tesla's sales are now up to $67 billion; that's closing in on the | size of BMW's consumer auto division). | melony wrote: | Not just the software, so many cars don't even have a | functional touchscreen while requiring use of it for many core | features. Hyundai for example like to use really low quality | touch screens that are even slower than my old Nokia's | resistive display. What is the point of _pan-and-zoom_ in a GPS | maps app if the screen can barely keep up in real-time? | gumby wrote: | The salaries are a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Most | companies in the world (though Europe in particular has no | excuse) don't understand that software is a strategic (and | existential) issue, so pay for it like any other thing in their | BOM. | | cf my long comment on this subject. | primeblue wrote: | tsunamifury wrote: | 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 Porsche put | owners through was shocking through the process. They displayed a | complete lack of understanding of the basics of control systems | and software safety. | | Needless to say I sold the Taycan and would never buy a VW | electric product. I wrote them a letter and spoke to the safety | team saying people will die from this sloppiness and lack of | professionalism. Someone will pay. Turned out I was right | mixmastamyk wrote: | 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? | orangepurple wrote: | 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. | 762236 wrote: | I wish that car reviewers would do their job and be critical. | They rarely mention how bad the modern cars are becoming. | geodel wrote: | Well, reviewers busy fiddling with ten thousand settings in | 14 INCH TOUCHSCREEN. While 2021 model has only 12.4 inch | screen. So new one is best thing that happened. | alephxyz wrote: | The simultaneous trends of bigger SUV/trucks with higher | hoods and poorly designed "infotainment" systems is | terrifying, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. | CobaltFire wrote: | I drive a Mercedes-Benz Metris and it's exactly that. | thriftwy wrote: | 1st gen Huyndai Cretas on anything but the highest trim levels | are just that. | dontknowwhyihn wrote: | This is exactly what I want. I think there's a huge, untapped | market for an electric car with minimal software. A car that | doesn't need software updates and doesn't track you. | ThrowawayTestr wrote: | Used car dealers | gumby wrote: | The rot is deeper than just the UI, unfortunately. | ricardbejarano wrote: | I believe new Mazdas come with no direct connectivity and have | no touchscreens. You can still connect your Android Auto or | CarPlay device though, and control it with a knob. | | It is the balance I like. I don't own one (yet). | jcdavis wrote: | Got a Mazda3 this year and the "no bullshit" infotainment | stack was a huge selling point for me. Airplay integration | using a knob is a little wonky in places (primarily | interacting with maps), but I consider it a feature not a bug | because I basically don't do any interaction I can't do via | voice commands. Physical buttons for all climate etc, not a | capacitive "button" to be found in the car. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Hmm, that smartphone integration implies there is something | at the other side communicating. Don't think I want that | either. Guessing many folks would be fine with bluetooth | audio for music and directions. | OttPeterR wrote: | I've got a new and somewhat-old Mazda. The new one does have | an internet connection but it really only seems to be used | for remote start and door lock status/control. Its using the | Verizon network (in the US) and it also pings a location when | you power off the car. (All these things are available | through a python api so thats fun) | gumby wrote: | 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 merely important | | Let's start with cars. Back before cars were just computers with | wheels I was briefly involved in a software project at | $SERIOUS_GERMAN_CAR_COMPANY. Mechanically their cars were | outstanding -- that's my drive. This project was some cool "by | wire" stuff, all modeled in Matlab, just as the ECU code was. But | it was clear that the mechanical guys were the top of the | pyramid; the safety guys were all mechanical engineers with some | programming experience. All the user-visible electronics (radio, | controls, etc) was subbed out to a low-price bidder because "who | cares about that stuff anyway?". This wasn't VW, but I have some | family exposure to VW specifically and that mentality still comes | through deeply: electronics are added to the vehicle, not | integral. The mental and organizational rewiring will be very | hard. These are not companies who believe you should "eat your | own lunch before someone else comes and eats it for you". The | long institutional problems seen in yesterday's post about Nokia | and the "Burning Platform" memo are pervasive throughout Europe | (and most places, including a lot of USA): | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32698044 | | You see this in the salaries. Sure, take-home salaries in the EU | are lower than US ones in across the board, but the delta in the | high value professions is extreme and quite telling. My son's | partner's parents in Europe are offended by what Amazon pays him | in the US because "he just works in IT". Well, he's a developer | in their highest revenue area, so Amazon think it's worth | investing in. Tesla cars ship with all sorts of fit and finish | bugs, and are above average in mechanical problems. But ("FSD" | excepted) they spend more of their attention on what really | matters: treating their vehicle as a modern electronic device. | But the European car companies are still stuck in the mid 20th | century and make the opposite branch cut. The rest of European | industry is the same. | | Andreeson wrote "Software is eating the world" 11 years ago. | Apparently nobody on the continent of Europe has read it. Sure, | software is considered important, but it's just another part of | the BOM, not something strategic. | | 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. Pretty damning. | | FWIW I've worked in France and Germany (and non-European | countries), including some car business, but most of my career | has been in the Valley (starting 38 years ago). I am not from | Europe or USA so in that sense I don't have a preference for | either side. I prefer living in Europe but vastly prefer to work | in the US. | amluto wrote: | > But ("FSD" excepted) they spend more of their attention on | what really matters: treating their vehicle as a modern | electronic device. | | Yet even Tesla does a rather bad job at this -- they consider | it to be a modern electronic device and ignore the wheels. OTA | updates regularly change the UI in a way that is difficult and | dangerous to learn when the wheels are spinning. Even when | familiar with it, the very basics are hidden in menus and | cannot be used without looking away from the road for longer | than is safe. | | Car companies: make your car software simple, reliable, and | boring. You may well need to spend serious money doing this, | but the goal should not be for it to be fancy or to feel | extremely modern. | | (With the latest update, turning off the seat heater is buried | in a menu. I still haven't figured out how to efficiently | dismiss overlay apps that are covering the map. It used to be | fairly obvious.) | geodel wrote: | People should try to reconcile the facts that those | outrageously high FAANG salaries occurs because of | | 1) Near monopoly in that sector 2) Excessive surveillance and | tracking users 3) Increasing inequality between haves and have | nots. | | And non-FAANG type IT worker are also paid relatively high at | the cost of other workers living perilous lives. | | So unless Europeans really start cherishing these "values". | They are not gonna get US level salaries. The way I see quite a | lot non-US / European people just like high salaries but never | want to think where it really come from. | | All this talk about Europe does not respect/appreciate / values | Software engineers sounds more and more like coded way to say | _We, software people, deserve much higher salaries at the cost | of everyone else_. | fdsfdsafdsafd wrote: | Your post has a misunderstanding of basic economics. The high | salaries of FAANG are not at "the cost of everyone else" | kareemsabri wrote: | Can you explain how paying software engineers higher salaries | means other people need to live "perilous lives". You could | just lower your EBIDTA a bit. Software engineers in the US | aren't rich because of janitors being underpaid or something. | chrisseaton wrote: | Five separate companies cannot be described as having a | meaningful monopoly between them. | | And there are hundreds of companies that pay at that level in | the US, not just FAANG. | | Reality is European workers are under-paid, not US workers | over-paid. | | Also curious what you think is different in Australia? Are | software salaries there like in the US and above somewhere | like London? | ceeplusplus wrote: | > And non-FAANG type IT worker are also paid relatively high | at the cost of other workers living perilous lives. | | Those workers live perilous lives because cities refuse to | build enough housing, not because a few workers have it good. | | > those outrageously high FAANG salaries occurs because of | | 4) Much more generous VC funding leading to more competition | between firms for SWEs, as a result of a more risk seeking / | risk tolerant culture with stronger work ethic | | Also you're ignoring that even SWEs at companies like Walmart | Labs make much more than SWEs in Europe. | metaphor wrote: | https://archive.ph/3an1z | dependsontheq wrote: | 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 shut down all displays (including speed) while | driving on the Autobahn (error message: no input), I stopped in | the next town, charging the car was no longer possible. I tried | to find out how to do hard reboot, my wife found a thread in a | forum, "leave the car with all smart keys, go at least 50 meters | from the car, wait for 15 minutes". That did the trick. | | Sometimes the voice recognition comes on and does something | weird, I have no idea why or what it tries to do, sometimes it | starts a specific radio station, it has not once recognized | anything I said. | | Some Update added a blue light glowing in front of the driver in | the small LED strip, it just ominously glows for a second. It | looks a bit like a warning, I have no idea what it is warning | about, it just happens sometimes. | | Sometimes in the night the alarm starts and wakes the | neighborhood, but I was able to solve that by disabling the | proximity features in the smart key system. | | The navigation forgets that I can charge the car at home after | every update. 20 kilometers before I am home it recommends I | should charge for 2 hours. | | The UI/UX is unintuitive and ugly. It shows a lot of useless | information in weird places and a lot of stuff is hard to find. | | The list of weird experiences I had with this car is endless, and | a lot of is just just bad software development, like the issue on | the Autobahn. | temac wrote: | Some of the bugs and ergonomics problem you describe seem | dangerous. The regulators should come in and ban those cars | until they are fixed. | Gordonjcp wrote: | I've been driving a 27-year-old Range Rover for a year. | Sometimes I need to hold the ignition key close to the receiver | in the rear window for it to lock. Sometimes I need to jiggle | the steering lock a little for the flappy door to close and | tell it the key is out, before it will lock. Sometimes I need | to poke the "petrol flap" button a couple of times before the | flap will open. | | Sometimes the radio doesn't really get a good signal on Radio 4 | and I need to press the SEEK button on the steering wheel. | | The dashboard displays were fuzzy and hard-to-read, but I wiped | the dust off and they were fine. They did go totally dark once | when I was fiddling with the brightness control, but I turned | them back on. | | It has never need rebooted. It has never forgotten how to be | fuelled up. It has never just turned off all its electronics at | speed on the motorway. The UI doesn't show any information | beyond speed, engine RPM, coolant temperature and fuel level, | unless there's some sort of fault indication up. | | I am really not convinced about buying a modern car. | | (My last car was also a 27-year-old Range Rover, which I still | have) | callalex wrote: | The crash safety of a modern car is just not even in the same | world as older cars. That's why I put up with all the | jankiness. You can drive perfectly and still end up in a bad | collision that was someone else's fault. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | I just bought a Subaru after a week renting a Porsche Macan | through Turo. It's wild how unintuitive the Porsche interface | was. It was ugly, it felt cheap and it was distracting to boot. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-03 23:00 UTC)