No one has it easy, but some companies are doing a whole lot better than others.
Ford announced this week that it is merging FNV4, its project to develop a next-generation electrical architecture designed to unlock new functionality and upgradeability for both EVs and internal-combustion cars, with its existing architecture, seemingly confirming reports that the project has not gone as planned. It’s another in a long, long line of false starts in the race for legacy automakers to develop true “software-defined vehicles” (SDVs), and further proof of just how hard the task is.
It’ll be worth the effort. Software-first architectures reduce costs, increase flexibility and—perhaps most importantly—allow automakers to move faster, without being slowed down by a complex web of suppliers creating their own code. Though becoming a leader in SDVs will be just as challenging as becoming an electric vehicle powerhouse, it’s also equally important. Consumers have had it with clunky, slow automotive technology, and the modern car is so computerized that a seamless electronic interface is an absolute necessity.
None of the legacy automakers has solved this problem yet. All of them have thrown billions at it. Only some of them will complete the transformation.
What Is A Software-Defined Vehicle?
Tesla invented the software-defined vehicle with the launch of the original Model S. While previous cars had plenty of software onboard, they all used a different approach. Electronic control units (ECUs) with supplier-sourced software would control groups of features or individual modules. Cars would have one computer handling, say, HVAC systems, and another for the lighting. Each of these computers was networked via CAN bus, an old-school network with limited bandwidth.
This was the original software-defined vehicle, the Tesla Model S.
Photo by: Tesla
Updates were done at dealers, and since that process was expensive, automakers only updated things when they had to, for safety, security or reliability reasons. This meant that software had to be fully validated and finalized before the product entered production, according to Sam Abuelsamid, vice president of market research at auto intel firm Telemetry.
But Tesla changed the game. The Model S was designed from the get-go to be updatable over-the-air, and since it didn’t rely on legacy suppliers, it used far fewer ECUs than its competitors. Most software duties were handled by a centralized computer, with only certain safety-critical systems getting their own computers. This simplified wiring, reduced production costs and allowed Tesla to make the car better over time.
The updatability was both broad and deep. One example Abuesamid offers: When the Model 3 first came out, it took far too long to stop in Consumer Reports testing, thanks to bad anti-lock braking system (ABS) calibration. Tesla was able to fix this with a software update over the air, something no one else could do for a braking system. That was impressive, but the example presented a worrying question: Did engineers not do stopping-distance testing before they shipped the car to customers?
The Tesla Model 3 brought the SDV to a mass-market audience, but its early quality issues show why the move-fast and fix-it-later approach can be problematic.
Thus, the double-edged sword of SDVs. They are more upgradeable and flexible than their predecessors, but that advantage allows companies to deliver under-baked software with a “fix it later” approach.
Teething Issues
Evidence of that dichotomy is not hard to find. As automakers have introduced vehicles with more advanced computing and electrical architectures, they have also struggled to deliver bug-free software on time.
General Motors provided America’s most salient example. Its Vehicle Intelligence Platform (VIP) uses a CAN bus system alongside ethernet connections. That allows for more networked features, including things like Super Cruise hands-free driving and key modules that can be updated over-the-air. But troubles with the platform also ruined the launch of products like the Hummer EV, Cadillac Lyriq and Chevy Blazer EV. All of them were wracked with software issues, one of which stranded our man Kevin Williams. And a truly centralized platform remains on the horizon.
Volvo also struggled with scaling its platform. It’s proud of the fact that the EX90 and EX30 are true software-defined EVs. They have a centralized computing system, a simpler electrical architecture and a software stack that is designed to get better continuously. But delivering it was a nightmare. The company delayed the EX30 and EX90, and then shipped them with plenty of bugs and missing features. Still, the Volvo EX30, EX90 and related Polestar 4 are SDVs you can buy in the U.S. today.
Ford’s FNV4 was its next big move, and according to Abuelsamid, it was supposed to be out already. The platform was going to underpin vehicles like Ford’s planned electric three-row SUV, which the company abruptly canceled last year. According to Abuelsamid, the software wasn’t ready. Now, some improvements from FNV4 are being folded into Ford’s existing FNV3 architecture.
My Blazer EV has gotten a few software updates since I got it eight months ago, but one of them still had to happen at the dealer.
Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs
Still, Abuelsamid says Ford’s current position is “way better than it was two years ago.”
Then there’s Volkswagen, which made a big bet on software development with its captive software arm, Cariad. Despite the early start and plenty of money, though, Cariad was a disaster. VW tried to reshuffle the company a few times and utterly failed to turn it around. Now, with its SDV plans way off track, VW is outsourcing key software tasks to Mobileye, Chinese partners and Rivian. It is, as Abuelsamid put it, a “clusterf—.”
The Rivian deal will at least allow the company to get its own “zonal architecture,” the latest buzzword that refers to a new, more efficient way to lay out electrical architecture in SDVs. But Volkswagen needs to learn how to do this itself, so relyihng on others isn’t the best option in the long run.
"Zonal architectures" are the next big thing in electrical system design, allowing companies to reduce complexity by running almost all functions through one of a few core computers distributed throughout the vehicle.
“It’s not an ideal solution,” Abuelsamid said.
As for everyone else, they’re all a few years away from having any proper SDVs on the road. Stellantis has been cautious with its rollout, but it’s working hard on its STLA Brain project. BMW is promising a generational leap in SDV tech with its Neue Class line of Vehicles. Mercedes has its true SDV platform launching on the CLA later this year, even if that car is looking a little less exciting after this week’s news.
Japanese and Korean companies remain further behind. Hyundai and Kia are transitioning to more software-driven vehicles, but their existing products feel a generation behind what GM’s doing and two generations behind Tesla. Toyota has brought much of its software team in-house and set up a major operation in the U.S., but is far from offering a true SDV. Honda’s existing products are legacy through and through, but it says the 0 Series EVs will use a true SDV platform with AI integration and a smart assistant, Asimo.
Honda's 0 Series Saloon concept previews its upcoming software-defined vehicle.
Photo by: Honda
All of these future products will likely have teething issues. Because even with deep pockets, this is not an easy transition. But automakers need to push through if they want to create affordable, upgradeable EVs with streamlined user experiences. As customers of Rivian, Tesla and many Chinese brands have proven, once you use a true SDV you rarely go back to a legacy product. It’s a smoother, more modern experience.
Why It’s So Hard
From the outside, it may be hard to understand why creating a software-defined vehicle is still hard in 2025. These legacy companies have poached big hitters from Apple, Tesla and Google. They’ve sunk billions into it. They have decades of experience with software-controlled modules. From the clouds, it all seems doable.
Yet on the ground, it’s a nightmare. Automakers are not redesigning software. They are reworking how their entire organizations approach software.
These are companies that have typically seen software as a problem to be solved, not a design to be experienced. Engineers at GM, Ford and Toyota have spent decades using an approach to software that was silo’d, minimally tolerant of risk and designed to remain unchanged through the vehicle’s 20-year life cycle.
Hyundai will launch a new software experience under the "Pleos Connect" brand.
Photo by: Hyundai
Now, they need to make compelling apps, slick new features and all-new electrical architectures that neither the companies nor their suppliers are used to using. They need to build Tesla-level upgradeability with far less willingness to ship unfinished goods, all while tucking it behind a military-grade firewall to ensure your car can’t be remotely hacked.
“The challenging part is these companies need to merge their development philosophies,” Abuelsamid says, keeping the safety-first mindset while also getting faster, more creative and bolder.
Plus, as Ford SDV project boss Doug Field tells The Verge, slower-than-expected EV sales mean they need to build systems that can also work with internal-combustion vehicles. That’s a major challenge, as EVs have a big battery that can power their electronics round-the-clock, enabling big over-the-air updates. When you only have a puny 12-volt to keep things moving, you’re going to run out of juice pretty quick.
Finally, they have to navigate all of these issues while not scaring off customers. GM has been more aggressive and, I’d argue, successful with SDVs than competitors, but its anti-Apple CarPlay stance has also scared off plenty of buyers. Plus, as automakers have moved more controls into their central displays, they’ve faced more consumer complaints and confusion.
So Who Wins?
The clear leaders here are the companies that weren’t already locked into the old-world approach to automotive software. Tesla, Rivian, Lucid and almost all of the Chinese automakers have built ground-up systems that work without legacy bloat.
Rivian's software may not be as great as Tesla's, but it's far ahead of legacy automaker tech.
Everyone else is having to stumble their way towards that future, with varying levels of success. GM had the most high-profile struggles, but like BMW with early iDrive, the company’s willingness to stick it out seems to have produced an organization that’s ahead of its legacy peers on software. But it remains to be seen whether the company can take its approach further down the path to true SDVs.
BMW and Mercedes are close to launching theirs, while the fruits of the VW-Rivian deal and Ford’s “skunkworks” next-gen EV project remain further out. As for the Korean and Japanese companies, all of the hard work is still ahead of them.
Tesla proved that a software-defined vehicle was a viable and desirable product. Chinese automakers proved that the software-first approach could be replicated and improved upon. Now, we need a legacy automaker to prove that you can turn a century-old hardware brand into a true software company. It’s possible, but we know now that it won’t be easy.
Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com.
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Comments
By acheron9383 2025-05-1122:1128 reply 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 doesn't have the API to your MCU, or it runs some dogshit speed communication system that means you have 500ms lag. The feature is just unworkable, and if the PMs push it anyways you get what happens for the legacy car makers, terrible underpowered infotainment systems with no central design philosophy, stuck in an awkward, bad, middle between a full software stack and all buttons for everything. 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.
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 different parts of the system it becomes just as complicated as your average micro-service cloud. Really, a car is a distributed system with dozens of "services". An analogy is that each microcontroller-microcontroller communication use their own custom binary-encoding API that runs on multiple different, incompatible versions of HTTP.
We actually spent considerable amount of time just developing our own custom protocol for communication that could run on all sorts of different physical interfaces (CAN, ethernet, modbus, etc) as well as a series of proxies between devices (so component A can talk to component C through a proxy in component B). And if we had to use a custom protocol from an external manufacturer we had to wrap it into our own custom protocol.
That protocol was actually used for our cloud data reporting as well, so eventually all our data communication would use a single unified protocol from micro-controller to IoT Linux to cloud data-ingestion pipeline to database.
For american cars at least, I read that one of the reasons this process exists is because car companies want to work around union rules for manufacturing by outsourcing components of the cars to subcontractors that they can make deals with.
Ultimately it's a price control strategy to pit these suppliers against each other to lower costs. But it means that designing these electronic sub-systems isn't just a question of the design itself, but also of managing all of these supplier relationships as well, they all have different contracts, you would have to coordinate all of them at once to make sure things are interoperable, etc.
That smells plausible, but from my seat as am armchair car enthusiast, it seems that foreign automakers outsource components just as often.
By ashoeafoot 2025-05-1216:15 and have the same problem with software ? yes and yes
By slipnslider 2025-05-1219:05 >price control strategy to pit these suppliers against each other to lower costs
Apparently that rabbit hole goes super deep in which the large auto manufacturers in the US throw their weight around and force suppliers into selling parts at cost or with razor thin profit margins. And on top of that, they force the suppliers to eat the loss when it comes to cyclical business demand (e.g. storage costs for over-producing during low demand and increased labor costs during times to under producing from high demand)
By datadrivenangel 2025-05-1212:50 Conway's law strikes again!
By jollyllama 2025-05-1214:501 reply You'd think the overhead of managing the supplier relationships would be more expensive than well-managed vertical integration. I'm guessing it's a failure on the part of admin to count their own costs.
By awongh 2025-05-1220:42 Those employees might not be unionized, though.
If that was a main factor, surely then Mexico should be ground zero for next-generation car electronics design? Like, Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez.
By poulsbohemian 2025-05-230:031 reply I can't speak to car electronics design or anything about the capabilities of Tijuana or Ciudad Juarez, but your comment had me reflecting that in the mid/late 90s those of us who were in b-school went from all about Mexico to all about China overnight. With NAFTA et al, American manufacturing was going to be all about developing factories in Mexico and moving good back and forth between the US and Mexico for design and finishing. Then once China joined the WTO it was absolutely an instantaneous pivot to China instead. Maybe all that's old is new again?
By smcin 2025-05-310:19 Right. The unwritten story of the last three decades is the Mexican people in general have lost out on the huge generational opportunity they theoretically should have from being a (comparatively) low-wage manufacturing and R&D option on the US's doorstep ("friendshoring").
On paper Mexico reaped enormous gains from NAFTA(/MCA) but those went to a small slice of the population, and people on fixed incomes/not in manufacturing/services objectively got worse due to inflation and rising cost-of-living, property prices. The share of GDP effectively lost due to corruption is also an issue.
By chii 2025-05-129:19 > (every time a component needs to talk to another component a new protocol was invented).
i'm sure that every time this happens, it individually makes sense to do it at the time.
This is a microcosm of how large systems get developed in small pieces, by different people, over a long(-ish) period of time. It's the same in the software world too i think, but presumably has a lot more consolidation than cars (as software for cars might be less common, and thus employees moving between companies is unlikely to make any sort of cross-pollination like there would be for FAANG-like companies).
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.
By HeyLaughingBoy 2025-05-1220:04 Bear in mind that all the electronics on a particular car are not specific to that car: there is a lot of reuse across product lines. And there are multiple vendors, each of whom is probably also selling the same, or similar modules to other manufacturers.
By tomaskafka 2025-05-1212:31 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.
By datavirtue 2025-05-1218:31 This aspect of the industry has seriously regressed. We started out trying to standardize and as vehicles have become more dependent on onboard networks manufacturers have gone completely proprietary and have put all information behind lawyers. The consumer is the real loser.
By oarsinsync 2025-05-1212:262 reply > 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.
By DanielHB 2025-05-1213:54 It is really hard, especially given you have to optimize for the lowest common denominator. For us it was a 512kb RAM microcontroller, we had to go to procurement to expand it to 2MB RAM and they were not happy about that.
On the other hand it was nice being able to just import a library into your code and JUST SEND A FREAKING MESSAGE without having to deal with thousands of lines of code that were last changed 3 years ago and nobody knows how it works. The scrutiny on the code quality of the common protocol was much higher and therefor much more pleasant to use and troubleshoot.
All the encoders and decoders of messages used the same code in all the parts of the stack (technically 2 implementations, one in Go and one in C)
By HPsquared 2025-05-1213:56 Think of the nightmare 5 years down the road when someone else has to then incorporate this protocol under their own new protocol, with the older ones nested inside.
Just to add one more thing to your point, if embedded devs work really hard and make the code work faster/better all reward you get is an _even_ more underpowered chip for the next version.
Hardware procurement is cut-throat, sometimes they have mandates to reduce component costs and the procurement people WILL reach them. Often procurement > product in the power dynamics so no matter how bad the product gets those people still do it because the software gets the blame for bad product, not procurement who forced a bad chip to be used.
The infotainment is usually the #1 chip to be cut down because it is often the single most expensive electronics part in the system that can be "easily" swapped for a different part.
I hate the penny-wise pound-foolish attitude both in embedded and Android phone development.
For years now, Samsung has used a 'virtual proximity sensor' in everything but their premium stuff. Sensors like that are a few cents. Degrading the entire experience on the phone for a few cents cost savings. Say you do that for 25 components, saving 4 cents each. You've now saved $1 on a BoM of $100-$200, whilst making the whole experience of your product feel a lot worse.
By chipsrafferty 2025-05-1619:45 I don't think that's about saving pennies as much as a reason to make premium models stand out.
Your account sounds accurate, but how fitting then that their cost cutting focus is losing them customers and potentially their entire company. VW is losing the EV war. Most manufacturers have already lost. Tesla and BYD are going to eat everyone's lunch. They either need to revolutionise their approach, or they're toast. I suspect they'll attempt to milk their existing supply chains into bankruptcy.
If the OEM stayed with the same chip for several years, wouldn’t the price go down over time?
Car OEMs are modern day colonial plantation owners, they know cost structures of suppliers and schedule their price cuts. They already have an annual cost saving quota. Prices don't just go down but go down just-in-time.
It would make zero sense if I drive to a Walmart and demand they sell to me with monotonically lowering prices as function of date since registration of my reward card, but in cars they do.
Ironically, this method of managing suppliers was perfected by Wal-Mart.
By HeyLaughingBoy 2025-05-1220:06 LOL. That's what I was thinking too.
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...
That’s always been the case with Tesla. I still have no idea how the yoke with no progressive steering and a tiny button for a horn ever passed any sanity check. Not to mention the NHTSA.
Oh, I wish they would install tiny horn buttons on all the vehicles in Vietnam! In that country, the horn is a method of communication, much to the ire of literally everyone trying to exist.
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 "you are driving a German car and seem to have have no indicators".
In india if you hit someone after sounding your horn you are not at fault as you gave warning and they didn't move. (It is far more complex than that but as always the real truth is too complex for a comment box - if you are trying to drive safe it is close enough, but this isn't a license to murder), As a result all drives will honk their own if there is any possibility someone might cross in front of them.
India is getting a lot stricter about driving rules, and I hven't been there for a few years. I would expect the above to change as people realize that the horn doesn't really work for that purpose anyway. But change is always slow.
Was something like 20 years since I was in India, but IIRC at least back then they didn't have a "priority to the right" traffic rule, but rather some kind of "the one who first honks has priority". Traveling in a taxi felt suicidal, drivers just honked when approaching an intersection and continued blithely.
Based on a quick googling, this seems to no more be the case, and there is a 'priority to the right" rule.
I saw something similar when visiting Latin America a few years ago, in a neighbourhood friends lived in. Some people would just go full speed in residential streets and hold the horn while crossing intersections because I guess that's what's gonna keep their car intact?
Latin America is “just” 33 countries each with their own culture (not to mention Brazil with its massive size).
By whstl 2025-05-1216:47 Yeah, I know. I just don't want to self-doxx by mentioning the country.
I also don't think this is part of any specific culture, mine or someone else's, it's just something I saw in one neighbourhood.
By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?
Neither system describes how Indian traffic works, which is much more of an iterated cooperative fluid dynamics simulation, with the main rule being ‘don’t drive into people who are in front of you’.
And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.
> By priority to the right do you mean a French style priorité a droite? Or American style stop sign priorities?
I mean
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_to_the_right
That is, unless there are other signs overriding it (like yield or stop signs), you must yield to someone coming from the right in an intersection.
> And they drive on the left, so priority to the right makes no sense.
Not sure that matters. The important thing is to have a consistent rule that everyone can follow. Whether the rule is to yield to the right or left doesn't per se matter, nor does it depend on which side of the road you drive on.
By vel0city 2025-05-1219:13 I do agree consistency is probably the most important thing, but deciding which side should go first can have differences based on if you're driving on the left or the right.
Imagine a 4-way stop of 1 lane each way roads. Cars drive on the right in this example. One car rolls up traveling from west to east and another car from south to north.
If we give priority to the right, meaning the south->north traffic, they end up out of the way of the other car sooner than the car on the west to east traffic. They only need to cross halfway before they're unblocking the other traffic. If we give priority to the left, meaning the west-east traffic, the west-east car needs to cross the entire road before they start to unblock.
By aloisdg 2025-05-128:17 I ride a bike for a few months in India. The honk system worked quite well. As a small vehicle, you learn your place on the road. Largest first, even if you honk. Honking at every turn in small town works ok, but it is loud. so loud.
By amatecha 2025-05-125:57 Ah wow, this explains so much about the idiot who didn't know how to use a 4-way stop and nearly drove into me the other day. I thought he's giving me a hard time, blaming me, when I had the right of way. Maybe he was just doing the "warning because he might hit" thing?
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 like Hanoi it REALLY gets to you after a while.
Here in EU if someone honks at you it's considered rude and will make me really react with wtf is your problem. Out in Asia it's completely normal.
By PetitPrince 2025-05-127:40 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)
By darkwater 2025-05-129:29 When I got my driving license too many years ago in Italy, they taught me that a brief honk when taking over in interurban roads is actually mandatory (but nobody did it). I don't know if that rule stayed the same as they harmonized more and more the road rules to the European ones.
By seanmcdirmid 2025-05-120:382 reply Horns were disabled in Chongqing at least a couple of decades ago. I’m not sure what it’s like now though, but the government in China can and will deal with excessive horning using means we wouldn’t consider in the west.
By rangestransform 2025-05-1218:051 reply They straight up banned horning in Shanghai when I was there in 2017 using some kind of camera system IIRC, it was quite jarring when I continued onto Nanjing and the usual cacophony resumed.
They also banned lane changing over solid lines with the same camera system IIRC
By seanmcdirmid 2025-05-154:052 reply Ya, China has no problem using camera/recognition tech to its fullest. I wonder if other societies will eventually be outcompeted (cheaper law & order costs means Chinese cities will be more efficient) or if there is some huge cost (privacy violations that lead to economic consequences) to this that will make it less competitive.
By grumpy-de-sre 2025-05-155:17 Looks like London is on track to deploy similar technology. They did a trial in Croydon recently that was considered a huge success. From what I understand they actually ended up with pretty decent buy in from the locals as it had a noticeably positive effect on the community.
We'll probably eventually see it in more western cities as time progresses. Unsure what to make of it tbh.
By rangestransform 2025-05-1520:44 Well I think it’s just like any other authoritarianism, benevolent with a benevolent leader but harmful with a malicious leader
Although things are a bit shit in many places, I do love our planet and the weird and wonderful ways it works.
Were car horns disabled (broken deliberately) in Chongqing?
By seanmcdirmid 2025-05-121:301 reply 20 years ago each city/province was basically its own closed market. So if you were driving a car in CQ, it was probably bought and even made in CQ. They simply required that the horns be disabled.
China internally is much more of a free market now, so I’m not sure how they could just disable horns anymore, although you still can’t get away with driving an outside register vehicle inside a city for very long without getting a crackdown by the police (meaning, they can enforce inspection requirements fairly easily).
I’m not sure if it was really Chongqing or some other obscure city like Dalian, I’m going by hearsay 20+ years ago. More recently, Shanghai banned honking in most circumstances in 2007 (inside its outer ring), but it’s enforced with just fines.
By grumpy-de-sre 2025-05-123:381 reply Was actually quite surprised by how "civilized" the driving was in our recent China trip. Don't think I heard a horn once in probably 20h or so as a passenger, did find the drivers up in Heliongjiang a bit bold with their lane weaving but in Beijing they drove great!
Clear rules, and consistent enforcement works.
Noticed something similar with littering, right now they have to employ an army of old folks to pick up cigarette butts. But I suspect once people come to expect clean surroundings that enforcement of littering fines can become a thing and the culture around respecting public spaces will slowly change. We even caught a young kid full on lecturing their grandparent for spitting on the street.
By seanmcdirmid 2025-05-123:431 reply Dongbei drivers are famous for their interesting driving (but I’m going by hearsay and that one famous song about it).
I don’t think horns were used much in Beijing even on my first trip in 1999, although I do remember the Japanese guy driving us from the airport in a Jeep using it (and also seeing lots of city buses out at night without headlights on, you don’t see that anymore).
I just got back from Beijing a couple of weeks ago and honestly…the traffic is still very horrible but fairly orderly. Just too many cars and not enough roads (but it’s always been like that).
By grumpy-de-sre 2025-05-123:51 Yeh the congestion on Beijing's ring roads is pretty awful. Orderly but awful, also less EVs than ideal.
Have a friend from Shanghai here in Germany that had a really hard time getting a drivers license due to her old driving habits. Aggressively cutting in front of people and horning isn't looked upon too highly here.
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.
By lostlogin 2025-05-127:37 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.
By HelloNurse 2025-05-128:091 reply Honking is a harmless replacement for solving disputes with handguns. You probably drove in low-stress environments.
By KSteffensen 2025-05-128:542 reply There is a low-stress driving environment in Italy? Where's that?
Milan is the only place I have ever been where reversing on the high way is a reasonable solution to missing an off-ramp.
By HelloNurse 2025-05-1210:01 A low amount of low stress people can be found late at night, on highways at negligible traffic hours, on the narrow and meandering country roads that everybody learns to avoid, in half-empty parking lots, and many other obvious uncommon situations.
By xarope 2025-05-133:51 oops, that might have been me. I kid. I only do that when completely lost trying to get out of an autogrill parking lot (!).
By PopePompus 2025-05-1210:591 reply Where ever you are in Italy, you will be told by locals that you can't trust anyone from a town south of that place.
By widforss 2025-05-1211:31 Even in Lampedusa?
By whstl 2025-05-129:55 What's the difference between them in terms of driving?
By Hikikomori 2025-05-127:271 reply Try driving in Naples.
By IncreasePosts 2025-05-1216:151 reply Naples is the first place I got honked at for not cutting the person off. I was at a stop sign, making a left turn onto a main road that had a steady stream of traffic. Apparently, I was supposed to wait a few seconds and then just creep out, cutting cars off on the way, which is what I believe the driver on the main road meant when he beeped at me and gesticulated wildly while I was sitting still at the stop sign.
By jq-r 2025-05-1221:05 That city was the first place where I saw a guy traffic splitting with a car. It was an ancient topolino, but my jaw dropped as he was snaking through traffic like on a moped.
By j-a-a-p 2025-05-122:07 Italy pales in comparison to Vietnam.
Lebanon. Especially Beirut. The honking. Every taxi driver that passed me if I was walking down the street. Honking. Honking. So much noise. All the time.
Six months I was there. Six months of honking honking honking.
By jq-r 2025-05-1221:07 Unfortunately like every city in Egypt. They have a hand permanently on a horn button.
By noisy_boy 2025-05-121:50 I have experience of both Vietnam and India amongst other countries. The latter takes any country, including Vietnam, you can throw at it and wipes the floor with them when it comes to mindless honking.
By ErrorNoBrain 2025-05-127:411 reply and here you can get a 100 euro fine, for using your horn.
You can only use it, if its to prevent an accident from happening. that's it.
By qmr 2025-05-1214:45
By unethical_ban 2025-05-125:442 reply My Mazda from 2014 has this innovative feature: a digital control mechanism for my climate control, with real knobs! No more navigating menus and swiping across touchscreens to adjust temperature. And if I want to change the direction of the airflow? I just move the vent!
By MetaWhirledPeas 2025-05-1214:471 reply The Tesla vents are definitely a debatable choice. I like them, but I acknowledge they are mostly an aesthetic choice. Many Tesla removals (stalks, etc.) come with a cost savings, but I don't really see it with vents. You're probably adding parts in the form of little motors and wires to power them. But they do fit with the theme of autonomy. Software can remember their position for each driver, or could hypothetically cycle through different positions depending on mode selection. (They might do this already but I don't pay close enough attention.)
Edit: Now that I think of it, it's possibly still a huge cost savings in that you can have interchangeable parts across all models, since the vents are hidden to the user.
By vel0city 2025-05-1219:16 Lots of car brands have only a few sizes of vents across several different models of cars. Look at the interiors of all the various GM cars across their different brands especially in the 90s and 2000s, and they're all essentially the same vents.
Yeah those suck - the vents often break, they’re ugly, they don’t work as well.
The Tesla vents are great, the ui is good or can use voice. Other companies that attempt what Tesla does do it poorly with bad software.
By knifie_spoonie 2025-05-129:172 reply I've driven many cars over the years. Not once has a vent ever broken.
Which cars are you driving where they break often?
I don't know what kind of breakage was the parent talking about.
My experience is that as the car gets older it is common for the vents to lose the capability to stay pointed where I place them. As in: you point them where you want and they flip back all the way to one side as soon as you let go.
(Hot climate here, with several months of "a/c set to max during the whole trip" per year)
By fossuser 2025-05-1510:11 I’ve been in many cars where they don’t stay pointed and where the moving mechanism plastic broke off from where it’s connected so it doesn’t move the vent fins at all.
By unethical_ban 2025-05-1215:53 Plastic in the 1990s was more brittle than today. Even back then, my 10-15 year old Ford had issues with the vents not easily moving, then breaking from force.
More modern cars of decent build do not have this issue.
By rurp 2025-05-1214:30 I've driven Tesla's a number of times and absolutely hate the vent controls, they are wildly less precise and take much more attention than in any other car I've driven. I hate pretty much all gimmicky Tesla UX decisions and think most are categorically worse than the standard options.
By Hikikomori 2025-05-1212:36 [flagged]
By rossjudson 2025-05-125:413 reply It makes me sad that a bunch of people who've never used/adjusted to the Tesla yoke are all but guaranteeing (via whining) that yokes are going to disappear. The yoke is great after you've adjusted to it, and I don't care about proportional steering at all. That's complexity I don't need.
By qwerpy 2025-05-126:11 The proportional steering with a yoke on their trucks is awesome. I did not want a yoke, but I wanted the truck and had no choice. I now can’t imagine going back to any other kind of steering. You acclimate to it within minutes.
By fossuser 2025-05-126:02 Yeah it’s a better design, particularly with the driver screen and it took me 10 minutes to get used to it.
I also prefer no stalks.
By SR2Z 2025-05-1214:40 Yokes will be fine - but only BECAUSE they can have variable ratios now.
Frankly, there are a lot of quirky design choices on a Tesla that make them unpleasant for me to drive:
- not being able to coast/disable regenerative braking
- the current implementation of the yoke and capacitive buttons outside the CT
- placing FSD/cruise on the shifter
I don't think these are "get used to it" things, I think they're actually worse UX for most people. I also think that Tesla implemented every single one as cost-cutting measures on a supposedly "luxury" car that's now falling further and further behind the competition.
> 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.
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: there is a way to do something correctly but just throwing something together wins the race to market. Winner takes all and we're stuck with ossified bad decisions from the past. The idea that we can fix it later is just a lie. You can't do the foundation later, you'll be stuck with a structurally unsound edifice and forever holding it together under a completely unnecessary cognitive load.
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.
It has definitely gotten much worse. The only thing keeping me sane is hacking solo projects in languages with great tooling. I don't think I can even stomach interviews anymore, let alone the whole application process farce.
By whstl 2025-05-1213:48 I remember doing an interview with systems design using microservices and mentioning at the end "Well I guess that's it but if this was my personal project I would just have a single server and no native cloud bs".
The guy basically answered "Oh, same. I just ask for people to do microservices because that's how the CTO wants".
We had the exact same issue as well haha
These kind of problems only happen years after the software roll out so no one cares when you are under time pressure.
By loeg 2025-05-1216:55 We sold physical hardware with bundled software, so we could actually create the problem via in-market software update that didn't exist at time of sale! Fun times.
By RedShift1 2025-05-1210:13 HPE also had this issue with their ILO 4. New firmware fixed that issue but if your flash chip was already worn out you're out of luck and the only solution is to replace the entire motherboard.
By loeg 2025-05-1216:56 Issue. We warrantied the longevity of those flash drives, and they were cheap anyway. The problem was mostly the customer pain.
By iknowstuff 2025-05-124:573 reply You’re using a software fault which wore out the flash as evidence of poorly designed electronics?
By amatecha 2025-05-125:54 How is writing excessive logs to a destined-to-fail flash chip in a car's electronics system not a poor design choice? Pretend the person wrote "poorly-designed electronics implementations/sytems" or similar, because that's obviously the intended meaning.
By mavamaarten 2025-05-126:261 reply If the flash was better, the product wouldn't fail so quickly. It's really a combination of poorly designed electronics, and a software bug wasn't there, the fault wouldn't have popped up so early.
By iknowstuff 2025-05-1314:36 All solid state chips have a write limit
By HelloNurse 2025-05-128:15 it isn't a software fault, it's a whole defective system that was designed poorly end-to-end: the software does something inappropriate, which the hardware cannot bear, probably because of a high level mandate to write too many logs and to be too cheap.
By averageRoyalty 2025-05-1122:2810 reply I understand the concept, but the question I have is why?
These companies have huge wallets, and can surely scoop up a smaller automative microcontroller company and bring it in-house? It seems like a problem than enough money could solve quickly, but they've been doing horribly at this for decades now.
By garyfirestorm 2025-05-121:164 reply I work in one of the big three - the culture here is more waterfall and less agile. They decided at some point ‘we don’t need to be experts in building systems, we should only be good at spec’cing them and putting them together’ This leads to a mindset of relying on suppliers for changing even one line of code and at their mercy. Talent leaves because they didn’t get to do any of the fun stuff. And you’re left with bunch of MBAs trying to wing it in what is available which is - no talent, bunch of admineers, and a long list of supplier bills. They go for cheapest component they can spec for a given feature cutting 4MB memory will save 5 cents per car, we sell half a million cars, that’s big savings! I can go on and on about this, but one of us even tried to be Tesla trying to build our own zonal architecture - and are currently struggling due to costs, tarrifs and turnover. Also you can’t overnight change this mindset - building vs assembling. But there has to be some way and I’m too about to walk out the door due to ~10yrs of frustrations.
By whiteboardr 2025-05-125:442 reply 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.
It’s sad to see that a once driving force of innovation is stumbling over its own arrogance and ignorance.
A major factor contributing to this are cost saving measures from the early 2000s where most of them stopped in-house research and development giving most of the work to contractors - a very expensive cost saving measure long term.
We’re down to them using “technology” as a seasoning for consumption like a fancy restaurant - very little long term thinking.
Yeah, and then those contractors (like Continental) has sub-contractors (like Akka) and they have sub-sub-contractors (some random Indian software company) working on the side mirror winding logic.
In German cities with automotive industry, you’ll find thousands of these satellite companies.
By rapsey 2025-05-128:55 And in Poland, Slovakia, Czechia, Slovenia, etc.
> 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
By whiteboardr 2025-05-1212:52 The main topic is software and it is still treated like a part you can just outsource and plug in.
Since cars are primarily being bought by sculptural aesthetics of the exterior and above all their brand they continue being bought for those who feel the need of a status symbol.
At the core there is still a lack of a long term strategy and above all stability to build on - not saying it is an easy task.
In the end the customer has to suffer with abysmal usability, reliability and ever changing mental models. And don’t get me started about the touchscreens everywhere situation…
It isn’t just software though - VW moving development and above all production engineering and planning to china since they failed coming up with an efficient solution in Wolfsburg is basically saying it all. [1]
Dire times ahead and i hope for the best.
Given that the driving characteristics of most of the cars on the road don't match a BMW, what're the real "real important car things"? The revealed preference seems to be that the things you listed aren't actually that important. Long term cost is. Maintenance cost is. Not having to bring your car to the dealership for service is. Having the car have a long lifetime is. Handling well is nice; sporty drivetrain is nice; but that sort of stuff is clearly just a luxury, and the bottom dropped out of the luxury market recently (see: LVMH restructuring). If you're going to buy a sporty luxury car, why not get a Porsche or something with more cachet? Obviously there are reasons, but BMW's in an awkward position.
By 0xFNaaNg 2025-05-1222:12 > what're the real "real important car things"?
A good design from engineering standpoint. You feel it just instantly when you use the product. Interior is nice and will accommodate just about every possible driver comfortably with every control reachable. Suspension just works frkn great no matter how it was tuned (sporty or comfortable) and no matter how simple the design is. Same for drivetrain, you will acelerate/decelerate precisely how much you'd expect. And it's not a luxury it's a norm, even cheapest german or french cars have all this things sorted out. I'm speaking for the EU market though)
Agreed, Germany still makes some of the best cars in the world. Who is making them better?
By slaw 2025-05-1215:53
By andrewflnr 2025-05-121:301 reply > They decided at some point ‘we don’t need to be experts in building systems...
So they've just chosen death. Fantastic, great to hear.
By pjc50 2025-05-129:34 Well, yes. The legacy car companies are ossified. They want to keep churning out minute variations on the same cars, and regard software as a thin layer for the entertainment system. They don't want to adapt to EVs, which force a redesign of the car as a whole. They're going to get run over by Chinese companies unless they can beg for tariffs to prop up their un-innovation.
By mihaaly 2025-05-129:09 Isn't the trouble that agile is not compatible with things that has to be thoroughly made, 'finalized before release', like in every mission critical production? Casuality and the dyamic free spirit primised has much much less space here.
This is not sexy. This is important.
Needs different mindsets than the software folks grew up along in the past decades. Yes! Yes! There are much much more sexy topics to focus on for an agile software maker, that yields better looking results seemingly instantly. Compared to the boring finalization and coordination - oh, you devil bastard, coordination - heavy activities.
Don't take me seriously, speculating heavily.
By doodlebugging 2025-05-121:376 reply > They go for cheapest component they can spec for a given feature cutting 4MB memory will save 5 cents per car, we sell half a million cars, that’s big savings!
I'm tired. Been out in the sun all day. Explain this to me please.
When I do the math I get 500000 * $0.05 = $25000
That's a small drop in a large bucket of their gross income or net profits.
EDIT: Harsh sun must've burned a few of my processors. I see now that this would only be one small change that saved an inconsequential amount of money. But each group is incentivized to produce minor changes like this that save small amounts and that those amounts do add to substantial savings and help complete the process of enshittification of the ownership and driving experience for those who choose to buy one of these vehicles.
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. Besides, you probably got promoted to a bigger / better role by now, and who can remember who decided what when?
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.
By colejohnson66 2025-05-1212:07 "We asked one of the software guys if we 'could' use a single camera, and they said, 'uh... possibly?', so we pushed through!"
By HeyLaughingBoy 2025-05-1220:42 Not just the owners, but the other engineers.
I have never worked in the auto industry, but I was an embedded software engineer at an F500 company that loved to just throw hardware "over the wall" to the SW engineers.
I had come from a very small company and working like this made no sense to me. After a particularly annoying discovery I was talking to one of the EE's and he explained it to me. "You see, the guy who designed that controller knows nothing about software. He just has a list of specs to meet, and he gets a processor, wires a bunch of peripherals to it, and releases a circuit board. If you're lucky, the SW guy who sat in the design reviews made sure to get a good enough processor to make your job easier. If not, you're SOL because as long as the hardware meets all the requirements they gave him, no one is going to want to change anything."
In this case, the engineer was incentivized to save a whopping $0.50 on a machine that cost around $2,000 to build. And for lack of that $.50 part, software spent hundreds of hours adding code to find a way to implement the behavior that it would have provided. Not to mention all the Test hours needed to verify that it worked as expected.
Paradoxically, I also saw the opposite behavior on the same project: people adding extremely complex hardware to solve simple problems because the company paid very well for patents, so of course everyone had an incentive to produce patentable designs.
By noisy_boy 2025-05-121:46 That is one component in one model. Car makers have several models with maybe hundreds (or thousands?) of electrical components. Plus "cost-saving" has always been a surefire way of ensuring bonus.
By 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2025-05-122:40 Penny wise, pound foolish
By smogcutter 2025-05-122:321 reply It’s very obviously a rhetorical exaggeration.
By garyfirestorm 2025-05-123:531 reply Yes sometimes it’s a dollar or two and it really adds up quick. Sometimes 10’s of dollars. That door speaker can be few dollars cheap - you may get 2% more THD in a frequency band… the conversations can be really reduced down to ‘meh subjectively not noticeable’ but will save us a million. Add few of these things and now you have a shitty radio system but 5 mil in bank.
By Marsymars 2025-05-1219:22 Speakers are a bit of a funny one, because, with the important condition that the amp needs to not be crap, they’re pretty straightforward to upgrade for the end user.
By olyjohn 2025-05-121:47 Yes but you make this small 5 cent change to 100 components and it adds up.
By jandrewrogers 2025-05-1122:51 There have been attempts at it. Unfortunately, they consistently botch the execution so badly that most of the executives in the business have PTSD from the experience. And these were very expensive failures that become lore inside the companies. When they do acquisitions of small companies entering this market those end up getting smothered by the culture of the automotive companies.
Everyone has spent a mountain of money on this problem but spent it all assiduously avoiding addressing the root causes.
The answer is that current car platforms were designed with flexibility as first goal.
Car companies realized early on they could outsource component development and production to 3rd parties and they could make them bid each other to further lower the prices.
So their platforms were optimized to be able to swap component vendors very easily (to achieve lowest costs).
Of course the vendors are not 100% interchangeable and building a platform to accommodate everyone has to make sacrifices.Aka target the least common denominator across all vendors.
By kulahan 2025-05-122:32 Then maybe they should let me buy some better damn chips so the experience isn’t so laggy.
I know, I know, shooting the messenger…
By liveoneggs 2025-05-120:571 reply too bad computers aren't spark plugs
To be fair, this seemed to be the right strategy since they were able to be profitable in a very crowded market. Yes, the new companies try to verticalize everything from components to software, but none of them seem profitable (marginally Tesla passes the bar, but not so sure if you took away all the subsidies and carbon offsets).
So maybe the legacy guys were right all along?
By garyfirestorm 2025-05-121:201 reply I can tell you this works if your product doesn’t need frequent upgrades/updates and isn’t cohesive. In legacy auto world, you ask for one line of code change and the supplier slaps 100k bill. This is generally why things look old, outdated, carried over and buggy.
I totally agree with what you say. I am just not sure if the car market is willing to pay a premium to have this nicer fully integrated experience. Maybe there is space for a couple of premium makers.
My preference would be do less! Shift all the nav and entertainment to phone integration; stop trying to make half assed shit versions of those. How many billions were spent on that?
By garyfirestorm 2025-05-123:55 Oh we don’t want Google Amazon and Apple to have the cake and eat it too. See GM Rivian and Tesla not supporting CarPlay and AndroidAuto.
To what extent was a clean sheet design a huge advantage over the legacy makers?
And to what extent were the subsidies an advantage? They phased out after 200,000 units and Tesla has sold millions.
By natch 2025-05-126:16 Tesla took the hit for the transportation industry, working their asses off and pioneering the costly ramp up to mass production of EVs, so the subsidies are the government compensating them for having not taken the easy path that the legacy auto makers are taking with their continued production of polluting gas cars and their half-hearted introduction of compliance cars.
Since government wants to encourage transition to sustainable energy, and oil and gas have been subsidized for decades, not to mention the tens of billions in bailouts for legacy auto, putting things in perspective shows that legacy auto should get the brunt of any criticism here, and the relatively smaller subsidies to Tesla are offsetting the larger investment Tesla has made.
The beauty of it is that the money is actually paid to Tesla by the legacy auto makers who have not stepped up or have stepped up only at a scale of virtue signaling, if you look at the sales numbers.
By kalleboo 2025-05-123:13 In Q1 2025, Tesla made $595 million on selling environmental credits/carbon offsets to other car makers. Net income for the whole company was $409 million.
Tesla has earned since 2017 over $10B in carbon offsets. That is in addition to the state and federal incentives.
By tashoecraft 2025-05-1123:441 reply How many issues due large companies run into thinking they can just throw money at it? Just look at google and stadia, or amazon and their failed game studio. They have immense money and knowledge and ended up with nothing.
Each car has dozens to 100+ ecus, written in different languages, by different teams, different requirements, and different companies. Some are proprietary. Ford can’t just tell Bosch, hey your abs module needs to now integrate with our api, multiplied by 100+ companies. The legacy car makers need to revisit everything, and move most of it in-house.
By Peanuts99 2025-05-128:20 At the same time, we've had car companies putting out cars for 20 years with 10s of different modules built by different companies and things have been working just fine. Suddenly it's a problem because apparently everyone needs a giant screen on the dashboard?
Because the auto companies outsource everything, lay the risk onto the outsourced companies and expect that some significant percentage of them will go bankrupt every year.
With that kind of adversarial relationship, you are never getting anything above the barest minimum of competence.
By datavirtue 2025-05-1219:00 Smells like Boeing.
By speeder 2025-05-129:23 I worked at BMW. I knew there was a project in there, using a certain ECU that was being quite problematic (as in, project being slightly late because ECU was a bit buggy and sometimes crashed when it was supposed to have almost 100% of uptime for legal reasons).
You ask: Why BMW doesn't just buy the ECU manufacturer?
Well... the company that was selling the ECU to BMW, is BIGGER than BMW. Even if BMW sold 100% of its assets and stock, it wouldn't have enough money to buy the ECU manufacturer.
The talent might not exist. Software development has been seen as the preferable career over electrical engineering for a long time now.
By ohthatsnotright 2025-05-1214:31 When I started my career I had a very keen interest in the embedded space, but when it pays half of what CRUD webapps pay I quickly changed to software only. I still tinker with embedded on the side and maybe at some point I can justify the cut in pay to go back to something I'd prefer to work on.
By lmm 2025-05-124:25 They don't have a culture that values it, at any level. Historically hardware was important and software was a nice-to-have addon cost center. That's the mentality that the people at the top are still in, and it trickles down.
By Mashimo 2025-05-128:41 > a smaller automative microcontroller company and bring it in-house?
I think in a lot of cases that would be Bosch, which is huge.
By raxxorraxor 2025-05-129:15 They did the opposite for decades in the hope to save some bucks, they outsourced everything so only business people remained.
Worse this really grew into a culture of entitlement where only a ready to use product is acceptable. There is no R&D anymore, there are people looking to buy solutions that don't exist for car makers.
This also works the opposite way. If the software roadmap does not inform the hardware requirements, then minimization of the bill of materials will lead to the selection of crappy hardware chips.
If you’re making very low end HW maybe this is true. Because HW is something that you put into the real world there are other constraints such as power, cooling, space, security of supply, ability to ramp, cost, reliability, etc. The calculus for HW selection is much more involved than simply SW. Good SW/FW can be performant on much less capable HW but it does mean that SW engineers need to understand more about the HW. This is a very rare skill in 2025. Most SW engineers I’ve encountered cannot explain stack vs heap. Furthermore even fewer understand how to use malloc correctly.
By DanielHB 2025-05-129:15 > Good SW/FW can be performant on much less capable HW but it does mean that SW engineers need to understand more about the HW.
It also takes much more time and requires a different set of talents. Often just using a bigger chip is better than investing the R&D.
The best analogy I can make is trying to make your own custom rendering engine and then code the UI in it or just use a browser and writing JS. Even if you do make it, your own custom rendering engine will probably cut a lot of features like fancy animations.
By Johanx64 2025-05-129:58 Blaming hardware people rubs me the wrong way.
People just use android and javascript front-end.
It's not crappy hardware by miles, crappy hardware as a category doesn't even exist these days.
It's hardware that can run everything necessary hundreds of times over, but shitty bloatland sloppy javascript it + android bloat it can not.
By Waterluvian 2025-05-1123:23 I feel like Subaru Eyesight violates this, which is why I’m so surprised with it. It’s a stereo camera system that just works so darn well. I’ve got to imagine the hardware that runs it is not insignificant.
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 automotive SoCs like the AM69A/TDA4AH (https://www.ti.com/ds_dgm/images/fbd_sprsp79b.svg) that target the industry.. 8 Cortex-A72s, a full GPU, multiple Cortex R5Fs that can lockstep, and a bunch of powerful C7000 DSPs. The SDK is probably not awesome as embedded BSPs tend to be but the SoC should be workable. That should be plenty of compute.
So what is really going on, and what happened?
By jameshart 2025-05-1212:02 Motorola were a car radio company originally
By mikepurvis 2025-05-121:403 reply I’m in a loaner 2025 Volvo right now and I’ve honestly been pleasantly surprised with the Android Auto setup. I thought I’d never again use anything other than phone projection, but nope — I can install Google Maps and Spotify and sign into both, and then my profiles and everything are right there including search history, and it’s actually more seamless and integrated than switching between CarPlay and the native/outer car UI.
Give it five years and it will be guaranteed garbage. Spotify will refuse to run on an unsupported older Android without the latest DRM API, while Google Maps will crash your system randomly, requiring you to disconnect the car battery to jumpstart it again. Volvo will offer you an upgrade of their proprietary device at the low price of $1899.
It's puzzling to see this push for general computing on devices that need to far outlast the typical release cycle of GC devices. There is nothing good that can come out of installing Android in your TV, fridge, let alone a - for fuck's sake! - a car.
If your consumer hardware needs to last for decades, then the core functionality and automation should be provided by sturdy embedded computers that are self-contained and do not require any kind of network access or regular updates, while the general computing functions functions should be provided by the user's own device or a replaceable/upgradable computer with a standardized interface.
I've been using Apple CarPlay on a car that was manufactured in 2016. There are some occasional issues with the infotainment system, but CarPlay works as well as it did nearly 10 years ago. It is much more likely that CarPlay will continue to function just as well whereas proprietary systems made by car manufacturers are going to start showing their age.
By Marsymars 2025-05-1219:31 > Google Maps will crash your system randomly
They’ve at least got some incentive to keep this working so they can keep showing you ads.
By robocat 2025-05-127:59 > typical release cycle of GC devices
Now I have a lovely vision of the Android Auto device getting Garbage Collected when nothing depends on it.
Real life GC would be a fun project to see a geek movie of.
> There is nothing good that can come out of installing Android in your TV, fridge, let alone a - for fuck's sake! - a car.
Android Auto is not Android on the car, it's a protocol that allows an Android phone to use the car's system as a display, with limited UI integration.
The version in Volvo and Polestar's is actually Android Automotive, which is it's own Android distribution with it's own version of Maps/Spotify etc. Funnily it even has Android Auto functionality too.
By mrpippy 2025-05-1213:00 Restated: “Android Automotive” != “Android Auto”
By bigstrat2003 2025-05-1215:37 Although it didn't use to have Android Auto, which was awful. Because as you alluded to, Android apps are not automatically available on AAOS. As it happens the music app I use is not available on AAOS, so until Volvo added Android Auto support to their cars I could not get a good experience with my music.
By cornholio 2025-05-128:31 Yes, Android Auto has some of the standardized interface features I was talking about, allowing the general computing needs to be fulfilled by a device brought by the user.
This is not what the GP is describing though, he's talking about the experience of a built in infotainment system running Android that can (for the time being) sync with his device.
Why did you think you'd "never again" use anything like Android Auto?
My own car is too old for Android Auto, but I sometimes drive a car that's from 2017 or so, and Android Auto works just fine on it, it's a pleasure to use (with the caveat that the phone has to be plugged in the USB port, wireless came later). So to me it seems like it always worked well.
By mikepurvis 2025-05-1221:15 Overall I’m a fan of the projection model, and I definitely see the benefit in longevity as well as the ability for older vehicles to get a retrofit head unit that adds in the projection interface.
My reflection was only that I was surprised at how well the built in apps worked when I tried them… but I definitely take it on board that it’s unlikely to still work this well 5, 10, or 15 years from now, so it’s important that the car still has projection available as a fallback.
By ErigmolCt 2025-05-128:22 Having your accounts, preferences, and history follow you into the car without juggling cables or switching UIs is exactly the kind of seamless experience SDVs should be delivering
By typewithrhythm 2025-05-1122:362 reply 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 quality), or something along the lines of get as close to a rivian with thirty cents per unit more than we paid last year.
> 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 use it. But I when I want to close both windows and I press two buttons simultaneously, I would like both windows to go up, not one up and one down, as it sometimes happens.
The crappiness of the software in this car is mind-boggling and it cannot be excused: most of it is incompetent and sloppy programming.
I would pay more for a car where the software department is somewhat competent and knows what they're doing.
Well, consider, you could have paid more for a different car that has better software, like a Tesla, Lucid, Rivian ... but you didn't.
I'm not blaming you, I initially thought a VW ID.4 was a cool option. It just wasn't clear to the marketplace how bad the software was, and it's easy to assume "it's fine, I don't need fancy stuff" until you live with it and see how fundamentally bad the software is. How is the market to know? If it takes a couple years to figure it out, it makes sense for the hardware company managers to just make the hardware specs at the competitive price, and software is ... just whatever needed to get it out the door.
I worked for a few years at a sub-division of Samsung, and I've thought for a while about why "hardware" companies can be so bad at "software" ... in many cases, it's just that the leadership chain doesn't know what good software is and who is good at it. Managers don't really know what a good programmer is or does. Division heads don't know what managers are good at managing software teams and projects. And so on.
So at some point 2 years after the car is released, the CTO drives it and realizes that the software systems are fundamentally crap and can't be fixed, and it was not close or in-progress or anything, but he should have realized it 3+ years ago if he had good software sense, long before the car was released. And that's what happened with the VW ID.4
By pjc50 2025-05-128:52 This is, incidentally, why it's so important to have a free market in software separate from hardware, despite what Apple may think. You can't have a free market competing on every possible feature; some features are going to be dominant. So people will choose cars based on size, aesthetics, price and brand .. but not on the quality of the software, which is very hard for them to evaluate even on a test drive.
By jwr 2025-05-141:31 > you could have paid more for a different car that has better software, like a Tesla, Lucid, Rivian ... but you didn't
At the time, I did not pay much attention to the software, because I never expected it could be so bad. Now I know better, and my next choice will consider software as one of the main factors (I don't be buying a swasticar anytime soon, though).
By rustcleaner 2025-05-127:50 If VW and all other product manufacturers of products containing universal machines as components were forced to charge customers a 100% sales tax on all such end-of-chain products, UNLESS all (and I do mean all, down to the controller on the SSD or the battery controller or whatever) universal machines in the product complied with the following:
A) If there is stored code for a specific universal machine in question and the storage is re-writeable, and
B) there is a control mechanism in place to integrity check the stored code before execution, and
C) the integrity check mechanism relies on a cryptographic secret, or any mechanism which prevents the owner from changing the code but permits the OEM to, then
D) the specific universal machine's key store MUST permit full wiping of all keys in a way where no keys are stored anywhere (no permanent manufacturer keys), and the key store MUST permit the owner to store his own root keys; additionally, in the interest of national security and the average citizen's digital sovereignty,
E) replacement software/firmware for universal machines should be encouraged rather than stifled, so additionally there must also be technical specifications detailing enough of the hardware's architecture and the overall design of the part or product (the logic in making design decisions to accomplish product functions), to permit a skilled owner to write his own firmware and achieve similar functionality as shipped.
Basically, think Louis Rossmann gets together with Richard Stallman, and they form a beautiful baby governmental regulatory body to come up with "Apple Laws" (sic: Lemon Laws) to answer and address the Apple Question.
Abandoned proprietary code on abandoned proprietary hardware is a national security concern much greater than the minute problems caused by the occasional tinkering script kiddie. It will mean the end of the easy money of putting everyone on subscription, and would encourage more evergreen platform/API design to reduce developer-driven code churn. If companies want to make cheap proprietary throw away product which will house malware in a decade when the company has long abandoned patching holes in it, and design it so no owner has a practical chance or hope of fixing the vulnerability, then companies can suffer a price-doubling tax that'll go to pay for their open source competitors to more easily compete!
Sorry, not sorry. Get expertise producing material things people need, if what I outlined above would mean the high paid software gravy train ends lol.
By typewithrhythm 2025-05-121:312 reply There are other competitors for that segment, even the Q4e on the same platform has better UI. People still buy the ID4 because it's not enough of a deciding factor.
By rapsey 2025-05-128:01 Hyundai/Kia make very good EVs. I am extremely happy with my new Kona. I would not say the software is amazing, but it is responsive, nice to use and has pretty much everything you need.
By 71bw 2025-05-1210:08 Amazing claim to read considering I have experience with modern Audi software on the daily and it is an utter dumpster fire.
By foepys 2025-05-127:15 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.
> 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.
By bzzzt 2025-05-127:27 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.
By rapsey 2025-05-128:57 Go for a Hyundai.
By trueismywork 2025-05-1123:231 reply You only have to develop those interfaces once for high end cars and get your money there. Rest is then just one of the small modifications.
By typewithrhythm 2025-05-1123:311 reply Not at all, a high end car will use an entirely different architecture to a mid/low end...
When you target a certain feature set it can make sense to use one big central processor, for lower end things it's more sensible to use limited smart sensors (from multiple vendors, for absolute cost minimums).
And it's generally not cost effective to move an old high trim platform down range due to changes in hardware and regulations.
By AlotOfReading 2025-05-1123:441 reply What you mean by different architecture here? I've never seen a situation where manufacturers choose fundamentally different architectures between price points on the same platform. I feel like I'm misunderstanding what you mean though.
By typewithrhythm 2025-05-120:212 reply Someone like Ford for example will have several software platforms, some for low cost vehicles, some high, some that are adaptable between trim levels.
So as you go up in features on some model "the BigTruk" you might be going through variations of one sw platform, or jumping between platforms.
Some have several platforms for high and low cost based on centralised vs distributed, so for example an s class will not have much software or hardware shared with an a class.
Apple doesn't have different software platforms for low vs high cost phones. Why is a car different? It doesn't even have as much functionality.
I think it's fair to say that the software in a modern car contains lot more functionality than an average smartphone. Drivers just aren't aware of how much is happening in their car each second.
By KSteffensen 2025-05-1212:521 reply To someone that knows nothing about car SW architecture, that is surprising to me, I would have expected a number of control loops for things like fuel injection, ABS brake control, drive-by-wire, EV battery charge and discharge, etc. each running on their own processor due real-time safety considerations. These I would expect to be different implementations and parameterizations of the same control theory maths.
On top of this comes some functionality to control windshield wipers, lighting, AC, seat heating, etc. Stuff which is probably not top-tier safety critical, but still important. I would expect that stuff to run on one, maybe two processors.
Then comes the infotainment system, running on its own processor.
Sensors are supplying data to all processors through some kind of modernized CAN bus and some sort of publisher/subscriber protocol. Maybe some safety critical sensors have dedicated wiring to the relevant processor.
A lot of variations on this seems possible with the same SW platform, tuned and parameterized properly. The real-time safety critical stuff would need care, but is doable.
Am I completely off the mark? Can you give some examples of where I am going wrong?
By gmueckl 2025-05-133:39 I am also not deeply into this stuff. But there is more going on in a car than what you list.
One probably surprising thing is that an LCD dashboard is usually driven by multiple rendering stacks. One is for the complex graphics and eye candy. The other one is responsible for brake and engine warning lights etc. and is considered safety critical. The second one is very basic and often partitioned off by a hypervisor.
A lot of these controllers are running more than just control loops. They are also actively monitoring their system for failures. The number of possible failure conditions and responses is quite large. I had instances where e.g. the engine warning light came on because the ECU detected that the brake light switch was faulty. In another instance, I had powered steering turn itself off during a drive because it had developed a fault. These kinds of behaviors are the results of dedicated algorithms that are watching just about every component of safety critical systems that can possibly be monitored.
All of these software systems are provided by different vendors who develop the aplication software based on either their own stack or operating systems and middleware provided by other upstream suppliers. It don't think it's uncommon for a car to contain multiple copies of 3 or 4 different RTOS stacks. Nobody at the car manufacturers is enforcing uniformity in the software stacks that the suppliers deliver. The manufacturers tend to want finished, self-contained hardware units that they can plug in, configure and turn on.
By omcnoe 2025-05-128:25 I mean there is just no way that that can be true.
By typewithrhythm 2025-05-124:38 Because a low and high cost phone do essentially the same thing, whereas a high trim car will do things like steering assistance in a way the low trim does not do at all.
And to support the differences high trim will have different sensors and differently distributed compute.
This means that the infotainment system will be running in different places on different cars.
By AlotOfReading 2025-05-122:33 Yes, different platforms have different architectures. Within a platform, the system level architecture will be relatively fixed. OEMs will part subsystems out to different tier 1s for different vehicles on that platform, but that's (ideally) just plugging different boxes together on the OEM side.
There's a lot of very expensive development tools (e.g. dSpace simulators) that rely on this model of automotive development.
By trhway 2025-05-1122:35 >Tesla, Rivian, and the Chinese EV makers
The iPhone on wheels paradigm shift has been stated like a decade ago and as usually the incumbents just can’t cross it while at the same time the new companies are successfully exploiting it.
Not surprisingly it coincides with EV transition - both are enabled by cheap electronics and EV voids incumbents’ ICE tech moat.
By brightball 2025-05-123:294 reply It was encouraging to hear an exec from Ford recently say essentially this in an interview. The legacy manufacturers seem to realize that Tesla is eating their lunch because of their lack of vertical integration. It’s not going to be an easy problem to solve but will be interesting to see what effort achieves.
By pjc50 2025-05-129:36 BYD would eat their lunch even more if they were allowed to.
By Alive-in-2025 2025-05-125:111 reply Tesla was eating their lunch in terms of software, integration, capabilities, apps. Then rivian came along and a few other companies doing a much better job than the awful legacy companies.
Now of course tesla/musk are destroying themselves through various idiotic actions. Sales are dropping through the roof. But the technical quality of the software ecosystem (car, web, app) is still better than all the incumbents. Think about Rivian getting a billion dollars from VW for their much better ECU and and software integration, for example.
I feel like Rivian is almost as good as tesla. Tesla still has all that, even as the company is in awful shape sales wise. Lucid seems to be better than the legacy auto, but I haven't looked into it as closely.
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-125:43 Rivians and Lucids cost tens of thousands of dollars more than 95% (not an exaggeration) of Teslas. Completely different markets (and size of market).
By cusaitech 2025-05-123:41 Was it the one with Verge?
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-125:381 reply https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-first-quarter-2025-...
Apparently, 300k+ people in 2025 Q1, and that is with a refresh in the most popular model happening in March (presumably people who would have bought held off until the new one came out and will buy in Q2 or beyond).
For comparison, this is 2024 Q1:
https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-vehicle-production-...
I don't understand this sentiment.
Should all VW drivers have a "I hate Hitler" sticker on their car too?
Because in case you aren't aware: VW was started by the German Labour Front (part of the Nazi party). Adolf Hitler himself oversaw early development of the first models.
Why the need to apologize for the CEO of the company that you buy products from? Should we also have an "I hate Foxconn" sticker on every Apple device?
By gizmo 2025-05-129:42 After WW2 Volkswagen didn't change their name or Nazi branding (if you haven't seen the uncropped version of the VW logo you're in for a surprise) exactly because people in Allied countries refused to buy German cars after the war. Even if VW or BMW or Mercedes had rebranded and apologized it would have made no difference. Their ties with Nazi leadership was too strong for any apology to be credible. What Frenchman would buy a Nazi car over a French car in 1950s? And so the German car companies focused on domestic sales, which meant they had to appeal to humiliated (former) Nazis for sales for which any rebranding would have been a negative.
German car companies absolutely were boycotted after WW2 in much of Europe (and rightly so) and boycotting Tesla for Musk's antics is consistent with that.
By bigstrat2003 2025-05-1215:40 At least some people are probably putting "I hate Elon" stickers on because assholes are out there destroying people's cars because they have beef with Elon, and they don't want said assholes to destroy their car. It's lamentable that people are willing to act so poorly that they think it's OK to destroy innocent parties' property as a form of protest, but so it goes.
By pdntspa 2025-05-1217:55 Because there are a lot of folks out there who think that merely patronizing a business supports everything their leadership stands for
By rconti 2025-05-1214:38 I needed to replace the 12v battery in our Tesla a few months back, and was surprised to see a protest out front. I laughed to myself, glad I had driven my Porsche to the service center instead.
Thankfully, I said to myself, none of our non-Tesla cars have problematic histories.
(Mussolini, Hitler...)
By __m 2025-05-1211:05 [flagged]
By ben_w 2025-05-1216:33 > maybe apple during steve jobs' time?
While I think Musk seems to have duplicated Jobs' Reality Distortion Field*, the second CEO-ing of Jobs didn't strike me as quite as severely attaching Apple to Jobs as all of Musk's businesses are now with Musk. For example, quite a lot of the industrial design of that era is (and was) strongly associated with Jony Ive, not Steve Jobs.
I think at best, out of all of Musk's business empire, the closest you get to a Jony Ive-esq "it's not Jobs" is that Gwynne Shotwell is well regarded and seen as being highly competent in her own right; the second closest is that Linda Yaccarino gets named a decent amount in the news, but even then she's very much in Musk's shadow. The public perception of Neuralink and The Boring Company is just "Musk announced his company, [Neuralink|TBC] did ${thing}".
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field — and apparently I'm nearly a decade late in making this connection
> Because tesla as a brand is uniquely tied to musk.
Which is because he is in the media a lot.
I can understand the impact on your brand as things are, but it would be interesting to see how well other manufacturers would stand up to scrutiny.
> musk wasn't tesla's face and main profiteer of any purchase.
The face bit of it makes sense.
As for "main profiteer", he is the single largest shareholder, but its about 13% shareholding - 87% of the profits belong to other people.
Even ignoring his initial shares from funding Tesla, he has been compensated more than Tesla has ever made in profits
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-1216:39 The majority of the owners of the other shares voted to compensate him more (by market value of shares that cannot be sold for 5 years, not cash, which is a relevant distinction) than Tesla has ever made in profit.
And since the compensation is equity, comparing it to profit, which is cash, makes no sense. One can discuss if the market price of the equity is too far removed from current profit, but surely even Elon doesn’t have any influence over what millions of investors around the world choose to pay for Tesla shares.
Should majority owners of a business not be able to vote on compensation?
By graemep 2025-05-1315:40 Will an increase in sales primarily increase his compensation or profits?
I do find it surprising that such ridiculously generous pay was approved by shareholders and think it rather prove what GK Galbraith said: "The salary of the chief executive of a large corporation is not a market award for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself".
On the other hand there are limits, and at this point I wonder whether shareholders will decide he is a liability and not pay him so well in future. If I was a shareholder I would want to sack him.
By brightball 2025-05-1216:251 reply [flagged]
By ben_w 2025-05-1217:04 I've seen the video. His excuse isn't good enough.
It's not just that I live in a city with small brass plaques on the pavement, in memory of those who were made to disappear last time[0].
It's not just that protestors projecting the image of the guy himself in the middle of that salute, on the walls of his own factory in Brandenburg, was enough to warrant an official investigation because such symbolism is unlawful in Germany[1].
He tried to support to the AfD political party in Germany, who were already suspected of being an extremist party (and have since been officially determined as such), and where several party members had already faced legal problems for using banned Nazi slogans[2] while their former friends at the EU level dropped them for trying to rehabilitate the image of the actual SS[3].
This is who they were before Musk chose to support them. And you trust his word on the innocent interpretation?
It's not like Musk has otherwise got a reputation for being particularly trustworthy — Musk got away with calling someone a pedo by claiming it was a joke; he's been punished for claiming that an offer to buy Tesla for 420/share, which can only be interpreted as a joke, was serious, and that he's really upset to be accused of saying anything untrue; he's mislead people about how close his cars are to full self driving, leading to out-of-court settlements[4].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/germany-musk-tesla-nazi-salute/a-71403...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/german...
[3] https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/european-parl...
[4] https://electrek.co/2023/11/07/tesla-owner-wins-10k-settleme...
By brightball 2025-05-124:26 It’s led to some great deals
By gorkish 2025-05-1218:59 I had one of the most popular published projects on mp3car.com back in the heyday. It actually got me into a few strange meetings with companies that were actually building this stuff, like Clarion. I had literally designed, built, and installed a superior product to what they shipped as a one-off for fun in 3 months, but to them I was just a token enthusiast.
The vocabulary that these people started throwing out was absolute nonsense. It was pretty evident that "vehicle informatics" was fucked the second someone said those words out loud. And here we are more than 20 years later and still no closer to getting it right. Despite being seemingly well regarded, even Tesla's in car systems are just awful. And it's more impossible than ever to fix, modify, or replace on your own.
Agreed!
They also want to treat it as a new revenue stream rather than as a value add, which ultimately hurts them.
We end users don’t want to pay a subscription for our car. Especially for things we already get for free on our phone.
By Marsymars 2025-05-1219:35 > We end users don’t want to pay a subscription for our car. Especially for things we already get for free on our phone.
I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I pay for ad-free navigation.
Sounds like a potential business opportunity! I don't know much about cars, how much is standardized in car electronics? Would it be possible to build a infotainment module that you could sell to several car manufacturers with only minimal modifications?
I think I've heard of something called an ICANN(?) bus that is used to communicate stuff in cars and is fairly standardised, maybe?
By zhengyi13 2025-05-1217:26 ITYM "CAN bus" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN_bus
Pioneer has been selling standard-sized Android Auto head units for over a decade at this point.
By joezydeco 2025-05-1215:37 It's CAN, and it's old serial technology.
There are already companies doing 3rd party electronics as mentioned above, such as Visteon and Continental, and Garmin is trying to get into that business too.
By dbolgheroni 2025-05-1216:55 That's what many OEMs have been doing for decades and this is exactly what many SDV have been trying to get rid of, since integrating many different products from many different manufacturers are slow, let alone iterating and designing new features.
Related to CAN, the bus is standard, but the thing is, CAN is just a bus, not a protocol. There are many ways you can have two ECUs (vehicle's modules) talking in incompatible ways.
By gizmo 2025-05-129:01 Electronics are responsible? Really? Is this why the car radio interface lags and barely responds to input? Is this why the maps apps is terrible? Car infotainment systems are comically terrible even in areas that are 100% controlled by the OEM. Carplay works by reducing the infotainment screen to a dumb terminal. Car manufacturers could have done this themselves, you know.
I completely agree that vertical integration and building your own software stack from the ground up is the correct approach, but that's not the root cause of the problem. A better explanation here is that when all brands have awful infotainment systems then there is no consumer choice that forces competition.
By raxxorraxor 2025-05-128:59 As an embedded developer I usually point to the fact that there is generalist hard and software available for the primitive problem an infotainment systems needs to solve. At least for that side I don't see how generalist pc hardware wouldn't suffice and fit probably 95% of use cases.
At least that is how I build my self-made system, which is quite awesome compared to solutions you generally see in cars. Not for the average consumer, but classic car makers can do much better with a bit of courage.
By xnx 2025-05-1213:01 How much extra work have automakers made for themselves by pridefully(?) refusing to use Android Automotive to handle some of the very things that auto makers are worse at?
As much as everyone used to clown on Tesla for it, the vast majority of cars would be better off with an iPad glued to the dash.
By LeonM 2025-05-129:35 For those unaware: the Volkswagen Up! is a small, low-budget car produced by VW group, it's also sold as the Škoda Citigo and Seat Mii. AFAIK it was only sold in Europe and Latin-America.
A family member had a early-gen Up!, and the OEM display (build by Navigon) that sat on top of the dashboard was removable, but used a proprietary connection, not USB. I believe it snapped on with magnets, which I remember thinking was quite nice.
The detachability was mostly for anti-theft reasons I presume, but quite quickly an aftermarket started to form to replace the OEM screen with other options, including phone mounts. I don't think VW envisioned that, but I thought that a detachable mount for aftermarket satnav, phone mounts or other accessories was quite smart.
I did wonder why they didn't just make it a phone mount as standard so you can basically BYOD, which could lower the price of the car further and probably be a better experience anyway.
> Volkswagen Up!: infotainment is just a USB port and a phone clamp.
Thanks to your comment I looked into it again, and I'm pleasantly surprised to see the newer generation Up! actually does have a OEM phone mount now, how cool! From what I just read it uses an app to integrate with some of the car's features.
More car manufacturers should do this for their budget cars. Have a few physical buttons for controlling built-in functions (namely HVAC), and let the user's phone provide the entertainment, navigation and other driving aids. Maybe even ditch the radio interface, and just have an amplifier and speakers build in.
It's a shame that phone OSes are moving away from on-device 'driving mode' in favor of Android Auto and Apple Carplay. I get it though, larger screen makes for easier controls and thus safer to interact with while driving, but still...
>>> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year.
Naturally, there must be some scale threshold where this is true, so I don't doubt your experience. And my workplace doesn't make anything as elaborate as a car, or with such stringent reliability specs. But my experience is that hardware is always finished before software.
By ska 2025-05-123:40 FWIW in my experience building both, hardware is always finished first because it’s cheaper to change the software later in the cycle. Much like drywallers patching over electrical/plumbing sins, software fills gaps …
By acheron9383 2025-05-163:06 I mean the EEs / MEs can certainly turn out a board and housing in under 6 months, certainly on a yearly cycle. Though for the current automakers, they don't have a team for this so it would take them probably 3 iterations to get good enough to actually scale it to a mass market car, and that is if their team has good talent and strong leadership.
By ErigmolCt 2025-05-128:19 You're right that legacy OEMs can't pivot overnight and start fabbing their own boards, but unless they move toward tighter integration of hardware and software (or lock down long-term partnerships that function like internal teams), they’re going to stay in this awkward middle ground.
By rustcleaner 2025-05-127:171 reply >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.
By rfl890 2025-05-1211:52 A nice thought experiment, but I doubt the US will ever do something as pro-consumer as this.
By MrBuddyCasino 2025-05-129:03 This seems like it is also a „purchase department got the cheapest crap instead of something reasonable“ problem. You don’t need to actually make your own electronics if the specs are decent and the features match your needs.
> 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?
By steve_adams_86 2025-05-1123:071 reply 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 obvious in retrospect, but it’s really not.
It requires quite a bit of in-housing that many of these teams aren’t yet well-versed in, so as you vertically integrate you’re also disrupting your internal structure while adding new people. It’s a lot to take on. Meanwhile, there are other long term plans underway already.
By jve 2025-05-1212:05 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.
Because they are not electronics companies, and further more they are terrible integration companies.
Unless the top of the company comes in and starts chopping every head that gets in the way of the new paradigm then it just ends up in locked up meetings for years of people that don't want to change.
Electronics integration isn't the problem, the people currently there are.
By dansiemens 2025-05-120:27 Precisely, such a change represents substantial risk in an incredibly risk-averse industry. People at orgs in such industries are in constant CYA mode, looking to point responsibility (and therefore blame) to anyone else.
The time to go and implement such a change probably pales in comparison to the amount of time spent in meetings getting people to agree to make the change.
By smallmancontrov 2025-05-1123:01 It is possible to put out a fire by dumping cash on it, but there's a minimum amount that you need to dump at once for it to work. They cannot stomach the amount required, so they just feed it in one handful at a time, which of course just causes the fire to grow.
When I was working at $samsung_competitor, my NDA'd next gen android phone prototypes (a huge motherboard with a screen) were sent some years earlier. Like Samsung is on S25 now, and we would get boards for S27... It takes a long time for these things to evolve.
I feel like I'm on crazy pills sometimes when talking with people who deal mostly with software. I think SW engineers sometimes think that engineering generally looks like what they do, when in reality SW is a deep outlier wrt process...
By demosito666 2025-05-126:14 The word “engineering” in SWE is just plain wrong. Present day software development has nothing to do with engineering outside of some very niche markets (aviation, mission-critical systems, embedded controllers). The term vibe coding came up really handy because it describes how 99% of software is developed much better than “software engineering“, with or without LLMs. That’s why it’s always fun to read such discussions of hardware vs software people.
By acheron9383 2025-05-163:23 When you design electronics you have to produce millions of, it takes a couple of dev 'spins' and usually a couple of prod 'spins' to get to the mass market board. Usually the PMs, EEs, MEs and SWEs get together and spec out a schematic, then the EEs will create the first draft of the board. There is usually extra connectors and test points on this board to ease testing and development. Once they verify it powers on, I as an embedded software engineer, start producing the software to get it running, or 'brought up'. While that is happening EE testing is going on for all sorts of things like EMI, power, communication speeds, etc. Besides the software I actually write, the chipset vendor's drivers need to be added and tested as well, there are always little things that take longer than they should. I've lost a lot of schedule to very subtle issues with chips. As we progress along, the schematic or layout gets updated and new versions are produced. Maybe the traces need to change to reduce EMI, maybe a chipset isn't workign well or we find a cheaper equivalent and swap it out. Then once everything looks good we move to a production version, all the test points are removed, and we start putting in orders for the parts we need in volume. If you want a million of something you usually have to order in advance. Then you start bringing the factory online, helping with factory test software...and well the point is the cycle time for all this is like 6 months for a tight ship. More like a year if the kind of thing your making is novel to the team since you need a longer dev time.
By 0_____0 2025-05-123:20 If you're curious why it takes longer than that, check out this primer on the HW dev cycle.
https://www.hwe.design/product-development-process/developme...
For components that have many components or complex requirements, or are part of more complicated systems, this takes longer. Cars have a design cycle that's many years long - 5-6 years would be a decent ballpark. That's due to the complexity of the product, complexity of the supply chains and tooling, requirements, and scale.
By philipallstar 2025-05-129:08 > In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?
It's because these companies are more about vendor management and regulatory compliance than building things. It's a totally different mindset.
By chipsrafferty 2025-05-1619:44 Why not just use iPads or some Android tablet? Why some shitty embedded system and not a real computer?
By yellow_postit 2025-05-1213:01 The VW and Rivian tie up for electronics will help answer if a traditional automaker can catch up if the electronics integration bit is taken off the table.
By drcongo 2025-05-128:59 Back when there were all the rumours of an Apple car, I was hoping that this was actually what they were working on.
By ricardobeat 2025-05-1210:01 > you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year
The Model S came out in 2012 so they’ve had well over a decade to catch up.
By megamix 2025-05-125:05 Are the PM women or not qualified?
By kylehotchkiss 2025-05-1119:2413 reply 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.
Mazda has done a great job at this so far, very minimal screen which automatically just shows CarPlay, and buttons for all the normal car stuff, which also isn’t overdone. The only flaw is the scroll wheel to interact with the screen, which is just slightly too clunky in apps with too many options
My 2017 Mazda cx5 refuses to not play the radio. There is no "off" for the audio, you have to choose a source. I use my phone, via bluetooth. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, the car does not connect with the phone. It then falls back to the last source chosen before BT, which is radio. Okay, so I created a flash drive with an mp3 of 30 seconds of silence, played that, then went back to bluetooth. This failback strategy worked one time, then it also failed to recognize the flash drive, and failed back to radio, again.
I will never want to listen to the radio. I would love to remove radio as an option. I would love to have no fallback as an option. But no, the car just f-n loves the radio and will not stop trying to force it on me.
Oh yeah, and the radio is buggy and could get stuck if I tune into the wrong station. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60333765.
This car definitely tries too hard to be smarter than it is. There's all sorts of exceptions that keep the doors from auto-locking when I walk away, and I would turn all of them off, but I can't. Walk away too fast? doesn't lock. Open the rear? won't auto lock. Car just doesn't feel like it? doesn't auto-lock.
And god forbid you hit the unlock button when the passenger has already unlocked it. Anxious beeps from the car for several solid seconds. That is not an error condition!
Performance and reliability have been great though. They just need to stop trying to be smart. They're not.
By victor9000 2025-05-1123:12 Long pressing the source button turns off audio and keeps it from turning on automatically on the next start. This at least lets you explicitly decide when you want music.
By PlunderBunny 2025-05-1211:15 Re: radio always turning on, my LDV eDeliver 9 is the same but worse - sometimes the radio comes on immediately, and sometimes it takes about 20 seconds. You can’t preemptively mute it in the latter case. There’s lots of other weird quirks with the radio (e.g. going into reverse switches to a low-volume radio if you were previously playing music or a podcast in CarPlay). It’s as-if almost any change in the audio switches the radio on. Other than that, it’s a great van!
Ah yes, Mazda. The car company which won't even give you a fuse box diagram, and instead says to contact the dealer if a fuse blows.
https://www.cx90forum.com/threads/fuse-box-diagram.172/
Something foul and malign is afoot at Mazda these days.
While not dramatically better, just a few posts down[0] someone paid for the "Welcome to Mazda" service manuals/program for $30 and shared the fuse box schematics
By bbarnett 2025-05-1210:59 From the perspective of Mazda being malign, it's not the tiniest bit better.
By viraptor 2025-05-1212:42 MG has exactly the same issue. Default to radio for some weird reason and no real "off" without disabling the whole system.
By bluGill 2025-05-121:59 I have tried that (not on a Mazda). The radio is still there playing whatever and if there is a valid station the now playing song has to be shown on the other useful screen. On I got the system to default to radio off, but that means I can't control my heated seats w=ithout turning the system on - there are several seconds of noise between getting the system on and it responding tol the volumn knob.
By rustcleaner 2025-05-128:39 I think making manufacturers pay you back the whole car in a recall, or half the car and you keep it, for this kind of crappy design, would be a good thing (especially since I am sure the firmware is code signed lolol). Oh no more Matsuda or GM because they went bankrupt from fines and restitution? Cry me a river, sucks to suck cutting corners lol.
Mazda also managed to squander a huge brand and structural advantage by falling into lockstep behind other Japanese automakers in underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure. Now they have to rely on their JV partner Changan to lead the way in producing EVs, giving up the core structural strengths that Mazda previously had in designing and building their own components - including software and controls, which in the Changan-led models have no continuity at all with Mazda's domestic models. They just superficially copy the Mazda exterior design language while wholly dependent on Chinese supply chains (and some Android Auto for the software, it seems) for manufacturing the actual EV.
By potato3732842 2025-05-120:082 reply While that might affect their market share in HN neighborhoods I assure you Mazda is making money hand over fist selling their boring non-hybrid SUVs to normal people. People love them and they sell.
By ak217 2025-05-123:49 I know Mazda makes good boring SUVs, I own one. I like Mazda's design philosophy, that's why I want them to succeed. In terms of vehicles sold, Mazda's sales peaked in 2017, the year before I bought my most recent one. As best I can tell, operating profit peaked in 2016.
Mazda maintained their relevance and independence by operating their own center of design, engineering, and manufacturing excellence in Hiroshima, and exporting the results to the rest of the world, since at least the 1960s. As I mentioned, that thread is now broken as far as EVs go, with the Changan JV making EVs for Mazda. China is now producing excellent EVs that surpass the capabilities of ICE cars at a fraction of the cost/price, thanks to continuous improvements in LFP battery technology. China also dominates solar, which (together with the batteries) solves the grid stress issue for large EV deployments in most regions of the world. Together these exports are likely to disrupt Japanese, US, and European ICE exports and energy markets throughout the world, no matter what tariffs the US chooses to enact.
Mazda and the rest of Japanese companies slept on it, led by Toyota's trust in the hydrogen-powered future that didn't materialize, even while Panasonic had the best batteries in the world. The time to invest in these platforms and technologies was 15 years ago - now they will have a far harder time financing this and finding technology development partners. Sure, they can survive - not thrive - on existing ICE exports for a while, but they will face a shrinking market and stronger headwinds - and are likely to lose their independence, which is what allowed them to design great cars. Don't believe me? Look into what's going on with Nissan (which squandered an even bigger lead - the world's first mass-produced EV).
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-121:362 reply They have a low single digit percentage profit margin. That is not making money hand over fist, that is barely surviving.
https://www.mazda.com/content/dam/mazda/corporate/mazda-com/...
Mazda’s operating margin is higher than Walmart’s (along with many others). I think hyper scalable sectors like high tech and finance distort our OM expectations.
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-125:05 Operating margin is irrelevant, only profit margin matters for this context. Walmart hangs out in the 2.5% to 3.5% range, not materially different than Mazda. Either way, any business with a low single digit profit margin is not making money hand over fist. It might be different if Mazda had such a huge and loyal market share that their low profit margins are offset by low volatility of expected future sales (such as with Walmart/Costco), but that isn't the case at all with Mazda.
Their expectation is that their sales will be stagnant at best, but probably decline for the foreseeable future.
That doesn't seem unusual for automotive. What number were you expecting to see?
By lotsofpulp 2025-05-125:09 It's not about unusual, just that a low profit margin in a volatile industry is (with a downward trend in sales for almost 10 years), by definition, not making money hand over fist. That is why their market cap graph looks like this:
By SoftTalker 2025-05-1122:062 reply A lot of people still don’t want or can’t really afford EVs given their limitations. I’d say it’s the majority where I live. I directly know only one person who has a full EV (not a hybrid).
I don’t think the Japanese automakers have squandered anything, yet.
We paid maybe a $10K premium for a used EV truck. It gets 2mi/kWh. Most parts of the country are paying ~ $0.125 per kWh, so that’s &0.06 of a dollar in electricity per mile.
A comparable truck gets 18mpg mixed. At $3/gallon, that’s $0.16 per mile. So, the price premium pays back after 100K miles. That’s comparable to milage driven during a long car loan.
I ignored oil changes, tax breaks on used cars, and picked the form factor where EVs are the least economical.
It’s still basically break-even.
For commuter with charging access at office or home EV makes sense. For me making 300+ mile round trips with no charging infra (pull in at the gas station in the foothills) and low overall mileage EV is trickier.
If that’s your common use case (with no stop on the destination side of the trip), then it’d limit your options to high range vehicles.
There's a stop, it's just in the middle of nowhere. 20 minute charge would be annoying but survivable assuming they had them in say Lone Pine. And yeah, 20 something mpg and 16 gallon tank multiplies out to a large range.
By dublinben 2025-05-1214:04 You're in luck! There's a dozen Superchargers available right in downtown Lone Pine: https://www.plugshare.com/location/60596
By neogodless 2025-05-1215:23 Including supply and generation, we pay $0.148 / kWh, and yeah, I average $0.06 charging my EV at home on a slow, inefficient 120V / 15A. (Some day I'll upgrade, maybe.) I've never charged anywhere else (except for free at the used car dealer where I bought it.)
We make a ~180 mile trip roughly once / month and could charge on site as we always stay ~2 nights, though probably slow 120V / 15A charge (aka Level 1). My current car would probably be pushing it, range-wise, but I definitely think for the vast majority of our usage, we could be using only EVs if we got one with a 300+ mile range (based on 100% battery usage.) From what I've read some EVs (like mine) struggle a bit below 15% and start to run in "limp" mode.
By jwagenet 2025-05-1123:50 China is currently making affordable EVs, though they might not meet (American) expectations of things like range. There’s no reason why traditional automakers couldnt be doing the same had they not focused on larger ice vehicles, hydrogen, or the luxury market.
By adriand 2025-05-1122:18 Hopefully they figure it out because I love my Mazda 3 hatchback and would buy an EV version of it in a heartbeat. Not only is it very fun to drive (I have a manual transmission) but the interior design is excellent.
By BoingBoomTschak 2025-05-1122:27 Mazda's target market is quite different from the EV buyers one, at least here in Europe.
Its reputation is that of a brand for people who really like cars, who can appreciate the care put into proper engineering and a wonderful manual transmission; or people with an eye for a "conservative" kind of quality. It's basically the new Volvo, but sportier.
By fooker 2025-05-129:16 > underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure.
This has been a fantastic decision, as a large number of EV manufacturers have gone bankrupt.
By deergomoo 2025-05-1122:43 I bought a Mazda3 a few months ago and I love it. It is exactly what I want as a driver.
I even adore the scroll wheel and wish it could be in any car I own in future. Yeah it takes slightly longer to do certain actions in CarPlay, but I can do it so much more safely than I could in the Civic I had before. The infotainment boots basically instantly; as you mentioned CarPlay starts itself, and the patronising-but-mandated “don’t use this in motion” warning dismisses itself. In the Civic I would be half way down the road already by the time it booted, blindly prodding at the screen to try to dismiss that warning so I could pause the podcast that started playing itself because I plugged my phone in.
And, while my 2022 car predates the stupid auto-re-enabling ADAS requirement in Europe, the 2024+ models have single button deactivation. I dunno how, cause it’s supposed to require a minimum of two presses legally, but it sure makes me wanna stick with Mazda.
However that makes the upcoming 6E that much more disappointing. They’ve partnered with a Chinese manufacturer, I assume because they don’t have an EV platform of their own ready yet. Looks fantastic from the outside, but the inside is a sea of touch screens with barely a physical control in sight.
By bitmasher9 2025-05-122:38 When I was doing my car shopping two years ago, I was initially considering another Mazda, specifically looking at the Mazda 3 AWD Hatchback. Their high tech features were significantly behind the other Japanese auto manufacturers. Some features like the ability for the car to automatically stay in a lane were not present.
When looking at who is doing it right, I wouldn’t put Mazda on a pedestal. They simply are behind the competition.
Generally agree but they are laying the path to enshitification. You see you can get turn by turn directions on the HUD, but only through their app where they want you to pay $10/mo for the privilege. Same for inputting addresses into their crappy nav system.
So I only use Google maps with Android Auto now, but cannot put the turn by turn display on. Also, who knows what telemetry Mazda is sending home on me without me knowing or wanting them to. Probably selling it to data brokers.
By mortos 2025-05-234:05 I believe I've heard the newer Mazda 3s have added the navigation into the HUD for Android Auto and Carplay. It's not in my 2020 though which is annoying.
As for selling your data, yes absolutely. It goes to Connected Analytic Services which is an affiliate company of Toyota Insurance. Toyota Insurance Management Solutions (TIMS) is another name to look up. Subaru sells your data to them as well.
By Izikiel43 2025-05-125:36 Really? I rented a cx90 with hud and with CarPlay and Apple Maps I think it had turn by turn directions
By mschuster91 2025-05-1119:434 reply > Remove the LTE chip
You can't, it's required for eCall which is a mandatory feature in Europe.
Unfortunately, it's fraught with issues, especially for the very first eCall modules where the hardware supported only 3G (HSPA)... which is being phased out across Europe together with GPRS (1G)/EDGE (2G), leaving these cars without a working eCall system - and no upgraded hardware modules in many cases.
Oops somehow a switch has attached itself to the fuse of the LTE module in my vehicle.
By cryptonector 2025-05-123:13 wire snips enter the chat
By mschuster91 2025-05-128:291 reply Won't work if the cellular modem is powered directly off the ECU's fuse or is embedded in the ECU itself.
By therein 2025-05-1220:27 Yeah, would not. I am glad my 2025 vehicle has a fuse for the telematics module.
By ryanbrunner 2025-05-1120:131 reply Wouldn't be the first or the last time that a car has a different build out for different locales - as differences go, that's pretty minor.
I mean we can also change laws again in europe (in favour of that) - but we could also keep it as a separate module. So the LTE chip only gets used for an emergency call and nothing else. No remote control.
Unlikely to happen, but possible (not 100% safe, but good enough).
If you don't turn on the LTE chip, it can take a while to get registered or a network in order to perform an emergency call. If the LTE module is turned on (the same applies for mobile phones) the network operator will know your coarse location because of the LTE specification itself. Furthermore, all communication equipment is legally required to support Lawful Interception; and LTE is no exception to this.
By lukan 2025-05-1214:21 Yes, that is sadly true, but they have that data via smartphones anyway.
But remote controlling the car is something different.
Ok but if you change the laws then you don’t need a different build.
By lukan 2025-05-127:53 Was my sentence that unclear? I constructed it as a OR. Either change the laws (my favourite solution as I don't like enforced modification of my car) - or use a technical solution to just meet the law.
By paulddraper 2025-05-1120:242 reply > required
That’s…terrible
By cryptonector 2025-05-123:14 Are there new vehicles in the U.S. that don't have an LTE chip and antenna?
By ratatoskrt 2025-05-1120:325 reply ...why? Seems pretty sensible to me?
By hshdhdhj4444 2025-05-1121:024 reply https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/smart-mobili...
Can you explain why these protections are not sufficient for privacy?
> 112 eCall is not a black box. It does not record constantly the position of the vehicle, it records only a few data to determine the position and direction of the vehicle just before the crash and these data are only transmitted to emergency call centers if there is a serious crash.
> eCall cannot be used to monitor motorist's moves. The SIM-card used to transmit the eCall data is dormant, i.e. it is only activated in case the vehicle has a serious accident (e.g. the airbag is activated).
By owenversteeg 2025-05-122:041 reply >112 eCall is not a black box. It does not record constantly the position of the vehicle, it records only a few data to determine the position and direction of the vehicle just before the crash and these data are only transmitted to emergency call centers if there is a serious crash.
That statement is factually inconsistent. Either 112 eCall incorporates a time travel device or it must constantly record the position and direction of the vehicle and other data. In theory, that data is then deleted, but you have no way to verify that it is - and it would only require a trivial, unnoticeable software update to modify this.
Thankfully, we're safe. Car software is notoriously high quality and rarely hacked. All governments are fully trustworthy, especially around espionage and privacy, and have a perfect track record of never lying to the public.
Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked; "hackers cannot take control of it", from ec.europa.eu. They built an unhackable device. I am not sure what you could be worried about. If the government tells you something cannot be hacked, then it cannot be hacked. Furthermore, none of the EU member states have been found using other infrastructure to violate privacy laws.
> That statement is factually inconsistent.
It's not. It just stores the last speed/wheel position/brake state data that it receives when the "collision imminent" condition activates. In some cars this can be literally the same signal that deploys the airbags.
> Look, the European Commission stated that it cannot be hacked
Pretty much. It's just a normal LTE radio, that is normally inactive. It technically is hackable, but I'm not aware of any hacks of baseband firmware of this severity.
By owenversteeg 2025-05-125:361 reply Sorry, that's incorrect. I have actually read the law and its relevant standards. The standard requires at least two pre-accident locations to increase accuracy and other fields with pre-crash data are encouraged.
And come on. Car manufacturers, which are notorious producers of insecure software, are legally mandated to make an inexpensive device which includes an LTE radio and a connection to the vehicle buses, and you think that is... unhackable? I can't tell if you're trolling me, but your average blackhat only needs 1 of (shitty car OEM software/LTE radio/vehicle bus connected device) to break into a system. This system is a trifecta of hackable crap. To call that, of all devices, "unhackable" is priceless.
The MSD (minimum set of data) is defined in: "CEN 15722 ESafety - ECall - Minimum Data Set".
The original standard version defined only one location datapoint, the more recent version defines two additional _optional_ points ("recentVehicleLocationN1", "recentVehicleLocationN2"). It also allows specifying the number of passengers.
The mandatory datapoints include the location and direction of the vehicle, but they can be acquired as needed.
> I can't tell if you're trolling me, but your average blackhat only needs 1 of (shitty car OEM software/LTE radio/vehicle bus connected device) to break into a system.
I'm not aware of black hats hacking into a modem that is passively tracking the mobile networks. It's theoretically possible, but I'm not aware of such feats.
By owenversteeg 2025-05-131:291 reply Sorry, your comment is incorrect again. The most recent version of CEN 15722 requires the two most recent locations before the incident location.
The modem does not have to passively track the mobile networks; it can do what it wants. The common OEM implementation these days is that the physical device that does eCall does several things, including eCall, over the same cellular radio. There's nothing stopping the OEM from connecting to a random website and eval()ing the result.
You seem confident in the security of this unhackable system so I will point out some of its other security weaknesses. Several eCall device implementations include Bluetooth modules (both "unused" as part of hardware and implementations that use Bluetooth.) Bluetooth is as secure as a wet cardboard box, so you could take BlueBorne or one of the six million other Bluetooth exploits that work on a non-discoverable device just sitting on the shelf, get in that way and boom, you can transmit whatever you want over the cellular radios. Vehicle infotainment systems are pretty insecure on average and are frequently hacked, so you could take over the infotainment system, get into the CAN bus that way and then send bad data to the eCall system, which is in the business of processing and responding to CAN data.
But those are just a few of the million ways; you could write up attacks all day long and you wouldn't scratch the surface. The facts are: this is a system with cellular radio(s), a CAN bus connection, sensors that constantly listen and interpret data; this is a large attack surface, built by OEMs that write notoriously insecure software. It is, by any reasonable judgment of those facts, a pretty hackable system. And yet, the European Commission goes around telling people that it "cannot" be hacked.
Anyway, this will be my third comment in a row here telling people that their comment is plain incorrect, so I'm going to have to leave the discussion here. I hope that my words provide some food for thought - for the next time that a system that could track you becomes legally mandatory.
> Sorry, your comment is incorrect again. The most recent version of CEN 15722 requires the two most recent locations before the incident location.
I have the standard open, and I don't see it.
> The modem does not have to passively track the mobile networks; it can do what it wants.
Sure. So just choose an automaker that doesn't provide data subscription services and/or don't pay for them. The eCall requirement in itself doesn't require tracking.
By owenversteeg 2025-05-2220:11 I can't believe I'm still responding to this, but your comment is incorrect. Again. If you are reading a version of CEN 15722 where the two most recent locations before the incident location are not required, then you are reading an outdated version from over a decade ago, which has been withdrawn in favor of a more recent version for some years now. The year is displayed prominently on every page of the standard, and the validity is _required_ to be indicated before you even open it, so I have some doubts if this is a genuine mistake.
It's been a while since I've seen the pro-surveillance argument of "well, you can just do this uncommon or difficult thing if you want to evade surveillance!" In several European markets, for several vehicle types, there _are_ no vehicles without OEM-connected cellular radios. Some OEMs don't even advertise it; it is used for activating features, or "security." Other OEMs will not _fully_ disable cellular connectivity even if you stop paying. If you're an OEM mandated by EU law to include a cellular modem and a location recording device, you might as well make some use of that - and they do.
By PaulDavisThe1st 2025-05-1122:55 Because you have to just believe that they are followed, and cannot verify it.
By rustcleaner 2025-05-128:28 Your privacy should not rely on the government's "trust me bro" and it's like we forgot about China owning SS7 last year lol. No, it is plainly obvious to me that the mandate for eCall and the lack of an owner off switch for it is for nannying and surveillance FULL STOP. No option to opt out must be treated the same as the violations to privacy they are attempting to pre-construct the conditions for.
By fucker42069 2025-05-1123:15 Well, for starters, the SIM card in the eCall system is only needed to receive a callback from the 112 service if the call drops, which the system automatically picks up. You can actually dial 112 without a SIM card in your phone, as a GSM device without one can still connect to nearby radio towers in a "limited-service set," better known as "emergency calls only."
I know some carriers have strange quirks in their SIM provisioning systems. For instance, it may take more than a few minutes or require a specific type of coverage (like UMTS) for an otherwise "dormant" SIM card to activate from limited service on short notice.
I found an article about eCall Callback that confirms this is a known problem: https://eena.org/blog/resolving-the-ecall-callback-issue/
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1120:573 reply It's not a tracker. It activates during an accident, or via manual action.
Hopefully those same people know what ANPR is and how does it affect them.
By mousethatroared 2025-05-1121:092 reply Of course it is. We're just told differently until a leaker proves differently. Twenty years too late to do anything about it
And naturally of course you don't carry a cellphone with you while you drive...you know, that device with accelerometers, GPS and an LTE chip that you leave powered on all the time on your person?
By kortilla 2025-05-1223:29 I don’t. What’s your point
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-1210:001 reply Of course I am free to carry it or not
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1213:011 reply You are also free not to use a mode of transportation. You can, for example, buy an old car, register it on a historical number plate, and you’re good. There is no retrofit requirement. If you want a new car, suck it up.
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-1214:091 reply I'm always amused at people who deem future and freedom of choice incompatible and effectively stating that the end game of all progress is absolute slavery and obedience.
Other than having some vested interest in denying people's right to choose between positive and negative aspects of progress, or having a Stockholm syndrome towards those who have such interest, I got no plausible explanations to this psychological phenomenon
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1214:53 Omg what am I going to do. Yes yes. You know I’m selling trackers online and just lobbying on hacker news.
You seem to be wasting your precious “armchair psychologist skills” here on hn.
By willywanker 2025-05-134:57 Ah yes, brilliant reasoning. "You carry one device that can be tracked as long as you're carrying it so what's the problem with having tracking baked into your vehicle?"
By mousethatroared 2025-05-1121:51 [flagged]
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1121:302 reply There are so many things in a modern car that track you. eCall is the smallest problem.
By koolba 2025-05-1121:34 Indeed there are: https://medium.com/@doctoreww/day-2-your-car-is-trackable-by...
And “modern” is going back over a decade. So most cars on the road.
By mousethatroared 2025-05-1121:52 [flagged]
By timewizard 2025-05-1121:402 reply I can actually remove my number plate. One tool, five minutes, car still drives.
And of course it's a tracker. It reports my location to a third party. There is no other definition for it. That it purportedly only does this during an "emergency" is not something I can verify nor trust.
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-1210:05 I wonder what is your estimated ratio of number of active CCTV plate readers to that of cell towers out of a city and back in the country?
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1213:301 reply I’m certain you aren’t that important for anyone to care.
Yes: it reports your location to a third party. When you have an accident. So you can get help.
And of course it can be verified. At the end of the day it’s a sim card in a passive mode. Maybe you don’t know how to verify it. There are millions of them driving around. I’m sure someone more qualified than you would have already reported if they were tracking in real-time. The system is nearly a decade old.
By timewizard 2025-05-1218:481 reply > I’m certain you aren’t that important for anyone to care.
Storage is cheap. We know the NSA hoovers up everything it can and puts in a database. This is facile reasoning.
> So you can get help.
How many accidents resulted in fatalities because 911 couldn't find the victim? What's the percentage on that you think? Is there _no other way_ to get help other than this system?
> I’m sure someone more qualified than you would have already reported if
You're just full of confidence. Pray tell where it comes from. What makes you believe this is true?
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1219:05 > You're just full of confidence. Pray tell where it comes from. What makes you believe this is true?
I trust in people who look for this stuff as a daily job, or because „they’re here to get you”. Because you know a sim card in the open is really easy to verify. And there are thousands of them driving around but also easily approachable sitting targets in every possible setting.
But you double down. I find this discussion pointless.
> How many accidents resulted in fatalities because 911 couldn't find the victim?
You’re missing the point of the eCall system. Think out of the box. What if there is no witness? What if everyone in the car cannot get help
Everyone who could reach out for help, received it. Can you tell the same about those who weren’t able to contact first responders in time? Maybe they’re still missing! It’s called survivorship bias.
Sounds like you are trying hard to be obnoxious.
By rustcleaner 2025-05-128:311 reply If it always has a cell tower connection, it is a tracker and... do you even operate?
By rad_gruchalski 2025-05-1213:39 Well… do you? eCall sim is passive, activated only in an emergency or explicitly as a response to the action of the occupants of the vehicle: https://www.bosch-presse.de/pressportal/de/en/bosch-explains...
By SoftTalker 2025-05-1122:172 reply Almost everyone has a phone you don’t need a second one built in to your car.
By FireBeyond 2025-05-1122:59 Almost like sometimes people get seriously injured in car accidents and can't get to their phone, assuming it's where it was left prior to the accident.
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-129:57 Let people decide if their fear of death warrants all kinds of surveillance on them and not shove that down their throats as in "we know that many of you would opt-out of being tracked so we made it mandatory", alright?
By paulddraper 2025-05-1217:37 Usually not always.
By bigstrat2003 2025-05-1215:50 There's nothing at all sensible about legally mandating that all cars must have a device which can be used for surveillance. Still less so for something which is at best a marginal gain in safety.
By paulddraper 2025-05-1217:37 One more thing to increase cost, fragility, security concerns, in an age when virtually everyone already has a cell device anyway.
By phyzix5761 2025-05-1121:131 reply Physical buttons are a huge need. Its so distracting navigating through screens to change the temperature while driving.
That’s interesting - what vehicles require you to do that? I know the usual suspect is the Tesla, which I have, but I never have to navigate through menus to change the temperature while driving.
As an aside a lot of people like to levy criticism on the infotainment screens which I think is very well deserved, but then people text and drive, watch YouTube videos, and do all sorts of crazy things too.
Instead of levying criticism on these distractions (let’s include billboard too) we should instead focus on just reducing car usage since we won’t stop people from being distracted.
The safest car is the one in your garage.
> As an aside a lot of people like to levy criticism on the infotainment screens which I think is very well deserved, but then people text and drive, watch YouTube videos, and do all sorts of crazy things too.
Instead of levying criticism on these distractions (let’s include billboard too) we should instead focus on just reducing car usage since we won’t stop people from being distracted.
This argument to me reads like one for abstinence from sex. The world is not so binary, we can both criticize distractions and build communities where car use is not a necessity. Not to mention in most jurisdictions some of these distractions are criminalized.
We can - but we don’t need to clutch our pearls about infotainment screens as if they are some sort of special moral insult relative to what’s very common in today’s driving communities.
Criminalization of texting and driving and such doesn’t matter unless you enforce, and we don’t enforce. So it’s de facto legal. Who cares about infotainment screens at that point?
We are talking millions of cars driving at a speed that can kill people both inside or outside the car. Anything you can do to reduce those distractions is a net positive for society. Less death.
As for criminalizing texting, I’ve heard enough people getting caught and getting big fines that it works enough for me to dissuade me from doing it.
If you live in America it’s just not enforced. Even cops do it. I don’t do it because I just don’t need to but you can watch people doing it for yourself if you pay attention.
If you’re focused on less death, sure we can criticize infotainment screens, but the energy is much better spent in demanding enforcement and in whatever we need to do to reduce car usage. Otherwise you’re kind of wasting your time, unfortunately.
By IcyWindows 2025-05-123:151 reply It is enforced in at least some parts of the US.
By ericmay 2025-05-1211:34 I haven’t been to every part of America, but based on the travels I have done there is very little, if any enforcement.
By Marsymars 2025-05-1219:47 In Canada at least, cops have special dispensation to be allowed to use their phones while driving.
By timewizard 2025-05-1121:374 reply Ford SYNC.
https://pictures.dealer.com/s/surprisefordvtg/0292/10a2adba8...
It's like a window into hell.
As a Linux fan and owner of a Sync 1.0 vehicle I feel your pain. I want to replace it with something aftermarket, but the cost of a dash kit is pretty steep if you want one of decent quality. I reboot it weekly, which takes minutes, so it doesn't freeze during the week. I'm guessing there's memory leak that takes a while to accumulate.
By johnbellone 2025-05-120:39 Original SYNC was actually embedded version of Windows. It’s running QNX now and Android for future versions.
By bigfatkitten 2025-05-1121:521 reply I've got a Ranger with SYNC 4. HVAC has its own set of buttons and dials below the display, but you can use the touchscreen widgets too if you want to.
https://www.ford.com.au/content/ford/au/en_au/home/owners/te...
By Marsymars 2025-05-120:01 Depends on the vehicle. Maverick Sync 4 moved HVAC controls to touch screen for 2025 models.
By johnbellone 2025-05-120:37 Just bought a 2022 Mustang to avoid the 2024-2025 series for SYNC 4 and the removal of physical buttons. Car is nice but can’t get past the whole digital set up.
By Gigachad 2025-05-120:40 We rented a BMW which had all climate settings on a touch screen. That touch screen crashed once and we couldn't turn the air con off without trying to reboot the car which isn't exactly trivial since there isn't any obvious off button.
By DragonStrength 2025-05-1122:033 reply Subaru require you navigating to second screen for climate modes. Simple temp adjustment has buttons, but the screen interactions for basic usage feels dangerous as a driver.
This is the feature I dislike most about my outback. Some systems just need buttons so you can operate without looking
Kia’s EV9 solved the problem of needing to look at the climate touch screen behind the steering wheel. That way, the driver cannot see it.
(Really. They did. No, you can’t adjust the steering wheel position enough to fix the problem.)
By hedora 2025-05-121:41 Typo: “Behind” -> “by hiding it behind”
By ericmay 2025-05-1122:12 I’m being pedantic but the OP did specifically say they need to “navigate through screens to adjust the temperature” which I think is different than setting climate modes. Not that I’m defending that you might have to do that specifically, but I was responding to the OP’s specific wording.
By frollogaston 2025-05-131:01 Even buttons can be distracting. Instead of just a hot/cold knob, some cars have ˚F up/down buttons you have to spam.
By phyzix5761 2025-05-122:272 reply Doesn't Tesla require you to navigate to a second screen when changing the fan speed?
By ericmay 2025-05-122:32 The OP said changing the temperature which is what I responded to.
Also at least personally I never change the fan speed but just set the temperature I want.
By sgustard 2025-05-122:36 Tesla added a feature via a software update a year ago that lets you change fan speed by holding the left steering wheel button.
By frollogaston 2025-05-130:59 If I had to use a touch screen to change the temp on my car, I'd probably leave in the garage.
Slate have done this and it's really quite compelling. You even get window winders.
"Have done this" implies Slate has delivered even one vehicle. They have not. I hope Slate succeeds, but let's not get caught up in the preorder hype.
By DidYaWipe 2025-05-1123:40 Yeah. Alpha "Motor" has been breathlessly hyping renders for years now, while declaring that their nonexistent vehicles have won all kinds of awards.
Oh, and every year there's "only three days left to invest!"
By owenversteeg 2025-05-121:30 I don't even think they've built a single prototype. I'd be happy to be corrected but last time I checked, none of the "prototype" shells they showed off had a powertrain.
By almostgotcaught 2025-05-1121:16 This is the same way that hn proclaims every single arxiv paper as revolutionary. I really wonder sometimes who is this gullible on the internet (kids? bots? I influencers?)
I was quite interested in this until I realized:
* Bed size is just five feet
* Towing capacity is just 1000 lbs
* Not AWD
None of these can be retrofitted after the sale.
Where I live, it'd struggle to be called a "truck" with these limitations.
By majormajor 2025-05-120:162 reply Meh. Base Maverick is a <5' bed, no AWD, and towing of 2000lb but I haven't seen one doing any towing in the wild. But the owners seem to love them.
Not everyone wants to spend 40-80k on a bloated luxury-truck-ized F150 when they only need to carry something oversized maybe once a year.
I think the market for base Mavericks is pretty small. At that point it's really not providing much value over an SUV with rear seats that fold down. I agree not everyone wants to spend 40-80k, but that doesn't mean they want to spend $20k for a small no-frills EV in the shape of a truck with not many other similarities.
I like the "starts out cheap, then upgrade it later" premise of Slate, and I like that it's electric, but it'll only really be a toy with the limitations I specified.
By majormajor 2025-05-123:322 reply AWD is only standard on the fanciest Maverick trim and not an option picked by the couple of folks I know with them. But that + the bed length doesn't seem to be stopping them from loving their trucks. Tacos also start at 5' IIRC.
But if you have even just those once-a-year "need a truck bed" needs the gap between "SUV with fold down seats" and "actual truck" is pretty substantial.
I think the set of truck buyers with either:
* just occasional needs for a bed, without a need to put sheet goods flat or such (if you have that just get a minivan these days ;) )
* a fashion-driven desire compared to a van or SUV vs a practical-driven one
is substantial compared to the set of "needs a professional-grade truck" buyers.
The set of professional-grade buyers hasn't changed much in thirty or forty years, but the former two sets have exploded.
By moduspol 2025-05-1216:31 For a pickup truck, if you're buying it so it's "there when you need it," it removes a lot of value if it's gotta stay in the garage during the winter.
Though yes, I could see it being less important if that's not an issue in your area.
By Marsymars 2025-05-1219:53 FWIW the Maverick handles 4x8 sheets fine - they go on the wheel wells and the tailgate with some straps to hold them in place.
By bluGill 2025-05-122:03 the f150 ev doesn't have a long bed. for those of us who haul stuff no truck works (until we step to the f250 or bigger)
By stronglikedan 2025-05-1316:32 It's not a truck. It's for people who need more than a car, but less than a truck. A Cuck? (oh, wait...) A Truar? Either way, those specs are plenty for the average person that just wants to haul some stuff, or pull a small trailer, and not burn too much energy while doing it (or not doing it).
The window winders I can do without. Not sure that even saves a noticeable amount of money at this point with electric windows such as commodity.
By StopDisinfo910 2025-05-1121:341 reply I seem to remember Jeep saying manual window winders were actually more expensive once you factor in the costs of having them as an option given how cheap electric ones are when they dropped them for the new Wrangler. Might still be cheaper if you only manufacture with them and don’t offer electric but the price difference can’t be that high.
By cameronh90 2025-05-1121:595 reply 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.
By cameronh90 2025-05-1212:16 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.
By SoftTalker 2025-05-1122:12 Manual windows can and do fail, but in my experience not as often as electric ones. There’s just less to go wrong.
By StopDisinfo910 2025-05-1214:48 In my experience, they both fail but differently.
Electric winders tend to experience motor failure leaving you with a stuck window. They don't stress the mechanism that much.
Manual winders, you would generally experience mechanical failure. If you were lucky, you broke the handle. If you were unlucky, you broke the gears and had the pleasure of watching your window fall into the door.
By Gareth321 2025-05-1210:28 > I never had a manual window winder fail to work
I have. It jammed. When I tried to release it the glass fell out (into the door).
By ekaryotic 2025-05-1310:29 same, the cable style are prone to seize. the older manual winders that use a segment of a sheet metal gear and levers were bulletproof though.
All depends on how they market it. Wind down windows to me today is an aesthetic statement - “we are selling a cheap, no frills vehicle - look see! Even wind down windows”
Such positioning could be what the intended customer base react well to.
By PaulDavisThe1st 2025-05-1122:53 Add handles like winders, but make them only have 5 degrees of travel up and down, so that they operate like the regular buttons :)
Which turns it into more uselessness for marketing rather then practicality.
For example, mechanical window winders would need a whole extra disengagement or locking mechanism for child proofing.
By coredog64 2025-05-123:14 Manual windows already had child proofing: Rear windows only go down part way so that kids can’t easily climb out.
By bjelkeman-again 2025-05-1121:391 reply But that car isn’t intended for customers transporting kids. Two seats.
My biggest concern is lack of a stereo. Did they include speaker cutouts and wires, or are you looking at a $1000 labor bill, minimum?
I’d much rather they included a $200 system, since ~ 100% of their customers will want to be able to have speakers in the doors and a mic in the dash (at the very least).
By germinalphrase 2025-05-1213:42 The presented solution from Slate is a mount for a Bluetooth speaker.
By saurik 2025-05-1121:13 I mean, they did something, for sure, but they sure as hell didn't do "this" ;P. What they are doing is more in the line of not providing even hardware, much less software, which is an entirely different paradigm... like, they don't even provide speakers?!...
By giantg2 2025-05-1121:43 It'd be great if they make an engine swap package for existing trucks with optional battery sizes.
By ErigmolCt 2025-05-128:24 The industry keeps chasing "connected experiences" and ad monetization while ignoring what most drivers actually want: responsiveness, simplicity, and reliability
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.
By rustcleaner 2025-05-128:191 reply ... but you can be a bro and make sure that hardware is close to the surface somewhere for easy access, its presence isn't required to start and operate the car (either firmware check or the immobilizer performing metrics), and its removal does not cause an obvious and annoying alert during operation (IE removal should not make the car appear to be in a 'degraded' state per its indicators).
You are complying by installing it, the customers are the ones [easily] removing it [because you were a bro].
It is mandatory to have and it is in checklist during annual vehicle check. Without it it is not street legal. And the car should show an error in case the module is removed/failed.
Those safety add-ons are there for a reason.
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-129:493 reply Those are not safety addons, those are surveillance ones
By stronglikedan 2025-05-1316:35 Really, it's only surveillance, thinly veiled as safety. The reality is that my car is no safer with an LTE modem. Zilch. Zero. It's purely surveillance, if you don't fall for the marketing.
In fact, I'm going to find mine and faraday that shit this weekend.
By graemep 2025-05-1212:55 Which they inevitably will.
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.
Yes, that is correct. But it is a different concept. The mobile network operators do that. Not the car. The car does not even have any way to stop that apart from going offline.
By the8472 2025-05-2517:21 First of all, you didn't directly answer my question, it wasn't a yes/no question. I don't know how these systems work. If they're almost always offline it would be a lot less concerning.
Secondly, the government makes both regulations (cell tower data retention, emergency calling). So in combination the government regulated user tracking. Where exactly it happens isn't really that important. Once the data is being collected it'll end up being used. Usually it starts with major crimes and anonymized statistics, once the automated infrastructure has been created it'll be abused either illegally by police overreach or legally by a tough-on-X government changing the rules. It's not like this is some novel pattern...
Let me guess: you are afraid of the surveillance, use only cash for payment, pager for connectivity and have no permanent address?
It's safer and convenient to have a connected car. I like it that way. When you can open your car app and check the location where it is parked, amount of gas or request ventilation/ac.
By graemep 2025-05-1212:56 That is a blatant reductio ad absurdum. People should have the right to reasonable privacy without being homeless and off grid.
I am happy to share my address and phone number etc. but not to be tracked wherever I go or have everything I do on my computer or within my home monitored. These are different things.
The Nissan Leaf is (was?) what you describe, apart from the LTE chip. The LTE doesn't seem to do much without NissanConnect (which was actually written by Bosch).
By mortos 2025-05-234:23 Nissan tracks you and sells your data. Pretty much every manufacturer does, if your car has a modem rest assured that your car is collecting and selling data from you.
By therealdrag0 2025-05-125:21 Hyundai is physical buttons and CarPlay. That’s why I got Kona EV, and Ioniq5 is well loved.
I have heard CarPlay royalty is quite big - has anyone some numbers?
Edit: maybe my information was old - some sources say it costs nothing
There are no licensing fees or royalties for CarPlay or android auto.
It does cost time/money to integrate, like any feature
By majormajor 2025-05-120:231 reply AFAICT USB-C iPhones don't have the same restrictions as lightning ones - https://9to5mac.com/2023/09/15/iphone-15-usb-c-port-compatib...
By joezydeco 2025-05-121:37 That's just for cables, I think you still need MFI (and all the paperwork and approvals and cost and the chip itself) that go with it if you want to implement a CarPlay receiver.
Does anyone prefer wired CarPlay over Wireless CarPlay?
I was annoyed enough that our used/new-to-us 2020 vehicle only supported wired that I bought a wired-to-wireless adapter and brought it with me on test drives to ensure that whatever I bought would work well in wireless mode [or else I was buying a different car].
I installed a wireless charger under one of the cubbies that was well sized to hold my phone on long drives. No need to faff around with cables.
By bigfatkitten 2025-05-1121:57 > Does anyone prefer wired CarPlay over Wireless CarPlay?
Yes, for the main reason that I have a Starlink Mini on my roof rack.
My phone can connect to the vehicle via wifi, or it can connect to the internet over Starlink via wifi, but not both simultaneously. With wired CarPlay, that problem is solved.
By nicce 2025-05-1121:55 Someone was so annoyed that they built Raspberry dongle themselves, and based on the stars, someone else was too: https://github.com/45clouds/WirelessCarPlay
Wait till you see how much it costs (in sales) to NOT have it. Eg: I won’t buy a car without it.
Generally yes, but I would buy a car that has no screen at all, just give me a phone holder on the dash.
By BobaFloutist 2025-05-1119:333 reply Yeah all I want is something that holds the phone and gives it a USB-C port that charges it, lets me play media through it, and lets buttons on the wheel control the phone (volume, next/previous, and programmable go forward/back x seconds buttons).
USB-C is so powerful, it can do everything Bluetooth does while charging, but for some reason that's just not an option in a lot of cars? Make it make sense.
It's the latency that kills me. Let alone the stupid "you're an idiot if you let this screen distract and kill you" message that pops up, it seems to take a good 10+ seconds to sync with the phone and "come alive".
This is with USB, too.
I want the car to start and CarPlay to be operational; we have no time to be wasting on whatever formalities software wants to have.
Maybe someday wireless CarPlay could start syncing with the system before you even get to the car, so it's already loaded when you sit down and start.
But some do, don't they? It seems to me that Hyundai will initiate the phone connection right when you open the driver's door. Then, as you sit down and start the car, the infotainment has already booted up and the phone connection comes online almost immediately.
Also, during short stops, the screens go black but the connection is kept up, so when you re-start, there is no delay.
By bombcar 2025-05-1123:24 That’s good to hear - the experiments I’ve had with the wireless CarPlay has been mediocre, but it’s only been a few rentals.
Whereas I really did take wired CarPlay into consideration when buying our minivan, there are only so many options that I may have had to compromise.
Then you want the Dacia Media Control.
It has a phone holder where other trim levels would place the screen, and USB power around there.
Other than that, the car is mostly Bluetooth a speaker.
They actually have an app that allows you to tune the FM radio, otherwise I don't think you can listen to radio broadcasts.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dacia.dngo
This is what the Slate truck is promising. I won’t buy it without CarPlay, personally, but you can put your money where your mouth is, supposedly.
The Slate truck won’t have CarPlay because it won’t have infotainment at all. If you want Carplay buy one of the dozens of offerings from companies like Alpine and have it installed at one of the thousands of stereo shops across the country. You’ll get exactly what you want from experts in what you want.
By mulmen 2025-05-124:14 Sure, that’s the point of the slate truck! Seems like a car for 3d printing enthusiasts.
By inquirerGeneral 2025-05-1123:17 [dead]
By ryanbrunner 2025-05-1120:12 Physical controls are worth it for me. Having a press to talk button, track advance and volume controls on my steering wheel is a pretty nice quality of life feature. I could do without a screen if the car has that.
By Xenoamorphous 2025-05-1120:031 reply I’d rather have a big screen for GPS.
By ghaff 2025-05-1120:26 My car even has a relatively small console screen but still prefer it over my (non-plus size) iPhone. I could live with just my iPhone on USB but consider the center screen a plus. (The vehicle is pretty good about climate control etc. on buttons.)
By mrloop 2025-05-1120:05 My old ford tourneo custom has a well placed phone holder. I use this and a MagSafe charger plugged into usb port on dash. Works great, I can use my phone, or anybody else can use the van and their phone, it’s really easy. Just looked and newer models have great big touch screen instead :(
By calmbonsai 2025-05-1119:341 reply You might be interested in the Slate truck when it comes out. It's too early to tell, but I like their philosophy.
By gambiting 2025-05-1119:36 I mean I have that already, a Volkswagen E-Up that has a cradle for a phone with a USB port behind it for charging. They even have an app that connects to your car directly(through Bluetooth! No fancy subscription based nonsense) and shows you all charging/energy consumption figures.
I just mean I'd totally buy a much higher end car that is like this, I don't need a screen with all the nonsense on it.
And what happens when phone sizes change? I've certainly had phone clips that didn't comfortably fit a new phone with case.
By gambiting 2025-05-1122:33 You get a new holder. The one that came with our e-Up was too small for my S24 Ultra, so I just got an adapter on eBay for like £3 and installed a new holder(with wireless charging!). Where there's a market need someone will provide a solution.
By SoftTalker 2025-05-1122:22 I think phones are about as big as they can get, unless we genetically engineer larger hands.
I'm not sure why you have the downvotes. Even it's mostly just about GPS, the built-in screen is better than iPhone on a somewhat dodgy clip attached to a vent someplace. Unless the car were otherwise compelling--and it's a pretty competitive market--not sure I'd buy a car without CarPlay.
By jay_kyburz 2025-05-1122:142 reply I want a car with a phone holder built in! My phone will always be higher powered and more update than any tech in the car.
Give me a car with no computer, but a phone stand and charger built in!
Oh oh, we could even use a standard like monitor stands.
By vv_ 2025-05-1213:03 The more premium Opel Astra K models had a phone holder built-in (optional accessory, but you get the point) that would also charge the phone. Practically no one bought it so they removed it in later models.
By namdnay 2025-05-137:58 > My phone will always be higher powered and more update than any tech in the car.
Carplay is your phone, it's like having an external monitor
By cryptonector 2025-05-123:02 You'll win your customers' love. The industry's awards? Who cares!
Removing LTE would remove key features that drivers want, including real time traffic updates, remote controls and streaming media? What's your objection to LTE?
By coderjames 2025-05-1123:14 The grandparent said
> support wireless CarPlay and android auto
Removing LTE doesn't cost me real-time traffic updates because (preferred maps app) is running on my phone which already has LTE. Streaming media? The media is being played from my phone or streamed via my phone, which already has LTE. I'm not sure what "remote controls" are in this context? Letting me set the A/C fan to high from Internet (almost certainly via a browser or app running on... wait for it... my phone)?
We've already paid for the LTE modems and app integration on the phone side of things, don't need to pay for it a second time on the car side or have to deal with the vehicle manufacturer's terrible implementations of navigation apps and media streaming services or yet another vendor collecting telemetry about me and reselling it to whoever wants to pay.
By throw0101d 2025-05-1123:012 reply > What's your objection to LTE?
Tracking, phoning home (with related privacy issues), etc:
* https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/09/flaw-in-kia-web-portal-...
* https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/10/five-...
That's a concern for privacy focused individuals, who are a very small fraction of the consumer market, despite being common here on HN. If the last few decades have shown anything, it's that most consumers don't rank privacy highly as a desired feature for products in anything but the most abstract ways.
There's zero chance a car manufacturer is going to nuke some of the most desired features of modern automobiles for some undefined cohort of privacy conscious consumers.
Most younger drivers would even buy Chinese vehicles despite their privacy concerns.
https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights/2024/5/22/y...
By raxxorraxor 2025-05-129:44 Some privacy concious customers know that data collected by China is less relevant than data your own legislation could get access to, but that is a different point.
It just should be said, that all these features could perfectly be implemented without violating privacy. You just have to use another system not from Apple and that other advertising company.
By throw0101d 2025-05-1123:39 I just want to be able to disable things even if they're default on. Or if not a software toggle, perhaps pull out the SIM card so the connectivity goes away.
By throw0101d 2025-05-1220:42 > You're not using a smartphone?
I have an iPhone with no social media apps. Mainly use it to check e-mail, Maps, weather, and SMS/RCS.
I feel confident that there is minimal third-party tracking, and that Apple themselves are relatively honest.
I think the idea is your phone will do that for you via carplay (etc)
That's a huge assumption. Cars had cell connectivity long before smartphones showed up. Onstar predates the iPhone by a decade.
By const_cast 2025-05-1123:082 reply I don't think it's a huge assumption. It was in the past, but not anymore.
The thing is that car manufacturers have been fucking up software in cars since... forever. The second car play and android auto hit the scene, that's all anyone wanted.
There's more benefits than just what's on the surface, too. Even if the car software is perfect, it doesn't have access to the same data your phone does. It won't put your contacts in your navigation, for instance.
By alistairSH 2025-05-1123:39 The only problem with CarPlay (and presumably AA) is lack of integration with the car…
Changing lock, light, and anudio (bass/treble/sub/fade) options. Map integration with fuel capacity (they only recently do this for EVs). Checking service intervals, recalls, etc.
If CarPlay had APIs/toolkit to serve those functions, it could 100% replace the UI that the manufacturer delivers (and nobody likes).
My car puts my phone contacts in my navigation. That's a software limitation of legacy car manufacturers.
By const_cast 2025-05-1123:34 Right, and Apple Car Play does it out the gate. So much so that I can say "Navigate to Doctor X" and it does it. And it did it without convoluted requirements on the vehicle side. And it will continue to do it, because Apple's navigation isn't going to rot like the car manufacturers will.
Look, can car makers make somewhat decent software? Probably, if they burn enough money. But is it even worth it? I don't think so. People already use their phone hours a day, just let them use that.
The moment you pick a non-techie off the street and help them see the amount of data collection occurring, you have another person who proves the assumption. It's not a huge assumption.
No one likes ads, no one likes their data being collected. The sooner insurance and car companies understand that, the sooner they get out of the maelstrom of false revenue from ad- and spy-ware programs.
What percentage of consumers do you think consider privacy as a feature in their car purchasing decision?
The only data I can find relates to Chinese vehicles which shows some concerns, but that's understandable given they are built by a foreign adversary.
https://www.autopacific.com/autopacific-insights/2024/5/22/y...
By Nursie 2025-05-121:02 > What percentage of consumers do you think consider privacy as a feature in their car purchasing decision?
What percent of users understand how much data is being collected about them?
By wyager 2025-05-1123:03 I have never once seen someone use the manufacturer provided traffic data, navigation, or "streaming media" over their phone when given the choice. Let's be real; it's just an excuse to try to subject customers to another subscription fee.
By donperignon 2025-05-126:53 Beware connectivity in cars, it is not for your good, it’s all about telemetry and profiling.
By nothercastle 2025-05-1123:16 Why does anyone need any of those except maybe remote start. The rest are handled though CarPlay. Nobody wants built in navigation that the phone already does
By majormajor 2025-05-120:20 If you keep that car for a decade or so the cellular connectivity may remove itself. Like it already did for 3g cars.
If you're gonna build that crap in at least go back to a standard-sized replacable module.
Looking back at the last 10 years how my fellow developers write code, the last thing I want is software defined vehicles. No one is rewarded for writing good code or for handling all the edge cases. People are rewarded for getting things done. The problem is, that this approach works e.g. for non-critical web applications, but not for cars, which are dangerous, heavy object traveling at high speeds.
Every car I've driven I disabled all drive assist features (except for ABS and ESP). They just simply don't work well. Edge cases are not handled well - there is a little snow on the sensor? Beeps continuously, because you're hitting the wall going 100km/h on the highway...
I hope more cars/trucks like the Slate truck will come. We want cheap, simple and safe cars.
Automated Emergency Braking has made driving significantly safer, according to the statistics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_emergency_braking_sy...
By DoingIsLearning 2025-05-128:472 reply I would argue that the software quality of ADAS systems is very different from Infotainment.
Infotainment systems are a race to the bottom on BOM+SW price point. ADAS OEM's understand that there is a human cost, liability, and reputational cost for failure.
The real risk with these monoliths is when companies start to remove the distributed/redundant nature of safety critical systems, in order to reduce hardware costs.
There are multiple very good reasons for a distributed system in a car. However, irrespective of how clever your architecture is, there is only one good reason for centralized systems in a car and that is cost. It benefits no one but shareholders and C-suite.
OTA updates are sold as a key benefit but again it's marketing, they only reduce costs for the manufacturers and effectively remove a lot of the penalties of recalls. I would argue that difficult/costly recalls put pressure on manufacturers for 'first time right' design, OTA favours happy-go-lucky software.
I believe you, that these systems work. However, I watched too many videos about cars on which it doesn’t. Many of them were expensive cars. Phantom breaking is really scary to me. I’d rather have full control of the car, than letting some system randomly emergency brake the car for no reason. ABS and ESP one can anticipate. ESP usually can even be turned off.
By DoingIsLearning 2025-05-137:34 I am not working directly on this but as far as I understand phantom breaking was mostly a calibration issue with earlier versions of front radar AEB.
By graemep 2025-05-1212:54 OTA updates scare me, as does any type of constant connectivity that is even indirectly linked to safety critical systems.
Statistics work on generic population but mush away a lot.
People are careless and inattentive beast of animals in our modern societies. Things are done for them, expected this way, they do not need to pay attention that much, which has lot of merits and advantages for the advancement of humanity. Dumb solutions doing as told and need to be handled expertly can be dangerous for modern people. Developing automation right (emphasis is here, big emphasis!!) is very necessary.
But unfinished and sloppy developers are killing careful people. Not show in the statistics, saving more bad drivers than killing good ones overridden by shit software cars.
Need to do it right with no collateral casualties.
I believe the tone of the conversations are into this direction anyway: please, pretty please, do it right! Not the current sloppy way! This is a dangerous game not mobile messaging platform, needs different mindsets than average software development approaches.
By speedgoose 2025-05-1211:421 reply Do we even have one documented case of a careful driver being killed by car software ?
By hedora 2025-05-1215:13 I have a new EV9 and the software on it regularly causes near miss accidents. I’m waiting to see accident statistics after it’s been on the market for a while. They’ll be dismal.
Examples: there are pedestrians nearby and the car is in reverse so it wildly swings the acceleration curve around, cycling between “slam on brakes” to “1-2mph” to “why am I on the other side of the street and standing on the break pedal?”
Even without pedestrians it constantly changes the acceleration curve and this cannot be disabled in a way that reliably survives turning the car off and back on.
Once, a motorcycle was lane splitting, so the adaptive cruise control tried to race it and accelerated at the car in front of me. I had to slam on the brakes.
This is by design: There’s a chapter in the manual explaining the dozen different reasons it’ll fail to regen brake at a stoplight (or, from what I can tell, rear end someone on the freeway) because of low visibility. (Including being on a hill, not going straight, pedestrians, vehicles in other lanes, and motorcycles lane splitting.)
Changing from drive to reverse to drive disables one pedal mode. I’m sure that’s caused at least one collision (when you take your foot off the pedals it automatically accelerates, especially in parking lots).
I’ve had it override steering too. Sometimes it tries to force me out of the lane. Sometimes it wants me to stay in the lane so it overrides emergency maneuvers when other cars try to merge into me.
The beeping is constant, and alert fatigue has set in. There’s even an undocumented alert icon that looks like “car is about to explode”. We don’t know what it means.
Even if they fix the safety issues, we plan to sell it for that reason.
Note that all of this idiocy is possible because they wired together the transmission, throttle, brake and vision systems more deeply than “we need emergency override”.
Anyway, mark my words: The accident rates on this model will be high.
By forgetfreeman 2025-05-1213:481 reply The future we want: The Ford Econoline rebooted with diesel-electric hybrid and full EV powertrain options, kei truck style flatbed with foldable sidewalls and tailgate, built on an actual frame so custom bed options are now possible, fully analog controls, no connectivity or center console display of any kind.
I want the center console, but not hooked to the rest of the car. Instead, it’d have a standard screen, and a jog wheel that’s compatible with third party computers.
I’d settle for a bluetooth (call and music) capable fm radio though.
By forgetfreeman 2025-05-1218:35 Serious question: Have you ever driven a vehicle that didn't have a center console display? Not having an ipad in the middle of the dash vying for your attention is pretty sweet.
The direction is likely inevitable. Modern cars already are software-heavy, even without full autonomy or flashy features
By GenshoTikamura 2025-05-129:42 It is only as inevitable as consumers' alreadism-driven apathy. The moment they recognize that Car As A Service is something out of the sane world and having a means of transportation that can simply expire or be blocked remotely for a far-fetched TOS violation is against their interests, all inevitablism goes up in flames.
By frollogaston 2025-05-131:041 reply The worst one is automatic brights. Some cars don't even have a button to disable it, and it's only like 75% reliable at detecting an oncoming car as to not blind the other driver.
By mdavid626 2025-05-136:32 Interestingly, for me this worked very well. On my BMW M235i it was flawless. It had normal beams, and one could turn on the auto beams. One button to switch it on/off. I really liked it, as it was easy to activate, did its job, and when in doubt, I could deactivate it easily (button).
On my VW Golf GTD (mk7) it works also pretty good, only the activation/deactivation is strange. It uses the same switch, which is used to switch on the beams. Depending on the current state, it activates the beams, auto beam or turns it off. After more than a year of ownership, I still don’t know how to use it. Sometimes when I need to turn it off, it doesn’t turn off, but does something I don’t want it to do.
