
Peter Mertens, Former Head of Audi R&D: “We All Did Sleep” - ajknzhol
https://cleantechnica.com/2020/06/13/there-will-be-blood-peter-mertens-former-head-of-audi-rd-we-all-did-sleep/
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yummypaint
_Without software, you lose the most precious asset you have as a consumer-
oriented company: access to your customer.

Without software, you lose the gold of the digital age, customer data.

Without software, you are just what is left, a company assembling low-profit
metal boxes assembling company — and low profit metal boxes are an
exchangeable commodity._

Personally, im sick of being constantly commoditized by companies who appoint
themselves as pimps for my personal data and attempt to worm their ways into
my life. Alot of people prefer their car to be a dumb box that they buy
knowing the manufacturer is operating on low margins. Im certainly not going
to celebrate a manufacturer for increasing their profit margin by adding
paywalls, subscriptions and other nonsense that do nothing for the driver
while extracting that delicious recurring revenue for the company. BMW has
been pushing things this direction recently with remote disabling of features.
I hope the market will punish them, but I'm not holding my breath.

New car buyers look for pretty different things from used buyers, will be
interesting to see how these schemes age and what they do to resale value.
Might be interesting if firmware unlocks are available for only earlier model
years as often happens with gaming consoles.

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atonse
The fact that the lesson they got from software is customer data and not a
configurable car means that they still don’t get it.

They’re even further behind than they think.

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smileypete
Another, longer interview with Peter Mertens:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W__A569KX2c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W__A569KX2c)

The shorter video in the Cleantechnica article seems to be based on a
transcript of the above.

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barbarbar
I want much less software in a car - or no software. Which car would that be?

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mchusma
You should want (good) software in cars. It's one of the core drivers of
safety improvements that reduce the rate of fatalities, and the only realistic
method of continuing to make cars safer.

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barbarbar
I am not really sure. Fx take the number deaths by traffic in say India. More
software will not change much I suppose. The ex Audi chief seems to want more
spying on the user. I don't want that either. That idea seems outright wrong.

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PeterStuer
"Without software, you lose the gold of the digital age, customer data"

As a consumer, how about you just make a car and stay the hell out of _my_
"data".

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cemregr
This website is refreshing over and over making it impossible to read on my
phone ...

