
Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system - elorant
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/volkswagen-audi-porsche-vw-group-plans-one-os-to-rule-them-all/
======
spanktheuser
I'm also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the
same thing. From my understanding it's unlikely to succeed because
manufacturers view suppliers as commodity producers of components they find
boring like brakes, steering systems, sensors, transmissions, safety systems,
fuel pumps, etc. Not as anything resembling a true partner. Not to mention
that it would require competitors to collaborate closely in the production of
a highly complex piece of software.

That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries?

1 Legacy corporation is warned that an integrated, consumer-friendly software
architecture for [multi-billion product line] is needed, and failure to
produce one creates an opportunity for an insurgent competitor and/or
commodification by adjacent supply chain players.

2 Leadership laughs and ignores mounting evidence of just such a threat
emerging for up to a decade.

3 Lo and behold, prophesied competitor finally emerges and finds immediate
market success.

4 Legacy company announces that they'll bring a competing solution to market,
promising investors that they'll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39
models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase
product support infrastructure. They're starting today and promise to launch
in 12 months.

5 Legacy company lights billion dollar bonfire to distract investors while CTO
frantically tries to source a robust embedded operating system with consumer-
grade interfaces and feature set.

6 Best case, no one who has such an OS will license it. Worst case, Google
will.

7 Leadership jumps ship, legacy company craters or slowly slides into
irrelevance, and CEO later gives interviews about how absolutely no one could
have seen this coming, with a sidebar complaining about software engineering
salaries.

Honestly, this whole narrative is becoming a bit boring at this point. VW is
at stage 5. The fact that its leadership consists entirely of charlatans is
self-evident.

~~~
magduf
>That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries?

This is a great post, but it could really use a list of actual examples from
other industries.

~~~
iforgotpassword
Not other industry, but Nokia. And Blackberry.

IBM is an example where the quick panic solution (original IBM PC)
surprisingly was quite successful for a while but also bit them in the ass in
the end (modularity and exclusive use of off the shelf parts).

~~~
pjmlp
PCs would have looked much different had Compaq not been so lucky with their
reverse engineering attempt, hence that whole failed PS/2 MCA recovery
attempt.

~~~
magduf
The MCA bus fiasco was hilarious. Basically, IBM decided it wanted to retake
control of the PC and get everyone to abandon the clones, so they came up with
the PS/2 and its proprietary MCA bus, and they really thought everyone would
suddenly abandon the clones and their open architecture and buy proprietary
IBM PS/2 machines that were incompatible with everything. They didn't seem to
understand at all that now the cat was out of the bag, they couldn't put it
back in. It'd be interesting to see an interview of the idiot executives that
hatched up that doomed scheme.

------
PorterDuff
It's just my own ignorance speaking (probably), but I can't say that I like
the idea of Android getting near/intertwined with mission critical systems.
Hopefully 'infotainment' implies something that is well clear of 'stopping'
and the like...although I'd just as soon that they dropped the 'tainment' part
and simply provided an interface for diagnostics, HVAC, &tc.

What bugs me the most about the 'tainment' part is that not only do I find
most of it irritating, but that you are binding technology that obsoletes
quickly with an expensive product that should last 10-20 years. It's a shame
that car companies have picked this as an area for product differentiation.

~~~
alexis_fr
The same was probably said 15 years ago about the computerization of the car
engine and their rapid deprecation. Did the average lifespan of a car decrease
since then? How ridiculous is it to drive a 4WD into the desert, full of
electronics that can’t be repaired and where a single chip can cost 300$ and
has to be shipped from mainland America...

So yep, with car computerization they reduced the lifespan from 30 to 12
years, and with infotainment they’ll reduce it to 8 years. Same length as a
Tesla warranty.

~~~
jobu
There has to be a balance. Electronic fuel injection (EFI) is _far_ more
reliable and adaptable than even the best carburetors. Electronic safety
systems may have reduced some of the longevity of a vehicle, but the
alternative is higher chance of injury or death.

~~~
PorterDuff
I think that the EFI argument is something of a red herring, no one is
suggesting a return to the Quadrajet.

OTOH, EFI can be done as a modular (and replaceable) product rather than as
part of monolithic whole-vehicle design, but that last bit of goodness or
regulatory need is likely not met.

I just think of it all as being Peak ICE. The last generation of piston
engines is going to be crazy complex and probably deserve to be usurped by
it's battery-powered successors.

~~~
photojosh
> The last generation of piston engines is going to be crazy complex and
> probably deserve to be usurped by it's battery-powered successors.

My car-loving boss just got a hybrid RAV4, and he absolutely loves it;
combines the best features of both with (presumably) the only downside of
lower maintenance (but even then there's less wear-and-tear on the ICE side).
I suspect we will see quite a slow, gradual transition through hybrids to
battery-only.

Of course, this is Australia (and I'd imagine similar in the US and Canada)
where it's more common to drive long distances.

------
castratikron
>some models simply won't run if the infotainment system is broken; the
navigation GPS provides the vehicle's master time counter, and without that,
the powertrain won't function

:O

~~~
dognotdog
Balkanization is about right. In my experience developing driver assistance
systems, there are enormous efforts spent on political turf wars instead of
proper design and engineering.

This is not surprising, as the team structures, at least as of a few years
ago, were traditionally set up with tradtional manufactirng in mind, around
parts and control modules, while the functionality exploded (within 1 or 2
generation of cars) and crossed those boundaries without adequate processes in
place properly architect the interactions from a bird's-eye view, creating
major computing power, network bandwidth, and most importantly to OEMs, cost
bottlenecks.

And as cost is king, nobody wants to budge on increasing cost on their own
module, and critical architectural decisions aren't made as much as put off
until there isn't any other choice left except to hacking in the most critical
bits with one eye closed and hoping somebody else's jenga tower falls first.

That, I imagine, is how you get that GPS time thing, I can see how it all
started: "Oh, I can save $.30 on my module if I don't put in an RTC, that'll
get me a nice bonus for cost saving, GPS is going to have one anyway ..."

~~~
castratikron
I've worked in that environment before. It doesn't help when upper management
has no software or hardware background whatsoever (e.g. MBA or "sales" or
whatever) and in that case the only way they see things is in terms of
dollars.

One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on the
board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was "worth" so
that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware.

~~~
cameronbrown
> One time I was working on a new project and I wanted to put an SD card on
> the board so that we could have a log. I was asked how much the log was
> "worth" so that they could justify the cost of the extra hardware.

Very much like testing. Incalculable if you need it (and you certainly do),
but managers who don't understand, just assume that you're doing something
wrong if you need to "waste time" reading logs or writing tests rather than
adding features.

------
chicob
_" But you also have to open up all the car's sensor data [to Google], and
when I say all, it really is all sensor data"_

This is revealing. I'm glad my tractor GPS/guiding system does not run
Android.

~~~
Zhenya
Android and Google services are 2 different things.

1 is an opensource OS, the other is proprietary services.

~~~
incanus77
Want to run Google Maps on this system? You must use Google services as a
whole.

Don’t want to? Look up the numbers on how many global providers of maps data
there are...

~~~
magduf
Not only that, the other providers are extremely deficient compared to Google
Maps, from an end-user perspective.

My 4-year-old car came with an infotainment system using HERE maps. It's
laughably bad compared to Google Maps, and here's why:

1) The HERE maps aren't auto-updated. You have to go to some trouble to
download updates twice a year, and then install them on the car with a USB
stick. You only get 3 updates for free, and after that you have to pay a huge
price for each update. Google Maps is updated constantly with new roads,
construction outages, even when a street is going to be blocked for a parade.

2) The business data on the built-in system is sparse. With Google Maps,
pretty much any brick-and-mortar business that exists is on there. And I can
easily see the business's operating hours too, and it'll warn me if I'm going
to get there too close to closing time.

3) Searching is far easier. Finding a destination on the built-in system is
like something from the 90s, and you generally need to start with a state,
city, etc. With Google Maps, you just start typing a name and it pops up
suggestions, which usually gets you the place you want very quickly.

4) No traffic updates on the built-in system. It has no way to get traffic
data; Google Maps has this by default unless you're in a "dead zone".

I could go on and on.

~~~
blub
You've discovered how nearly infinite ad dollars and leveraging a near
monopoly in mobile has allowed Google to destroy competition.

~~~
magduf
What competition? There was never anything on that level before Google Maps
came around. It's not like Mapquest ever offered similar functionality. Google
didn't invent GPS mapping, but they did seem to invent combining it with a
bunch of really useful other information like business addresses, hours,
reviews, photos, easy searching, etc. And that doesn't even include stuff that
isn't useful in cars, like walking/biking directions, public transit
directions/hours/etc.

Would we have gotten all this without a near monopoly like Google? The only
thing I've seen that comes close is Apple Maps, and that too is backed by a
gigantic company with its tentacles in many things. Some company that only
does maps isn't going to have access to all that data, so you'll just get a
program that makes pretty maps that's only useful if you know the GPS
coordinates for something, which of course no one does.

~~~
blub
The competition which couldn't improve their products as fast or as well
because they did not get free money from their ad business and now had to
compete with gratis good quality maps to boot.

For a long time after Google Maps entered the market there were better
products available from various providers.

~~~
magduf
Were they really better though? Maybe by certain metrics, but maybe not by
other metrics.

If someone shows me a GPS navigation app that's really pretty, fast, and even
shows me where speed traps are, that's nice and all, but what if it doesn't
let me just type in a business name, and instead I have to actually know a
street address? Then it isn't very useful to me. I'll go back to the app that
lets me navigate to business names instead, because that'll save me a lot of
time by not having to use a separate app just to look up a street address for
every destination I want to go to.

This reminds me a bit about the debate between Google Maps and Waze (yeah, I
know they're owned by the same company). The Wazers love waze because it's
cartoonish and easy and shows speed traps. That's great, but to me it's too
simplistic, it doesn't show alternate routes in real-time (GM will show me a
gray route, saying "similar ETA", "3 minutes slower", etc. as I drive), and
it's absolutely useless for public transit, so I stick with GM. And this is
with two free products both owned by Google.

Finally, what "better products" are you talking about? I remember quite well
when GM came out. I switched almost immediately from MapQuest. This was back
when it was a PC-only (web) application, of course. At the time, MQ had a
clunky interface, and then GM suddenly came out using AJAX, and I could click
and drag the map around! It was utterly amazing compared to MQ that you had to
use pan and zoom buttons for. Maybe the map dataset was better for MQ? I'm not
sure about that, but let's just say for argument's sake that MQ had better map
data. That's fine, except that there's more to using a map application than
the dataset: the user interface is extremely important too. So this seems like
a good example of ignoring how important the UI is, and then wondering why so
many people suddenly abandon the "superior" product for the one with the
easier-to-use UI, which is something we've seen over and over and over in tech
over the decades.

~~~
blub
I was using iGO offline maps for navigation on Windows Mobile where one could
search for addresses and also POIs. Sygic was a similar app later available on
the Sony P1i.

Both of these were offline apps using maps from multiple sources, at a time
when Google were still gathering data and mobile online access was expensive
and inconvenient. At least when using iGO the iPhone and Android didn't exist
yet.

------
Etheryte
The key takeaway for me here is that they want to build an Android-based OS
that will run both user applications and, say, your traction control on the
same stack. Given the very mixed history of Android security, updates, and
more, I simply can't see how this would end well.

~~~
vgoh1
The article must be misleading. Android would never have the latency or
reliability to run things like traction control and fuel management. The
engineers at auto companies are well aware of this, but perhaps the author of
the article is not.

~~~
Onanymous
Engineers might well be aware but not the managers who make decisions

~~~
jacquesm
Contrary to popular belief most managers in industry are not 100% clueless. No
manager in a car company would be so incompetent that they would off-load time
critical functions to a phone. My money would be on incompetence of the writer
long before I'd suspect the people on the other side of the interview.

I've been through a couple of those myself, it is always very interesting to
see how your words come out once they've been interpreted by someone who is
essentially clueless but well-meaning and trying to understand something that
goes above their normal day-to-day level of complexity. And that's the good
case, the one where they don't have an agenda to push.

~~~
oblio
On top of that, there's also this funny thing aspect:
[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-
Mann#Quotes_about_...](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-
Mann#Quotes_about_Gell-Mann)

> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the
> newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case,
> physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
> has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often,
> the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing
> cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s
> full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the
> multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or
> international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the
> newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was
> about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

~~~
magduf
Well, you do know that the newspaper isn't written by a single person, but by
a large team, so I guess the hope is that the journalists who wrote articles
about far-off Palestine were more competent than the journalist trying to
write an article about physics.

~~~
JetSpiegel
That "effect" is just Michael Chricton co-opting a Nobel laureate to one of
his rants. It has nothing to do with Gell-Mann, the physicist.

------
NohatCoder
I get a little bit worried when I read that they want one platform for
everything, the security needs of different systems are too different. I'd say
a modern car needs at least 3 separate systems:

A low level system for all critical features, this should be coded as safely
as possible and run on a slow almost unbreakable computer.

A selfdriving features module, doing all the computations that are too
intensive for the low level system. The low level system must be able to
detect malfunctions in this system and act accordingly.

An infotainment system, just assume that it has been hacked when designing the
other systems. It should be simple to prove that this system cannot take over
the rest of the car.

------
LeonM
I think this is a result of automotive technical progress slowing down. And I
don't mean that in a bad way.

For the past 100 years, we have been developing better and better cars, with
both breakthroughs and incremental improvements in the drivetrain, safety,
comfort, reliability, etc.

Now though, cars are consolidating. Most car companies only have a handful of
'platforms' on which they build various models. For example: Volvo currently
only produces 3 models of combustion engines. We have reached a point where
numerous subsystems are just 'good enough' and require little more R&D.

During the past 20 years or so, the software had to keep up with all the new
tech coming out in the automotive world. Now that development of automotive
hardware is slowing down, it is time to focus on the software for the long
run.

Tesla has been doing this for a while now. Their electric drivetrain is at
point where there is more for them to gain in software than improvement of the
hardware. For other car manufactures it is a bit harder to accept that, as
they have been developing hardware technology for a long time.

Edit: fixed my wrong example about Volvo, thanks to C1sc0cat

~~~
C1sc0cat
Volvo appear to have 3 main engines and multiple versions of the same engine.

And I suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war
designs the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's

~~~
tyingq
_" suspect that some ICE engines in use are still variants of pre war designs
the Chevy Small Block v8 is a little newer starting mid 1950's"_

Perhaps, but I'm not sure how relevant that is. The only pieces that remain
somewhat as they were would be the block, crank, and rods.

Overhead cams, variable valve timing, aluminum heads/blocks, electronic
ignition, fuel injection, ECU, etc...are all newish.

If some other design (rotary engines, for example) were better and made
economic sense, they would have likely won out.

~~~
C1sc0cat
Just variants though the British Leyland O series dated back to well before
ww2 and lasted into the 80's if not the 90's

~~~
tyingq
Which, as mentioned, was retrofitted with overhead cams, fuel injection, etc,
decades after the WWII era.

~~~
C1sc0cat
We are talking about the British car industry here, BL is what the the company
that made the Mini couldn't work out what profit they where making on the dam
thing.

------
stefanoco
My two cents: \- I'm asking myself why there's no reference to Autosar
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUTOSAR))
which is not an operating system (whatever this means in this context), but
yelds a sort of a standard architecture in the car and among third parties.
It's a real mess, but it works in this sense. \- rumors exist about VW and
other manufacturers pushing for using ADA (more specifically Spark), anyone
aware of this?

~~~
molteanu
Yes, it is a mess. At over 15.000 pages, AUTOSAR specifies not general
utilities, libraries, battle tested data structures used in the automotive
field or whatnot, but actual automotive components that in theory can be
developed independently and combined to build the whole car. XML being the
medium of choice for this standardization doesn't help either. You're left
with tools upon tools that modify XML files and generate C code based on those
files and very little opportunity to actually look/modify those C files by
hand, even in trivial circumstances. In short, the AUTOSAR idea, from what
I've experienced, is to hire an army of mouse-clickers that can use shiny
tools to assemble and configure every aspect of the car. They would not learn
C or any programming, but learn the actual standard and know what you need to
click or check in each and every instance. The tools would then take care of
bringing in the code and generate the header configuration files for you.

Anyway, not mentioning AUTOSAR might be a sign that its days are numbered,
perhaps?

~~~
jacobush
Then, from my experience, when the mouse-clickers are done, you employ an army
of C-coders to work around and/or abuse the (expensive) AUTOSAR components
until the system (somewhat) does what you wanted it to.

In my case it was AUTOSAR in name only. Our higher bosses thought we were
running AUTOSAR, but the lower you went, the understanding was firmer and
firmer that what we actually ran was custom software.

Oh, the days numbered part - nah, I don't think so. AUTOSAR is for very low
level stuff, I think unholy combinations will live on for a long time. AFAIK
all the component (like hardware, Bosch for instance) vendors only provide
AUTOSAR components for integration. Not sure, it was a few years ago I was in
the loop.

------
lispm
It's 5000-10000 people for the car software, connecticity, cockpit, autonomous
driving, energy, mobility services, etc.

Many of them already work in the Volkswagen Group, but will be centralized
working on common platforms.

------
ravedave5
I wonder if this is fallout from Tesla. They must have a huge advantage in a
way here having a clean sheet architecture only a decade old. Between this and
superbottle I think the idea to use suppliers as little as possible may pay
off.

~~~
Shivetya
Own a Tesla Model 3.

Over the air updates is vastly under estimated by many people. It is just as
much of a revolution in the automobile industry as the electric drive train.
As more cars move to electric and electrified drive trains the value of over
the air updates that Tesla employs will become more evident.

it frees you from being forced to buy a new car to get new and or improved
features. plus building a system like that allows Tesla to add new hardware to
their cars with ease as the mindset is in place already.

A model S bought five years ago enjoys most if not all the updates a newly
purchased model S has today. that is not something any other maker can claim
and I doubt that any even want to go there because not only does it free the
consumer from having purchase a whole new car for exciting features but
obligates the maker to providing updates to an existing car.

------
krn
An Android-based infotainment system developed in collaboration with Google
has already been announced and demonstrated in 2020 Polestar 2 EV, Volvo's
alternative to Tesla Model 3, which might have inspired this "Volkswagen's
bold plan"[1]. I have nothing against it, if the update policy would be
similar to Android One's. Otherwise, it can easily become a security
nightmare. Imagine, if your 5-year-old Audi car was as secure as your 5-year-
old Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjeNoPJ25Jc&t=5m28s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjeNoPJ25Jc&t=5m28s)

------
breakingcups
Iteresting. On the user-facing side I hope the choice for Android will mean
GPL compliance and a way to sideload apps. Can't wait for a LineageOS variant
for cars.

My experience with user-facing Volkswagen software has been terrible so far,
so I hope a new mandate might improve that area drastically.

As far as the underlying new operating system Volkswagen is developing for all
their cars, seems like a smart move as long as the design by committee
syndrome is somewhat curtailed.

~~~
ashleyn
Lineage for cars won't happen, too many questions surrounding
roadworthiness/safety/security.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
It's not like it's controlling anything critical, just the entertainment
system that already ran Android.

~~~
yk
An entertainment system suddenly blinking is safety critical.

------
davidthewatson
I fail to see how an operating system causes 2 or 3 decades of divergent
software engineering to coalesce. That's only probable if numerous components
descend from the operating system group in an architectural style that is
unified, congruent, and global. That's way beyond the bounds of what we
traditionally call operating systems. You are more likely to wind up with a
cargo cult.

------
Neil44
A big driver not mentioned is differentiation in the market, now that the
trend is for platform sharing across manufacturers. Essentially the same car
being sold by several different manufacturers with the only differences being
the badge on the back and things like the infotainment system fitted. By
carving out a big ecosystem early they’re getting a head start in that area.

~~~
dwyerm
We're changing to auto market into the cell phone market? Oh no.

"Well, I get Free Miles(tm) with the Chevrolet, but it throttles at 70MPH and
the radio only plays Pandoa. Or I can get the exact same car from Crysler,
with no throttling, but the miles come in bundles of 1000 and radio apps are
$5/month."

------
skc
And by new they really mean Linux, right?

~~~
codeulike
Yep and the source code will be a printout in the trunk.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I was quite surprised when my new oven came with a sheet of paper listing all
the open source software.

------
AcerbicZero
I can see what VW is trying to do here, and honestly out of the various rental
cars I've driven over the past 6 months, my Golf R's Android Auto/Car Play
integration has probably been one of the best. VW also has a history of people
doing minor modifications of their cars electronics, both via the intended
menus and for more complicated things, via the outstandingly named vagcom
(VCDS)*

I think this is the direction more automakers should go. I drove a friends
Tesla the other day, and it shares some the same features, allowing you to
make fairly specific customizations of certain things through the built in
menu.

*Some items which can be customized via the VCDS - DRL's, Windows Auto-Up/Auto-Down/etc, and a bunch of other things I can't remember anymore.

------
ElijahLynn
With all the car operating systems (OS) that will no doubt be connected to the
internet AND abandoned in the coming years. We need a car OS that is fully
open source so companies can offer security updates after they are abandoned,
so they don't get hacked and taken over as a full autonomous bot army of cars.

------
tt
Once an OEM opens up its vehicle data and control to Android (and/or Google
Automotive), it's game over for them. The OEM becomes a commodity hardware
maker. Plenty of analogy with mobile phones manufacturers. The OEM will not
make a dime after the sale of the vehicle while Google will build and
strengthen a development platform to enable third-party applications and
services and profit from them (something Google knows how to do really well).
Think Turo/Getaround, cleaning, refueling, charging, insurance, package
delivery, in-car applications, etc.

One way out of this is for the major OEMs to band together and create their
own standardized platform that works across OEMs. At minimum, that platform
should expose a single standard interface to all third-party service
providers.

~~~
nexuist
>One way out of this is for the major OEMs to band together and create their
own standardized platform that works across OEMs. At minimum, that platform
should expose a single standard interface to all third-party service
providers.

This already exists, and it's why there's a slew of Bluetooth-enabled apps on
the app stores that let you self-diagnose your own car. It's called OBD-II and
it's federally mandated on every vehicle since 1996 in the US and since 2003
in the EU: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-
board_diagnostics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On-board_diagnostics)

~~~
magduf
OBD-II isn't actually a real standard. The OEMs all tack on additional stuff
to it, so none of the implementations are fully compatible with each other.
Ford and Mazda, for instance, use a medium-speed CAN bus that other OEMs
don't, so most OBD-II readers can't access anything on that bus. Also, the
whole point of OBD was supposed to be standardizing diagnostic messages so
anyone could read the trouble codes. However, all the OEMs have lots of
proprietary codes that aren't in the standard. The whole thing is a mess.

Finally, OBD-II isn't a standard bus anyway. It's an interface to the end user
or technician. The various modules on the car are interconnected with a
variety of buses: CAN (high-speed or low-speed or medium-speed), LIN, MOST,
etc.

------
tonyedgecombe
In some ways I wish they abandoned infotainment systems completely and just
relied iOS/Android to provide those services. Stick a dumb screen in the car
with USB/Bluetooth connectivity to my phone.

------
close04
As (not) discussed previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973385)

------
stefanoco
A bit out of context but worth mentioning: anyone here having knowledge of the
trend regarding using ADA/Spark in the automotive industry?

------
papermachete
How long until car modifications are outlawed and reserved for overpriced
proprietary mechanics shops?

~~~
rootusrootus
We were already going in that direction, but perhaps EVs will push us over the
edge. Tesla has certainly made it damn near impossible to work on their cars.

------
teddyh
Of all the possibilities, shouldn’t VW be the _least_ trustworthy actor to
make software for cars?

EDIT: I am, of course, referring to the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal)

~~~
carapace
Yeah, my _first_ thought was, "Will it lie to me about my car's emissions?"

------
hwj
I wonder what language this new OS will be writtin in. C?

------
hkai
I'd prefer a car without an operating system.

~~~
sangnoir
You can probably get one with no software/microchips, but it won't be new.

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growlist
My cynical side tells me that if Germany weren't one of the world's largest
car exporters, the EU would already be legislating to harmonise these systems
globally.

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amelius
> Senger also revealed that VW Group will be using Android for future versions
> of the MIB infotainment platform

Yikes, can't they find an OS that isn't laden with adtech?

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whalesalad
Can you think of a better platform? What's the alternative?

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amelius
Pure OS, [https://pureos.net/](https://pureos.net/)

And if that's not sufficiently capable perhaps VW can invest into making it
so.

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Zhenya
VW is looking for a strong 3rd app support; I doubt pure OS is in the same
ballpark as Android for ready-to-install applications from large developers
like spotify, tomtom, etc etc

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qaq
10,000 people that sounds like an overkill

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yitchelle
This sounds like an underestimation to me. An ECU in car can consume up a team
of 200 to 250 engineering resource. This only for those working directly on
the ECUs. Add to it the secondary functions, the numbers will explode.

~~~
virtualritz
I worked on the infotainment part of recently released top brand car's
software. The number of engineers on that was flabbergasting. Way higher than
your number.

But the reason was not that it was needed.

The reasons were:

\- The approach to developing software (pure waterfall, with lots of agile BS
bingo terms as seasoning). As someone else mentioned: Old car companies do not
understand software. I may add: At all.

\- Upper management throwing more resources at missed deadlines (that were
moving all the time anyway). Every seasoned developer knows that more
developers will slow you down. Nine women can't have a baby in one month.

\- Trying to understand the issues with the project getting pear shaped by
looking at burn down charts.

Once I was on a way to one of these meetings in an elevator and someone said:
"Gentlemen, are you also on going to our weekly 'Men who stare at graphs'
ritual?"

Most senior engineering folks agreed that the work hundreds of developers,
dozens of engineering managers, PMs, POs, agile coaches and god-knows-what-
other-fancy-title people were doing could be done by a team of around 25.

I completely agree and as such parent is right. 5k-10k people is complete
overkill. But then -- given how these companies work -- it is not. It is
indeed an underestimation and the very reason this will go nowhere. A few cars
will be released with this OS and then it will be replaced by something much
better that someone else, not an old car company, was doing in the meantime.

~~~
yitchelle
I have also worked in the infotainment space, now in powertrain space. It
seems that the infotainment teams seems to be 2x to 3x the size of a typical
automotive engineering team.

Sometimes, I feel that infotainment products are more subjective than the
other car functions. eg, Does that "ding" sound notification reflect the
values of our brand vs Can the maximum power be transferred to the rear wheels
in the snow within 300ms, subject questions vs objective questions. Subjective
questions needs more study and analysis, leading to more engineers.

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test2016
Exciting but slow

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Phenomenit
I think everyone is scrambling to not get Netflixed.

Software is key!

~~~
yk
But in this analogy, VW is the mouse waiting in a dark alley for the upstart.

