Peter Mertens, Former Head of Audi R&D: “We All Did Sleep”

https://cleantechnica.com/2020/06/13/there-will-be-blood-peter-mertens-former-head-of-audi-rd-we-all-did-sleep/

by ajknzhol • 6 years ago

19 10 6 years ago

yummypaint• 6 years ago

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.

atonse• 6 years ago

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.

barbarbar2• 6 years ago

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

mchusma• 6 years ago

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.

ta17711771• 6 years ago

Surely they mean userfacing/surveilling/influencing software.

barbarbar2• 6 years ago

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.

rasz• 6 years ago

No software also means carburetors and vac lines all over the place. Might as well fly https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23945838

PeterStuer• 6 years ago

"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".

cemregr• 6 years ago

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

smileypete• 6 years ago

Another, longer interview with Peter Mertens:

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.

Peter Mertens, Former Head of Audi R&D: “We All Did Sleep”

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