Volkswagen Willing to Pay $1B Just to Look at Rivian's Software

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/volkswagen-so-desperate-it-s-willing-to-pay-1-billion-just-to-look-at-rivian-s-software-235988.html

by Corrado • 2 years ago

12 20 2 years ago

autoevolution.com

WhereIsTheTruth• 2 years ago

Sounds like someone at Volkswagen is getting blackmailed

This article for sure sounds like FUD

gruturo2• 2 years ago

The substance of the article is true but yes it's sprinkled with debatably subjective opinions and comments and links to an identically-toned article (https://www.autoevolution.com/news/volkswagen-lost-the-ev-re...) by the same author.

Same picture on top, just titled "Epic fail!" instead of "Desperate".

I don't know whether it's a strategy to attract eyeballs or the author just hates VAG. Despite the style though, the core message is not wrong.

rychco• 2 years ago

Volkswagen benefits from Rivian's expertise in developing and producing software-defined vehicles

What is wrong with current Volkswagen cars that this is so desirable? What is the benefit for consumers?

gruturo2• 2 years ago

Let me hazard a guess - not specific to Volkswagen:

Awful, slow, buggy, unresponsive, unergonomical, poorly-integrated, occasionally dangerous software, including the user interface, produced by a company culture that just won't change as it just doesn't see value in this, therefore either outsources it to the lowest bidder or mismanage it internally.

There's a reason Android Auto and Carplay are selling points.

constantcrying7• 2 years ago

produced by a company culture that just won't change as it just doesn't see value in this

I don't think that is the real problem. The issue is that Volkswagen has always been a hardware company and you can not make hardware like you do software. Fast iterations are not possible in hardware, so you need a careful long iterative process to fix previous problems and produce improved designs. Implementing a software process into this can only lead to disaster.

They also know that this is a major problem, which is why they founded Cariad to develop software, but that got burdened by the same problems.

Also: compared to the US, software engineering is payed terrible in the EU. If you are writing software you don't get payed more than an engineer.

tibbydudeza• 2 years ago

During the ICE era VW bought head units from Blaupunkt and Fuel Injection systems from Bosch and A/C systems from Delphi no need for a real software culture just integration expertise.

With EV's it is different ball game where software is a differentiator thanks to Telsa and the type of customers (techies) who are early adopters.

SAI_Peregrinus• 2 years ago

Anything developed using AUTOSAR is going to be awful shit. No competent programmer will willingly get within 10 feet of an AUTOSAR job posting if they've ever had to suffer through using it, and all the old ICE manufacturers standardized on AUTOSAR. They can't retain good programmers, and they can't hire programmers who have experienced their shit before, so they're left with naive newbies or overpriced contractors whose only goal is to milk the company for as many billable hours as possible.

constantcrying7• 2 years ago

What is wrong with current Volkswagen cars that this is so desirable?

Terrible problems with software.

VW even founded it's own software company, but apparently that didn't work out to well.

kkfx5• 2 years ago

Automotive is one of the many field heavily dependent on software and unable to create anything good in that. That's a good example of why we damn need to change the IT landscape for a future society...

FLOSS MUST BE BY LAW, we can't accept a modern society of black boxes and this allow for collaborative development witch anyone own it's own while all other can cherry pick creating a fast enough, stable enough, safe enough stream of innovation.

Another part is electronic witch we are still champion but many industries who need electronics are TERRIBLE at it. Again open hw is mandatory to create evolvable architecture for any field.

We can't accept things like a car briked because parked in at a certain steepness and for some reasons a crapware update fails under that condition, overnight, without any human owner control. Similarly we can't accept safety features like ADAS being tied to car infotainment just because the automaker bought some ancient SoC and tablets for that purpose not knowing what to do otherwise. FLOSS prove to be a technical success, a business failure. It's time to make it the norm so business can compete in hw not in selling services.

Of course it's terribly hard but if back then at Xerox this happen it can happen again, recreating some relevant conditions like public fund for public FLOSS projects, created to serve the people not some private parties and used by any private party for commerce. This allow for a balance between the private sector needs and the public allow freedom of innovation and reducing certain level of crap for all.

constantcrying7• 2 years ago

Free software can be terrible as well, it solves nothing.

What you want to achieve with safety critical systems is diametrically opposed to common open source development patterns. A car company can not possibly take liability for a car where some random guy has flashed some software on.

kkfx5• 2 years ago

Free software can be terrible as well, it solves nothing.

Yes, it can, but being open, with an open toolchain, public from the start where the repo is just few SLoC, chance exists that someone else fix or even substitute it, so if a car sell because the hw/the design is good but software is bad chance exists that others fix it or even change it. Since ANY OEM of course try to grab as much as possible bad things likely disappear quickly while good one flourish. We might have terrible Android crappy ROM but also others totally different and being open it's hard to make them non interchangeable, meaning that after an initial phase there will be no VW or Rivian sw but common "distros" compatible with various cars, certified by the public to be safe for public use on the road.

almatabata• 2 years ago

They had some opensource initiatives like Genivi, now Covesa see:

* https://github.com/GENIVI * https://github.com/COVESA * https://www.automotivelinux.org/

If you have worked on automotive projects you know they follow some kind of standards like DLT for diagnostics and logging or at least they used to. A lot of it has moved to Android Automotive now.

* https://source.android.com/docs/automotive/start/what_automo...

RealityVoid• 2 years ago

Speaking of open source AUTOSAR, there was also aarcore, that was promptly bought by Vector and they closed the implementation.

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/vector-swallows-swedish-soft...

Volkswagen Willing to Pay $1B Just to Look at Rivian's Software

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