<story><title>Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/volkswagen-audi-porsche-vw-group-plans-one-os-to-rule-them-all/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spanktheuser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the same thing. From my understanding it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries?&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x2F;or commodification by adjacent supply chain players.&lt;p&gt;2 Leadership laughs and ignores mounting evidence of just such a threat emerging for up to a decade.&lt;p&gt;3 Lo and behold, prophesied competitor finally emerges and finds immediate market success.&lt;p&gt;4 Legacy company announces that they&amp;#x27;ll bring a competing solution to market, promising investors that they&amp;#x27;ll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39 models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase product support infrastructure. They&amp;#x27;re starting today and promise to launch in 12 months.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;6 Best case, no one who has such an OS will license it. Worst case, Google will.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>clouddrover</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;VW is at stage 5.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;No. Volkswagen is at the stage that four years after deciding to bet the company on going electric, deliveries of their new EVs based on their new EV platforms will start next year.&lt;p&gt;Their new software plan goes hand in hand with their EV push. Volkswagen is going to be the world&amp;#x27;s biggest producer of EVs because they&amp;#x27;re spending the most money to be it and they have the scale to execute it:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-volkswagen-electric-insight-idUSKCN1PV0K4&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reuters.com&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;us-volkswagen-electric-insig...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Your narrative doesn&amp;#x27;t match the reality.</text></comment>
<story><title>Volkswagen’s plan to create a new car operating system</title><url>https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/09/volkswagen-audi-porsche-vw-group-plans-one-os-to-rule-them-all/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>spanktheuser</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also aware of a project from a major automotive supplier to attempt the same thing. From my understanding it&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;That said, how many times have we seen this story in other industries?&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x2F;or commodification by adjacent supply chain players.&lt;p&gt;2 Leadership laughs and ignores mounting evidence of just such a threat emerging for up to a decade.&lt;p&gt;3 Lo and behold, prophesied competitor finally emerges and finds immediate market success.&lt;p&gt;4 Legacy company announces that they&amp;#x27;ll bring a competing solution to market, promising investors that they&amp;#x27;ll produce a similar quality OS, but across 39 models, uniting 457 separate component suppliers AND the entire post-purchase product support infrastructure. They&amp;#x27;re starting today and promise to launch in 12 months.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;6 Best case, no one who has such an OS will license it. Worst case, Google will.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>weinzierl</author><text>&amp;gt; The fact that its leadership consists entirely of charlatans is self-evident.&lt;p&gt;Charlatans maybe but the real problem is that they are old men with ballpoint pens who proudly claim that they have &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;petrol in their blood&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The real tragedy is that most German automotive managers have no clue about the complexity of modern software and I&amp;#x27;d bet most of them would answer the question: &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;What is more complex, the mechanics or the the software?&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt; with &lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Mechanics, of course!&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot;
without a blink.</text></comment>