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Wow, OK, good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about German cars. I don't understand why they're so bad at software. My BMW takes that long to

Wow, OK, good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way about German cars. I don't understand why they're so bad at software. My BMW takes that long to boot up the nav too! One of my biggest reasons to get a Tesla 3 is that they seem to be much better at software and seems to understand general computing and the flexibility that comes with it.

woah 11y ago
I don't know anything about software engineering in Germany or at BMW, but knowing German culture, I imagine it is due to some combination of waterfall processes, top down management, fixed specifications, and every engineer being required to have a master's or phd.
rconti 11y ago
I know some BMWs have Navigation systems that begin to boot as soon as you unlock the car. It's a clever solution -- although my dad ran into battery discharge issues because of it; if you don't drive much (retired) so the car sits a lot, and then all of your trips are short trips... sooner or later you might kill the battery.
- yason 11y ago
  Where might you need navigation on short trips? I assume you can just turn the navigation off in a BMW so that it doesn't prevent using the rest of the functionality.
  - rconti 11y ago
    Well, it boots (and runs) in the background. I don't think any modern nav system can be truly switched off, even if the display to the radio/nav/etc system is switched off. Again, because of boot times, it makes sense to have it begin booting as soon as the car is unlocked, and to run in the background the entire time the car is running.
gumby 11y ago
I can tell you the reason at Daimler (Mercedes -- did some work with them in Sindelfingen): They care about the car and the driving experience (sound and reliability of the motor, doors etc). The radio and such? Not mission critical, so they just write a spec and outsource it. You don't get any advancement for worrying about those things. I've owned a bunch of mercedeses over the year and they've generally been pretty good, though expensive to fix when something does go wrong. My mini, by contrast, has a "sport" button. The documentation says "makes the car more sporty". The current "S" models have a turbocharger not a supercharger. 40% of the manual is on the entertainment system. I think these are all great. (Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again!)
- bflesch 11y ago
  Thanks, that's interesting. Every time I see someone with iPhone earplugs driving their car I am thinking about the "experience" ;-) I did some IT forensics on Mercedes models a couple of years ago, and you could retrace the bad guys' routes by looking at the exception log of their Windows CE navigation software. It had an exception ~5 minutes, and always dumping the stack including the filename of the currently played audio file that told the current road to the driver. The horrible thing I have learned from car shopping during the past year is that all manufaturers are just repackaging the components delivered by continental. If you buy the premium options at Audi or Volvo, you basically get the same component from a third party. There is no secret sauce in the car apart from the engine and the navigation software, and they screwed up both big time.
  - gumby 11y ago
    The extreme case of this was the Boxter which was completely outsourced and just badged Porsche. Well that was the extreme case, now it's increasingly common (e.g. Lexus SUV). The good news is this increases commoditization of the car business.
- paganel 11y ago
  > Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again! It's getting a little OT but I'm generally curious about what those problems might be in Mini's case. A close friend wants to buy a second-hand Mini One, I've heard they've got issues, I was curious what those issues might be. I've also heard they're very entertaining to drive, too.
bflesch 11y ago
It's horrible UX and as a German software engineer I am deeply ashamed of the bad practices in the local car industry. During university there were always these huge talks about the engineering excellence needed for all the fancy embedded systems, but once you get in touch with these systems it leaves a bad taste. For example with current Audi, if you put it into reverse, the camera pops up and then picture freezes for ~2 seconds. In every talk with salesmen from the three large German brands I ask about the software issues, but they don't even notice it. I really feel a lack of focus on UX. (You could replace "embedded systems" with "human-computer interaction" - car industry was always the big example but once you get more experienced you see they are all hustling, and badly..)

woah 11y ago

I don't know anything about software engineering in Germany or at BMW, but knowing German culture, I imagine it is due to some combination of waterfall processes, top down management, fixed specifications, and every engineer being required to have a master's or phd.

rconti 11y ago

I know some BMWs have Navigation systems that begin to boot as soon as you unlock the car. It's a clever solution -- although my dad ran into battery discharge issues because of it; if you don't drive much (retired) so the car sits a lot, and then all of your trips are short trips... sooner or later you might kill the battery.

yason 11y ago
Where might you need navigation on short trips? I assume you can just turn the navigation off in a BMW so that it doesn't prevent using the rest of the functionality.
- rconti 11y ago
  Well, it boots (and runs) in the background. I don't think any modern nav system can be truly switched off, even if the display to the radio/nav/etc system is switched off. Again, because of boot times, it makes sense to have it begin booting as soon as the car is unlocked, and to run in the background the entire time the car is running.

gumby 11y ago

I can tell you the reason at Daimler (Mercedes -- did some work with them in Sindelfingen): They care about the car and the driving experience (sound and reliability of the motor, doors etc). The radio and such? Not mission critical, so they just write a spec and outsource it. You don't get any advancement for worrying about those things. I've owned a bunch of mercedeses over the year and they've generally been pretty good, though expensive to fix when something does go wrong. My mini, by contrast, has a "sport" button. The documentation says "makes the car more sporty". The current "S" models have a turbocharger not a supercharger. 40% of the manual is on the entertainment system. I think these are all great. (Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again!)

bflesch 11y ago
Thanks, that's interesting. Every time I see someone with iPhone earplugs driving their car I am thinking about the "experience" ;-) I did some IT forensics on Mercedes models a couple of years ago, and you could retrace the bad guys' routes by looking at the exception log of their Windows CE navigation software. It had an exception ~5 minutes, and always dumping the stack including the filename of the currently played audio file that told the current road to the driver. The horrible thing I have learned from car shopping during the past year is that all manufaturers are just repackaging the components delivered by continental. If you buy the premium options at Audi or Volvo, you basically get the same component from a third party. There is no secret sauce in the car apart from the engine and the navigation software, and they screwed up both big time.
- gumby 11y ago
  The extreme case of this was the Boxter which was completely outsourced and just badged Porsche. Well that was the extreme case, now it's increasingly common (e.g. Lexus SUV). The good news is this increases commoditization of the car business.
paganel 11y ago
> Of course at the end of the day that mini is a BMW so has all the fit and finish problems I experienced with BMWs before I gave up on them. Fun to drive but never again! It's getting a little OT but I'm generally curious about what those problems might be in Mini's case. A close friend wants to buy a second-hand Mini One, I've heard they've got issues, I was curious what those issues might be. I've also heard they're very entertaining to drive, too.

bflesch 11y ago

It's horrible UX and as a German software engineer I am deeply ashamed of the bad practices in the local car industry. During university there were always these huge talks about the engineering excellence needed for all the fancy embedded systems, but once you get in touch with these systems it leaves a bad taste. For example with current Audi, if you put it into reverse, the camera pops up and then picture freezes for ~2 seconds. In every talk with salesmen from the three large German brands I ask about the software issues, but they don't even notice it. I really feel a lack of focus on UX. (You could replace "embedded systems" with "human-computer interaction" - car industry was always the big example but once you get more experienced you see they are all hustling, and badly..)