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I believe the two legacy issues are: 1) automakers have very little control over their product any more. They rely heavy on Tier 1 suppliers for major componen

I believe the two legacy issues are: 1) automakers have very little control over their product any more. They rely heavy on Tier 1 suppliers for major component development and production so they ship hodgepodge product 2) they look at a car as a product that is shipped and forgotten. They never have looked at it as a platform for continuous future improvement. This similar to the iPhone vs feature phone analogy-- cars from legacy manufactures are the best they will ever be the day they leave the manufacturing line. Without changing these fundamental mindsets, they are in deep trouble.

simonsarris 10y ago
I think your #1 is especially true. Almost every car company seems to be nothing but Branding + Internal Combustion Engine expertise. Almost everything else gets farmed out (brakes, steering wheels, seats, windows, most of the car). Until recently every electric car they made and sold would be at the expense of an ICE car they were not selling, while devaluing their ICE expertise and team. I can understand the reluctance, though I don't like the end result. That is changing as Tesla and others are (hopefully) eating into ICE sales and they have more, um, incentive to get into the electric pipeline. Aside but the US could help push this along by increasing the gas tax, since the gov hasn't done that since 1993. It would be cheaper than continuing the subsidy, but hopefully help future tech. (And I guess it wouldn't hurt to maybe fund some infrastructure.)
- mikeash 10y ago
  It's worth noting that the US gas tax is an absolute amount per gallon, not adjusted for inflation. In terms of real value, the gas tax is substantially lower now than it was in 1993.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    It is, which is why the federal highway trust fund is broke.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Not only does it fail to adjust for inflation, but it also doesn't account for the huge increases in average fuel efficiency we've seen in that period, so it's a double whammy.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Also the amount of money due to parts profits. Everything is expensive, even the slightest piece of plastic.. because it's proprietary so if you're not into hardware hacking you bleed. They've been ignored by mass DIY movements since forever but in these arduino / 3D Printing days they'll have to cut that fat off.
csours 10y ago
Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, but not on vehicle development. For #1, what would you do? Ship a much simpler product or ship a worse product? In the current system Tier 1 supplier can concentrate expertise in a single area and spread development costs across many OEMs. A single OEM cannot effectively compete with this cost structure. Tesla is notable for many things; one of them being its vertical integration. So far Tesla has been able to compete by both building simple cars (excluding the X, which is another story entirely) and charging quite a lot of money. They have also had serious quality issues, probably relating to their vertical integration. These quality issues may be resolved, but by that time either they or their competitors will have developed a new product, and then they will have to go through the development and refinement cycle again, at huge cost. Regarding #2: the iPhone came out in 2007. Since then, there have been about 7 development cycles. For most automobile platforms there have been 3 or fewer development cycles since 2007. Before the iPhone, there was no real concept of remote update of mobile devices. Automakers have caught onto the trend and you will see more mainstream OEMs doing remote updates pretty soon.
- marricks 10y ago
  I think seeing more automakers doing remote updates is pretty scary actually, at least if they can't do it right. Which automaker had it so you could hack the infotainment system to stop a car?[1] Tesla at least has a very good separate systems for the console and deeper underyling controls. Tesla's were designed properly from the beginning, and perhaps that's just it, if you have to add something like autosteering on after the fact it can't be as secure? Perhaps other automakers will get better with time though... From a wired article, > Rogers likens [Tesla's system] to the way avionics and Wi-Fi systems are configured on commercial airliners. The Wi-Fi is able to get GPS location data about the plane from the avionics system, but a gateway implements tight controls over what data can pass between the two. In the same way, Rogers says, “we know [the Tesla gateway] stops the obvious stuff. But I haven’t tested it to see what happens if I hack the gateway. If we were able to hack the gateway, then we could control any part of the car just like the Jeep hackers.” [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig... [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s-teslas-already/ https://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s-tes...
llukas 10y ago
ad 2) You mean when new model comes out next update makes your model slower? Thank you but no thank you. I don't want have EULA for a car and one more entity trying to track everything I do and pretending I own the car while actually they do. Continuous future improvement is wet dream of locking car owner (in your world it should read "car user") into paying more.

simonsarris 10y ago

I think your #1 is especially true. Almost every car company seems to be nothing but Branding + Internal Combustion Engine expertise. Almost everything else gets farmed out (brakes, steering wheels, seats, windows, most of the car). Until recently every electric car they made and sold would be at the expense of an ICE car they were not selling, while devaluing their ICE expertise and team. I can understand the reluctance, though I don't like the end result. That is changing as Tesla and others are (hopefully) eating into ICE sales and they have more, um, incentive to get into the electric pipeline. Aside but the US could help push this along by increasing the gas tax, since the gov hasn't done that since 1993. It would be cheaper than continuing the subsidy, but hopefully help future tech. (And I guess it wouldn't hurt to maybe fund some infrastructure.)

mikeash 10y ago
It's worth noting that the US gas tax is an absolute amount per gallon, not adjusted for inflation. In terms of real value, the gas tax is substantially lower now than it was in 1993.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  It is, which is why the federal highway trust fund is broke.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Not only does it fail to adjust for inflation, but it also doesn't account for the huge increases in average fuel efficiency we've seen in that period, so it's a double whammy.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
agumonkey 10y ago
Also the amount of money due to parts profits. Everything is expensive, even the slightest piece of plastic.. because it's proprietary so if you're not into hardware hacking you bleed. They've been ignored by mass DIY movements since forever but in these arduino / 3D Printing days they'll have to cut that fat off.

csours 10y ago

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, but not on vehicle development. For #1, what would you do? Ship a much simpler product or ship a worse product? In the current system Tier 1 supplier can concentrate expertise in a single area and spread development costs across many OEMs. A single OEM cannot effectively compete with this cost structure. Tesla is notable for many things; one of them being its vertical integration. So far Tesla has been able to compete by both building simple cars (excluding the X, which is another story entirely) and charging quite a lot of money. They have also had serious quality issues, probably relating to their vertical integration. These quality issues may be resolved, but by that time either they or their competitors will have developed a new product, and then they will have to go through the development and refinement cycle again, at huge cost. Regarding #2: the iPhone came out in 2007. Since then, there have been about 7 development cycles. For most automobile platforms there have been 3 or fewer development cycles since 2007. Before the iPhone, there was no real concept of remote update of mobile devices. Automakers have caught onto the trend and you will see more mainstream OEMs doing remote updates pretty soon.

marricks 10y ago
I think seeing more automakers doing remote updates is pretty scary actually, at least if they can't do it right. Which automaker had it so you could hack the infotainment system to stop a car?[1] Tesla at least has a very good separate systems for the console and deeper underyling controls. Tesla's were designed properly from the beginning, and perhaps that's just it, if you have to add something like autosteering on after the fact it can't be as secure? Perhaps other automakers will get better with time though... From a wired article, > Rogers likens [Tesla's system] to the way avionics and Wi-Fi systems are configured on commercial airliners. The Wi-Fi is able to get GPS location data about the plane from the avionics system, but a gateway implements tight controls over what data can pass between the two. In the same way, Rogers says, “we know [the Tesla gateway] stops the obvious stuff. But I haven’t tested it to see what happens if I hack the gateway. If we were able to hack the gateway, then we could control any part of the car just like the Jeep hackers.” [1] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig... [2] https://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s-teslas-already/ https://www.wired.com/2015/08/researchers-hacked-model-s-tes...

llukas 10y ago

ad 2) You mean when new model comes out next update makes your model slower? Thank you but no thank you. I don't want have EULA for a car and one more entity trying to track everything I do and pretending I own the car while actually they do. Continuous future improvement is wet dream of locking car owner (in your world it should read "car user") into paying more.