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It is stereotypically Amazon to spend tens- or hundreds-of-millions to develop a fully-integrated next generation truck and then try to save ten bucks by puttin

It is stereotypically Amazon to spend tens- or hundreds-of-millions to develop a fully-integrated next generation truck and then try to save ten bucks by putting the slowest possible CPU behind the head unit / infotainment system.

judge2020 4y ago
Even the R1T had initial impressions that the infotainment wasn't exactly super optimized. I think it's been improved but there's a reason Tesla can get away with such a barebones and average quality interior.
zlsa 4y ago
Using a more powerful computer won't really change development costs all that much; but it could seriously affect BOM costs. Amazon wants to buy absurd numbers of this, so it's not unreasonable that they've tried to heavily cut costs in the BOM. (Also what the other commenter said.)
- Majromax 4y ago
  I think that's a false economy. Suppose a better infotainment system saves even one minute of time per day. Over a 300 day work-year, that's five hours of driver-work, valued on the order of $100 (at $20/hr). All other things being equal, $100 would go a long way in an infotainment BOM. If this isn't being done for cost reasons, I expect it might be a result of bulk ordering. Rivian isn't a large car manufacturer, so it might not be ordering custom equipment from the manufacturers. If they have to compromise by taking an infotainment package wholesale from existing mass-production lines, then maybe there's no "$100-equivalent" upgrade on the market.
alx__ 4y ago
I blame bean counters for that kind of nonsense
TheDong 4y ago
If working in the modern software industry has taught me anything, it's that developers can figure out how to write slow janky UIs no matter how powerful the processor. I'd go so far as to say there's an inverse correlation here. My 100Mhz desktop had a more responsive UI than any computer I've used in the last 5 years. Text editing on that 100Mhz computer felt responsive, typing characters had them appear on the screen instantly, I could copy+paste 100s of lines of text without a problem. Now, I load notion.so on a 4Ghz cpu, and typing is sluggish, scrolling has severe lag, and pasting 100 lines of text sometimes takes several seconds. All this is me saying that I'm more inclined to blame software than to blame the hardware for UI lag.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  I've always used vim for text editing (and programming languages that do not use JVM), never had a problem with responsiveness regardless of computer spec.
- tstrimple 4y ago
  I'm going on record to suggest that people who have used computers from the 80's and 90's have rose tinted glasses on when remembering their experiences. Nostalgia is a bitch and lies to us all the time. Just loading a fucking program from a spinning disk hard drive adds a significant amount of startup time to programs that we've completely imagined away from the "golden age" of our computer usage. At this point I'm convinced it's just a natural extension of "they don't make it like they used to" which has plagued mankind for basically every generation ever which completely ignores survivor bias. I distinctly remember experiencing *major* performance gains when moving to more memory than my system and apps needed to use and the move to solid state drives. None of the "programmer's don't know how to code today" nonsense even comes close to eclipsing the performance gains from those two changes.
  - foepys 4y ago
    Both can be true at the same time. You can have a very slow program startup time but once it is up, it's very responsive to inputs.
  - 4y ago
dclowd9901 4y ago
Never mind that. What the hell is going on with the in truck efficiency and linking stops with app state? They could save so much “paper pushing” that drivers have to do if they just utilized organized cargo areas and GPS.
trap_goes_hot 4y ago
Maybe developer workstations should be less powerful than production machines ;)
- albert_e 4y ago
  I Concur. Especially UI developers should not have retina displays or 3x 43" 4K displays when developing web page layouts
  - dagw 4y ago
    They can have all of that for their editor and photoshop and whatever. However their actual preview monitor should be smallest cheapest monitor they can find. Back when I was writing some quite heavy 3D software we would always test each release on a machine that was slightly below our advertised minimum spec to make sure it was at least usable there.
- yardie 4y ago
  In every movie production edit bay will be a $100 Walmart flatscreen. Because making a video production look good in 4k ProRes is fairly easy. But the majority of your audience is going to watch it on that cheap screen or something similar.
assttoasstmgr 4y ago
It's pretty clear whoever designed this toy has never driven an actual cargo van or done any blue collar work in their life. That Tesla-style touchscreen for starters. I give it 3-6 weeks before it's shattered or fails. The look on the guy's face was priceless when he couldn't open the cargo door without walking over to the touchscreen and tapping an icon. As opposed to having a simple button on the door itself. Many late model cargo vans do share crappy infotainment systems with their passenger counterparts, but almost never use them for core or upfitter functions, just the radio. Have you ever seen the inside of a Ford Transit van? They're remarkably pedestrian. Or a UPS truck, made from steel and brawn and not much else. These things need to be engineered to take a beating. Yet this has push-button start with a fob. (Keys are a much better choice for fleet vehicles, if not only for key management, they withstand abuse in the field much better than fobs, which are expensive and difficult to replace.) What they should have installed instead is a cup holder for the sports drink urine bottle. Which you keep next to the cigarettes and burrito wrappers, to the left of the shitty basic FM radio with real knobs. How are you supposed to use a touchscreen for basic functions whilst wearing gloves? This thing was designed by office-dwellers. All they need is for Ford or Benz to turn their bare bones cargo vans electric and they'll be turning these Rivians into beer cans.
- dagw 4y ago
  All they need is for Ford or Benz to turn their bare bones cargo vans electric You mean like this? https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/ https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/ https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/vans/en/electric-vans https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/vans/en/electric-vans
  - assttoasstmgr 4y ago
    Yes exactly like that. You'll notice the Ford Transit EV still retains the traditional mechanical key, and also features a simple locking glove box that works off the same key. But why do that when you could make the glove box electronically locking via bluetooth proximity over the infotainment. People have deluded themselves into believing that EV's must be packed with superfluous electronics and other futuristic garbage, whilst it's just the drivetrain that's different.
fnordpiglet 4y ago
Gotta have something for your promo doc on frugality if you’re going for L7
fiat_fandango 4y ago
This fully explains my time working at a startup acquired by Amazon. We were provided the lowest spec macbook pro to the extent that lead engineers were literally waiting around for hours every day waiting for builds to complete. Some couldn't even use two monitors due to display output limitations. Anyone who has worked for amazon is fully aware of how the company internals being literally held together with duct tape.
Zigurd 4y ago
Amazon's religion is measurement. This is a return to Taylorism, "Scientific Management," and the Bedaux System. But they won't see the problem with that unless they try to measure the efficacy of measuring everything.

judge2020 4y ago

Even the R1T had initial impressions that the infotainment wasn't exactly super optimized. I think it's been improved but there's a reason Tesla can get away with such a barebones and average quality interior.

zlsa 4y ago

Using a more powerful computer won't really change development costs all that much; but it could seriously affect BOM costs. Amazon wants to buy absurd numbers of this, so it's not unreasonable that they've tried to heavily cut costs in the BOM. (Also what the other commenter said.)

Majromax 4y ago
I think that's a false economy. Suppose a better infotainment system saves even one minute of time per day. Over a 300 day work-year, that's five hours of driver-work, valued on the order of $100 (at $20/hr). All other things being equal, $100 would go a long way in an infotainment BOM. If this isn't being done for cost reasons, I expect it might be a result of bulk ordering. Rivian isn't a large car manufacturer, so it might not be ordering custom equipment from the manufacturers. If they have to compromise by taking an infotainment package wholesale from existing mass-production lines, then maybe there's no "$100-equivalent" upgrade on the market.

alx__ 4y ago

I blame bean counters for that kind of nonsense

TheDong 4y ago

If working in the modern software industry has taught me anything, it's that developers can figure out how to write slow janky UIs no matter how powerful the processor. I'd go so far as to say there's an inverse correlation here. My 100Mhz desktop had a more responsive UI than any computer I've used in the last 5 years. Text editing on that 100Mhz computer felt responsive, typing characters had them appear on the screen instantly, I could copy+paste 100s of lines of text without a problem. Now, I load notion.so on a 4Ghz cpu, and typing is sluggish, scrolling has severe lag, and pasting 100 lines of text sometimes takes several seconds. All this is me saying that I'm more inclined to blame software than to blame the hardware for UI lag.

Aperocky 4y ago
I've always used vim for text editing (and programming languages that do not use JVM), never had a problem with responsiveness regardless of computer spec.
tstrimple 4y ago
I'm going on record to suggest that people who have used computers from the 80's and 90's have rose tinted glasses on when remembering their experiences. Nostalgia is a bitch and lies to us all the time. Just loading a fucking program from a spinning disk hard drive adds a significant amount of startup time to programs that we've completely imagined away from the "golden age" of our computer usage. At this point I'm convinced it's just a natural extension of "they don't make it like they used to" which has plagued mankind for basically every generation ever which completely ignores survivor bias. I distinctly remember experiencing *major* performance gains when moving to more memory than my system and apps needed to use and the move to solid state drives. None of the "programmer's don't know how to code today" nonsense even comes close to eclipsing the performance gains from those two changes.
- foepys 4y ago
  Both can be true at the same time. You can have a very slow program startup time but once it is up, it's very responsive to inputs.
- 4y ago

dclowd9901 4y ago

Never mind that. What the hell is going on with the in truck efficiency and linking stops with app state? They could save so much “paper pushing” that drivers have to do if they just utilized organized cargo areas and GPS.

trap_goes_hot 4y ago

Maybe developer workstations should be less powerful than production machines ;)

albert_e 4y ago
I Concur. Especially UI developers should not have retina displays or 3x 43" 4K displays when developing web page layouts
- dagw 4y ago
  They can have all of that for their editor and photoshop and whatever. However their actual preview monitor should be smallest cheapest monitor they can find. Back when I was writing some quite heavy 3D software we would always test each release on a machine that was slightly below our advertised minimum spec to make sure it was at least usable there.
yardie 4y ago
In every movie production edit bay will be a $100 Walmart flatscreen. Because making a video production look good in 4k ProRes is fairly easy. But the majority of your audience is going to watch it on that cheap screen or something similar.

assttoasstmgr 4y ago

It's pretty clear whoever designed this toy has never driven an actual cargo van or done any blue collar work in their life. That Tesla-style touchscreen for starters. I give it 3-6 weeks before it's shattered or fails. The look on the guy's face was priceless when he couldn't open the cargo door without walking over to the touchscreen and tapping an icon. As opposed to having a simple button on the door itself. Many late model cargo vans do share crappy infotainment systems with their passenger counterparts, but almost never use them for core or upfitter functions, just the radio. Have you ever seen the inside of a Ford Transit van? They're remarkably pedestrian. Or a UPS truck, made from steel and brawn and not much else. These things need to be engineered to take a beating. Yet this has push-button start with a fob. (Keys are a much better choice for fleet vehicles, if not only for key management, they withstand abuse in the field much better than fobs, which are expensive and difficult to replace.) What they should have installed instead is a cup holder for the sports drink urine bottle. Which you keep next to the cigarettes and burrito wrappers, to the left of the shitty basic FM radio with real knobs. How are you supposed to use a touchscreen for basic functions whilst wearing gloves? This thing was designed by office-dwellers. All they need is for Ford or Benz to turn their bare bones cargo vans electric and they'll be turning these Rivians into beer cans.

dagw 4y ago
All they need is for Ford or Benz to turn their bare bones cargo vans electric You mean like this? https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/ https://www.ford.com/commercial-trucks/e-transit/ https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/vans/en/electric-vans https://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/vans/en/electric-vans
- assttoasstmgr 4y ago
  Yes exactly like that. You'll notice the Ford Transit EV still retains the traditional mechanical key, and also features a simple locking glove box that works off the same key. But why do that when you could make the glove box electronically locking via bluetooth proximity over the infotainment. People have deluded themselves into believing that EV's must be packed with superfluous electronics and other futuristic garbage, whilst it's just the drivetrain that's different.

fnordpiglet 4y ago

Gotta have something for your promo doc on frugality if you’re going for L7

fiat_fandango 4y ago

This fully explains my time working at a startup acquired by Amazon. We were provided the lowest spec macbook pro to the extent that lead engineers were literally waiting around for hours every day waiting for builds to complete. Some couldn't even use two monitors due to display output limitations. Anyone who has worked for amazon is fully aware of how the company internals being literally held together with duct tape.

Zigurd 4y ago

Amazon's religion is measurement. This is a return to Taylorism, "Scientific Management," and the Bedaux System. But they won't see the problem with that unless they try to measure the efficacy of measuring everything.