4 ms·
Legacy auto are almost all terrible at software. Tesla invented the softward defined vehicle (software controls almost everything, updates happen automatically
by NotSammyHagar 3y ago
Legacy auto are almost all terrible at software. Tesla invented the softward defined vehicle (software controls almost everything, updates happen automatically over the air, software can add new features and they do it constantly, almost monthly). Ford, GM, VW, several Japanese brands like Toyota have all failed to make great software. With EVs more and more features (almost everything) is controlled by software. And legacy auto is terrible at it.
Tesla & Rivian have good ui, updates over the air. Tesla has a great 10 year history. Rivian had a good one year history until they made an extremely terrible update that made some people's cars undriveable. I don't recall Tesla ever having anything that bad. They lost their great reputation. Rivian needs at least a few years of continuing updates to recover their previously great rep.
Back to legacy auto. The failures of the blazer ev are apparent to anyone who uses one. Customers have been reporting problems with the blazer ev and other ultium cars for months on places like reddit group r/electricvehicles. The past week or 2 there have been a least a couple dozen reviews where gm sent out the cars to be evaluated in official reviews. And it doesn't seem like many or maybe any of them worked out well. This is a collosal failure of a huge auto company. The failures must have been apparent to everyone working there.
This is way too long already, I'm not going to go into vw software updates that take so long they were afraid it would run out the 12v battery system and brick the car (most all evs have a 12v battery that recharges from the big battery, but during os updates for safety it only runs on the 12v "starter"/utility battery).
- lucw 3y agoIf I can point to a single aspect which distinguishes the companies that are software first (google, apple, tesla, etc) and those that aren't: it's input lag on the UIs. Companies that treat software as an afterthought don't mind release software with horrendous input lag. First class software companies find that unacceptable.
- setr 3y agoCoincidentally I came to the same conclusion for video games; you can generally assume that a game won’t be much good if the menu options have input/animation lag — my theory being that any game designer who actually liked playing their game would have gotten fed up with it during playtesting
- xeromal 3y agoHaving owned a pretty "old" tesla, a MCU 2 model S, the screen always felt responsive to be. All the MCU 1 cars were pretty laggy but they were also Tesla's very first screen attempt and I think they did pretty good for a car designed in 2009 or so