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I also pointed this out in the other thread, but VW is currently building up a direct competitor to Rivian. VW themselves says they want the investment for the

I also pointed this out in the other thread, but VW is currently building up a direct competitor to Rivian. VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious.

neals 2y ago
VW has had large problems getting their software processes straight. They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) so I'm not surprised they'd buy a whole car company just for the software.
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) I don't think that is true at all. They even tried to create a separate company, just to focus on software, so that culture there could develop differently. It just didn't work out.
  - dacryn 2y ago
    because they forced their policies and standards onto the new startup company. It's the classic mistake: you setup a separate 'startup style' company to move fast, but give them too much budget and too much rules, so they just spend the budget on rebuilding the same mess instead of innovation. It's a consultant heaven to make a lot of money, but in the end this really only works if the group company stays in the dark for a considerable amount of time and doesn't impose their ideas
  - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
    > They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?
      - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
        You recognize that software engineering is different from mechanical/electrical engineering and stop shooting yourself in the foot. This will only happen when a competent software guy is part of the top executive suite and has sufficient freedom to do what is necessary. I think the chances are slim, considering the general ineptitude regarding software development in German companies. They will get better until finally arriving at mediocre, but they will never be as great as American companies. I hope one day they manage to implement a functioning CarPlay in their VW Polos, it has been broken since years.
      - lucianbr 2y ago
        I expect people making tens of millions per year to figure it out. Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? Presumably it's not impossible.
        dagw 2y ago
        Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? The only in house auto software people don't seem to completely hate is Tesla.
      - n_ary 2y ago
        The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leadership expect to hire talents for the same pay(or sometimes less) of what is paid in core group but forget that core group gets plenty other benefits(union benefits are immense things, educational budgets, pursue some other stuff for a while and then come back anytime to take up where you left off, family benefits, discounts, profit sharing etc.) and get confused when people obviously don't want to work for that kind of pay minus all the benefits. So eventually, they hire a lot of expensive consultants, who create lot of busywork to induce artificial lack of manpower to hire more of them. Eventually, a lot of budget is spent, only thing left to show are a lot of irrelevant proof of concepts. Then core group finance people comes asking for massive budget cuts, when all of these consultants leave(with any domain knowledge) and suddenly a small firefighter internal people have to start cleaning up the mess and work long hours. Thanks to good social benefits, most people internally get frustrated due to such bad conditions and leave and then eventually the company folds. Sadly, it is mostly a repeat playbook of big names and I have seen it happen three times already. I don't blame the consultant firms as it is not their fault to make as much billing as possible because they know there will be budget cut anytime. I don't blame internal people leaving because, they are never paid fairly, subjected to very bad conditions and they are free to leave and care about their wellbeing.
  - Moldoteck 2y ago
    they tried to create a separate company, but culture was imported. It's called vw group for a reason. They have lot's of 'bureaucracy' and this is not specific just for vw. That's why things do happen so slow - changing the processes that do already work (poorly but work) is super hard when there are lot's of ppl that do praise these procedures
- k8sToGo 2y ago
  One of the reasons they replaced the CEO, thankfully.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?
  - dtech 2y ago
    Apparently working together with Apple is extremely difficult because they are so controlling and demanding, and that is even without the cultural and timezone difference, so I doubt it's viable.
    - ajb 2y ago
      Apple regularly does acquisitions (like, multiple per year), so I guess it's not impossible - but they seem to usually be much smaller companies which presumably assimilate. Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. A company which does multiple acquisitions per year will have a team specialising in the integration of acquired companies, and practice and institutional knowledge of the issues of doing so. But a merger would be different - a smaller company will slot in under some existing executive, with maybe the CEO promoted into the top team if it's a really hot company; a merger would require the merger of two executive teams, which would be a difficult event. So yeah, might not be viable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
      - londons_explore 2y ago
        Might make sense to acquire part of VW. Ie. one or two brands, one or two factories, and a chunk of the design team. Then sign an IP/licensing deal that both halves of the new company have access to most/all of the IP developed historically.
        swores 2y ago
        Or even make it a full acquisition, but allow VW to remain a separate organisation with its own CEO and own board who answer to Apple's shareholders (and/or to the very top Apple execs) rather than to a separate group of shareholders? I.E. securing any future VW profits, and ensuring that the IP licensing deal is indefinite, while staying hands off and allowing VW to keep doing what they do with the exception of using Apple software.
peutetre 2y ago
Maybe eventually they'll make Rivian a Volkswagen brand. They own many auto brands. As part of the joint venture with Rimac they gave Rimac the Bugatti brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Rimac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Rimac
- constantcrying 2y ago
  >Maybe eventually they'll make Rivian a Volkswagen brand. That seems counter productive though, they seem to want Rivian tech. Usually their brands are managed centrally, so VW is developing platforms and architectures, which are then used by Skoda, Seat and Audio to make their models.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    >which are then used by Skoda, Seat and Audio to make their models. Autocorrect strikes again!
  - skapa_flow 2y ago
    VW decided to decentralize development, especially software. This is true for the Chinese market, which is very important to VW. Germans like knobs, Chinese like playfull interfaces with gadgets.
    - constantcrying 2y ago
      >This is true for the Chinese market Yes, that is true. Maybe they want to do something similar in the US? Where they have some subsidiary doing largely independent development for more region specific models?
  - Tomte 2y ago
    I'm not certain, but I think it isn't like VW developing platforms and everyone using it. It's more every company in the conglomerate taking turns or having specializations and everyone else using that. So that a Golf platform is first developed by VW and then productized by VM and Skoda, but Skoda is already developing next year's platform which VW will use.
Reason077 2y ago
> "VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious." If you've ever driven a Volkswagen EV and compared their software experience to what the likes of Rivian, Tesla, and Polestar have, this will come as no surprise.
- jwr 2y ago
  As a VW EV owner (ID.4), I can attest to this. The software is a burning dumpster fire, usability is terrible, the most common workflows break or simply never work, the car forgets even basic settings like whether you want to charge to 80% or 100%, and even the bare basics like the windows going predictably up when you press both "up" buttons sometimes fail (race conditions, apparently). It's an absolute disgrace. I think any other vendor's software is better than this.
  - aklendr 2y ago
    Probably designed with ITIL processes and UML diagrams. That sort of thing is popular in Germany.
  - raphael_l 2y ago
    We drive an ID.5. Apart from the UX, the outdated visual design language – is the interface also horrendously slow in yours? I have very noticeable lag when interacting with it, sometimes it takes even a second to respond to input. If it weren't for the insanely good driving experience (coming from a VW Polo before), the software would have definitely convinced us to go for another car.
    - jwr 2y ago
      > is the interface also horrendously slow in yours Yes. But I consider this to be the least of its problems — if it were slow, but actually worked, I'd be OK with it. The problem is that it is quite simply broken in a number of ways. It looks as if no management at VW ever used the car. It should be mandatory for management to use any new car design as their home/family car for a month or so. I'd imagine some problems would be fixed in no time. Things like the car forgetting charging settings, the car being unable to link driver profiles to key fobs (!) and distinguish between drivers, the fact that some settings are per-driver, while others are per-car, or the fact that the phone app doesn't display any useful information, especially if you have two drivers. I mean, I could go on and on. It's mind-boggling that software of this quality has ever been released.
nuccy 2y ago
Car manufacturers' interconnecion is amazing by itself. Direct "competitors" share engines, gear boxes [1], or the whole vehicle [2] (modifying just interior and badges, of course). Seems like they adopt the same strategy as laptop manufacturers did (though likely the other way around) - cheap and middle range cars are OEM ones, especially commercial vehicules (made under someone's license with minimum modifications), while only high-end are independently developed. 1. Aisin owned by Toyota provides gearboxes to VW, Skoda, GM, Nissan, et al: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions 2. Same car, different badges: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renault_Trafic&diffonly=true#Third_generation_(X82;_2014) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renault_Trafic&... (see "Also called")
- flakeoil 2y ago
  Most of the components used are developed by other companies such as Bosch, Continental, Magna, Autoliv, Marelli etc. The car manufacturers build up their cars using these almost off-the-shelf components.

neals 2y ago

VW has had large problems getting their software processes straight. They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) so I'm not surprised they'd buy a whole car company just for the software.

constantcrying 2y ago
>They've thrown money at the problem for years (instead of changing company culture, which needs to happen first) I don't think that is true at all. They even tried to create a separate company, just to focus on software, so that culture there could develop differently. It just didn't work out.
- dacryn 2y ago
  because they forced their policies and standards onto the new startup company. It's the classic mistake: you setup a separate 'startup style' company to move fast, but give them too much budget and too much rules, so they just spend the budget on rebuilding the same mess instead of innovation. It's a consultant heaven to make a lot of money, but in the end this really only works if the group company stays in the dark for a considerable amount of time and doesn't impose their ideas
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  > They even tried to create a separate company This is an attempt to sidestep the politically hairy problem of changing a company’s culture. This never works because the daughter company either gets eaten by the more powerful parent company‘s culture, or their output is ignored and never integrated back into the parent.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    What do you do instead? The VW processes for mechanical, manufacturing and mechatronics engineering seem to work reasonably well. How do you change the culture of such a large company, without breaking what works?
    - MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
      You recognize that software engineering is different from mechanical/electrical engineering and stop shooting yourself in the foot. This will only happen when a competent software guy is part of the top executive suite and has sufficient freedom to do what is necessary. I think the chances are slim, considering the general ineptitude regarding software development in German companies. They will get better until finally arriving at mediocre, but they will never be as great as American companies. I hope one day they manage to implement a functioning CarPlay in their VW Polos, it has been broken since years.
    - lucianbr 2y ago
      I expect people making tens of millions per year to figure it out. Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? Presumably it's not impossible.
      - dagw 2y ago
        Are there no auto manufacturers with ok software? The only in house auto software people don't seem to completely hate is Tesla.
    - n_ary 2y ago
      The core issues of such daughter concerns is that, despite being a separate thing, a lot of "leadership" people from core management are shipped to run the separate thing. These leadership people carry over the whole process and cultural mess into the new place while claiming to be "startup culture". Secondly, one major issue that frequently occurs but goes unnoticed is that, the pay is abysmal. Basically, the leadership expect to hire talents for the same pay(or sometimes less) of what is paid in core group but forget that core group gets plenty other benefits(union benefits are immense things, educational budgets, pursue some other stuff for a while and then come back anytime to take up where you left off, family benefits, discounts, profit sharing etc.) and get confused when people obviously don't want to work for that kind of pay minus all the benefits. So eventually, they hire a lot of expensive consultants, who create lot of busywork to induce artificial lack of manpower to hire more of them. Eventually, a lot of budget is spent, only thing left to show are a lot of irrelevant proof of concepts. Then core group finance people comes asking for massive budget cuts, when all of these consultants leave(with any domain knowledge) and suddenly a small firefighter internal people have to start cleaning up the mess and work long hours. Thanks to good social benefits, most people internally get frustrated due to such bad conditions and leave and then eventually the company folds. Sadly, it is mostly a repeat playbook of big names and I have seen it happen three times already. I don't blame the consultant firms as it is not their fault to make as much billing as possible because they know there will be budget cut anytime. I don't blame internal people leaving because, they are never paid fairly, subjected to very bad conditions and they are free to leave and care about their wellbeing.
- Moldoteck 2y ago
  they tried to create a separate company, but culture was imported. It's called vw group for a reason. They have lot's of 'bureaucracy' and this is not specific just for vw. That's why things do happen so slow - changing the processes that do already work (poorly but work) is super hard when there are lot's of ppl that do praise these procedures
k8sToGo 2y ago
One of the reasons they replaced the CEO, thankfully.
lostlogin 2y ago
So there is Apple, a massive company that makes software and has struggled with its car project, and VW, a massive company that makes cars and has struggle with software. In another universe, I wonder if this could have been a partnership?
- dtech 2y ago
  Apparently working together with Apple is extremely difficult because they are so controlling and demanding, and that is even without the cultural and timezone difference, so I doubt it's viable.
  - ajb 2y ago
    Apple regularly does acquisitions (like, multiple per year), so I guess it's not impossible - but they seem to usually be much smaller companies which presumably assimilate. Their last big one[1] seems to have been the purchase of Intel's smartphone modem for $1B, still a lot smaller than VW's market cap of $58B. A company which does multiple acquisitions per year will have a team specialising in the integration of acquired companies, and practice and institutional knowledge of the issues of doing so. But a merger would be different - a smaller company will slot in under some existing executive, with maybe the CEO promoted into the top team if it's a really hot company; a merger would require the merger of two executive teams, which would be a difficult event. So yeah, might not be viable. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
    - londons_explore 2y ago
      Might make sense to acquire part of VW. Ie. one or two brands, one or two factories, and a chunk of the design team. Then sign an IP/licensing deal that both halves of the new company have access to most/all of the IP developed historically.
      - swores 2y ago
        Or even make it a full acquisition, but allow VW to remain a separate organisation with its own CEO and own board who answer to Apple's shareholders (and/or to the very top Apple execs) rather than to a separate group of shareholders? I.E. securing any future VW profits, and ensuring that the IP licensing deal is indefinite, while staying hands off and allowing VW to keep doing what they do with the exception of using Apple software.

peutetre 2y ago

Maybe eventually they'll make Rivian a Volkswagen brand. They own many auto brands. As part of the joint venture with Rimac they gave Rimac the Bugatti brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Rimac https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Rimac

constantcrying 2y ago
>Maybe eventually they'll make Rivian a Volkswagen brand. That seems counter productive though, they seem to want Rivian tech. Usually their brands are managed centrally, so VW is developing platforms and architectures, which are then used by Skoda, Seat and Audio to make their models.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  >which are then used by Skoda, Seat and Audio to make their models. Autocorrect strikes again!
- skapa_flow 2y ago
  VW decided to decentralize development, especially software. This is true for the Chinese market, which is very important to VW. Germans like knobs, Chinese like playfull interfaces with gadgets.
  - constantcrying 2y ago
    >This is true for the Chinese market Yes, that is true. Maybe they want to do something similar in the US? Where they have some subsidiary doing largely independent development for more region specific models?
- Tomte 2y ago
  I'm not certain, but I think it isn't like VW developing platforms and everyone using it. It's more every company in the conglomerate taking turns or having specializations and everyone else using that. So that a Golf platform is first developed by VW and then productized by VM and Skoda, but Skoda is already developing next year's platform which VW will use.

Reason077 2y ago

> "VW themselves says they want the investment for the Software of Rivian, which also is somewhat curious." If you've ever driven a Volkswagen EV and compared their software experience to what the likes of Rivian, Tesla, and Polestar have, this will come as no surprise.

jwr 2y ago
As a VW EV owner (ID.4), I can attest to this. The software is a burning dumpster fire, usability is terrible, the most common workflows break or simply never work, the car forgets even basic settings like whether you want to charge to 80% or 100%, and even the bare basics like the windows going predictably up when you press both "up" buttons sometimes fail (race conditions, apparently). It's an absolute disgrace. I think any other vendor's software is better than this.
- aklendr 2y ago
  Probably designed with ITIL processes and UML diagrams. That sort of thing is popular in Germany.
- raphael_l 2y ago
  We drive an ID.5. Apart from the UX, the outdated visual design language – is the interface also horrendously slow in yours? I have very noticeable lag when interacting with it, sometimes it takes even a second to respond to input. If it weren't for the insanely good driving experience (coming from a VW Polo before), the software would have definitely convinced us to go for another car.
  - jwr 2y ago
    > is the interface also horrendously slow in yours Yes. But I consider this to be the least of its problems — if it were slow, but actually worked, I'd be OK with it. The problem is that it is quite simply broken in a number of ways. It looks as if no management at VW ever used the car. It should be mandatory for management to use any new car design as their home/family car for a month or so. I'd imagine some problems would be fixed in no time. Things like the car forgetting charging settings, the car being unable to link driver profiles to key fobs (!) and distinguish between drivers, the fact that some settings are per-driver, while others are per-car, or the fact that the phone app doesn't display any useful information, especially if you have two drivers. I mean, I could go on and on. It's mind-boggling that software of this quality has ever been released.

nuccy 2y ago

Car manufacturers' interconnecion is amazing by itself. Direct "competitors" share engines, gear boxes [1], or the whole vehicle [2] (modifying just interior and badges, of course). Seems like they adopt the same strategy as laptop manufacturers did (though likely the other way around) - cheap and middle range cars are OEM ones, especially commercial vehicules (made under someone's license with minimum modifications), while only high-end are independently developed. 1. Aisin owned by Toyota provides gearboxes to VW, Skoda, GM, Nissan, et al: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Aisin_transmissions 2. Same car, different badges: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renault_Trafic&diffonly=true#Third_generation_(X82;_2014) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renault_Trafic&... (see "Also called")

flakeoil 2y ago
Most of the components used are developed by other companies such as Bosch, Continental, Magna, Autoliv, Marelli etc. The car manufacturers build up their cars using these almost off-the-shelf components.