Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | hungry_Zeus's commentslogin

Automotive electronics tend to have an operating design range from -20 to 120C ambient. Not that they see this kind of ambient temp but usually they have to be AEC-Q:100 qualified. Think about solar loading. Touchscreen (VHB tape, backlite, etc) all have to withstand intense temperature swings and last longer than a typical consumer electronic. If you look at the some of the Automotive testing, its pretty intense (High temperature Operation endurance testing and Thermal shock testing) in comparison to commercial grade testing.

Usually car manufacturers have to spend significant amount of Reliability testing before the launch the product to avoid recalls. Tesla missed some of the typical automotive testing and the early Tesla vehicles had a bluish Mura after a year and some the adhesive layers on the TFT panel started seeing issues and they had to replace the screens on a rather large number of cars


But like another commenter said, that still doesn't explain crappy software.


It's very hard to do software when the hardware has the priority.

You spend a lot of time fighting with its quirks and drivers.


Yes, Crappy automotive SW is solely because most if not all infotainment SW is written by third party vendors. GM/Ford/FCA have engineers who are good at drafting Requirements and throw these said requirements over the wall to vendors like panasonic, bosch, Lear etc. They write 100 page documents on how the system needs to behave and these OEM vendors need to deliver these infotainment black boxes without any significant issues. (You can imagine why, if the infotainment board (Say intel or Qualcomm FW) has a bug that was found in production; they would need to update over USB or some other form debug method and reflash on the side of the production line and this cost hundreds of millions).

Again tesla has done a great job and implemented OTA and some of the automotive companies are following suit but this still does not help them much as the updates are given by the vendors whose sole job is to cover themselves (So most updates will go through a year of testing even for minor changes to make sure not to brick anything)


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: