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Closing factories will not be enough to save Volkswagen

https://www.economist.com/business/2024/09/05/repairing-vw-requires-huge-upheavals
26doener | | 90 | HN
pfdietz | parent | next
> Developing software in particular has flummoxed VW.

This is reminding me of Motorola, or really any of the old cell phone companies that were blown away by Apple and smart phones. It was easier to get a company that was good at software to make phones, than it was to make a company that was good at phones to make software.

readthenotes1 | parent | next
Apple may have produced a few pieces of popular hardware before they produce the iPhone.

I expect a more telling difference is whether the management of the successful company is overtaken by people who are better at political infighting than competing with other companies

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sunflowerfly | parent | next
This is true across many industries as well. For example, today’s SLR cameras have terrible software that is nearly impossible to change by anyone other than the manufacturer. I feel they should be a sensor and physical buttons with today’s phone hardware for brains. Let the user load custom software to control the hardware if they wish.
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raverbashing | parent | next
Yup

Hardware engineers (most of them, anyway) make awful software developers.

They always get dregged on any slightly flexible process and higher level development.

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nojvek | parent | next
Apple had iPod which was almost an iPhone already and they had decades of hardware and UX experience. They needed the cellular bits which they didn’t all build inhouse. Qualcomm is still the modem giant and Apple still uses them.
dzhiurgis | parent
I’ve just rented a toyota and it’s comical. How people keep buying this???

Car is perfectly fine (despite being an anaemic ICE), but damn fix your UX.

People shit on Teslas touchscreen, but buttons on your Toyotas are worse - smaller, crowded and hard to discern.

Audio connectivity feels designed by lawyers who wish you to crash car as quickly as possible (thinking about this loud - maybe it’s a good thing, like the tullock spike?)

taneq | root | parent | next
The last Toyota rental I drove (think it was a ‘22 or so?) sure had a smaller, less ‘app-like’ touchscreen and a lot of physical buttons, but I could use those buttons while driving. I’m giving this one to the Toyota.

Edit: Your not meant to try and pair your phone while driving on any car.

lotsofpulp | root | parent | next
All cars I’ve rented in the last 5+ years have CarPlay/Android Auto, so it is all the same UX. Connect the phone via usb or Bluetooth, and I’m good to go. Can’t say that for Teslas.
ianbooker | root | parent | next
This is exactly the Volvo / Polestar philosophy. There is a Decoder podcast with their CEO about just this sentiment.
phinnaeus | root | parent | next
CarPlay is a handy crutch for cars with terrible software. Teslas have had generally good software.
dzhiurgis | root | parent
Except most cars I've tried had shite carplay connectivity.
beowulfey | root | parent | next
My 2019 Toyota has terrible UX. The higher end cars, particularly newer ones, are a little better (comparing Camry vs Corolla e.g.) but overall pretty bad.

Would love to hear people's opinions on car UX though. The Tesla is terrible too, as are most newer car brands. I haven't minded Hyundai cars, and I recently drove a new Nissan that was decent.

room4 | root | parent | next
I drove a Hyundai that wanted to sync contacts from my phone when I connected it to Bluetooth to play music. I declined for privacy reasons, and the car then had this loud booming audio request to sync contacts every single time I turned on the car and then I had to wait 30 seconds for the car to timeout/fail after my phone denied the request, and then I had to click on a touchscreen to skip the sync rather than retry.

I ended up just not using Bluetooth while I drove that car because it was such a nuisance. I'm not sure whether it was so bad because of incompetence (they never considered users not wanting to share contacts) or out of malice (they know they can wear people down through harassment and hassle to eventually share their data).

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soco | root | parent | next
Oh I have a 10 years old VW with both buttons and touchscreen. I tell you, the buttons you can learn and they're the same across similar VW models, but as soon as you have to do anything with the displays (the big one in the cockpit and the small one on the board) things go downhill immediately. I don't know who designed such UX, but I wonder, do they have the nerve to put it in their CVs?
emsign | root | parent
I can't use touchscreens while driving because I keep missing a lot. I'd have to look at the screen for too long. That's why I prefer low priced or older models. I'm puzzled why touchscreens are even allowed.
mattmaroon | root | parent
I've got a Stellantis vehicle (admittedly, a higher trim one) and my girlfriend has a Model Y. I absolutely HATE driving the Model Y. Tesla's UX is far, far worse. The main thing I interact with in my car is CarPlay. Simple things CarPlay does well (making and receiving calls, providing directions, voice to text, playing music/podcasts, etc.) Tesla fails at and that's most of what a car UX is for these days.

I will literally never get a car without CarPlay. But even excepting that, Tesla's UI mostly sucks.

The answer to shitty buttons isn't shove it all 3 layers deep in a touch screen menu, it's better buttons.

dzhiurgis | root | parent
I haven't tried Stellantis (though MB I've drove 2 years ago was awful), but CarPlay has nothing against Tesla. Maybe you are not used to it, but after a while craplay feels like a joke. Sure, Siri and custom apps is nice, but maps and its UX is just unbelievably behind.
mattmaroon | root | parent
Im very used to both, can’t stand Tesla. I’ll take my RAM any day. It was funny watching my girlfriend use CarPlay, I had to show her “honey just say Siri call mom” as she was looking for some menu on the screen. She’s just used to doing everything the hard way.

Siri is how I interact with my car while driving. Tesla’s voice recognition is straight out of a 2005 flip phone. I can’t just call someone or play the music I want to hear without touching screens. I can’t just tell the GPS where to take me because it doesn’t understand proper nouns. It’s maps routinely don’t have things or have inaccurate data. (I do love that you’ll be driving through a neighborhood and it shows you every goofy home-based business in the DB though.)

The last thing I want when driving is distraction and their UI seems designed to do it as much as possible, probably so you’ll give up and pay them for self-driving. Or you can drive at highway speeds while digging through a convoluted touch screen just to control your HVAC.

I use tons of apps on CarPlay that don’t exist on Tesla. Tesla supports very few. Apple maps is bad, luckily you can use others easily.

Tesla’s UI is so bad I honestly thought you must be trolling for a second.

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