[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

3201 readers

1 users here now

We have moved to:

!electricvehicles@slrpnk.net

A community for the sharing of links, news, and discussion related to Electric Vehicles.

Rules

No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, casteism, speciesism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia.
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
No self-promotion.
No irrelevant content. All posts must be relevant and related to plug-in electric vehicles — BEVs or PHEVs.
No trolling.
Policy, not politics. Submissions and comments about effective policymaking are allowed and encouraged in the community, however conversations and submissions about parties, politicians, and those devolving into general tribalism will be removed.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Sunshine@lemmy.ca

Ceres@lemmy.world

GM & Ford Are Struggling With EVs Again, But Why? (cleantechnica.com)

submitted 2 months ago by MyOpinion@lemm.ee to c/evs@lemmy.world

68 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Recently, there’s been some bad news out of Detroit. Ford’s backing off on some upcoming EV models, including a three-row SUV many had been looking forward to, and will instead be focusing more on hybrids. GM has been having different problems with software, recently laying off 1,000 developers after a string of Silicon Valley types failed to acclimate to more traditional corporate culture.

While these companies would like to have us all believe that making EVs and software for EVs is simply too hard, other companies like Tesla and Rivian have been doing a lot better. Tesla is now making more EVs than anybody, even beating out ICE models in some segments. Rivian is still climbing the profit ladder, but is selling software to Volkswagen, a pretty good sign that “legacy auto” is struggling in odd ways while newcomers are having no problem churning out EVs.

So, we need to ask ourselves why these established players are struggling while newcomers are doing just fine.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] _stranger_@lemmy.world 47 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Silicon Valley types failed to acclimate to more traditional corporate culture

Ford: We suck at software, hire different people to do it better.

Also Ford: The different people are doing things differently and my ancient management structure is scared and confused! Fire them!

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Bringing in experts to fix your problems, then not letting them. Classic.

[–] ErrorCode@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I see this all the time in tech. "We don't like product/service X. So we went with competitor Y. Then customized Y to look exactly like X. I don't understand why we don't like it. "

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Looked at another way: People with no process control comprehension had difficulty understanding the requirements of safety critical software and are best building mobile apps rather than truly high reliability, critical software.

Just a thought as someone that's worked among Silicon Valley Types for decades.

The problem is almost certainly less about management style and more about development cycle differences. Ford's inability to understand software development strategies, and developers' inability to understand hard requirements and tight scoping.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I think there's truth in both camps here.

Certainly software developers don't understand safety critical design a lot of the time.

Also mechanical / production engineers don't understand software development a lot of the time.

However, EVs need very little software. Trouble is, they've been positioned as luxury cars, which do.

[–] drdabbles@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

IMO a good luxury car doesn't need a bunch of bullshit software either. Making a vehicle that works primarily as a vehicle and lastly as a gadget should really be the focus IMO. But these companies all thought there was easy money to be saved by eliminating buttons and replacing it with touch screens running software. Unfortunately, very few of them compared the reliability of a button with a 10 million cycle rating to software running on an ARM processor on a commodity LCD panel.

Younger consumers that are buying expensive vehicles for the first time also don't realize that luxury doesn't mean sparse plastic interior with a touch screen, but rather the quality of materials and components used in the vehicle. Perhaps that's the industry changing, or perhaps is naive people being ripped off, only time will tell.

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 10 points 2 months ago

GM, not Ford, but your point stands.