so what German software company has hit it big outside of SAP?
Why is it that VW/Cariad has so much difficult with software in their cars? Why do they rely on Horizon to do their work if they can find enough software developers back in Germany?
New Energy Vehicles (NEVs) in China
- Thread starter supercat
- Start date
Why is it that VW/Cariad has so much difficult with software in their cars? Why do they rely on Horizon to do their work if they can find enough software developers back in Germany?
PiSigma
"the engineer"
Cariad's office in Bay area do most of the heavy lifting. They are also trying too hard to standardize everything in VW, so every vw, Porsche, audi and Skoda is supposed to have the same source code. Just too many systems trying to integrate for one software. TP talk to Sabrina yuan on it if you want, she runs the infotainment group for cariad.
There are plenty of decent mid sized software companies in Germany lots of people never heard about. For example you have SUSE who are a major contributor to the Linux Kernel and GCC. You had Star Division who originally wrote what later became StarOffice/OpenOffice/LibreOffice. People talk about the Chrome or Safari browsers. Those are based on WebKit. Well WebKit is just a souped up version of KHTML which was originally written by German software developers. Ever heard of Cinema 4D or Cinebench? That is also made by a German company called Maxon. That is utility software. In games software you have Crytek for example the company which made CryENGINE and the Crysis and FarCry games.
The problem in Europe was never lack of software development talent. It is just lack of either financing or a large enough market. There are lots of software companies, basically all over the product spectrum, but most are mid sized ones.
VW isn't a software company. That is the problem. Any car company will lack the proper mindset to go about it.
Isn't Horizon a self-driving chip company which also happens to make software? Because that is a place where Germany definitively has a deficit, semiconductor hardware design, which is kind of curious considering Siemens owns one of the major EDA companies.
The thing is it expensive to tapeout a chip and this is a major blocker for chip development in Europe where there is little investment into these things. It is much easier to just invest into real estate or something.
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That is emblematic to the problems I talked about established companies's struggle during market transitions. It is about mindset, leadership and culture.
GM has been making billions from SAIC-GM venture for years. In fact, during 2008 government bailout, it was Shanghai GM that was the primary factor with which the federal government assessed GM viability. Given its own first-hand local market intelligence with tier-one local partner, GM has yet found its way toward EV. F-150 is cash cow for Ford while similar trucks and SUVs are cash cows for GM. There has never been enough organic motivation for them to go all-in on NEV until it is already too late for them to catch up.
Back to German auto makers. Similar business stories evolve in established ICE companies with entrenched local interests. "Check from China" has been so sweet for VW and BBA each year that incumbents just need to sit there and enjoy. Gatekeepers and decision makers are not the types that made Tesla what it is today nor are they types that made Chinese NEV makers what they are today. I have seen this movies in my industry a few times over past decades.
Those who are not in the field of industrial-grade ICT integration with NEVs are not really the types that can help catch up with Tesla or HIMA or even new-kids-on-the-block like Nio, Li Auto or Xpeng. Cutting-edge NEVs in China today are really software-defined consumer-owned automobiles. Blue-screen-crash like we got used to in PCs here are absolutely disasters in China consumer markets. Let me tell you a joke to end my comments here: during 10 years of driving my Audi A6 3.0T Quattro (C6), its bluetooth handsfree connection between my mobile phone and its infotainment system never worked as seamlessly as expected; and when I was looking for its proprietary USB cable for my phone, I was told by the dealer that it would cost a few hundred bucks.
The only successful NEV company outside China is Tesla, which is really a half-Shanghainese company ...
Doesn't matter, they have a walled garden and American market preferences. Ford and GM don't really have a huge presence outside of US. 60% of Ford's business is in U.S. alone, with roughly 75% if you include North America. GM is even more extreme with like 80%+ in NA.
Thinking about the future of China-EU cooperation in NEVs does make me think that EU can eventually catch up in EVs though. Yes, China is ahead for now, but this could change in the future, especially if some sort of understanding is reached in EU regarding market access for Chinese firms. EU carmakers have the ability to integrate China's supply chain and make great vehicles, the next step will be localizing more parts of the supply chain and moving it from China to EU.
And it's entirely possible that they can even assemble a better vehicle eventually... but this is al way in the future of course.