SalisburySam
Active Member
TL;DR - times, they are a-changin’.
Longer; may not read - Vehicular complexity is increasing, is here to stay, and our levels of frustration will need to accommodate this paradigm.
Wow, lots of things going on in this thread, which may have outlived its usefulness. My summary, likely oversimplified, is that there are several points of agreement…and a few points of roughness. At a macro level, there seems to be agreement that both building a car at production scale and chosen level of quality is hard, and building software quality is also hard. The joining of the two combines those difficulties into something harder yet. Worse, today’s cars and today’s software are both very complex compared to just a few years ago and that aggregate complexity makes things much harder again. So where does that leave us? It certainly challenges the testing or quality control functions of the manufacturer implementing more thorough hopefully automated testing procedures to meet regulations (another area of changing complexity across the globe) which is also hard and complex. Complexity’s biggest downside is, well, its complexity., i.e., the difficulty in testing each function, and how each function interrelates with each other function. So with all that in mind the manufacturer’s challenge is how to do exhaustive testing, if that is even possible, and if not to determine what absolutely must work flawlessly to meet regulatory and market requirements and test those intensively, and be aware of how much will it cost to do so.
There is another factor at work and that is the imperative to provide “new.” Objectively for me, the iPhone13 mini is very, very similar in almost all regards of importance to me to the previous year’s iPhone12 mini. But there’s enough difference to (a) allow Apple to continue the trend of the latest, greatest offering every year, and (b) recognize many (VERY many) buyers upgrade annually. Even the calculator app on my iPad has about a quarterly ”upgrade” introducing “new improvements” in usability and appearance. Wait what? It’s a calculator. Is the math different? No, just the background colors, numbers rounded or not on the screen, ad tracking, and the like, enough so that it is considered “latest, greatest.”
So where frustrations come in is two-fold: (1) sometimes you just don’t like the way something works or doesn’t as delivered. Experiences with wipers, auto high beams, size of seats, TACC, expectations not met such as FSD, poor trunk lighting, no spare tire, paying extra for a garage door opener, and the list goes on. Some of these you knew about before buying and you decided as you wished; others you found after purchase. You pays your money and you takes your choices/chances. The second and larger frustration is that as more hardware functionality becomes software, that delivered functionality may not be a one-for-one replacement, and the software can and likely will change. So an HVAC control head becomes a series of taps on the screen, a CD player becomes a screen-driven streaming option, and so on. Instead of an experienced team of mechanical engineers designing a control system, that design work has moved to an experienced team of software designers. Perhaps great if they work together, but HVAC controls are new areas for software developers. And the software is built to be changed going back to the extreme complexity and inability to test everything. When you find an “ooops moment“ in software you can reasonably quickly correct it and reissue. If your keyed ignition system doesn’t work in the wild, it’s a massive and expensive recall…ask GM.
But that ability to change results in its own levels of frustration given that we owners can be very resistant to change, and changes can be made that are objectively poor judgment, others can be totally indefensible, and others just plain terrific and much welcomed. Who decides? We do, and we grouse about the changes we don’t like, sometimes praise the ones we do, and make our buying decisions accordingly. Which (finally) brings me to the last point of this tirade: what car you buy and like/dislike will very likely not be the same vehicle throughout your ownership. You will constantly be considering those likes/dislikes until one side takes over and you either trade the vehicle or continue ownership and change your evaluations. That’s a new “thing” in products, and certainly new in the auto industry. I expect we’ll see much more of this, not less.
Perhaps I should switch to decaf.
Longer; may not read - Vehicular complexity is increasing, is here to stay, and our levels of frustration will need to accommodate this paradigm.
Wow, lots of things going on in this thread, which may have outlived its usefulness. My summary, likely oversimplified, is that there are several points of agreement…and a few points of roughness. At a macro level, there seems to be agreement that both building a car at production scale and chosen level of quality is hard, and building software quality is also hard. The joining of the two combines those difficulties into something harder yet. Worse, today’s cars and today’s software are both very complex compared to just a few years ago and that aggregate complexity makes things much harder again. So where does that leave us? It certainly challenges the testing or quality control functions of the manufacturer implementing more thorough hopefully automated testing procedures to meet regulations (another area of changing complexity across the globe) which is also hard and complex. Complexity’s biggest downside is, well, its complexity., i.e., the difficulty in testing each function, and how each function interrelates with each other function. So with all that in mind the manufacturer’s challenge is how to do exhaustive testing, if that is even possible, and if not to determine what absolutely must work flawlessly to meet regulatory and market requirements and test those intensively, and be aware of how much will it cost to do so.
There is another factor at work and that is the imperative to provide “new.” Objectively for me, the iPhone13 mini is very, very similar in almost all regards of importance to me to the previous year’s iPhone12 mini. But there’s enough difference to (a) allow Apple to continue the trend of the latest, greatest offering every year, and (b) recognize many (VERY many) buyers upgrade annually. Even the calculator app on my iPad has about a quarterly ”upgrade” introducing “new improvements” in usability and appearance. Wait what? It’s a calculator. Is the math different? No, just the background colors, numbers rounded or not on the screen, ad tracking, and the like, enough so that it is considered “latest, greatest.”
So where frustrations come in is two-fold: (1) sometimes you just don’t like the way something works or doesn’t as delivered. Experiences with wipers, auto high beams, size of seats, TACC, expectations not met such as FSD, poor trunk lighting, no spare tire, paying extra for a garage door opener, and the list goes on. Some of these you knew about before buying and you decided as you wished; others you found after purchase. You pays your money and you takes your choices/chances. The second and larger frustration is that as more hardware functionality becomes software, that delivered functionality may not be a one-for-one replacement, and the software can and likely will change. So an HVAC control head becomes a series of taps on the screen, a CD player becomes a screen-driven streaming option, and so on. Instead of an experienced team of mechanical engineers designing a control system, that design work has moved to an experienced team of software designers. Perhaps great if they work together, but HVAC controls are new areas for software developers. And the software is built to be changed going back to the extreme complexity and inability to test everything. When you find an “ooops moment“ in software you can reasonably quickly correct it and reissue. If your keyed ignition system doesn’t work in the wild, it’s a massive and expensive recall…ask GM.
But that ability to change results in its own levels of frustration given that we owners can be very resistant to change, and changes can be made that are objectively poor judgment, others can be totally indefensible, and others just plain terrific and much welcomed. Who decides? We do, and we grouse about the changes we don’t like, sometimes praise the ones we do, and make our buying decisions accordingly. Which (finally) brings me to the last point of this tirade: what car you buy and like/dislike will very likely not be the same vehicle throughout your ownership. You will constantly be considering those likes/dislikes until one side takes over and you either trade the vehicle or continue ownership and change your evaluations. That’s a new “thing” in products, and certainly new in the auto industry. I expect we’ll see much more of this, not less.
Perhaps I should switch to decaf.
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