This is good news for everyone else
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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They should sell BYD vehicles.
I think all those dongles hanging off the car would have been a problem anyway
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I remember when Tesla begged Apple to buy them
That would actually be a terrifying precedent. "Can not pair phone to iCar™. Please use an iPhone next time, moron".
A massive corporate monopoly enforcing the use of its devices by purposefully removing cross compatible functionally between different platforms. Spineless governments don't do anything cause they are toothless and on the payroll.
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Instead of trying to make a full electric car, I'm surprised Apple and Google aren't focusing on making a smart AI "head unit" that's compatible with third party car manufacturers. The head unit would control all aspects of the car through the CAN bus and also take camera/sensor inputs from the exterior of the vehicle, and be responsible for things like self-driving, lane assist and all those difficult AI-based features.
This way the car manufacturers could focus on what they do best (building safe reliable hardware) and outsource all the hard AI software problems to tech companies who specialise in this area.
This is pretty much the goal of CarPlay
I can see the sharks on Shark Tank telling them - “license it!”
I'll pass on having evil corps like Google put AI in my car.
Comma.ai is open source and does exactly what you are describing as that "head unit", not too mention is widely compatible with many car manufacturers.
Couldn't agree more, but I'm just highlighting it seems like a much more profitable and attainable commercial goal for them in the short term than trying to enter the vehicle manufacturing space as a competitor. The fact there's an awesome open source project tackling this idea already (thanks for the link - I didn't know this existed!) says it's viable.
They've already dipped their toes in with Car Play/Android Auto and have the relationships with third party vehicle manufacturers, so this seems like a logical next step. Perhaps that's what they're actually doing by shifting their car team to AI.
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Shifts team to generative AI.
If your car development team can be transferred to AI developement you weren't building much of a car.
This is referring to the team working on the self driving functionality.
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Skilled developers can easily transition to another field of software engineering.
Yeah but a car is mostly made of engines and bolts and wheels and stuff like that, you know.
Even in 2024, there's still a lot of non-software (automotive) engineering involved in building a car -- even an electric one.
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I really feel for the engineers and devs who don't get to see their project released into the world. Especially after so much effort.
As an engineer who's spent a good chunk of his career working on stuff that got cancelled, it's really not that bad. You're generally paid well and looked after, learn a tonne on someone else's dime, have good job prospects, a strong network of talented colleagues, plus most engineers are there for the team problem solving and challenge anyway. The final product release is just the cherry on top.
It’s kinda part of the job. Several times in my career I’ve put in months of effort on projects that then get canned for various reasons. One of them was 100% complete. No real big deal, it’s still a good billet on my resume.
After all the layoffs in the tech sector, it's doubtful it were even the original engineers working on the project.
I guess we will never see an electric car with the charging port on the bottom
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