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Comment by RandomBookmarks | Hacker News Reader

It seems German car companies are trying hard to not become the next Nokia.

Just recently Bosch, Mercedes and Porsche joined forces with local universities in the "Cyber Valley" initiative: https://a9t9.com/blog/facebook-cyber-valley/

Time will tell if this is enough. It certainly is difficult to turn them into software-focused companies. One reason is that everyone who works there right now, went there to work because she/he wants to work on ICE engines, and not all this "modern stuff".

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Bosch is (and always was) a company heavily focused on (1) making things electronic (2) making things programmable (3) R&D, they're very modern. While one of the biggest automotive suppliers they never supplied engines or most of the heavy mechanics (gearbox etc.), but rather: [engine] control, which was iirc invented by Bosch, sensors, electronics, firmware, ...

ABS and ESP are Bosch product names.

Car manufacturers have been knee-deep in electronics and sw for decades now. 50% of all engineering work on a new car is sw and virtually no function in a modern car is not at least partially controlled by sw. The industry is in the process of switching onboard communication to TCP/IP on ethernet and switching the electronic architecture to pc-like nodes running linux. Linux is the state of the art in infotainment already.

And no offense, but your point about the people in the automotive industry is nonsensical. Only a tiny fraction of engineers are working on the drivetrain and most of even those people would take offense at being called ludites. In fact, electric drivetrains are (and have been for years) one of the big hypes in the industry.

Porsche recently established a digital innovations lab here in Berlin and is doing a lot of work for the "connected car" right now https://www.mhp.com/en/the-digitalization/connected-car/

The new Audis also have pretty nice Assistant Systems and full digital Cockpits. They surely lack behind on electric engines and full autonomy, but i think they understand what the market will look like in 10 years.

Audi will introduce the world's first mass production car with lidar-based automation features in a few months. They will introduce their first fully electric SUV next year. I would be very careful when throwing shade on them right now.

ICE will probably have to go because of climate impact. But mechanical cars, and other kinds of engine can still be done, albeit not as the 99% monopoly ICE have now.

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