German carmakers and suppliers want to create a shared open-source platform

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www.heise.de/en/news/Autonomous-driving-Co-Germโ€ฆ

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We once had to make an interface for a big German car manufacturers new car. It showed texts about things and stuff (I really don't remember). The target was an embedded browser for which a not really accurate emulator existed.

I could only develop against that emulator. They could not supply us with a computer running the real thing. For testing I had to go to a secret locked garage where the real car stood with obfuscation decals so that competitors wouldn't be able to see the design. It was really tight and uncomfortable to work in when I had to debug something only occuring on the real hardware. And I was lucky that I had cellphone reception at all in the garage.

One or two years later after I had left that team I saw a colleague finally having basically a full car's cockpit in his office for testing, so things got a little bit better.

My point is, car companies work differently than computer guys. I hope this project won't die amid their inflexibility.

I've noticed some problems with how user interfaces are designed on cars. Especially google maps. Tiny hard to reach buttons with margins separating them. Sure, it looks sleeker, but when one is driving and cannot easily look at the screen, that's the least of our concerns

Physical buttons will now be required in the EU, so hopefully that problem will be less.

My ID4 was horrible with that. Only oversensitive capacitive touch buttons and an extremely laggy touchscreen.

This isn't a "control the air conditioner with a touch screen" scenario. I'm actually specifically thinking of the tiny button to mute/unmute direction announcements



Yeah, the knob to control everything was a big reason why developing for the emulator sucked. With the emulator you could just click on buttons and links, where in the real thing the users would be stuck with an awkward knob they'd turn to select stuff.

I loved that โ€˜big awkward knobโ€™ or the โ€˜idrive controllerโ€™ in the BMWs, now sadly itโ€™s gone, so I take mine and everyone elseโ€™s life in my hands to zoom in or out on navigation, or to find a setting the car insists is default and I have to opt out of on every single journey.
Knob, reach down, without taking eyes off road, feel the position, click turn idents to know how many menu levels youโ€™re in, push down to select.
You canโ€™t feel a touchscreen to find button three of five, it literally forces you to look at it to operate. So unsafe!





FOSS cars when?

You wouldn't steal a car



But then how will they hide the emissions cheating?


2030: year of the FOSS car.


Comments from other communities

Does that mean we can finally rip out all the privacy violating software and hardware?

No they just want their own privacy violating software

Ah, yuck.

Wish any company would build electric vehicles without that in.

Privacy costs money. There are companies that retrofit gas cars into electric ones without making them into trackers on wheels. You can also buy EV kits and do it on your own.

Oh, neat! Thanks, we had been wondering this!






It is planned to certify the open-source processes and ensure compatibility with existing standards such as Autosar

๐Ÿคฎ. Anything that touches autosar is/will be complete trash

What is Autosar?

Its a bug collection of standards thats meant to make software more modular. The modularity ends up being so complex though that actually using the modularity ia a PITA




Please yes. Please Europe, make the market for open source gigantic.

This is your way out of America's big tech nightmare. Take it. Run with it. Never give it up.



Europe gives me hope for so many things that benefit us peons.


This is great! Maybe we won't need to go out of our way to find old dumb cars now.


Maybe I'm just old and cynical but after dieselgate I do wonder if this is just to make any kind of illegal software based stuff harder to detect and attribute to one firm.

Unless this is the exception of private firms choosing the best solution. Rather than the one that best protects their profits....

Plus are there really masses of customers crying out for a carplay/android integration alternative?

not requiring putting up with google/apples telemetry and having up to date maps/navigation and music via ones own phone would be great.


If a manufacturer uses software to do illegal things, they themselves are responsible for that, no matter who developed the software...

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Hi just old and cynical, I'm old and cynical dad.
So yeah, I immediately started wondering what could be the angle here for the firms pushing it. It is not from the goodness of their nonexistent hearts, so what is there to benefit...

I don't think it would be to have harder to detect anything, it would probably be easier to detect if anything.

I'd wager it is just the fact that these firms are crap at making software. They realize they are lagging behind, and don't want to depend on 3rd party solutions that can fuck them over later on or reduce the value of their cars if the support is ever dropped or updates are stopped (by them or the 3rd party).

So by pushing for free software they are trying to remove the cost of licenses of 3rd party software, the cost of maintenance, and the cost of development. Any issues or problems, they can also shift the blame. They'd also be removing software as a factor to compare cars, which I'm sure is something making them look bad right now.

But at the end it feels like a net win for buyers, so it may just end up being the most sensible solution and at the same time profitable for these firms. And even if the general public is not really demanding for this, I'm sure the car firms using this will sell it as the more private option, and everyone likes it when they tell you google, apple or others won't be tracking you.

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But then how would they hide the emissions cheating?


translation: german car manfacturers want third parties to develop their garbage for free


still no more affordable cars. still combustion engines. still nothing to offer in terms of e-mobility


If this runs on anything but Linux, I'll laugh my ass off. Also, I bet collaboration of the open source software will happen on a closed source platform (probably Github).
Another bet, it will require closed source components to function and won't be able to be tested locally.

Anti Commercial-AI license


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