Ford CEO Jim Farley on why it's so difficult for legacy car companies to get software right & why
@Tesla’s vertically integrated approach is the right one:
“We farmed out all the modules that control the vehicles to our suppliers because we could bid them against each other, so Bosch would do the body control module, someone else would do the seat control module, someone else would do the engine control module. We have about 150 of these modules with semiconductors all through the car. The problem is the software are all written by you know 150 different companies and they don't talk to each other. So even though it says Ford on the front, I actually have to go to Bosch to get permission to change their seat Control software.
So even if I had a high-speed modem in the vehicle and and I had the ability to write their software, it's actually their IP and I have 150, we call it the loose Confederation of software providers, 150 completely different software programming languages, you know all the structure of the software is different. It’s millions of code and we can't even understand it all. That's why at Ford we've decided in the second generation product to completely insource electric architecture. To do that you need to write all the software yourself, but just remember car companies have never written software like this, ever, so we're literally writing how the vehicle operates the software to operate the vehicle for the first time ever.”
via Everything Electric Show:
youtube.com/watch?v=8IhSWsQl…