Volkswagen
Android has successfully established the in-vehicle infotainment ecosystem. Originally, Google’s operating system began rolling into new cars as a custom install, but more recently it developed Android Automotive. Android Automotive powers new vehicles from General Motors, Polestar, Volvo, Honda, and soon BMW and the Volkswagen Group. .
A long-standing question with the popularity of Android Automotive has been the issue of support. The car is expected to have a much longer service life than smartphones, especially his Android smartphone. Since infotainment systems are now integral to the operation of a car, how long can we reasonably expect these infotainment systems to be supported?
So far, the longest period an Android phone has been supported before an unsupported chip finally calls time on the Fairphone is just over seven years. No one thinks it’s okay to be sent to the mountains.
I had the opportunity to ask Dirk Hilgenberg, CEO of CARIAD, the software division of the Volkswagen Group, the following question. Given that cars have a much longer useful life compared to smartphones, how does VW plan to patch these cars and keep them safe for 10 or 15 years? ?
Lifetime support
“We actually had a deal with the brand, and while the negotiations took some time, lifelong support was very important.
The follow-up was clear: how long is ‘life’? “It’s an additional option for brands that want to use it for 15 years after service and even longer. As you know, all legal aspects have to guarantee renewalability,” he said.
“So, as you can imagine, I’m very cautious about branching for releases because all branches have to be maintained for this long. So if there is an end of operation and an EOP [end of production] It’s been over 15 years since then and we have to keep it up. What’s more, some brands actually say, “My car is a unicorn, so people want more of it, I drive it only occasionally, but I want it to be safe.”
(A mention of a unicorn should make sense in the context of the VW Group, which owns Bugatti, Lamborghini and Porsche. These cars are often collected and can be on the road for decades.)
In such cases, CARIAD will provide ongoing support, Hilgenberg said. “Especially when it comes to cybersecurity, all legal matters are involved. Security and safety are of paramount importance at the Volkswagen Group and indeed we see them as a differentiating opportunity,” he said.
there is reason to be optimistic
At this point, the more cynical reader will probably fire up the comments section to tell them how much they don’t believe these claims. But according to Guidehouse Insights principal research analyst Sam Abuelsamid, there are reasons to doubt Hilgenberg.
“New E/E architectures are moving from the old distributed arrangement of dozens of ECUs with low-power and cheap microcontrollers to an arrangement with a few domain controllers with much more powerful SoCs. In turn, these platforms (such as GM’s Ultifi and MB.OS) provide APIs for applications to communicate, read sensors, and send commands to actuators,” Abuelsamid told Ars. I’m talking
“This decouples the application from the underlying hardware. Even if CARIAD (or any other OEM) chooses to use Android Automotive, QNX, etc. for infotainment, the application It runs in containers at layers of computing power These new E/E architectures should be able to support containerized OS updates much longer than typical phones and certainly longer than before ,” explains Abuelsamid.
However, there is no guarantee that OEMs will be able to make their business model work for this long-term support.
“They obviously expect to generate many new and ongoing revenue streams based on selling subscriptions to features or selling new features as OTA updates, but so far, No one has really proven that consumers are willing to pay for it, Tesla said: As subscription fatigue becomes real, how many car owners I don’t know if they’ll pay for it, especially if the upfront price of the car doesn’t go down correspondingly.It’s an even bigger problem in the used car market, which accounts for three to four times the number of new cars sold each year. ,” Abuelsamid told me.
