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>The reporter here could still be mixing categories. Ford has thinky computer chips for their infotainment systems, but not enough dumb chips that control the heated seats.

Automotive EE. It’s nearly entirely this.

No one that sees how vehicles are made would ever follow the recipe if they were concerned about a chip shortage.

Driver seats, with 8 modules in them. That’s at least 8 micros, at least 8 switching power supplies, at least 8 bootloaders, applications, verifications, 8 different (ish) suppliers, etc. The reality is most of those are more than 8.

There is a movement going on right now that next gen goes back to larger computers like Tesla does. Which is how Tesla was able to say they were so nimble during shortage. They aren’t; they just had a lot less to do.

Current system is bad. But don’t worry, we’ll screw up the next one too!



Super interesting!

So is it a fair simplification that a Tesla really just has everything running through a giant tablet as a cost cutting measure? Wouldn't that affect vehicle longevity? I have 10 year old tablets that can barely boot up any more, but 20 year old power windows that still work perfectly.

I was also hearing that one of the responses to this might be more base models with manual features (cranks, push buttons, etc). Any truth to that?


The screen you see isn’t (shouldn’t) really be deciding anything.

I don’t work for Tesla, but as I understand it their architecture is largely one (effectively a) PC per quadrant.

There are sub modules of course; but as I understand it they are kept pretty dumb relative to the larger controllers.




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