Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.
It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
> Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software.
On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user.
If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
you settle with one failure story for another failure story.
there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.
> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid
Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit.
Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.
huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.
Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.
their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.
It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.
you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern.
you can pin your Bluetooth app with drag-n drop , never used car link so not sure if that's an app or an icon.
glovebox is the real annoying item i can confirm is a 100% weird design choice. I still love pin in valet mode so that my items are not stolen.
> you can swipe left to show full map if you in the navigation and open it almost in full screen. even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands. Really fake concern.
Would you mind uploading a picture of this "almost full screen"?
> even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands.
Yeah, sure. "We removed about 40% of the screen, but don't worry, you still have a lot of screen left!"
> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid
I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPlay today that Tesla will never add to their infotainment system.
i can create an entire list of features, that will never ever be in CarPlay, because it's not made of this is just a dongle on steroids, not a proper way to make your car smart.
Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)
automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym
send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself
proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced.
In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.
Software is not solved. Writing trite code of the kind that has been written millions of times before is somewhat solved, if you are willing to never maintain it.
Please don't act like a jerk on HN. We can disagree without belittling and jeering, and this style of comment doesn't make your position seem strong, at all. You've been here long enough to know that this is not what HN is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.
Given that the (user-facing) software that comes with the car is always broken (modulo Tesla and a few other modern exceptions), it's no wonder people want to replace that software with literally anything else that actually works.
This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved.
It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user
Hello, Elon
Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.
Not even 13 days ago another article on here was glazing the infotainment system. I even have the article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769397 People were attacking the critique I levied towards shallow praise flippantly gravitating to the word consistency, but now I feel vindicated.
Once upon a time, physically shipping faulty software had real costs borne by the organization - production, redistribution and transportation of a physical disc.
Today there’s no disc, no recall - that cost to shipping broken software is gone. We the users pay the price.
I remember my parents needing to buy very expensive map DVD disks in order to update the car’s navigation system to update their car’s navigation computer.
The disks were very expensive and if you didn’t update them it wouldn’t know about new roads (slower trip, missed turns, etc).
That's why we have Android Auto: move the updates to a thing that already has frequent Internet connection, and if the update goes wrong it's clearly the fault of this other company, plus the car itself still works fine.
Jeep already had an OTA the broke the ability for the car to be driven.
Pretty much this. The less software on the car, the fewer problems.
It's practically impossible to test every permutation of code against every system. Maybe AI can help, but practically it'll just mean the software gets more complicated, with more features. And to top it all off, more and more features get regulated, so they have to be there. The rear-view camera requirement in particular, since you need a screen to see the output. And if you have a screen... well it's an already paid cost, so, might as well display other things too.
It all comes down to cost. At scale, testing hardware is appreciably more expensive than testing software. The former requires specialized machinery that costs the soul of your firstborn, and the logistics overhead for each do-over means long iteration times. The latter can be done with a CI pipeline for pennies worth of compute in a fraction of a working day.
Stuff like climate control and radio/Bluetooth were included in many/most cars in the last decade. Expensive as they were, the cars were a lot cheaper than today's cars. And they just worked, which means they were either so simple that sophisticated testing wasn't necessary, or they tested it thoroughly.
I don't think they're saving that much by ditching them and going to SW.
They also didn't need updates (well, the Bluetooth module may have, but nothing else).
It definitely was nice not to have to worry whether the climate control may stop working because the radio was modified. Or because of any update.
As a driver, dumping everything into one SW system has significantly degraded my experience. What I gain ("Ooh, I can now use Waze on a bigger screen!") is minimal.
> The latter can be done with a CI pipeline for pennies worth of compute in a fraction of a working day.
I'd appreciate the point if they were successful at it. As it is, they're not. It's rare to find a non-buggy car.
At scale, testing software is appreciably more expensive than using hardware. That's why at most people test a tiny slice of it, and ships out broken software in the hopes of fixing it later. Testing hardware is expensive because nobody thinks it can be fixed cheaply afterwards.
It's Android Auto and Apple Carplay. Not sure how that's an "isolated HW function". That would be an issue if they put the turn signals or AC controls on the screen only.
wouldn't that be impossible in this case? since android auto needs to draw to the screen, control infotainment, etc. even a dedicated USB + rocker switch for android auto would still need a software path to do those things
Putting things like climate control, car settings, etc on the same screen as Android Auto is not at all necessary.
Older cars (that still had touch sensitive displays), simply had separate HW modules and HW interfaces (buttons/switches) for the rest. You never had to worry that modifying/repairing/updating one would impact the other.
It’s an indictment of business attitudes towards customers. It’s not the software’s fault, the software is doing what it was supposed to. The fault lies with the organisation that decided that’s what it should do.
When I bought my car, it had no Car Play or Android Auto. Upon some investigation I found out that both of them were installed on all the current models. It’s just disabled on the cars sold without the option. Some open source software for the car entertainment system flashed on the car was able to turn on the flags to enable various features including Car Play and Android Auto. So a happy story.
Even hardware features (heated steering wheel, rain sensing wipers, etc...) are now behind software switches which the car maker can control based upon subscription or trim-level purchase.
All the hardware pieces are installed at build time
The real cost is manufacturing with all the different options at different trim levels (combined with different paint jobs etc). Automakers have always made bank on options and trim. It is in fact cheaper for them to build all vehicles with the relatively cheap options and sell it as a subscription or add-on enabled by software. Engineering is in fact a large part of the option cost to begin with. The big task of the automakers is overcoming customer resistant to the “you will own nothing and be happy” model without feeling swindled being charged to use something they already own—or at least putting up with it and still paying. See Matt Walsh’s most recent monologue on this very topic.
Volkswagen Group for example. Most of their brands are like this, Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda. Carplay/Android Auto is in the head unit but you have to
pay 200-300€ to unlock unless it’s part of the trim
level you choose.
Users are complicit. Why did this user install the update? Were they suffering from an issue it supposedly solves? My six-year-old Honda has never had a software update, and in any case "OTA" updates can only be initiated by the user.
They described their car as having "auto-installed" the update.
An update which advertised, amongst other features, that it "rectifies errors and prevents security gaps" and stated "This update is recommended for everyone."
Borderline insane to refer to the user as "complicit" in that case.
Of course, we largely only need to worry about the security vulnerabilities because manufacturers increasingly hook our hardware up to the internet so they can exfiltrate data about us.
To be honest, with how poor quality some software has gotten, I refuse to update it, security issues or no. Most products aren't that bad, thankfully, but there does reach a point where the theoretical risk of a security vulnerability is outweighed by the immediate issue of "this crap doesn't work any more".
While the users are not at fault, this culture has certainly turned me way more careful and deliberate about applying updates - if it's not broke, I usually don't; big corporations are more suspicious of breaking things and open source are usually good about them; and if there's no changelog or it's very generic, I'll stay away as well.
Assuming your car has all the functions you care about, and the OTA updates aren't bringing you any bugfixes or feature updates you care about, is there any good reason to update? Or even have it online to begin with? I'm not expecting someone to hack my car; on the contrary, I'd rather have it be impossible for the automaker to reach my car in any way without it being obvious to me (i.e. me flipping a switch to get it online for whatever reason).
Auto manufacturers need to realize that one bad software experience means lost sales of entire cars. Fail to provide a good experience at the cost of your brand for years to come.
Auto manufacturers just don't know how to do software. They don't understand it. They treat it like just another line item on the BOM: Like a bolt or a gasket. Source it from the cheapest provider, give them checkbox requirements, and then spoon it into the car on the assembly line somewhere. They don't think of it as an ecosystem to build off of, or as something to make beautiful to compete with other car makers. It's just another costly assembly that they bolt onto the car and forget about.
If we had a software building code, it could mandate the testing procedures for consumer devices, like a car's headunit firmware. This building code could be backed by an industry body that could revoke its certification from manufacturers if they don't comply with the code. Super-advanced-testing-procedure #1: plug a phone into a test car and check it works before release.
(This software building code is more necessary for software used in critical infrastructure. But it should also be applied to consumer devices as basic protection for consumers against manufacturers breaking functionality the consumer paid for)
Plug one of every combination of vendor, model, OS, and config into the car and check if everything works. That’s what would be required to actually ensure functionality.
His good points here are undermined by the profane, emotional high-cortisol crashout. There’s a place for well-written, witty diatribes and polemics, but throwing F-bombs and F-yous into complaints is not that.
I've been lately into mobile apps and i am finding that there is no system which combines these 3
1. AOT
2. JIT (for hot paths)
3. Interpreter for non JIT paths or where you explicitly do not want jit.
Imagine, a system which compiles your app to AOT but when you push OTA update, part of the app are selectively replaced to JIT or Interpreted mode.
it's theoretically possible but nobody seems to be doing it. I found react native / expo eas update but i don't think it's like this, it has a Hermes VM which runs bytecode but it has no JIT so you'll write native code for hot path then you'll need to upload a full update to Android. So, only toy level code performance can be can actually be written in JS?
Much better, patch the parts where AOT calls into JIT or interpreter.
Currently i am using react native and flutter. Flutter's UI framework code is in Dart if you load this whole code into JIT, it will consume a lot of resources on mobile device as the framework is big.
But what if we could run the most of the code in AOT and only run changed code in JIT or interpreted mode? arguably it would perform as good as it does not being complete AOT while also providing react native like fast updates.
The article is a lovely cathartic rant against agile software development methodologies applied in the wrong place in the wrong way, whether or not the software(s) in question used such methods. On of the worst assumptions, I believe, is that the end-user is willing and able to function as testing/QA without detriment to the product and company.
This is a general belief of our current version of capitalism. As much work as possible is outsourced to the user, the gains are captured by the company.
The practical solution here would be closing the feedback loop with customers. The business does want happy customers, it's important they return to purchase in 5 years. The problem with car companies is that they don't get immediate feedback (telemetry, tickets, etc) when they do push an issue. And they obviously don't have gradual roll outs the way tesla does.
Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published, follow Tesla's model which has been very reliable within the industry
Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published...
I don't know how the rules work in the UK or Ireland where the author is, but the US has no such mandatory testing. Also, all manufacturers have telemetry these days and the ones I'm familiar with all do gradual rollouts (to varying levels of competence). You basically can't do immediate rollout given the scales involved.
Please don't take this as suggesting any of them are good at software, mind you.
You're right the facilities may be there for telemetry & feedback, but none of the Tesla competitors are structured to manage that telemetry and feedback. Often the brands are repackaging software from vendors (e.g. Bosch) that are terrible at fixing things.
Let's face it, this really is about Tesla, vs the rest of the major players (ford, kia, VW etc)
Obviously I'm under NDA, but the data I've seen at $(OEM) was down to the level of variant tracking and real time geolocation. The commercial fleet management programs can do things like scheduled updates and know what hardware/software is in each component of each vehicle, which the manufacturer has to keep track of anyway for recall purposes.
The most expensive appliances (particularly stoves) are the ones with no LCD screens. "Smart" TVs are often cheaper then dumb ones. People have learned that software does not always make things better. Anything that has code in it I assume will last for about three years. In practice that's a little less then the average but a safe assumption.
Does MINI make their own software? I thought it was the same as BMWs with another skin. My BMW gets quarterly updates. Only once in the past year I've had it did I notice anything new (new voice assistant), otherwise it just resets my driver screen and sets my interior lighting on full blast every time it updates.
If Android Auto stopped working I'd also be livid because I don't use the built in crap.
Kia just did this with their EV9 update - it broke CarPlay with a blank screen a few minutes into driving, which then reverted itself a minute later. Another OTA mostly resolved it. Neither of these updates explained what happened or what the fix was.
Let me be a devil's advocate here: you have essentially two options.
1. You write release notes thet contain technical details. Less than 1% of your customers understand them. More than 90% probably won't even care, let alone understand the document. And then there are the folks who get confused or scared and reach out to customer support with weird questions. This generates extra workload.
2. You explain nothing. The release simply is. The technically minded people are mildly annoyed. A few customers affected by open issues wonder if it's fixed now. The rest of them doesn't even care that there is an uodate and carries on with their lives. Customer service continues to complain about the usual bunch of random and weird customer issues.
It's quite natural to start doing (2) in a consumer facing business, isn't it?
Most people with experience in the tech industry would say that LLMs will make it worse. They make more mistakes than a human, faster than a human, but get treated (by management) as preferred to a human. The end result was never going to be more reliable software.
> Everything you create should be an artistic endeavour aiming for perfection.
Amen. If you go to a bakery, you expect them to care. If you hire a photographer, you expect them to care. Software isn’t (usually) a factory line; CRUD may be similar concepts throughout, but everyone is making it themselves.
You still did not learn the lesson? Once you take possession of a fixed-function appliance, NEVER EVER EVER take any updates, and do not connect it to the internet (CarPlay does not require internet connectivity in the car). Do not buy fixed-function appliances that require internet, that is what computers are for.
88 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 40.2 ms ] threadSomeone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.
It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user.
If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.
Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit.
Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.
Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.
their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.
It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.
you can pin your Bluetooth app with drag-n drop , never used car link so not sure if that's an app or an icon.
glovebox is the real annoying item i can confirm is a 100% weird design choice. I still love pin in valet mode so that my items are not stolen.
Would you mind uploading a picture of this "almost full screen"?
> even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands.
Yeah, sure. "We removed about 40% of the screen, but don't worry, you still have a lot of screen left!"
I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPlay today that Tesla will never add to their infotainment system.
Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)
automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym
send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself
proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.
Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?
Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced.
In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.
wait, you're serious? let me laugh even harder
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Software is not solved. Writing trite code of the kind that has been written millions of times before is somewhat solved, if you are willing to never maintain it.
Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.
This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.
This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved.
It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.
Hello, Elon
Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.
Today there’s no disc, no recall - that cost to shipping broken software is gone. We the users pay the price.
Arguably the peak quality after a few months/years of fixes is better, but that doesn't really matter because usage is front-loaded
The disks were very expensive and if you didn’t update them it wouldn’t know about new roads (slower trip, missed turns, etc).
Jeep already had an OTA the broke the ability for the car to be driven.
Don't put discrete, isolated HW functions behind a SW powered screen. It's that simple.
It's practically impossible to test every permutation of code against every system. Maybe AI can help, but practically it'll just mean the software gets more complicated, with more features. And to top it all off, more and more features get regulated, so they have to be there. The rear-view camera requirement in particular, since you need a screen to see the output. And if you have a screen... well it's an already paid cost, so, might as well display other things too.
We should kill the reg.
I don't think they're saving that much by ditching them and going to SW.
They also didn't need updates (well, the Bluetooth module may have, but nothing else).
It definitely was nice not to have to worry whether the climate control may stop working because the radio was modified. Or because of any update.
As a driver, dumping everything into one SW system has significantly degraded my experience. What I gain ("Ooh, I can now use Waze on a bigger screen!") is minimal.
> The latter can be done with a CI pipeline for pennies worth of compute in a fraction of a working day.
I'd appreciate the point if they were successful at it. As it is, they're not. It's rare to find a non-buggy car.
See also: the article linked to this thread.
Many cars have AC controls on the screen only.
Older cars (that still had touch sensitive displays), simply had separate HW modules and HW interfaces (buttons/switches) for the rest. You never had to worry that modifying/repairing/updating one would impact the other.
All the hardware pieces are installed at build time
An update which advertised, amongst other features, that it "rectifies errors and prevents security gaps" and stated "This update is recommended for everyone."
Borderline insane to refer to the user as "complicit" in that case.
They are far better.
BYD reliability and support leaves European cars for dead.
(This software building code is more necessary for software used in critical infrastructure. But it should also be applied to consumer devices as basic protection for consumers against manufacturers breaking functionality the consumer paid for)
I've been lately into mobile apps and i am finding that there is no system which combines these 3
1. AOT 2. JIT (for hot paths) 3. Interpreter for non JIT paths or where you explicitly do not want jit.
Imagine, a system which compiles your app to AOT but when you push OTA update, part of the app are selectively replaced to JIT or Interpreted mode.
it's theoretically possible but nobody seems to be doing it. I found react native / expo eas update but i don't think it's like this, it has a Hermes VM which runs bytecode but it has no JIT so you'll write native code for hot path then you'll need to upload a full update to Android. So, only toy level code performance can be can actually be written in JS?
Much better, patch the parts where AOT calls into JIT or interpreter.
Currently i am using react native and flutter. Flutter's UI framework code is in Dart if you load this whole code into JIT, it will consume a lot of resources on mobile device as the framework is big.
But what if we could run the most of the code in AOT and only run changed code in JIT or interpreted mode? arguably it would perform as good as it does not being complete AOT while also providing react native like fast updates.
The article is a lovely cathartic rant against agile software development methodologies applied in the wrong place in the wrong way, whether or not the software(s) in question used such methods. On of the worst assumptions, I believe, is that the end-user is willing and able to function as testing/QA without detriment to the product and company.
See also self-checkout etc.
Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published, follow Tesla's model which has been very reliable within the industry
Please don't take this as suggesting any of them are good at software, mind you.
Let's face it, this really is about Tesla, vs the rest of the major players (ford, kia, VW etc)
If Android Auto stopped working I'd also be livid because I don't use the built in crap.
1. You write release notes thet contain technical details. Less than 1% of your customers understand them. More than 90% probably won't even care, let alone understand the document. And then there are the folks who get confused or scared and reach out to customer support with weird questions. This generates extra workload.
2. You explain nothing. The release simply is. The technically minded people are mildly annoyed. A few customers affected by open issues wonder if it's fixed now. The rest of them doesn't even care that there is an uodate and carries on with their lives. Customer service continues to complain about the usual bunch of random and weird customer issues.
It's quite natural to start doing (2) in a consumer facing business, isn't it?
Absolutely.
But also don't break my stuff.
"Bug fixes and performance improvements "
Even worse than the "reformat" commit message that your bisect landed on.
Which is never, unless something is broken.
Having rolling releases for a CAR is absolutely stupid.
Amen. If you go to a bakery, you expect them to care. If you hire a photographer, you expect them to care. Software isn’t (usually) a factory line; CRUD may be similar concepts throughout, but everyone is making it themselves.
Give a shit about what you make.