This misses the fundamental reality of the electronic systems in a car—and the testing required any time they are updated. Cars are not a single SoC (system on a chip) like a phone. Nor are the environmental sensors as rudimentary as those on a phone or watch. The complexity includes the networking of multiple computing units, their interactions, and the provision of user interface to access the user-selectable settings on them.
An "update" to the car is FAR more complex than an update to a phone or a PC. In fact, one reason BMW do not update as frequently as many of us might want is due to all of the things which could go wrong on an update (example: one CU is updated while a related CU fails and now they can't accurately communicate). Such a simple issue can be catastrophic (read: life critical) in a car. It is far from a system where you can, "Reset to factory and try again," as many of us have had to do with consumer devices.
So, it's easy to say, "BMW isn't modern like Apple or Google," when the truth is FAR more complex. Perhaps this is one reason the rumored Apple Car is still a non-product after all these years of supposed development...
this isn’t entirely accurate….
the hardware and software on our car is actually far less complex than that found on a new smartphone. It’s pretty easy to see that, actually. Try an augmented reality app on your smartphone that runs through the camera… there are several. Some of the ones I’ve used when I fly are exceptionally impressive… and they’ve been around for 5-7 years.
the difference is the allowance for, what we call in the industry, “Mean Time Between Failure.” For
liability reasons, it pays for a car manufacturer to make a more
simple system that has a lower MTBF. Some manufacturers are able to maintain an industry standard of lower MTBF and also integrate more advanced software and hardware. Ie- “better features.”
BMW has kept to their hardware/software setup of individual ECU’s (non-federated) and a proprietary software strategy that hasn’t really changed markedly over the past 15 or so years since I’ve been looking at it.
The result for BMW is a defined amount of risk for the
company (as well as the consumer to a certain extent)…. But the price for that defined risk is essentially an automatic obsolescence the day the vehicle is purchased.
This is good and bad imo. Good: you know what you’ve got. Bad: the experience will not adapt over time to fit “modern” standards.
Tesla is really the only company to try to go down a different hardware/software approach that more mimics a smartphone- and it’s impressive what they’ve been able to do. I thought BMW was going down that path too- and they may very well be…. But not with the pre 2024 I4’s… in the code- the 2022 and 2023 are using the “old” philosophy- staying safe, and being prudent.
why? Because they can. They don’t have to “prove” anything just yet. At some point that may change- but the company doesn’t feel threatened enough just yet to do so.
