I read an article on automotive (micro)processors or, "My Ode to Ford Dev Teams"

[ScrappyLaptop]

Came across an interesting IEEE article with links to other interesting articles regarding the electronic side of vehicles today & going forward. I've been involved in software development processes in one role or another my entire career and the most complex project I've worked on feels like a hobbyist playing with an Arduino compared to embedded vehicle code & communications. It really points out why Ford is "slowly" (if you listen to e-vehicle pundits) easing into electric vehicles. To put it simply, Ford clearly intends to do so without losing reliability or raising risk. Or market share, which the company seems to innately understand is tied to the other two.

If only they made them, I would buy corporate & personal phones, workstations or network systems made by Ford's dev teams in a heartbeat - even it if was 100% proprietary - because I know it would be rock solid in every dimension measured. It feels a bit like NASA's work, but with the added requirement of being made for mass consumer markets. To be honest, regardless of methods used, it feels from my consumer perspective like the sort of expected project & code quality I came to expect in my first decade of my career, long before poorly implemented concepts like agile & disposable code and really-crappy-apps-as-front-ends came along. If that reads as a mild calling-out of Tesla's seat-of-the-pants engineering (superlative as some of it is), so be it. I happen to be proud of the company that made my truck and how they are doing things.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/software-eating-car

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[Tom_C]

Came across an interesting IEEE article with links to other interesting articles regarding the electronic side of vehicles today & going forward. I've been involved in software development processes in one role or another my entire career and the most complex project I've worked on feels like a hobbyist playing with an Arduino compared to embedded vehicle code & communications. It really points out why Ford is "slowly" (if you listen to e-vehicle pundits) easing into electric vehicles. To put it simply, Ford clearly intends to do so without losing reliability or raising risk. Or market share, which the company seems to innately understand is tied to the other two.

If only they made them, I would buy corporate & personal phones, workstations or network systems made by Ford's dev teams in a heartbeat - even it if was 100% proprietary - because I know it would be rock solid in every dimension measured. It feels a bit like NASA's work, but with the added requirement of being made for mass consumer markets. To be honest, regardless of methods used, it feels from my consumer perspective like the sort of expected project & code quality I came to expect in my first decade of my career, long before poorly implemented concepts like agile & disposable code and really-crappy-apps-as-front-ends came along. If that reads as a mild calling-out of Tesla's seat-of-the-pants engineering (superlative as some of it is), so be it. I happen to be proud of the company that made my truck and how they are doing things.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/advanced-cars/software-eating-car

In a previous life I worked in electronics and then semi conductor manufacturing. I'm now in network engineering.

I'm not sure I understand where you're going with you point. Can you explain? I quickly glanced over the linked article and gleaned it was talking about processing horsepower, but not sure where that was in your point? Not trying to be argumentative, but I'm interested.

 

[D Fresh]

If only they made them, I would buy corporate & personal phones, workstations or network systems made by Ford's dev teams in a heartbeat - even it if was 100% proprietary - because I know it would be rock solid in every dimension measured.

Apparently you've never used Sync.

 

[Radioman]

Apparently you've never used Sync.

Or visited Ford's website for owners...

 

[RedlandRanger]

In a previous life I worked in electronics and then semi conductor manufacturing. I'm now in network engineering.

I'm not sure I understand where you're going with you point. Can you explain? I quickly glanced over the linked article and gleaned it was talking about processing horsepower, but not sure where that was in your point? Not trying to be argumentative, but I'm interested.

I too work in IT and have for over 30 years. The items in the article were no big surprise to me. We have gone from hardware controlling things to most everything being controlled by software now - I understand why - software is MUCH easier to do and VERY flexible. I think this is the biggest reason the amount of code in a car is increasing. The downside is there is an attitude of "its just software, if we find a problem we can issue a fix" - when issuing fixes have very low cost (over the air) it encourages sloppy engineering, IMO.

One of the comments in the article was about complexity of the software but I think a big piece of that is there are VERY few qualified technical people - most companies are outsourcing offshore to the lowest price bidder which produces absolute garbage software. It may function for the original intent but it is impossible to maintain and enhance - and the process just keeps repeating itself - it becomes a game of "whack a mole".

I'm not seeing Ford do anything significantly different in this area - Look at Sync for a great "failure" of consumer software - it is customer facing but it has TONS of issues with updates. These forums are littered with postings of people not being able to do updates and having all sorts of odd issues with it.

I'm curious what you see Ford doing that is so much different (and better) than other manufacturers? Personally, I think Ford is doing OK compared to other manufacturers, but that isn't saying a whole lot - I don't see a huge improvement in engineering related to software at Ford.

 

[P. A. Schilke]

I too work in IT and have for over 30 years. The items in the article were no big surprise to me. We have gone from hardware controlling things to most everything being controlled by software now - I understand why - software is MUCH easier to do and VERY flexible. I think this is the biggest reason the amount of code in a car is increasing. The downside is there is an attitude of "its just software, if we find a problem we can issue a fix" - when issuing fixes have very low cost (over the air) it encourages sloppy engineering, IMO.

One of the comments in the article was about complexity of the software but I think a big piece of that is there are VERY few qualified technical people - most companies are outsourcing offshore to the lowest price bidder which produces absolute garbage software. It may function for the original intent but it is impossible to maintain and enhance - and the process just keeps repeating itself - it becomes a game of "whack a mole".

I'm not seeing Ford do anything significantly different in this area - Look at Sync for a great "failure" of consumer software - it is customer facing but it has TONS of issues with updates. These forums are littered with postings of people not being able to do updates and having all sorts of odd issues with it.

I'm curious what you see Ford doing that is so much different (and better) than other manufacturers? Personally, I think Ford is doing OK compared to other manufacturers, but that isn't saying a whole lot - I don't see a huge improvement in engineering related to software at Ford.

Hi Rob,

A back story, Ford was investigating the use of a increased energy density battery in 1988, A sodium/Sulfur battery. One of my co workers left Ford Truck to be part of a program to use these batteries in an Aerostar installation with electric motor front wheel drive. The battery...huge as it was operated at a temperature of 450° F. The software created to handle these batteries and the electric Aerostar was, at the time, was the most complex ever created by Ford. The year was 1988. So Dick K plunged into this arena. There were some problems with NVH that needed sorting and as a NVH Technical Expert, I got involved. I was bowled over by the electrical complexity of this package and to keep the battery at operating temperature at all times was a daunting task. The software would use the batteries own power to keep itself warm, for example. So driving one of these prototypes was quite strange...very quiet powertrain that included squeaks and rattles and whine and moan NVH... So I drove one of these vehicles home over night. I parked it in my unattached garage next to my race car. It was making all sort of noises...fans whirring. I wondered if it was a smart thing to do. I plugged it into my 220V welding outlet. Closed the door and bid the prototype good night. Next morning I started my drive to work and the vehicle had alarms etc going off...beeps, chimes and so on. I kept driving and made it to my building. There it failed... no motive power. So it was towed back to the off site program building for diagnosis. Never got a report on what went wrong, but shortly afterwards several prototypes caught fire, one that took out a Ford Program Chief Engineers house as it was in an attached garage. Was not too long after that the program was scrapped. I then found out from Dick I was lucky my garage did not burn down... Whew.... It was suspected the software to keep the battery warm was at fault, but never validated with good reason...Sodium sulfur was not ready for prime time.....

Best,
Phil Schilke
Ranger Vehicle Engineering
Ford Motor Co. Retired

 

[dmeyer302]

Cool story Phil, I hadn’t heard about the EV Aerostar. We had an Aerostar as mom’s car when I was a kid so I’m more interested in it than I should be

http://www.evalbum.com/517

http://books.google.com/books?id=qu...ok_result&ct=result&resnum=21&ved=0CEgQ6AEwFA

 

[RedlandRanger]

Hi Rob,

A back story, Ford was investigating the use of a increased energy density battery in 1988, A sodium/Sulfur battery. One of my co workers left Ford Truck to be part of a program to use these batteries in an Aerostar installation with electric motor front wheel drive. The battery...huge as it was operated at a temperature of 450° F. The software created to handle these batteries and the electric Aerostar was, at the time, was the most complex ever created by Ford. The year was 1988. So Dick K plunged into this arena. There were some problems with NVH that needed sorting and as a NVH Technical Expert, I got involved. I was bowled over by the electrical complexity of this package and to keep the battery at operating temperature at all times was a daunting task. The software would use the batteries own power to keep itself warm, for example. So driving one of these prototypes was quite strange...very quiet powertrain that included squeaks and rattles and whine and moan NVH... So I drove one of these vehicles home over night. I parked it in my unattached garage next to my race car. It was making all sort of noises...fans whirring. I wondered if it was a smart thing to do. I plugged it into my 220V welding outlet. Closed the door and bid the prototype good night. Next morning I started my drive to work and the vehicle had alarms etc going off...beeps, chimes and so on. I kept driving and made it to my building. There it failed... no motive power. So it was towed back to the off site program building for diagnosis. Never got a report on what went wrong, but shortly afterwards several prototypes caught fire, one that took out a Ford Program Chief Engineers house as it was in an attached garage. Was not too long after that the program was scrapped. I then found out from Dick I was lucky my garage did not burn down... Whew.... It was suspected the software to keep the battery warm was at fault, but never validated with good reason...Sodium sulfur was not ready for prime time.....

Best,
Phil Schilke
Ranger Vehicle Engineering
Ford Motor Co. Retired

Wow - cool story. Good thing your garage didn't burn down!

Ford does a GREAT job at engineering the mechanicals of a vehicle, but software is a VERY different beast and it is really hard to do well. There is "software engineering" which is attempting to bring traditional engineering discipline to the software world, but in my experience, it has not been terribly successful. Cheap, throwaway software riddled with bugs seems to be the norm these days - and it is getting worse, not better.

 

[Trigganometry]

Back when I entered the world of PC’s and programming the amount of working memory and storage space was limited. 512 memory and a 10 meg hard drive was living large. What this did though was to have developers write the cleanest and smallest code possible. For that reason things were tested well and proven out before release to public. God forbid you launched junk!

Fast forward to today. Just write something that works close to what we want and we can patch it later. Who cares how big it is, add more memory then.

I do robotics and automation now. Especially the robots, finding a bit of code that is off is mind numbing. If I can I will program my own PLC’s in the old ways. When associates look at what I have done the first comment I usually hear is “I can’t believe how small your program is to do this task”

I built devices 15 years ago using these principles. They still are humming along today without errors!

 

[ryyck]

Back when I entered the world of PC’s and programming the amount of working memory and storage space was limited. 512 memory and a 10 meg hard drive was living large. What this did though was to have developers write the cleanest and smallest code possible. For that reason things were tested well and proven out before release to public. God forbid you launched junk!

Fast forward to today. Just write something that works close to what we want and we can patch it later. Who cares how big it is, add more memory then.

I do robotics and automation now. Especially the robots, finding a bit of code that is off is mind numbing. If I can I will program my own PLC’s in the old ways. When associates look at what I have done the first comment I usually hear is “I can’t believe how small your program is to do this task”

I built devices 15 years ago using these principles. They still are humming along today without errors!

My youngest son is an EE. Worked on Lockheed projects, dark projects, communication security and now in corporate security IT.
His sentiments are the same...lots of wanna-be with no talent. It drives him nuts...even at his level.

 

[gfitzge2]

Back when I entered the world of PC’s and programming the amount of working memory and storage space was limited. 512 memory and a 10 meg hard drive was living large. What this did though was to have developers write the cleanest and smallest code possible. For that reason things were tested well and proven out before release to public. God forbid you launched junk!

Fast forward to today. Just write something that works close to what we want and we can patch it later. Who cares how big it is, add more memory then.

I do robotics and automation now. Especially the robots, finding a bit of code that is off is mind numbing. If I can I will program my own PLC’s in the old ways. When associates look at what I have done the first comment I usually hear is “I can’t believe how small your program is to do this task”

I built devices 15 years ago using these principles. They still are humming along today without errors!

Rick. I am intrigued by your answer. I spent 28 years as an electrician in a Ford assembly plant. Specializing in robots. We used kawasaki and fanuc robots and allen bradly plc. Of course PLCS are the controlling force in industrial automation. As you know plc logic was commissioned by GM to replace relay logic and mimics contact and coils so that it would look fimiliar to the electricians already trained to trouble shoot equipment. Using more advanced programming techniques can yield some very efficient and reliable logic, but often confounds those trouble shooting.
I learned the hard way. After some advanced programming training, I was given the job to write the program for a small system. I used all my new skills. It was beautiful. Or so I thought. When the machine would malfunction for any reason ( often just a valve or solonoid) they would take a look at the logic, begin to curse and then call me.
I eventually re did the program in basic relay ladder logic. No more calls

 

[AdamHarris]

Ok I don’t get all this Sync hate on here. I’m impressed with its look, user friendliness, speed, etc. I’m certainly not one of you infotainment snobs though since I’ve had mostly old vehicles until now. I love how it handles calls and texts through the system etc. it’s not perfect (something is Still turning my iPhones volume down every time it links up to Sync) but it ain’t bad. Updates are always difficult to manage on almost any piece of computer equipment seems like.

 

[JesseS]

Ok I don’t get all this Sync hate on here. I’m impressed with its look, user friendliness, speed, etc. I’m certainly not one of you infotainment snobs though since I’ve had mostly old vehicles until now. I love how it handles calls and texts through the system etc. it’s not perfect (something is Still turning my iPhones volume down every time it links up to Sync) but it ain’t bad. Updates are always difficult to manage on almost any piece of computer equipment seems like.

HA! I am still chasing that gremlin myself, every time i link to sync my iPhone volume is reduced to 20%, if I forget to turn it up I miss texts and notifications as I am old and my hearing sn't the best. (I blame that on the Army big guns)

 

[Trigganometry]

HA! I am still chasing that gremlin myself, every time i link to sync my iPhone volume is reduced to 20%, if I forget to turn it up I miss texts and notifications as I am old and my hearing sn't the best. (I blame that on the Army big guns)

Check to see if you have adaptive volume control on. It will adjust volume for amount of noise in the cab. Turn that off and you should find that a non issue.

 

[Tom_C]

Check to see if you have adaptive volume control on. It will adjust volume for amount of noise in the cab. Turn that off and you should find that a non issue.

I thought adaptive volume was speed based? I assume that's in the audio controls on sync3?

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