Knowing what you don’t know is the beginning of wisdom. Of course sometimes wisdom comes after repeatedly being whacked with a club. One is less painful.

 

VW subsidiary largely discontinues its own software development

There go future updates on “old” platforms.

 

Truth. Abandoned development platforms get no love. "Throw it all away. It would be cheaper to start from scratch." Been there, and my T-shirt is in tatters.

 

To be clear, VW is countering that this article is off target, and they've said as much in recent public announcements re: Cariad.

Supposedly Cariad will continue to focus on developing software technologies that VW considers are core functions. This is admitting that some software is better left outsourced.

Consider that Bosch designs and manufacturers anti lock braking systems for many brands, they have better economies of scale, and Bosch should also develop the software that runs the ABS system. But because that ABS needs to integrate with the BMS developed by NXP to manage regen, there needs to be a middleman (Cariad) to ensure the necessary communication happens.

Tesla, as I recall, couldn't get the Boschs and Continentals and whomever to play ball for the prices and control they wanted, so they went outside of the established automotive supplier industry and developed novel supply chains of their own. This gave them a level of pricing and software ownership that is unique to Tesla (at least in Western circles) and is what allowed the tight integration they enjoy.

VW would have to nuke existing supplier relationships and start almost from scratch to do something similar, and that would probably be prohibitively expensive (and perhaps costly to support of existing products).

Anyhow I'll not seeing much new in this article, and it seems to be minimizing the software commitments VW says Cariad is sticking with.

 

I guess i still don't see where the Rivian software fits into the picture.

 

There was an interview with Rivian CEO where the collaboration with VW is managed at the CEO level , so I would imagine VW EV platforms will be reset, so there won’t be continuity for existing platforms.
Buying a VW group EV makes little sense now.
If Rivian survives its R2 and R3 will be in direct competition with ID4 size future EV’s.
VW needs to buy Rivian entirely.