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Ford's Badly Needed Plan To Catch Up On Hybrid, Electric Cars (arstechnica.com)
Ford supposedly has a plan to adapt to the changing world of transportation. The company recently announced that it's "going all-in on hybrids," readying six new battery electric vehicles by 2022, with the first due in 2020, and adding more performance versions of its SUV line up. "Additionally, by the end of 2019, every new Ford will have 4G LTE connectivity, and the company is developing a new cloud platform that will deliver over-the-air updates," reports Ars Technica. From the report: New hybrids: "Hybrids for years have been mostly niche products but are now on the cusp of a mainstream breakout," said Jim Farley, Ford president of global markets. "The valuable capability they offer -- plus fuel efficiency -- is why we're going to offer hybrid variants of our most popular and high-volume vehicles, allowing our loyal, passionate customers to become advocates for the technology." So America's best-selling truck (the F-150) will get the ability to act as a mobile generator, something that should come in handy on job sites. Meanwhile, the Mustang will have performance to match the 5.0L V8 version but with more low-down torque, according to Ford. The company says that these new hybrids will be cheaper and more efficient than its current hybrids, via "common cell and component design and by manufacturing motors, transmissions, and battery packs."
New BEVs: We have to wait for those new BEVs, too. The first of these -- an electric performance SUV -- also shows up in 2020, but with five more planned between then and 2022. Ford says that it's "rethinking the ownership experience" as part of this and that over-the-air software updates to add new features will be part of the $11 billion investment plan.
More SUVs, more commercial vehicles, a super Mustang: Other new vehicles on the way include a reborn Ford Bronco SUV and an as-yet unnamed small SUV, but before then we'll get redesigned Explorers and Escapes, due in 2019. Next year, Ford will also bring a new Transit van to the US, and it says advanced driver-assistance systems, like automatic emergency braking and others, will be added to future commercial vehicles like the future E-Series, F-650, F-750, and F59-based vehicles.
New BEVs: We have to wait for those new BEVs, too. The first of these -- an electric performance SUV -- also shows up in 2020, but with five more planned between then and 2022. Ford says that it's "rethinking the ownership experience" as part of this and that over-the-air software updates to add new features will be part of the $11 billion investment plan.
More SUVs, more commercial vehicles, a super Mustang: Other new vehicles on the way include a reborn Ford Bronco SUV and an as-yet unnamed small SUV, but before then we'll get redesigned Explorers and Escapes, due in 2019. Next year, Ford will also bring a new Transit van to the US, and it says advanced driver-assistance systems, like automatic emergency braking and others, will be added to future commercial vehicles like the future E-Series, F-650, F-750, and F59-based vehicles.
...would be a genuine low emissions, super high efficiency diesel engine under the hydrid package. Good electronics and battery tech mean you could optimize the diesel's operating parameters.
It's not really a software / hardware distinction, the problem is more how complicated it gets. When we switched from relay logic to software logic in the production lines I was working on in the 1980 and 1990 the fault rate went way down, because less things were able to break. Plus you didn't have to re-wire the entire cabinet when the logic changed, you could just copy over the software. But of course those processor maybe had 512 bits of input and 128 bits of output, and the software consisted of maybe a few thousand and/or logic instructions and perhaps 1028 bits of RAM to store intermediate results. (and yes, i *mean* 0/1 bits, not bytes or anything else)
But yes, anything that has anything that's even remotely in the the area of "over the air" ... something is *way* to complicated to be trusted with operating machinery in my opinion.
The vast majority of people who buy pickup trucks just do it because it's macho.
They don't need a big engine, they don't tow anything, they don't need a work truck, they don't have to haul anything, they just want to look cool.
Trucks are ideal to be made electric. Plenty of space for batteries, loads of torque at low speeds, and priced right to absorb the battery cost.
The problem is towing long distances, the batteries are just too expensive to do that at this point. For most people, though, a truck is a fashion accessory and they'll be fine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The thing is, OTA updates can give you material improvements. For example, a while after Tesla started shipping dual motor Model S's, an engineer had the idea of "Torque Sleep", wherein you automatically sleep one of the two motors (which have different gear ratios) in low torque demand times, then instantly wake it when traction or accelerator pedal needs require it. Since you have three separate choices on motor operating conitions (double torque on the front motor, double torque on the rear motor (different RPM), or balanced torque between the two), you have three choices of efficiencies, and can choose the most efficient combination. When they pushed out this update, overnight people with dual motor configs got a dozen miles more range.
Here's another: when Model Ss started being rolled out, there obviously wasn't many years of data available about how all of these motors would hold up in the real world, so Tesla had to make conservative assumptions about power limits. Years later, once the data was available, Tesla used OTA updates to raise the limits on a lot of their slower models, improving their acceleration.
Autopilot of course has a huge amount of software development going into it every year. OTA updates deploy this to all owners. Trust me, owners *much* rather this situation than the alternative situation where nobody is allowed to have Autopilot until some unknown future date when it's "flawless" on all roads in all situations and never makes the driver take control. The reality is that there never will be some sort of date when it's "perfect"; there will always be continuous improvements, and you want those improvements in your vehicle.
OTA updates are a good thing.
Is your job to sit under bridges and jump out at unsuspecting travellers?