VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23K: source

Re:VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23K:... by dsfyu404ed on Friday November 09, 2018 @08:14AM (#18414090)

>I believe that their cars having a single central ECU vs. the general trend of multiple interconnected modules is fairly novel for a major car maker?

Ford was doing that in the late 80s when they started making electronically controlled transmissions (and I doubt they were the first). I doubt they were first.

Functionality gets integrated to the ECU. Then engineers decide that the ECU doesn't need to care about the windows and the HVAC so it gets its own module. Then they decide that there's no reason to have all these extra modules when the ECU can just do it. Wash, rinse repeat. Everything old is new again the cycle time is just long enough that most people don't remember.

Edit: Why is this down-voted?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:VW plans to sell electric Tesla rival for less than $23K:... by jacobush on Friday November 09, 2018 @09:08AM (#18414388)

They do decide back and forth, and where I worked the cycle was in large part driven by the dynamics between what features the market wanted (safety classification being an interesting one - this inherently pushes towards dedicated MCUs) and how well a single MCU offering at that moment in time could handle all the features wanted.

Of course, by the time the thing is designed, components are sourced and so on, the pendulum might have well have swung the other way.

[ Parent | on HN ]