Automotive

New Audi CEO Markus Duesmann is assembling a project team entitled "Artemis" whose mission is to develop a new computer-driven vehicle system. Project Artemis will sit alongside the group's Car.Software organization, based in Ingolstadt. The new team will be led by Alexander Hitzinger, who worked at Apple on autonomous vehicles, was responsible for autonomous driving at VW, and built the Porsche team that won Le Mans in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

"Technical development of vehicles is no longer organized according to a vehicle's size, but by the car's electrical and electronic architecture," Duesmann said, explaining that premium/high-value models would differentiate themselves by to their computing power and sensor levels...  "Artemis will be smaller than a Formula One team, with around 200 staff."

 

In addition the Audi CEO job, Duesmann is also head of research at VW Group where more than 10,000 employees are working in research and development in Wolfsburg alone! 

In a similar vein, Honda has hired a software guru from Stanford, who said,  "Software adds tremendous value but was being ignored in Japan. Just look at where the wealth is. It’s in the software area, not in the hardware area. Hardware is more like a commodity, and it’s in software where the major margins are."

Sandy Munro, who tears down cars for a living and analyzes them, just completed his report on the Tesla Model Y, which went on sale in March. It's based on the Model 3's architecture, but has raised the bar.

"I thought the Model 3 was 10 years ahead of everybody else," Munro said after examining the individual components and construction of the Model Y. "Then we tore apart the Model Y, and we're pretty much convinced the Model Y is another three or four years ahead [of the 3]."  A former Ford Motor Co. engineer and manager, Munro has been providing competitive analysis to the auto industry for more than three decades. He markets his piece-by-piece teardowns to automakers and suppliers and is widely quoted for his insights into who is setting benchmarks and who is lagging. 

What do you guys make of this - will the fender be emblazoned with its CPU chip, or processor count, or computer bus names? How will we know how smart the cars are? (and do we care?) Will we give up road tests and just watch Sandy's teardowns? Skip the dealer and order it online for touchless delivery?

As Elon Musk said this week, "Yeah. It seems like the future is really headed towards online ordering. You can always go take a test drive, but a lot of people, the way they get a test drive is from a friend of theirs who has the car. So they are driving the friends' cars and they're like, "Hey, this car's great," and then they just go and order it online while they're still in their friend's car. Literally. From the screen in the car."

Look at the chip population density of the model Y board - it's like comparing London to Manchester or Paris to Lyon, or LA to St Louis, or ...

Cazalea

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