For over 100 years we have striven for engineering excellence in our cars. Get into the seat of a Mercedes and the quality and the craftsmanship speaks for itself. We would like to tell the same story when it comes to the software in our cars. However, 10 years ago we came to realize that using a hardware approach to achieve quality was doomed to fail when it comes to the software side of it. Nowadays, a customer sees a car as a “phone on wheels” and expects the same level of usability, configurability, and ease of use, while being stylish and up-to-date with today’s standards.
First we tried to expand the software supply chain and invest more, but the gap seemed to grow wider. The constant change in expectation towards software in consumer electronic and vehicles combined with a more technologically adapted generation leads to less tolerance for outdated and poorly performing software from our consumers.
This talk sheds some light on how we redefined our entire approach to software development and procurement with an Open-Source-first strategy – from both an engineer and a manager’s perspective.