VW's Software Division, Cariad, Loses More $Billions

insightman

insightman

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What a mess. VW, Audi, and Porsche have had to delay vehicle introductions by more than a year because of problems at Cariad, “The software powerhouse of Volkswagen Group.” The following numbers came from this InsideEVs article:
VW Group’s Cariad Software Division Had A Bad Year. Again

In 2023, Cariad posted an operating loss of $2.6 billion.
In 2024, Cariad posted an operating loss of $2.64 billion.
Over the past 3 years, the total loss is over $7.5 billion.

Not for the first time, Cariad is laying off employees. This year, 1,600 people will be jetisoned. Desperate to get their EVs into production, VW had to fork over $5.8 billion to Rivian to get access to Rivian's EV software.

VW created Cariad in 2020 to develop a uniform operating system and a uniform electrical architecture for the Volkswagen Group’s upcoming vehicles. Now, instead of a uniform anything, both Cariad and Rivian are developing software for the VW Group's EVs.

I drove VW Golfs (well, actually, Rabbits) for years before switching to Honda and now my wonderful MINI Electric. I hoped that VW's ID.GTI concept would become a reality and become my next car, but that hope is fading, due to VW's slipping sales, labor problems in Germany, and the black hole for cash that is Cariad.
 
It seems that "soft" ware is the hard thing to do. There also seems to be a lot of rushing of half baked products not fully tested into the market place. I don't see how laying off more employees from Cariad is going to help this situation unless VW ultimately plans to to bail out of this endeavour and just go with Rivian. I bought the first VW of my life 15 months ago; a 2023 id.4. Clunky software aside I'm really enjoying the car. I'll bet my chances of a major OS upgrade are close to nil. At least the software glitches experienced so far have been annoying rather than catastrophic. I haven't been stranded away from home or anything like that.

The other big software issue is that most dealer techs in spite of "factory training" seem ill equipped when vehicles come in with tech problems. This applies across the board and not just VW
 
At one point, I think they had dreams of autonomous driving - self-driving cars, and they staffed up for this effort. But more recently they have given up on that, and not they need to scale back.

More recently, VW now seems to be able to deliver updates OTA. For a long time that was a sore point with a lot of people. More recent cars have reportedly made architectural changes that prevent the early ID.4 from being upgraded to software version 4 and beyond.
 
ericy said:
At one point, I think they had dreams of autonomous driving - self-driving cars, and they staffed up for this effort. But more recently they have given up on that, and not they need to scale back.

More recently, VW now seems to be able to deliver updates OTA. For a long time that was a sore point with a lot of people. More recent cars have reportedly made architectural changes that prevent the early ID.4 from being upgraded to software version 4 and beyond.
Click to expand...
Is Rivian fixing those things or has Cariad made some actual progress?
 
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