More Headwinds for Volkswagen as Software Technology Falls Behind

VW continues to experience serious problems with ID.3 electric vehicle software. Test drivers report 300 errors per day. According to the report, launching cars on the market is in danger.

According to media reports, Volkswagen is struggling with serious software issues with the ID.3 EV. This model is the first production car developed by VW exclusively as an electric car. But the automaker was faced with problems in its creation not for the first time.

In mid-December, Tesmanian reported that ID.3 would be built in a few months without a complete software architecture. According to company reports, cars will be parked in specially rented parking lots. And only in the spring service teams with mobile computer stations will have to install new software for the first 10,000 ID.3.

The second wave of software installation is scheduled for mid-May, with a total of more than 20,000 ID.3 to be converted. Only after that, the newest software can be loaded into the new electric car with the help of updates “over the air”, as it was for a long time with the leader of the US automobile industry Tesla.

Source: Tesla_performance_3/Twitter

But, according to a new report, software problems are still not resolved. But that’s not all: many new problems are added every day. VW experts say that the basic architecture of ID.3 software was “designed too hastily.” Many parts of the system will not understand each other, this will lead to dropouts and other difficulties.

Manager Magazin writes about “hundreds of test drivers” who report new bugs every day - up to 300 bugs per day. Internal negative scenarios mean that the launch of cars in the market will be delayed indefinitely.

More than 10,000 technicians and engineers are currently working on ID.3, including external ones. They have just attracted hundreds of additional experts, such as the best people from Audi and Porsche, who attend production on Mondays and Fridays.

Due to the tightening of control over CO2 emissions, the VW Group CEO Herbert Diess began developing the company's first electric vehicle. The automaker must save 30 grams of CO2 per car in order to achieve EU goals. If this goal is not achieved, then this will lead to fines.

Audis e-tron and Porsche Taycan could also help achieve the goal of reducing CO2 emissions. But Audi also has problems, so it has already lowered its forecasts for the number of cars to be produced. And due to problems in the supply of parts for batteries, the Audi plant in Brussels was forced to temporarily stop production. And with Porsche Taikan things are not going smoothly, as they would like. The automaker is already delaying the delivery of cars.

In fact, the difficulties faced by VW are not unusual. After all, their main problem at the moment is not to create an EV, but to create a "Smart EV".

VW was faced with a shortage of enormous technical and financial resources. Traditional car makers lack highly qualified programmers. And it will be very difficult for them to make up for this shortcoming due to the fact that they don't have a main link.

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk is more than just a company executive. He is the person from whom the basic ideas and vision come, and most importantly, he understands how he will achieve his goals. He has an extraordinary mind, so he can easily understand any subtleties of his business, from management to production processes, including software development.