A complete disaster! VW ID.3 Release Breaks Due to Software Hack

30 Mar

It seems that another big scandal is brewing at Volkswagen: the ID.3 electric hatchback, on which the German manufacturer relied heavily, turned out to be dead born due to a poor-quality digital platform, and so far the model is produced exclusively in the form of “cans”.

There are rumors that VW ID.3 had software problems appeared in the German press last year, and since then the problem has not disappeared, but only worsened – its scale turned out to be such that the model’s release schedule is likely to be disrupted , and Volkswagen will suffer huge losses, including due to an environmental penalty, which was supposed to decrease as a result of the release of a large number of ID.3.

Recall that ID.3 was officially introduced in September last year, and is positioned by the manufacturer as an epoch-making model, comparable in value in the history of Volkswagen with the Beetle and Golf. The fact is that ID.3 is the first truly massive electric car of the German brand, it should have laid the foundation for a huge ID-family of various “electric trains” and become a hit, but, unfortunately, the first pancake turned out to be lumpy, and so, what to digest it still does not work out. Volkswagen e-Bulli: electrifying a classic van

 

The release of VW ID.3 started in Zwickau, Germany last November, taking into account the importance of the event, Angela Merkel herself arrived at the launch ceremony. Based on the high sales of new items, the Chancellor even increased subsidies for the purchase of electric vehicles by 50%. However, as the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung found out, ID.3 hatchbacks still go off the assembly line in the form of “cans”, that is, this is “iron” without electronic filling, that is, a semi-finished product. Volkswagen sends these semi-finished products for storage to a huge open-air warehouse near Leipzig, and there the cars wait until they are revived and sent to dealers. This warehouse last week was filmed by an employee of the Nextmove rental company, which even caused problems with the police. New images of the updated Volkswagen Caddy. Premiere at the end of February

 

So, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung, obtained from a source inside Volkswagen, the situation with the release of ID.3 is catastrophic, the machine is still very far from what can be called a finished product. Volkswagen initially decided, by analogy with Tesla, to develop a completely original digital platform for ID.3 with the possibility of updating “over the air” and other modern “goodies”, but allocated too little time and resources for this matter. Now the software is an absolutely raw product, consisting of several blocks that do not want to work together. If you fill this software in ID.3 in this form, the car simply can not drive and will fail.

The IT directors of Martin Hofmann, who is responsible for this mess, have already been dismissed, and now Volkswagen bosses are in urgent negotiations with Daimler regarding possible cooperation in the field of software that would allow to revive the ID.3 project as soon as possible. The problem is that Daimler is currently conducting similar negotiations with BMW, and cooperation between the two premium manufacturers looks more promising, especially since at the hardware level they started working together at the end of 2018.

In general, Volkswagen was in a difficult situation, frantically looking for experienced programmers who are now in short supply, and most likely will not be able to release 100 thousand ID.3 by the end of this year. Now we are talking about how to begin, as planned, the delivery of cars this summer, but in limited volumes and with greatly truncated capabilities in terms of electronics, which can be expanded in the future when the software is finally “finished”. It’s only clear that for such a crude product, the press will tear Volkswagen to pieces.

There would be no happiness, but misfortune helped. The epidemic of the coronavirus COVID-19 gave Volkswagen a welcome respite, and everything can be attributed to the Chinese infection: a delay in supplies, small circulations and the inability to fulfill the requirements for CO2 emissions. The only question is whether Volkswagen can solve the software problem in force majeure, when other problems are higher than the roof.