Engineering Explained. This is bad.

[TahoeMichael]

Majority of software problems are not key card or fob related, even if many are manifesting as such to an average user. I'm 100% convinced that wide range of manifestations actually points to a single or a small number of related deeper bugs in vehicle communication protocol and/or real time events processing. In other words, multiple subsystems and low level controllers are failing to stay in sync or failing to communicate real time status changes to the central brain. Impossible to know if comms stack can be tuned up to perfection or needs to be thrown out and redone from scratch, but I feel confident it's all fixable in software once the right skills are acquired and mobilized by Lucid's management.

I tend to agree. I've been following the conversation here about the Gravity more than the Air, because it's a GGT I'm thinking of buying. One can't make any definitive diagnosis without more context, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Gravity's problems have a common denominator in a core communications library that has problems with message delivery and synchronization. In general, it seems like the OTA updates for the Gravity have made almost no progress on most of the bugs, and only delivered some improvements in how the fob is handled. My hope is that the team hasn't been twiddling their thumbs, but rather is prepping an OTA update that address problems across many modules, and requires a lot of time for careful testing as a result. Of course, lingering problems with the Air after years of work might be a counter-argument for there just being a lot of discrete bugs that are thus inherently tedious to address.

 

[TahoeMichael]

Actually, the turn signal sounds are the perfect way to asses the OS. "Some jitter" is not something human should be able to hear. "Some jitter" means millisecond more or less. That's not what I hear.

I really wish I was able to see if the blinkers follow the sound, but I am too lazy to set that experiment up. My suspicion is that the tempo (or the lack of a tempo) is the same.

Well then, I can say with confidence that QNX does a great job with its real time process and event scheduling. The inconsistency you notice is all about how QNX is being used, and not a flaw inherent to QNX.

 

[tarator]

Well then, I can say with confidence that QNX does a great job with its real time process and event scheduling. The inconsistency you notice is all about how QNX is being used, and not a flaw inherent to QNX.

Of course, I am holding it wrong...

 

[DreamTour]

Majority of software problems are not key card or fob related, even if many are manifesting as such to an average user. I'm 100% convinced that wide range of manifestations actually points to a single or a small number of related deeper bugs in vehicle communication protocol and/or real time events processing. In other words, multiple subsystems and low level controllers are failing to stay in sync or failing to communicate real time status changes to the central brain. Impossible to know if comms stack can be tuned up to perfection or needs to be thrown out and redone from scratch, but I feel confident it's all fixable in software once the right skills are acquired and mobilized by Lucid's management.

That is my take too, it’s underlying architectural issues especially with the car waking up / sleeping. A brute force way to do it is to just keep the computers on but then vampire drain.

It’s not something you can just ask a coding agent to go find a bug on because it’s not just a logic / syntax oversight it’s how all the subsystems work with each other.

 

[DrZorro]

The Marques Browning video on Xiaomi is, I believe, a true foreshadowing of how the future will play out. Here's a new car company, with its first model released not even 2 years ago, and the software is fast, on point, and apparently almost bug-free. "A $42,000 car that feels like a $75,000 car."

The Xiaomi SU7 shows that automotive software can be done quickly and efficiently and relatively bug-free.

Sure, the car doesn't compete in Lucid's market, but that's only because Xiaomi doesn't want to play in that market - at least not yet. The market is pretty small, after all.

Ironically, the greatness of Xiaomi and other Chinese automakers is, I think, why Elon pivoted Tesla to concentrate on FSD, robotaxis, and robotics. He correctly saw that Tesla couldn't compete in the low end of the market, and probably not even in the mid-market for long. He gave up on the high end of the market years ago and instead put all those engineering marbles into pickups (what could be more American and non-Chinese?), but blew it not just with the vehicle design, but with his own reputation. He once thought Tesla would sell 250,000 CyberTrucks in 2025, but they'll be lucky to sell 20,000. But, that's for another forum.

As far as Lucid goes, the high end of the automotive market is tough. Is Lucid competing with Mercedes or Mayback? With Aston Martin or Lambo (who now makes an SUV - the Urus - too)?

I watched the video too. The Xiaomi's software looks lightyears ahead of Lucid and seems to not have bugs. It basically looks like it's running an android tablet with an app for all the car functions. Much simpler and they didn't have to reinvent the wheel. I don't understand why Lucid keeps trying to reinvent the wheel. They should have gone a similar route or outsourced parts of it for help.

I left a reply to Nick Twork's comment on the EE video and told him that the Lucid software team needs to watch that video so they at least have an idea of where things need to be. I get the idea that the software team is all over the place with poor leadership and oversight. If Lucid wants to survive longterm, they don't just need stable, reliable software, they need to leapfrog everyone and become innovate and offer things that nobody else is doing to add value to the car and brand--like Xaiomi's phone mirroring and nav instructions through the headrest.

 

[gaskiller]

Majority of software problems are not key card or fob related, even if many are manifesting as such to an average user. I'm 100% convinced that wide range of manifestations actually points to a single or a small number of related deeper bugs in vehicle communication protocol and/or real time events processing. In other words, multiple subsystems and low level controllers are failing to stay in sync or failing to communicate real time status changes to the central brain. Impossible to know if comms stack can be tuned up to perfection or needs to be thrown out and redone from scratch, but I feel confident it's all fixable in software once the right skills are acquired and mobilized by Lucid's management.

Yeah. But they are taking toooooo llllong to address these issues. They drag their feet!

As a customer and investor, I don’t care how difficult it is, just get the job done! Pay more, hire the right people and take software more seriously instead of dumping a half baked product on your customers. And stop being silent. CEO needs to own up and tell us what the heck they are doing about it.

They have one more chance, otherwise say bye bye to this company. Listening Marc?

 

[L-Dude]

I read threads like this and I feel like everyone is driving a different car than I am. Is my car perfect? No, in fact I had to wait three seconds in the rain today for the handles to present. BFD. The overhead view of the backup camera took a few seconds to load. Do I care? No, the car is phenomenal. It's not perfect, but neither are my computers, my TVs, my garage door openers, my irrigation system, etc etc etc. The car is great and has been getting better in the time that I've owned it. My TV isn't getting better. My computers aren't getting better (although now they are changing features just for the sake of changing features), and my irrigation system DEFINTELY is not getting better.

This place is exactly like the Audi forums I used to frequent. Everyone blows up every little thing about the car. And I can tell you there are way more people there "lemoning" their cars than here.

Here's something else that gets very little play here: there is an ongoing cry for Lucid to "do something!" Didn't they just replace their head of engineering and several other high level execs around the time of their last earnings call? To me, that is pretty significant, and definitely comes under the category of doing something.

I think Lucid is selling cars faster than they can make them--at least last time I looked (at the Airs, not the Gravities). One YT video isn't going to sink the company.

 

[DrZorro]

Yeah. But they are taking toooooo llllong to address these issues. They drag their feet!

As a customer and investor, I don’t care how difficult it is, just get the job done! Pay more, hire the right people and take software more seriously instead of dumping a half baked product on your customers. And stop being silent. CEO needs to own up and tell us what the heck they are doing about it.

They have one more chance, otherwise say bye bye to this company. Listening Marc?

I agree... With the limited money they have, the money the are paying Timothee and the basketball players could have gone to hiring a whole new team of ambitious innovative college software grads to fix the problems.

 

[Nunya]

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Gravity's problems have a common denominator in a core communications library that has problems with message delivery and synchronization.

Exactly my thoughts too. These can be difficult to debug and can hypothetically rationalize the difference from car to car. But even with that it's just an excuse. This is clearly a management issue.

Has any Lucid management acknowledged these bugs and made a commitment to prioritize fixing them? That would go a long way. I've not seen it. Almost sounds like Elmo's style of refusing to talk to customers - not a good role model. Maybe a stock holder can directly ask at the next stockholders meeting.

Still don't have an order in. Not sure I want to risk it being in the 5% (more or less, who knows?) that have non-trivial issues with their new Gravities. That's too high of a risk for me. they need to set my expectations or I will do it based on many anecdotal reports here. And if they can't get cars to consustently unlock, start, music that plays properly, screens that take too long to turn on, freezing screens, false idiot lights, self-moving seats, or corrupted driver profiles - how can they even consider hands free or more? First SAE level 4? Not sure that's ever going to happen with the current CEO. I'd suggest he consider stepping down.

 

[jbawden]

To be fair, Lucid didn't follow the roadmap of Tesla. Early Tesla hardware was a real shit-show. Individual vehicles could be fine, but the overall hardware engineering, manufacturing, and quality control was amateur hour. To a lesser degree, Tesla struggles with that even today. Lucid seems to be doing much much better in that regard. What they failed to recognize is that software is both important and hard, and requires a substantial investment.

Failing to recognize that software is incredibly difficult is a common problem with hardware people, and Peter Rawlinson is apparently not unusual in that regard. These days, hardware people usually know how to program. They whip out a couple thousand lines of code to solve some problem they have, and they think "gee, pretty easy compared to my day job!". They fail to recognize that a billion lines (or more!) of code is a completely different problem, particularly when that consists of multiple million+ line modules written by different organizations who never expected their modules to have to work together. They also don't understand that the discipline of software engineering just doesn't look like hardware engineering. The software industry has long prioritized feature bloat over reliability and quality, and that goes right down into the academic programs that produce new software engineers. Disciplines like design-for-testability effectively don't exist in the software world. That means that when you actually want a highly reliable software system, you're engaging in hire-wire work, while engineering for reliability is table-stakes in the hardware world.

I think this post really sums up how we got here and is validated by the fact that efficiency, driving dynamics, NVH, and all related hardware executions are nearly universally praised. Software? Not so much.

 

[Crossbar5]

Lucid switched to Marquardt (MB's supplier) for the Gravity key fobs . . . but we all know how that went.

Mercedes hasn't used that supplier since 2012.

 

[HC_79]

I remember early in model 3's rollout they had a lot of quality issues, poor fitment, production delays etc the whole "production hell" phase. While I'm not a fan of Elon at all, I give him tons of credit for how he personally became involved in troubleshooting the production issues, and if I recall correctly, he slept at the factory for weeks etc, as resolving this issue was critical for Tesla's financial future.

People working at Tesla have disputed this claim. Elon made out he was practically living at the factory when he wasn’t. It was more a PR stunt than him actually doing anything useful.

I don't know Nick, he might be a great person. But being the head of communication and knowing how well Lucid communicates, he is clearly not very good at his job.

Communication can certainly be better but keep in mind they’re publicly traded so they do need to be careful what they do and don’t say. Clearly the software issues are getting to a point that Lucid just needs to fall in the sword and admit publicly it’s got a problem and what they’re doing/going to do to fix it along with a timeline. We’re beyond the “soon” statements now. They’ve have years to address this behind the scenes and are still struggling so they now need to fess up to the owners what they’re actually doing to fix and when.

 

[TahoeMichael]

People working at Tesla have disputed this claim. Elon made out he was practically living at the factory when he wasn’t. It was more a PR stunt than him actually doing anything useful.


Communication can certainly be better but keep in mind they’re publicly traded so they do need to be careful what they do and don’t say. Clearly the software issues are getting to a point that Lucid just needs to fall in the sword and admit publicly it’s got a problem and what they’re doing/going to do to fix it along with a timeline. We’re beyond the “soon” statements now. They’ve have years to address this behind the scenes and are still struggling so they now need to fess up to the owners what they’re actually doing to fix and when.

I think Lucid has admitted they have a problem. Rawlinson admitted it at a factory event summertime last year, and executive turnover since then would seem to confirm it. Software teams do not turn on a dime, and it doesn't shock me at all that we could be a year into Lucid realizing it has to rethink its software development and not see much external sign of progress yet.

 

[HC_79]

I think Lucid has admitted they have a problem. Rawlinson admitted it at a factory event summertime last year, and executive turnover since then would seem to confirm it. Software teams do not turn on a dime, and it doesn't shock me at all that we could be a year into Lucid realizing it has to rethink its software development and not see much external sign of progress yet.

I work for a software developer so I know full well how long things take to turn around when a new team or leadership takes over. Problem is that this is the 2nd or 3rd time a reboot has taken place that just puts the timeline to fix further behind. Lucid can’t expect owners to just wait without some form of official communication now. If another 12 to 18 months are needed to resolve then they’re now at a point where they need to openly communicate that.

There’s way too much noise on the software issues not just in here but spreading to other outlets for them to just hide under a rock, not say anything and think it will all blow over.

 

[tarator]

I work for a software developer so I know full well how long things take to turn around when a new team or leadership takes over. Problem is that this is the 2nd or 3rd time a reboot has taken place that just puts the timeline to fix further behind. Lucid can’t expect owners to just wait without some form of official communication now. If another 12 to 18 months are needed to resolve then they’re now at a point where they need to openly communicate that.

There’s way too much noise on the software issues not just in here but spreading to other outlets for them to just hide under a rock, not say anything and think it will all blow over.

I know it's not the common view here, but I love the fact that they are making "robustness" updates. The fact that they don't have what to report means that they are fixing long standing issues and cleaning up the code. Of course, there are going to be issues when you do that, and we have all seen them.

 

[electric]

I’d rather see a PR stunt of Lucid CEO sleeping on the factory floor than a PR stunt of Hollywood actor and basketball players pretending to be race car drivers. A lot cheaper too.

 

[DrZorro]

I work for a software developer so I know full well how long things take to turn around when a new team or leadership takes over. Problem is that this is the 2nd or 3rd time a reboot has taken place that just puts the timeline to fix further behind. Lucid can’t expect owners to just wait without some form of official communication now. If another 12 to 18 months are needed to resolve then they’re now at a point where they need to openly communicate that.

There’s way too much noise on the software issues not just in here but spreading to other outlets for them to just hide under a rock, not say anything and think it will all blow over.

Agreed. I hope that Nick and the rest of the Lucid leadership don't think his 3 sentence comment buried in the other 10,000+ comments on that video will cut it --along with a prayer that this will blow over quickly. I've browsed many of the comments on that video and the number of people that have stated they are cancelling their order or taking it off the short list of cars they are considering is in the hundreds (if not greater by now).

 

[EVCar]

A company’s culture is difficult to change overnight.
Lucid does acknowledge problems, but usually when the boiling point has already been reached. And it’s rare.
The lease return fiasco is the only incident I remember where the issues were publicly acknowledged and remedies instituted.
I know Peter had said something about the state of the software, but not a whole lot. I’m not aware of any mea culpa to Air owners or any roadmap for future development.
Given this history, I’m not hopeful for any difference with Gravity.

 

[Smorgasbord]

BTW, the tempo of the sound for the turn signals the car keeps tells me everything I need to know about the real-time-ness the car's OS has. Or rather the lack of it.

Well, not really.
First question is, what module is creating that sound? Is it really the infotainment or is it the Instrument Cluster or is it a VCM (Vehicle Control Module), or even something else?
Second question is - the tempo could be set programmatically, so what was the timing supposed to be

The real test is how quickly the first beep/signal light comes on when the stalk is moved. And does that vary based on what else the car is doing?

Failing to recognize that software is incredibly difficult is a common problem with hardware people, and Peter Rawlinson is apparently not unusual in that regard.

Vince's intent was to describe that Rawlinson didn't acknowledge that the processes for developing great software are often different than those for developing great hardware. So, not that he didn't think it was hard, it was that he thought the solutions were the same as great hardware engineers do.


As for the key card/fob problems - it would be useful to characterize use case into at least two groups:
1) Where there is only one driver.
2) Where there are two drivers, one primary and one secondary but both drive the car regularly. Another level is what happens when both drivers are in the car (may not matter now with only one fob and no phone as key, but watch out when that happens).

 

[Smorgasbord]

But be real: the Lucid Air is outselling every other luxury sedan EV.

Well, that means beating the Model S and Porsche Taycan, vehicles that both manufacturers have all but given up on. Besides, the real test is how they do against their ICE counterparts, not against other EVs.