SW 2.0

[joec]

The other aspect of this release that has me really excited is that they have made significant underlying changes to the software that will open up the potential for new features and capabilities. My mindset is that with this release I am moving from a "they have to fix the user experience and performance of the software" to an excitement of looking forward to the potential this unlocks in where they will put their focus and what they have to work with. Should be a fun ride- pun fully intended.

This is how the major rewrite was probably sold to the marketing team and senior leadership.

It's hard to put a good spin on "We screwed up, but we've got in under control now." But sometimes, you've got to work with that.

The fact that sooooooo many issues were caused by the underlying foundation (boot up time, frame rate on cameras, audio drop outs, bass dropping out completely, screens freezing or gooing black, AC turning off, phone key not reliable, and on and on and on) means that fixing that foundation got them a ton of real, honest-to-goodness, user-facing improvements that came along for the ride.

The hardest part of convincing management you need to rewrite something from scratch is convincing them of the future benefit. Because often it's a huge investment of resources with almost no immediate impact to the end user.

I'm willing to bet with this one update, they will be closing out a huge chunk of their customer service software tickets.

 

[PhotoEye]

This is how the major rewrite was probably sold to the marketing team and senior leadership.

It's hard to put a good spin on "We screwed up, but we've got in under control now." But sometimes, you've got to work with that.

The fact that sooooooo many issues were caused by the underlying foundation (boot up time, frame rate on cameras, audio drop outs, bass dropping out completely, screens freezing or gooing black, AC turning off, phone key not reliable, and on and on and on) means that fixing that foundation got them a ton of real, honest-to-goodness, user-facing improvements that came along for the ride.

The hardest part of convincing management you need to rewrite something from scratch is convincing them of the future benefit. Because often it's a huge investment of resources with almost no immediate impact to the end user.

I'm willing to bet with this one update, they will be closing out a huge chunk of their customer service software tickets.

I'm willing to bet with this one update, they will be closing out a huge chunk of their customer service software tickets.

That would be a great, immediate, and demonstrable impact.

 

[CLTGT]

I look at this as the first step of many, a foundational step if you will. I think it was very difficult to add capability on top of a foundation that was basically not prepared to support what was going to be added to it. Getting this out there, tested and, eventually, widely distributed was quite necessary before they start layering on enhancements and additions.

It gets here when it gets here, days, weeks, months. In the meantime, we deal with what we have and are excited about what's to come...and somewhat jealous of those who have gotten to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah and their birthday early to quote one of the Beta Bunch.

 

[Mr_rhythm]

The Beta Bunch... the Beta Bunch... that's the waaaay they became the Beta Bunch!

 

[CLTGT]

Well, maybe we should change it to the Beta Brigade... There is another I thought of, but it might get me banned.

 

[Mr_rhythm]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

 

[Sid432]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

Now, folks who are singers can sing it for us and we will enjoy

 

[HC_79]

I think this may not be 10 months, but very recently 6 months when software got slow around March/April. I have to give credit for Peter Rawlinson took the heat and risk by firing VPs and added replacements in various areas of top business. This rewrite is very BOLD and is what VolksWagen and Electrify America needed instead of nonstop spaghetti patches. Lucid is fast and nimble at this stage.(30% of Rivian staff and 5% of Tesla staff) And the strategy of going down delivery trim levels from GT to Tour at slower delivery also work for them. By the time they get to Pure, they already timed themselves with CarPlay/AndroidAuto OTA deployment. Imagine the scale of 2000 people complain to 20,000+ people are not happy about software.

I repeat, it took Polestar2 29 months after debut to deploy Apple CarPlay, and have about 60,000+ delivery since debut. Their USB-C port is still close protected from data link after 31st month. I think Lucid may deliver under half of that benchmark. My hat is off to Lucid software development team pushing hard. When the software finally gets there, this would be best sedan ever in the market.

I agree. If this was any legacy automaker in this situation they would just keep slapping more lipstick on the pig and never actually look at the root cause. VW Group as a whole are notorious for shitty software and they just keep upgrading the hardware thinking that will solve the problem. Hardware can only cover shoddy software development so much. Prime example is ABB units seem quite popular in Europe and work as they should yet EA had such a big issue with them that they moved to Signet. Then the Signet ones became a problem and now they've moved to yet another brand. It's not the charger it's VW and how shoddy it build infrastructure and software.

 

[Tesla2.0]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

Great! Now you got my head stuck with this tune for rest of day…

 

[Bobby]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

Username checks out.

 

[Tesla2.0]

I agree. If this was any legacy automaker in this situation they would just keep slapping more lipstick on the pig and never actually look at the root cause. VW Group as a whole are notorious for shitty software and they just keep upgrading the hardware thinking that will solve the problem. Hardware can only cover shoddy software development so much. Prime example is ABB units seem quite popular in Europe and work as they should yet EA had such a big issue with them that they moved to Signet. Then the Signet ones became a problem and now they've moved to yet another brand. It's not the charger it's VW and how shoddy it build infrastructure and software.

VW just want to patches, not to re-innovate. They are also too big and too old of staff’s average age to change.

 

[HC_79]

This is another example of where Lucid could communicate better with its customers.

It would be good if Lucid would let us know when the rest of us can expect to receive this software release. A statement like:
----
Version x.xx.xx has now entered customer beta-testing. This version includes the following changes:

If the beta test is successful, we expect to begin general deployment on xx/xx/xx. If testing is successful, all customers should receive this new version by xx/xx/xx.

We will keep you informed of any changes to this plan.
-----
Any company that makes regular changes to software that changes the basic functions of their products should follow the industry best practices in communication with its customers.

Customers should not be left guessing what a product is supposed to do, and when new changes are planned to take effect. Information about products and changes should come from official company sources, not from other customers.

I strongly recommend that someone in the Lucid software release department be assigned responsibility for customer communication concerning software releases.

Lucid should understand it's in the software industry just as much as it is in the auto industry. Customers care just as much (or even more) about how they interact with the vehicle every day as they care about vehicle's raw performance specs.

First of all, I don't think we should take away the fact that what Lucid has shown in the past 11 months is that they will address issues and not just forge ahead making a bigger mess or throw the towel in and say "it is what it is". Should this have happened? No but to rewrite the entire software stack is by no means a small task so credit where credit is due. I actually don't mind the UX\UI. I think if they can get multiple apps running with what's been done in 2.0 it will actually be a pretty solid system.

I'm 50/50 on the communication of this so I do agree with you. I work for a gaming company so to see how this was communicated yesterday surprised me. We're building a brand so our PR department wants full control of what gets released to the public. As others have pointed out, I agree that this may be more common in the gaming industry but I think Lucid could have handled this better. Should Lucid communicate to owners via email every single update that comes? no, that's what release notes are for but you don't see Apple go from iOS 15 to iOS 16 with no public communication on "what's new". Why? because it's all about keeping that brand recognized. Lucid is trying to build a brand, they know the software complaints have been plaguing them and I suspect many reviewers were told not to mention anything about the software when they were given press vehicles. No offense to @borski or @Tesla2Lucid but some more professional videos from Lucid themselves should have been posted on their official communication channels. I think this is a huge win for Lucid so they should have taken the credit for it and dropped the comms via Twitter and email communication to owners. When you're building a brand, this stuff matters and wobbly videos, etc. do not make good PR. Seeing some of Jeff Curry's posts of blurry images and videos that give you motion sickness tells me that Lucid's PR department is in need of some TLC.

Again, I'm not shitting on Lucid or any of the people who posted pics etc. I think Lucid deserves some major kudos for this and they should have taken the credit for themselves by official communications. Let's face it, they've had a rough year so this could have been a huge win for them. I just see it as a missed opportunity from a PR standpoint.

 

[Mkavouras]

But PR doesn’t happen until the official release. Or right before. Not during beta testing. It seems that would be premature.

 

[PaulM]

Don’t get me wrong. I love our Lucid Air but we are really getting ahead of ourselves here… most of us don’t have 2.07. Let’s hope it gets us closer to the ideal. I get that this car can do a lot of things that my GMC Yukon cannot but it is missing things we could do since 2016 and I expect a 150k luxury car to do them. Plug in my phone and play music, turn on the radio and play music, accurate turn by turn directions, not reset while driving.

 

[CLTGT]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

Oh am I ever sorry I opened this can of words, glad I did not propose the moniker starting with "Master"...

Great job, very creative.

 

[HC_79]

But PR doesn’t happen until the official release. Or right before. Not during beta testing. It seems that would be premature.

True, but if you're intending on announcing something then you slap your beta testers with an NDA so they can't share until Lucid can officially communicate. This isn't the case in this scenario so I don't believe Lucid had any intention of doing an official comm on this update. Probably more a one liner in the next earnings call

 

[borski]

View attachment 5284
Does this image mean the backup camera still blocks the garage door icons?? One of my most frequent frustrations!

Yes, but you can close the overhead view and the rear camera independently, and pulling them back up takes no time, so it’s a lot less annoying than before.

 

[borski]

i see the mirrors are not folded when you approached the car, does that mean it's an option in 2.0 to keep it from folding when you lock? from what i recall the mirrors on both sides fold automatically when it locks and unfold when you approach the car. in your video it looks like the mirrors are already unfolded.

Interesting observation! No, that option still doesn’t exist, so I actually don’t know why the mirrors were unfolded! It’s possible that they unfold first before unlocking? I’ll have to test that later today. Will report back.

 

[CLTGT]

Now, folks who are singers can sing it for us and we will enjoy

@borski has "singer" by his Twitter name and he is part of the "bunch". I look forward to his rendition.

 

[Drendino]

Here's a story of a car from Lucid,
That was shipping with some very funky stuff.
The Air was fast and slick and sexy,
The software simply way too rough.

Then one day the devs said this is stupid!
It's time to rebuild this whole suite.
They were new and struggled to make it happen,
Especially with the deadlines they had to meet.

But then 2.0 was delivered to some users,
And they started to drive right after lunch.
It turned their Air into what it always could be,
And they all became the Beta Bunch.

The Beta Bunch,
The Beta Bunch...
That's the waaay they became the Beta Bunch!

Great, now I can’t get that jingle out of my head. People have been banned for less.