Technology Obesity in Automotive and CARIAD: The Case for Pre-Competitive Common Platforms

The future winners in automotive will not be the brands that cram the most lines of code into a vehicle, but those that deliver the most seamless, dependable value to the driver.

The automotive sector is traversing turbulent terrain, plagued by squeezed operating margins, delayed model launches, and shaken legacies among established original equipment manufacturers. While conventional commentary attributes this distress to failing to catch up with electrification or autonomy, the root cause lies far deeper: the industry has surrendered to a self-inflicted crisis of technology obesity. This engineering and strategic analysis examines the ergonomic limits of in-car touchscreens, dissects the software architecture crisis embodied by Volkswagen Group’s CARIAD unit, and proposes a pre-competitive consortium model designed to restore engineering sanity.

Ergonomics and the Enduring Value of Tactile Controls

Reflecting on automotive cockpits from the 1990s and early 2000s illustrates that tactile controls are not a nostalgic preference, but a matter of fundamental ergonomics. Activating headlights, adjusting climate temperature, or toggling windshield defrosters took seconds using discrete, satisfying physical buttons that delivered immediate mechanical feedback. That reassuring click signaled task completion without requiring the driver to divert visual attention from the road.

In contrast, contemporary cockpit design has largely eliminated tactile switches under the guise of aesthetic minimalism and assembly cost reductions. Drivers must now navigate through three nested digital menus merely to activate seat heating or adjust cabin airflow. Forcing drivers traveling at highway speeds to hunt for small virtual icons across a glossy display is not technological progress; it is an ergonomic hazard that directly compromises road safety.

Recognizing this risk, Euro NCAP announced updated safety evaluation protocols taking effect from 2026. Vehicles requiring drivers to use touchscreens for core functions such as turn signals, hazard lights, wipers, horn, and emergency calls will face direct point deductions. The resurgence of physical switches is not technological regression; it represents an essential engineering correction prioritizing human biomechanics, muscle memory, and driving safety.

While simple mechanical innovations like Skoda’s Simply Clever umbrella compartments or integrated ice scrapers provide tangible utility at minimal cost, squandering billions of euros on glitchy, slow-loading infotainment menus represents an acute misallocation of engineering capital.

The CARIAD Stumble and the Fallacy of In-House Operating Systems

When the software-defined vehicle emerged as an industry imperative, legacy automakers feared being reduced to low-margin contract assemblers. The most visible and expensive manifestation of this anxiety was Volkswagen Group’s establishment of CARIAD in 2020. The mandate was sweeping: build a unified proprietary operating system, cloud backend, and autonomous driving stack for all group brands.

Instead of securing technological leadership, the initiative created one of the costliest organizational bottlenecks in modern industrial history:

During the 2022–2023 period, CARIAD reported annual net operating losses exceeding two billion euros.
Architectural defects and integration deadlocks within the E3 1.2 and E3 2.0 software architectures forced multi-year launch delays for critical models, including the Porsche Macan EV and Audi Q6 e-tron.
Attempting to reconcile nearly one hundred disparate Electronic Control Units across legacy multi-tier supply chains resulted in a fragile codebase exceeding one hundred million lines of code.
Recurring delivery crises triggered sweeping executive leadership changes across the group.

The defining turning point arrived when Volkswagen acknowledged the limits of going it alone. The group forged multi-billion-dollar external partnerships, investing five billion dollars into electric vehicle startup Rivian for software architecture and hundreds of millions into Xpeng. The ambition to conquer software purely in-house culminated in the pragmatic procurement of external architectures.

The Compounding Costs of Automotive Technology Obesity

Technology obesity extends beyond engineering delivery schedules; it generates compounding liabilities across the entire automotive value chain:

Escalating Vehicle Purchase Prices: Billions in unamortized software R&D expenditures are inevitably passed along to showroom price tags. Consumers find themselves paying premium prices for digital features they rarely requested and seldom utilize.
Service Center Backlogs and Reliability Liabilities: While traditional mechanical components routinely function reliably for fifteen to twenty years, modern dealerships face backlogs of vehicles immobilized by software crashes, blacked-out instrument clusters, and botched over-the-air firmware updates.
Mismatch Between Hardware and Software Lifecycles: Automotive engineering operates on seven-to-ten-year component supply and qualification cycles. Consumer electronics and software architectures evolve on twelve-month cadences. Coupling these disparate tempos inside closed architectures leaves vehicle hardware feeling obsolete before leases expire.

Pre-Competitive Collaboration and the Open Consortium Model

Reversing this trajectory requires fundamentally restructuring how the industry approaches software. The viable solution lies not in individual manufacturers attempting isolated miracles, but in adopting pre-competitive collaboration across shared foundational layers.

It makes little economic sense for every automotive brand to independently develop basic operating system kernels, microcontroller drivers, Bluetooth protocol stacks, encryption engines, or database abstraction layers. Such redundancy is as inefficient as requiring every automobile assembly plant to construct and manage its own private electrical power station.

The computing and telecommunications sectors resolved this dilemma decades ago:

Personal computer manufacturers standardized around common BIOS interfaces and operating system layers, competing primarily on form factor, display fidelity, and thermal engineering.
Smartphone manufacturers unified around the Linux kernel and the open-source Android platform, eliminating redundant baseline R&D and focusing competition on cameras, battery efficiency, materials, and distinct user interfaces.
Although automotive industry bodies like AUTOSAR, COVESA, and the Eclipse Foundation’s Software Defined Vehicle working group exist, proprietary silos continue to fragment industry efforts.

A rigorous, industry-wide open consortium provides clear economic and engineering dividends:

Shared Capital Expenditure: The immense development cost of foundational software and hardware abstraction layers is amortized across multiple original equipment manufacturers.
Standardized Reliability and Security: Running unified baseline code across tens of millions of vehicles accelerates vulnerability detection, defect resolution, and security patching.
Concentration on Genuine Brand Differentiation: Automakers can redirect billions toward vehicle dynamics, structural ergonomics, interior craftsmanship, battery chemistry, and clean, intuitive user interfaces.

A New Engineering Paradigm Focused on Practical Value

The automotive industry stands at an architectural crossroads. Turning automobiles into rolling smartphones must not compromise their fundamental purpose: providing safe, dependable, and comfortable transportation.

The long-term market winners will not be the manufacturers that boast the highest line-count of code or those that eliminate every tactile dial in favor of distracting displays. The future belongs to brands that champion engineering discipline over digital gimmickry, delivering intuitive, reliable, and user-centric vehicles.

In complex engineering landscapes, the most strategic decision is often recognizing when an individual race cannot be won alone, and having the courage to build a shared foundation.

📚 References

Euro NCAP (2024). Safer Cars with Physical Controls: 2026 Vehicle Safety Protocol Updates. Euro NCAP Communications.
Volkswagen Group (2023–2024). Annual Reports and Strategic Software Realignment. Volkswagen AG.
Financial Times (2024). Volkswagen and Rivian Form Joint Venture in Software Modernization Push. Financial Times.
Bloomberg (2023). The Software Stumble: How In-Car Tech Delayed Germany’s Premier Electric Vehicles. Bloomberg News.
COVESA (2024). Open Standards and Architecture Frameworks for Connected Vehicles. Connected Vehicle Systems Alliance.
Eclipse Foundation (2024). Software Defined Vehicle (SDV) Working Group Overview. Eclipse Foundation.
Automotive News Europe (2024). Why Touchscreens Failed the Usability Test in Modern Cockpits. Crain Communications.

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