In your Autoline conversation, you made a really interesting point about Ji Yue and other Chinese EV makers flipping the US legacy 20% software vs 80% automotive engineer ratio.
Does the Chinese EV maker 80% of SWEs include hardware/embedded systems engineers? I would think these would also be extremely important in integrating all aspects of the NEV stack - BMS, inverters, motors, 12/48/400/800v architectures, chips for driving/autonomy/infotainment, etc.
What's important to remember is that among the younger, well educated in China there are many more versed in SW engineering / development because of the prevalence of all the tech companies specifically in Beijing / Wuhan / Chengdu / Shenzhen than in automotive engineering. And we are talking about hundreds of thousands of software engineers.
Some of the things you've mentioned above have been developed at a smaller scale at companies like Niu, Xiaomi, DJI, Huawei, Meituan (just to name a few of the thousands) whose products have a HW / SW component.
Now, the control units for EVs is likely more unique relative to consumer products but it's not as huge a culture or competency leap as with traditional automotive.
100%, I've been thinking about a lot about how China's dominance in so many electronics industries was an underrated tailwind for the NEV industry to execute extremely quickly.
There's a huge contrast between all the eng talent in China that has come of age scaling HW to millions or even tens of millions of units per year in these industries, vs in the US where, outside of Tesla, there's been few if any domestic companies that have SW teams tightly coupled with both HW and manufacturing engineers.
Fun fact: I actually co-led an Uber trip for the Eats exec team to meet the Meituan and Ele.me teams in Beijing and Shanghai respectively. Very impressive to see what Meituan has done with 1 million+ quadcopter food deliveries in Shenzhen. Enabled of course by the rich drone ecosystem in Shenzhen.
I will be at MOVE in London, and would love to catch up with you there. -JJ.
Add me on the MOVE app and we can find a time to meet up while I am there.
In your Autoline conversation, you made a really interesting point about Ji Yue and other Chinese EV makers flipping the US legacy 20% software vs 80% automotive engineer ratio.
Does the Chinese EV maker 80% of SWEs include hardware/embedded systems engineers? I would think these would also be extremely important in integrating all aspects of the NEV stack - BMS, inverters, motors, 12/48/400/800v architectures, chips for driving/autonomy/infotainment, etc.
What's important to remember is that among the younger, well educated in China there are many more versed in SW engineering / development because of the prevalence of all the tech companies specifically in Beijing / Wuhan / Chengdu / Shenzhen than in automotive engineering. And we are talking about hundreds of thousands of software engineers.
Some of the things you've mentioned above have been developed at a smaller scale at companies like Niu, Xiaomi, DJI, Huawei, Meituan (just to name a few of the thousands) whose products have a HW / SW component.
Now, the control units for EVs is likely more unique relative to consumer products but it's not as huge a culture or competency leap as with traditional automotive.
100%, I've been thinking about a lot about how China's dominance in so many electronics industries was an underrated tailwind for the NEV industry to execute extremely quickly.
There's a huge contrast between all the eng talent in China that has come of age scaling HW to millions or even tens of millions of units per year in these industries, vs in the US where, outside of Tesla, there's been few if any domestic companies that have SW teams tightly coupled with both HW and manufacturing engineers.
Fun fact: I actually co-led an Uber trip for the Eats exec team to meet the Meituan and Ele.me teams in Beijing and Shanghai respectively. Very impressive to see what Meituan has done with 1 million+ quadcopter food deliveries in Shenzhen. Enabled of course by the rich drone ecosystem in Shenzhen.