Will Volkswagen delay the release of Golf 8 due to OTA upgrade issues?

According to Volkswagen's plan, the next-generation Golf, which has been exposed many times, will be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show in September this year. However, there are recent reports that Volkswagen will postpone the release of the Golf 8 due to some software issues. This software problem is mainly about OTA upgrades.

OTA is not uncommon in emerging car manufacturers and pure electric vehicles. Starting with Tesla, the car system and even the underlying systems and functions related to power and charging can be directly upgraded or added through OTA, without having to go back to the dealer to spend time and money for the so-called "wired upgrade". Considering the issues of safety and uniformity, traditional car companies have not been too aggressive in promoting the provision of OTA functions.

What we know is that OTA is an important function that Volkswagen will soon implement, and it will be installed on the ID. family series at the latest. However, considering that the Golf 8 will also be postponed to next year, the time is very close to the launch of the first model in the ID. series (the mass-produced version of the first ID. pure electric SUV will definitely be unveiled at the Frankfurt Motor Show), so not only us, but also Volkswagen hopes to be the first to install the OTA function on the Golf 8.

However, Jürgen Stackmann, a member of the Volkswagen brand board of directors, made it clear that software and electronic systems are areas that Volkswagen attaches great importance to in the future, but it is indeed a very big challenge for them now. The most important ones are the debug problems encountered in adding OTA functions and their system collaboration, as well as some other problems such as online interconnection, mobile phone interconnection, etc.

Due to the huge pressure in software engineering, Volkswagen has drastically reduced the original planned production of the Wolfsburg plant this year from 80,000 vehicles to 10,000 vehicles. It should be noted that the factory can currently produce 2,000 current Golfs per day.

For a brand like Volkswagen with a large product volume, adding such an innovative function requires updates and upgrades to the underlying electronic architecture of the entire product that are far more complicated than what we see. At present, the amount of code in the Golf system is already dozens of times that of our mobile phones. The subsequent electronic module upgrades, system coordination, after-sales network support and other issues are the main reasons that prompted Volkswagen to postpone the release of the Golf 8. In addition, facing the suppliers behind the numerous parts on the car, the new standards need to be unified with them.

In addition to the technical implementation difficulties, as traditional car companies, the more important issue they consider is actually the logic and strategy of the OTA upgrade scope. For example, it is easier to upgrade the car machine application that is more software-oriented, but should the entire ECU underlying firmware that involves more products itself be included in the scope of OTA upgrade from the beginning? Especially for the parts related to power and transmission that are related to the life safety of the car, the OTA method of giving the operation right to the network push and the car owner to operate it by himself will undoubtedly make the car owner bear more risks compared to the more rigorous traditional upgrade.

Therefore, compared with technological breakthroughs, the public is more concerned about how to implement OTA upgrades on products. From the perspective of car companies, it is a balance between product safety, stability and convenience for car owners.

Jürgen Stackmann also said that in addition to the complexity and coordination of the system, another important issue that Volkswagen is concerned about is the security of OTA. OTA upgrades are equivalent to opening up the original system to a certain extent. It is no longer a closed-loop closed system, but the system security needs to meet the same standards as before. In the face of hackers hijacking during transmission and potential bugs in the system, Volkswagen must ensure that the car upgrade does not affect the user experience or even cause driving hazards.

Despite the delay, Volkswagen hopes that the Golf 8 can still be launched in Germany in February next year, which is expected to be the 9th week of 2020, which is around February 24. It will then expand to the European market. On the other hand, with the delay of the new car, we can see the GTI and R versions at the same time. However, the electric version of the e-golf will not continue, and its role will be replaced by the ID series in the later stage. Within a year, the Golf 8 will be launched in the US market, but the basic version will no longer appear. Volkswagen expects to only retain the GTI and R versions, and other derivative versions will be further reduced or even cancelled.