[foooorsyth]

I work for a major OEM in automotive. Getting ANYTHING “simple” into real cars, especially anything related to physical access and starting the vehicle, is a huge undertaking. $1.2 mm is cheap for this sort of feature, assuming that money goes to the actual implementation, standardization, homologation, and integration on the assembly line.

[_ea1k]

> $1.2 mm is cheap for this sort of feature, assuming that money goes to the actual implementation, standardization, homologation, and integration on the assembly line.

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it sounded like the $1.2mm went to some prototypes and a research paper.

[foooorsyth]

Well if that’s the case then it is indeed a rip off for the taxpayer.

[dghlsakjg]

They already spent $1.2mm. They have a prototype hand wired together. This isn’t even close to production ready, and it never will go into production because almost every new vehicle has an immobilizer built in that is authenticated via an nfc chip in the key that does exactly what this does, but transparently without driver input.

[f1shy]

Car OEM are far as example of efficient work…

[foooorsyth]

It’s not efficient. That’s the point.

The car is a complicated product. It’s not a website. It’s not an app. My employer has 120k+ employees and factories in every continent except Antarctica. Regulatory bodies interject with anything related to access and security, and those bodies are different in every country/region. The product itself is massive physical good that many countries consider domestic production of which to be a matter of national security. Every single physical change to the product is analyzed by bean counters. Shipping the product requires at least some level of expertise in mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, hardware, software, and manufacturing. You need factories, regulatory approval, supplier networks, programmers, drivetrain engineers, management, people to lobby the government, accountants, and much more. You need it all.

You’d be shocked at how difficult adding a single physical button to any given car can be. Scoffing at $1.2mm for a new ECU that relates to security is naive. “I could do this in one day in my garage” is not how shipping a change to automotive products works.