auto software Software, the Final Frontier for Auto's?

[G. David Felt]

Starting this thread for a single focus and that is job discussion of software in the Auto industry.

I took a quick look, Ford has 1,500 software positions open in support of their EV products. GM had over 1,300 listed on their site and since the pandemic took hold has removed most jobs and is showing less than 100 jobs now. Yet on Indeed they show 50 jobs open for software engineers in embedded development. Took a look over at VW which is showing hundreds of software jobs in Tennessee. Seems both BMW and Mercedes-Benz also has lots of openings for software engineers here in the US.

This makes one wonder as the auto industry moves to EV's which will require still a wide variety of engineers to build the auto's, how much more does it become software driven on differentiation between various product lines?

I can see having an electric motor that via software delivers a wide range of horsepower and torque or as I think will become the new standard kW and NM which are both certified standards by SAE. I think eventually people will focus on kW and NM for the auto they buy rather than cylinders for current ICE auto's.

So this brings it down to Software on how you can set the difference between one product line and another. It also makes me wonder if some one buys say a Ford and then purchase the software for a Lincoln if they will be able to hack their auto the same way some people today do their cell phones.

What are your thoughts on software, future auto's and what might happen?