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Aptera Software
Just curious (because my background is in software) and because this may (or may not) align with the Right to Repair – but is there any information with regard to the software that controls the Aptera and would it ever be open source?
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Aptera Software
updated 1 month, 3 weeks ago 10 Members · 20 Replies -
Just a guess on my part. Not open source. A lot of IP in the Aptera software that I am sure they would not want made public and would want complete control of the baseline. A major issue with open source is you lose control of that baseline. In a SW maintenance situation it would be a nightmare for Aptera to deal with all of the branches of “Open source” if others had been working on it to try to fix it or to just “Enhance” functionality. Spaghetti code comes to mind.🤨
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While I don’t disagree that while the Aptera is under warranty the
system should be “locked” to external software changes, but as soon as
the warranty is over why would Aptera care what I did to the vehicle at
that point? Honestly, I think its really intriguing to think of some of
the enhancements the community can come up with once Aptera is out in
the wild-
@Christopher Brisbois Simple answer: Public relations. If you hoon-out the vehicle’s OS and it becomes unreliable or uncontrollable or bursts into flame, YOU won’t be blamed by the “court of public opinion” – the company will.
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Just to clarify – nearly all Open Source projects are monitored by a parent company. For example, Microsoft has moved a vast amount of their software to the open source world — anyone can SUGGEST a change (create a new branch per se), but it must undergo a peer-review AND pass all existing tests; and even then, may not be included as a feature in a subsequent production release.
To John Malcom’s point – naturally, some sub-systems may contain Intellectual Property (IP) that a company will not include in the “open” part of the source. However, interesting modifications can be proposed, for example, if someone wanted to develop a different User Interface for various systems or cultures (entertainment, environment, drive / battery monitor, etc.), or develop an algorithm that may enhance power consumption.
I don’t think very many people (myself included), would have the technical know-how and some sort of on-line simulator would probably need to be set-up, which would be a prohibitive cost), but it would be a very unique thing to offer. I am constantly amazed by the talent that exists out there and sometimes someone may suggest something that makes a product that much better. Anyway, it was just a thought.
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Aptera probably doesn’t own their entire software stack so it may not be possible to open source everything but they could open source their portion and I think it would be a good idea if they did. It’s trivial to determine if the software running on the car has been modified or not. The car is connected to the Internet so Aptera will know if it’s running modified code, if it is they could void the warranty if they wanted to. I could see where people who are interested in racing their cars might want to override the power limits. Doing that would be the equivalent of adding nitrous to an ICE, you would risk blowing up your motors but that’s your problem not the manufacturer’s. People add superchargers, nitrous, modified firmware, to their ICE’s all the time, doing so voids the warranty but there are people who do it anyway.
If they do opensource the software they should put it under the GPL and not the BSD license. GPL forces other companies that modify the software to give those changes back to the community. That’s how Linux works, thousands of companies and people contribute and those changes can be incorporated back into the kernel if Linus thinks they pass muster. BSD allows anybody to fork the code and they have no obligation to give their changes back. Apple uses BSD Linux as the core of the Mac and IOS and they’ve contributed nothing back to the BSD project, or almost nothing.
The other thing that they should do is officially support it in the way that Google supports Android. Google not only provides the source code for base Android, not for their services which sit on top but just the base OS, and they also provide developer tools and a means of loading your own firmware into your phone. The thing that Google doesn’t do but I think Aptera should is have an official repository for third party contributors and a mechanism for submitting patches so that Aptera can take advantage of them in the mainline code. I suspect that the UI might greatly benefit from this approach and maybe even things that are more deeply embedded in the car.
As for the warranty policy. Things that effect the drive train void the warranty, things that don’t shouldn’t. If you chip your engine and it breaks and you take your car back to Dodge they won’t cover the repairs. If you replace the wheels on your car and the engine breaks you are still covered. On the Aptera if you modify the UI and the computer crashes that’s your problem, if the battery fails that’s still would be covered.
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One more thought about third party patches. If Aptera accepts a patch and move it into the mainstream code they should pay for it and buy the copyright to that code. They need to own or have full rights to all of the code that they use so that in the future if they want to change the license or even close things up they have the right to do so.
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Aptera is a vehicle manufacturing company not a software company. There is no business case for Aptera to allocate the resources necessary to manage open source software licensing and control. Such an allocation would divert resources from their progress towards engineering and producing more innovative and efficient vehicles for the US and offshore markets. If open source software was a good idea for EV manufacturers the the most successful EV company in the world would be doing it now. Tesla has no open source software.
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I expect there are different software systems in any modern car, control, infotainment, nav etc.
I’ve done some open source development, but I don’t think it would make sense to open source all the control software, i.e. motor, brakes, steering and charging speeds due to safety and liability concerns, that said I would like the ability to be able configure settings within safety margins that Aptera may not feel meets all owners needs.
I would like to see the infotainment software, phone App and APIs be open sourced. As a current BMW i3 owner and part-time contributor to bimmer-connect I learned to hate BMW’s close source mentally. We had to reverse engineer their APIs (more than once), and had no ability to fix their bugs or keep our cars connected after they turned off mobile connectivity on 5 year old cars. I doubt we’ll ever buy BMW again.
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I’d just like to add my two cents and say that Android Automotive OS would give Aptera a huge leg-up in the in-car user interface department, and allow for external devs like myself to support the car with apps from available on the Google Play Store, and that software and app compatibility is something that I’ve found to be highly desireable among consumers. Sometimes just telling someone that their preferred music platform of choice is available in a certain car is enough to convince an on-the-fence consumer, and any such software hesitancies would be solved by adopting Android Automotive OS.
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I agree, it is definitely worthwhile to use the momentum that android offers for entertainment and ‘user domain’ purposes. But then you also have to consider the work involved in keeping your system up to date. So maybe using an existing high quality tablet and integrating it with the aptera by developing an app for it is a better and more future-proof concept. That way, 1. the base for operating the vehicle with a set of controllers is generally separated from the observation and entertainment part. Vehicle data can still be used by viewing the data through the app. And also control can be allowed for certain aspects. 2. For future tasks such as autonomous driving you also need a powerful device that needs to perform independently from entertainment, so this should be a separate entity, too. This allows for modular design and good upgradeability but also relatively low cost and in-house software maintenance.
In this constellation, part of at least the interface could be made public to allow for user content to be generated inside the Android software app environment.
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Is the software interface customizable? Can I write my own? Are the functions of the car accessible via an API to enable this kind of customization?
That would be the ultimate “right to repair” if we could manage the software ourselves.
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No. Aptera couldn’t provide a warranty for a vehicle that ran non-OEM software.
You’re talking about customization, not “right to repair.” All the R2R means is that Aptera won’t force you to use their “approved” mechanics or shops. They intend to make all the repair and assembly information available to anyone who wants it.
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Just the “software interface”. GUIs are always crap. I don’t care about vendor support for that piece. I can fix it better and faster myself.
