Volkswagen is worth half as much as it was in the middle of July when a VW share would have cost you more than €200. And it’s not out of the woods yet.
The scandal has already pulled in its subsidiary brands like Audi, Seat and Škoda. The problem has spread from the US to Europe. VW is the world’s largest car maker and sold 5 million vehicles in the first half of this year so it is hardly a small, local problem.
It seems likely that a simple software fix for Volkswagen’s problems would leave the cars with far worse fuel efficiency than they currently enjoy.
The scandal could even change the way we look at software in cars. It’s central role in car design and development is now startlingly clear to everyone. The millions of lines of codes needed by modern cars allow for cheating but can also be seen as a potential security problem.
This crisis could be serious enough to create pressure for more openness around engine control unit software in order to protect the public as well as potentially speed up evolution of the whole market.
The argument is not new of course – open source advocates would claim such a move could improve all our cars while still leaving plenty of room for innovative companies to make money.
There is also an argument for security – as we move to ever more ‘wired’ vehicles, even if not completely self-driving, then cyber-security risks also grow. Allowing proper security vetting of software could help find vulnerabilities which would otherwise be left open for hackers.
As cars increasingly ‘talk’ to each other, and to manufacturers, so potential access points increase. As the sheer amount of software increases so does the chance of mistakes being left in the code.
Security and stability are two reasons there is so much open source code in infrastructure projects. Cloud infrastructure relies on open source software and increasingly this is also being pushed down to customer and user interfaces too.
Arguably the biggest impact of open source software is how it changes the culture and structure of a company. It forces people to work together and look outwards rather than inwards.
Some claim it is the archetype for new ways of doing business. A lot of this will already be familiar to those running large IT departments – the new demands placed on them by fast changing business requirements have already created very different internal structures and working practises.
You could even suggest a more open source culture makes situations like Volkswagen’s less likely to happen.
Companies are no longer made up of competing silos. Individuals in different business areas need to know what else is going on, they need access to data and they need the skills and technology to use that data to effectively inform decision making.
Of course there will still be restrictions – data protection, client confidentiality and of course rules set by regulators still need to be followed. But adapting to new technology means more than just updating your desktops, it means changing how your company and the people within it work.