German companies, especially old school industrial ones like VW, have a very hard time understanding open platforms. The view everything through the lense of liability and compliance first. Their thinking is that if someone runs their app on a custom ROM and uses that to manipulate the app in any way, and that causes some extremely hypothetical damage, that they might be held liable for not having prevented this situation.

Obviously, the chances of that are virtually zero. But they'd rather make their product worse than assume with any kind of risk, even if it is virtually zero. That is simply the way in which German enterprises operate.

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anonymousiam an hour ago | parent | next [-]

If they have concerns about the security of their app on some platform, they have the choice to either put "security" into the app, or to trust the platform vendor to provide the security. The correct solution is the first way. Deferring trust to the platform provider is the lazy way.

If their APIs are done correctly, they shouldn't be afraid to expose them.

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formerly_proven an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If I had to guess it’s liability concerns around the app-based remote unlock and parking + R155 and CRA. A lot of european companies have moved to require attestation in their apps, likely spurred on by the CRA.

	▲	an hour ago \| parent [-]
		[deleted]

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user3939382 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

VW didn’t seem too concerned with compliance when they were rigging their pollution tests.

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zie 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

That was just engineers engineering their way into creating Electrify America :)

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xenocratus an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

They'd have you know they actually cared a bit too much about said compliance itself.

	▲	CuriouslyC an hour ago \| parent [-]
		*appearance of compliance

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joe_mamba 33 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Them cheating the tests WAS them ensuring THAT compliance.

In fact, that's how a lot of compliance works in industries where there's little checks and bounds and little enforcement and relies on self regulation.

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this_user an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, the only reason they did it was to be able to comply with the requirements of the test.

But the reality is that every once in a while you have a scandal like this or something like Wirecard, and it happens, because the culture is such that absolutely nobody thinks it possible. That includes officials and regulators whose first instinct will often be to come after the people trying to expose the scandal, as has happened in the case of Wirecard.

	▲	joe_mamba 32 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>because the culture is such that absolutely nobody thinks it possible Only naive laymen or newcomers to Germany think it's not possible. German business leaders, lawyers and politicians know exactly how much corruption and scamming is going on in the business sector, and it's not a little. >first instinct will often be to come after the people trying to expose the scandal, as has happened in the case of Wirecard. That was purely malicious to try to protect Wirecard, not because the regulators couldn't possibly imagine corruption and law breaking exists, that was the story they used as cover for their corruption. Like you're a regulator and instead of doing the thing you were hired for and look at the evidence the economist showed you, you instead "use your instincts" to decide not to do your job and not look into Wirecard because you can't imagine something bad can ever happen? Come on! All those regulators should have been fired and tried for corruption and/or conspiracy to crime.

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neya an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah sure, the company behind Dieselgate and single handedly destroyed the diesel market is worried about compliance? Give me a break.

	▲	adrianN an hour ago \| parent [-]
		VW is large enough that different parts of the company can have very different opinions.