I like cars and electronics. On what should I focus?

[mrburnzie]

I work as an IoT developer, where I develop the electronics and code for the electronics that controls a smart house.

Since I have been young I loved cars. I like mechanics too, because my dad is a mechanic and when I was in highschool I worked on autonomous robots where you had to know quite a lot about mecahnics.

As I'm getting older, I want to set a bit more precise goals. One of my goals before was to do what I like, which is electronics. I achieved that.
Now I'm looking deeper and where I see myself is in the car industry or some other vehicle.

What are the seniors suggestions that work with vehicles? What should I work on? What should I focus on? What mentors should I search for?

Thanks!

[NiHaoMike]

Plenty of electronics to work on in modern cars:

I would say that the mechanical side of cars is trending towards simplicity.

[Zucca]

What are the seniors suggestions that work with vehicles? What should I work on? What should I focus on? What mentors should I search for?

Depending on what your starting level/skills are, working on cars could be very expensive.
I suggest to start to repair motorcycle or even bikes. Cheaper and tons of stuff to learn.

Another idea if you want to stay on cars and EE: take a popular old car and redo the ECUs to make it a smart in 2020, step 2 EV conversion.

[AndyC_772]

This is a tricky question.

I've been an electronic engineer for nearly 25 years, and I've always been interested in cars. Quite by chance, I've ended up doing a lot of design work in and around the automotive industry - accessories, sensors, motor sports etc.

The internal combustion engine is going away, and with it, many of the opportunities to design electronics related to it. Electric vehicles are definitely on the way in, but they're designed by a relatively small number of teams at major OEMs, and there's not a great deal of scope to work on them unless you happen to be able to get a design job at one of the big car firms.

Outside of the power train, cars are undoubtedly also getting a lot of extra technology - ICE, self driving, radar and the like - but again, it's all very software intensive and closed. If the major manufacturers happen to have R&D groups located where you are, then that's great. If not, you'll have a hard time finding electronics work in the automotive sector.

My advice? See what jobs exist near your location. Be prepared to diversity and look outside the automotive sector if necessary.

[mrburnzie]

Yeah, this is something I thought of too. As I started with robotics I love to work on things that I fan touch and see how it works, moves.
Any industry that is like the car infustry but more electronics oriented?

[Halcyon]

You could look into vehicle data forensics, which is a sub-set of digital forensics. There is demand out there (insurance companies etc...) for retrieving data from vehicles such as telematics, location data, paired devices, contacts etc... Most modern cars log and keep this stuff (usually on flash memory or a hard disk inside the centre console or as part of the infotainment unit). Have a look at https://berla.co they make some tools that do just this, but they aren't the only ones. Of course you could manually carve this kind of data out yourself. Some manufacturers also use passwords to lock/unlock the hard disks so that presents another challenge, but rarely are the disks actually encrypted. File systems and data formats vary widely.

[gussy]

I also work as an IoT developer (right now at least, consumer electronics in general) and like working with cars too. I built my own endurance race car by completely stripping a street car down and building it back up into a race car piece by piece. I enjoy the mechanicals just as much as the electronics and code.

Do you want to work on cars/vehicles/automotive in your professional life as part of your career, or do you want to work on personal projects in that field for fun? I think you were asking about the former, but it's worth clarifying.

For me, I choose to work on automotive/motorsport projects in my own time, as making that my job would probably suck a lot of the life and fun out of working with those systems.

If you want to take your career into this space, there are a number of IoT/automotive companies here in the US that could be a good segway, and I'm sure there are others outside the US. These companies mostly focus on telemetry and data logging for trucks. Not very glamorous, but it's a foot in the door. If you want glamorous then self-driving cars is where you want to look. All those companies need EEs and firmware engineers. The dream of course is to work on electronics and technology used in race cars, although from my experience these companies are usually quite small and there's not too many of them. Career advancement in that industry seems either glacially slow at a small company, or you hit the jackpot and end up with a well funded top level race team where you become "the expert" at something.

[Circlotron]

Motorsports is a good area to be involved in. Find someone who already runs a business and has constant contact with customers and has some pet idea they would like to do and know who they would sell to but don't have the electronics skills. That way you don't have to deal with individual customers, you just get a single phone call - "hey! Make me another twenty doodads". Keeps life simple.

[mrburnzie]

To clarify, I want to work professionally on cars.

" All those companies need EEs and firmware engineers". I love this. I love working on firmware and that is where I would aim for.

Now building some custom electronics or ECU's for custom electric old VW's is also a good choice for me.
Maybe I should go out and find companies that do restoration of old vehicles and make them electric.

[mrburnzie]

"who already runs a business", what do you mean exactly? What kind of business?

[hans]

There is also a huge market for after market modifications of vehicles, not only cars.

I used to work on after-market GPS steering systems in precision agriculture. Those systems in itself are quite complex. Although many customer-facing features end up in software, it also requires the necessary hardware to support it. And since tractor manufacturers, like John Deere, try to digitize and protect their own systems increasingly more often.. it was an interesting mix of analog/digital design, firmware and some reverse engineering here and there..

I also have seen people starting companies specialized in extension battery packs and high power chargers for said packs. Some electric cars grossly oversell their capable range, to the point that a '300km range' car can practically only get you to the shops in next Town when it's winter time. Again here, places to do own analog/digital/firmware design, but also some measures needed to maintain compatibility.

One risk with these kinds of business is perhaps insurance. As an engineer I was only involved in the ethics & safe design, but not necessarily in when it does go wrong. I heard stories from previous years where tractors drove of the road (luckily no other traffic) or into locks when they booted the GPS computer while driving (+a glitch in the hardware/firmware). There was a disclaimer etc. with the system, but I don't want to imagine what happens if you do hit something..

[tszaboo]

To clarify, I want to work professionally on cars.

" All those companies need EEs and firmware engineers". I love this. I love working on firmware and that is where I would aim for.

So I went for a job interview at Bosch. They told me that they want to hire me to this group of 15 people, who were working on this project that is supposed to take 3 years to compete. It was a  battery management system, for the 12 V lead acid battery. It measures the voltage, current, and sends it through CAN bus.

It is something that a half competent electronics engineer can do in two weeks. But the solution from the 15 people will probably be 0.5 EUR cheaper, and if you sell 10 million of it, it is worth to do.

Dont work in the automotive industry, if you like cars.
Buy an old Toyota Supra if you like cars.

[Circlotron]

"who already runs a business", what do you mean exactly? What kind of business?

Something related to motorsport. That was implied in the initial sentence.

[mrburnzie]

Haha, oh yes I would like a toyota supra. 
That is exactly what I'm afraid of. If I like cars, I think when I get a job in the auto industry I will just start slowly disliking cars...

I love to design custom stuff. What are the best branches where I can work (and not get bored) or even start a business that involves custom design stuff. The first thing that pops into my mind is freelancing, but we all know how it can be a pain in the ass (I have been doing it a while now and I got good and bad experiences). I'm looking for something where I don't really have to deal with the customers, only a dozen of customers. I have experience in manufacturing as well (last project I had 50K units built  ), which is a plus.

This is slowly turning into a career advice topic... 

[gussy]

"who already runs a business", what do you mean exactly? What kind of business?

If you were going to design your own custom niche gadgets then you could target motorsport workshops, the businesses who build track toy cars for their clients. Real race shops will mostly want to use expensive but proven, name brand, off-the-shelf systems, but people who are taking their car to the track once a month are less particular about brand names.

One recent example that comes to mind was a group Porsche owners wanted a way to make their exhaust quieter during a specific turn at a specific race track (to "pass" the sound meter check). These cars already have "make the exhaust quieter" valves actuated by a button on the inside of the car. Someone built a box that was essentially a GPS module, an ardunio, and FET to trigger the button/valve whenever you came within X meters of a hard-coded location. These were selling for around $500 ea. So although volume is very low, margins are crazy high. If you can find enough niches like that you could do well, but you will be dealing directly with customers.

[AndyC_772]

Real race shops will mostly want to use expensive but proven, name brand, off-the-shelf systems, but people who are taking their car to the track once a month are less particular about brand names.

It's a pretty small community. Team engineers will call up their contacts at suppliers who have a good track record of reliability, and ask "can you make me a version of <thing> that does <new thing>?".

Usually followed by "...in time for the race in three weeks".

So although volume is very low, margins are crazy high.

There's some truth to this, though the actual unit production costs of anything made in very small numbers are high too, especially for anything that has to survive extreme temperature and vibration.

[Syntax Error]

@mrburnzie A salient story on just how reliant the auto industry is on electronics:
"Computer chip shortage disrupts global car production"
https://www.dw.com/en/computer-chip-shortage-disrupts-global-car-production/a-56224486