How will progress at the edge change our homes, cars and the electrical grid? In this conversation, Bill sits down with Kai Hackbarth, Senior Tech Evangelist at Bosch Global Software Technologies, for a wide ranging discussion around smart homes, smart vehicles and the challenges posed to the electrical grid.
How will progress at the edge change our homes, cars and the electrical grid? In this conversation, Bill sits down with Kai Hackbarth, Senior Tech Evangelist at Bosch Global Software Technologies for a wide ranging discussion around Kai’s work at the OSGI foundation, and the complexities of smart homes, smart vehicles and the challenges posed to the electrical grid.
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“Electricity is not the answer for cars. to call it like this. So, if everybody drives an electric vehicle, no grid can manage this.”
“The grid was never designed for renewable energy sources.”
“I think hydrogen will come, right? It's not yet ready for cars”
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Timestamps:
(00:00) How Kai got started in tech
(06:28) Kai’s definition of edge
(13:06) Smart homes and smart assisted living facilities
(20:39) Kai’s work with the OSGI
25:29 Challenges and innovations in smart grid technology
28:49 The future of electric and hydrogen vehicles
32:51 Software-defined vehicles and industry challenges
39:00 Developments in edge tech and sustainability
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Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.
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Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko.
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Follow Bill on LinkedIn
Follow Kai on LinkedIn
Edge Solutions | Dell Technologies
[00:00:00] Narrator: Hello and welcome to Over the Edge. This episode features an interview between Bill Pfeifer and Kai Hackbarth, the head of product and solutions at Bosch Global Software Technologies. Kai's areas of expertise include smart homes, energy management, smart grid, and vehicle to vehicle or vehicle to infrastructure communication, among other specialties.
In this conversation, he and Bill dive into these topics for a wide ranging discussion that covers how technologies are impacting our homes and vehicles. And the challenges this poses to the electrical grid. But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsor. Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with Edge solutions.
From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi cloud environment, we're here to help you simplify your Edge so that you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell. com slash edge for more information. Or click on the link in the show notes. And now please enjoy this interview between Bill Pfeifer and Kai Hackbarth, the head of product and solutions at Bosch Global Software Technologies.
[00:01:10] Bill Pfeifer: Thanks so much for joining us today. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to this one.
[00:01:16] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:18] Bill Pfeifer: Absolutely. We, we've been starting with the same question every time and it's a really fun one. How did you get started in technology? Can you take us back to how you came to be here?
[00:01:30] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. I mean, it, it, it, it, All started with a static, what was it? 64 spectrum. I don't remember the exact computer model, but it was like in [00:01:40] the, in the eighties, right? So where you, you know, could only do basic and stuff like this, but then what really got me started was, you know, Atari computers to say it like this, right?
So opposite of my home, there was a computer store. And I got a present, an Atari 1040, right, ST. And I started working, you know, after a while at this computer store, right? So I was doing, you know, different kinds of stuff. So we were selling scanners, OCR, fax software, and all this, right? So, and that was the beginning, if you want, right?
So afterwards I started my own business with a few friends. And, yeah, we called it an internet agency. So we basically programmed HTML pages.
[00:02:26] Bill Pfeifer: Going way back. I love it. I'm surprised at how many people on this podcast have like, you know, I was six and I always knew when I was 15, I started a business and you know, I was running through the woods playing with sticks and things like that.
So I'm still catching up. But I'll get there. Uh,
[00:02:47] Kai Hackbarth: Time will come. Exactly. Right.
[00:02:48] Bill Pfeifer: So, So now you're at Bosch. What do you do at Bosch? And what's a, what are you typically like? What's a typical day to day? What's a typical project that you would be working on?
[00:03:00] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah, so, I mean, I'm now, since beginning of this year, Head of Product and Solutions at Bosch Software and Digital Solutions, so I'm responsible for the European region, so we specifically focus on a couple of products around Internet of Things, around sustainability, industry 4.
0, so there is no such thing as a, [00:03:20] Typical project to call it like this, right? So they're, they are all kind of very different, but I mean, in the end, when a customer comes to us, they, they think of Bosch, you know, having solutions, especially as in the industrial domain already available for them. Right. So Bosch, as you may know, right?
So we have, I don't know, 250 plus factories. So we develop technology for our own purposes. And through our division, we, you know, makes this available to external customers. So there's a variety of, of things. It's so focus areas, like I said, is for example, IOT. And there right now, the hot topic is software updates.
updates, right? Um, because the law requires this, for example, right? But also connectivity, right? I mean, how do I connect my devices or let's say, different context then, but my machine on the shop floor and bring it, you know, to the cloud, right? So that, that are, you know, a few simple examples, obviously.
[00:04:22] Bill Pfeifer: So Bosch covers a whole lot of different businesses.
It's, it's a. I mean, a really diverse company. How much do you spend helping internally make better things for Bosch versus customer engagements? And what sorts of things do customers come to Bosch for? From a, from an IOT software edge perspective.
[00:04:48] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. I mean, especially when we talk about the, the IOT suite, right?
So this is our IOT platform, right? So, I mean, Bosch started this in 2008 and I [00:05:00] came through an acquisition in 2015 to Bosch, which was, we were also dedicated on, on IOT platform business to call it like this. And Bosch started this, as you said, basically for. First for internal purposes, but the previous CEO also had always the opinion, you know, what we do for ourselves also has to compete on the external market, right?
So, I mean, it's, it's one thing, right? And so, so the journey started in the sense that we had like this IoT embedded middleware, for example, for smart home purposes and so on. So, Our smart home is using it, several different external customers are using it, and what I think we really solved in comparison to other, you know, vendors is that we speak all this different IOT protocol, so we really, you know, help potential customers to quick start their journey.
Right? And, and then even more, I mean, what we are trying to do is not to build like a closed shop, right? So we want to have open ecosystem. So we use a lot of standards and also open source in, in our products, right? Also there, it is really crucial, right, so to help customers to build these ecosystems, right?
It's not just, you know, here's a, you know, a piece of technology, use it, right? So we tried also to make it as easy as possible in adopting it, right? And so just one example is, uh, It's an abstraction layer we did for the edge part, right? So we're, we abstract devices from the protocol. So if an app developer, for example, wants to write an app for, let's say a smart home gateway [00:06:40] to turn on and off the light or change the color or whatever, right?
That, you know, they don't need to know the protocol specific details, you know, what the exact. Bluetooth, Z Wave or whatever other protocol, right? So we just, you know, we, we say this is a lamp and this is what you can do with it. Right. And there is like a, let's say unified API, how you can, you know, access it.
Right. So, and yeah, so I think this is, you know, where we are coming from.
[00:07:07] Bill Pfeifer: Okay. So you mentioned you were touching on a couple of different things, smart homes and IOTs, lamps, things like that. But then Bosch also does, you know, factory solutions and transportation and medical, and again, just a huge swath of stuff.
So let me take us back to a question that used to be a standard question that we asked every guest and then kind of stopped after a while because the answers started to sound the same. Yours might not. What's your definition of the edge?
[00:07:36] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah, I mean, edge, I guess, I would say the definition has changed.
In my opinion, right? So I mean, so would you have asked me 10 years ago, I would have said like, you know, you know, a gateway, for example, is the edge or, you know, an edge device would be, you know, the thermostat that you put in your home, right? But I mean, that's very, you know, IOT specific right now with, you know, cars becoming connected.
So it's all connected with factories coming connected that, you know, these are edges too in the end, right? So a car is a sort of an edge device, right? And similar, you deploy now, I mean, not embedded devices, but maybe let's call it service, right, at the edge in factories, right? So I [00:08:20] would say, you know, everything that is close to the Source of data is, for me, the edge now, right?
[00:08:27] Bill Pfeifer: Okay. Yeah, and it's an interesting point that cars are, cars are part of the edge. They're mobile devices. I was just at Mobile World Congress, and Xiaomi, released their electric car. They're a mobile phone producer. They do home automation robots and stuff like that. Now they make a car. So I guess it's just, I
[00:08:48] Kai Hackbarth: mean, this is actually, this is a funny, funny thing that you say is right.
So, I mean, what you have seen in the past, right? So companies like Bosch are known as Hardware companies, right? So household appliances, power tools, you know, car equipment, let's call it this way, right? And Bosch also wants to become a software company, right? So, I mean, not everybody knows that, especially my division, yeah, we have 38, 000 software engineers at Bosch and there are more, right?
So, I mean, this is just my division. And then you see companies like Google, Amazon, right? So, which used to be Let's call it software companies, right? Mm-Hmm. or cloud providers becoming hardware providers, right? Yeah. So with Alexa and all this, right? So it's, it's funny how these things are, you know, changing.
[00:09:36] Bill Pfeifer: Mm-Hmm. , it's gonna be really interesting to see where that stops and Yeah. To your point, right? Yeah. Bosch is known as a hardware company, but these days it's hard to imagine hardware that. doesn't have software running it, where it used to all be solid state stuff. Now everything has some kind of sensors and control modules and things like that.
And so there's so much software anyway, [00:10:00] that you might as well put some better instrumentation on it and get more value out of it, or your competitors will. But then it's also kind of fascinating to watch. The folks that we used to think of as traditional software players, Microsoft, they made windows and office.
That's all they did forever. And now they're building their own AI chips and their own processors. And my goodness, Xboxes,
[00:10:25] Kai Hackbarth: right? So, yeah, yeah,
[00:10:27] Bill Pfeifer: but actually, actually spinning their own chips and, you know, doing some of that stuff, like really deep hardware stuff. Kind of fascinating. I wonder. How many companies will be left standing when we finish the next round of consolidation?
And yeah, yeah, it's going to be fascinating. So as you get into these projects that you work on, again, not, not really a typical project, quote unquote, because there's so much variability because Bosch covers so much stuff. What's, is there kind of a common thread in the stuff that comes to you of, you know, people are having challenges with.
Hardware that they need software middle, middleware to integrate between multiple things, or are they trying to add more intelligence? Are they? Uh, looking for more automation. Is there just no common thread and it's all, it's all kind of up in the air and everyone's different. Is there, is there any sort of common thread in what you see?
[00:11:26] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. I mean, I mean, we, where I'm coming from, we are a software company, right? So we focus on the software side of things, but that doesn't mean we don't. Do not do hardware stuff, right? So, I mean, so we have projects where we do really PCB [00:11:40] design, we do firmware development, we do, you know, the cloud connectivity and so on, right?
But when we talk specifically now about IOT projects, let's say it this way, right? So the first thing, right, is connectivity, right? So I have some sort of sensor device or, uh, an asset that I want to connect with. I want to collect data and with this data, I want to do something, right? Right. And then typically, you know, when, when you, when you already have this, right, you have, for example, in our case, we have device management platform where we manage devices remotely.
So we can retrieve data, we can remotely manage these devices. We can push software updates, all this. Right. And, and that's, I would say always, you know, sort of a foundation to, to build your IoT. Application, let's call it this way, right? And that's true, be it, you know, smart home, be it industrial, be it, I don't know, smart city.
And the one thing which I would say, Where I see a difference is that, for example, this deployment model, especially when we talk about the device management platform, right? So, I mean, so we had many, many cloud players, right? That basically left the IOT game, if you want, right? And so we always offered our device management platform as a service, but also as an on premise deployment option.
So a customer could take it, you know, deploy it in their own. Public cloud instance or private cloud instance or in their own [00:13:20] data center of their choice really, right? And I believe that is crucial. This so called deployment flexibility. So, especially in Europe, many, many companies are still concerned about security, right?
So, they don't want especially personal data. Uh, to be. Shared in the cloud, let's call it, right, or even in industrial environment, right? So, I mean, data from the shop floor is mission critical, right? So, I mean, it's in many cases still unimaginable to call it like this. Yeah. To send data in the cloud, right?
Yeah.
[00:13:57] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah. It's a good way to get on the news and not in a good way. Exactly right.
[00:14:01] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah.
[00:14:03] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah. So. I know in the past you've done some work on smart homes and you mentioned that a little bit earlier. That's just, it's such a cool space and it's one that it was really big for a while and then everyone just kind of left that space.
But now I think it's coming back around and I think Bosch has been in there for, I don't think you guys left the space. I think you kind of stayed in there. It just went a little bit quiet. So you're probably well ahead of. Most people, most companies in that space. Can you talk some about the work you've done, how you got into it?
What, what kind of projects you've worked on?
[00:14:40] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, in the end, this all started in the previous company, right? Uh, that Bosch acquired Prosis Software. And so I think our first customer, interestingly enough, was BSH, Bosch Siemens Home Appliance, 2001, when I started, this was our, our very first customer, right?
Um, so we were [00:15:00] connecting home appliances via power line, which was. Let's say not working superb, to call it like this, right? With gateways and we could, for example, remotely control via WAP phones back then, right? Our devices, kitchen appliances, for example, right? I mean, it was more of a marketing gag, I would say, right?
So nobody really saw any real value in it, right? But we also did it for, for other brands like Miele and so on. I mean, there is, let's say, a customer cliente, right? So that just buys, you know, the most expensive equipment they can, and they just get it and probably don't even know about what they have, right?
So, but anyway, I mean, that's how, how things, I would say, started for us. So this already brought, let's say, volume, right? And then I was very active also in, in, in the standardization area, right? So it was GI Alliance, was our partner. platform, I would call it. And we also specified specifically for smart home environments, a lot of standards to connect devices, but also remotely managed gateways.
And we collaborated also with other. Industry alliances. So this was heavily adopted, especially by telecom companies, if you want, right. And Deutsche Telekom used this, I would say, as a, as a foundation for what is, I think today, Deutsche Telekom smart home. And, and also there, the aim was really to build this ecosystem.
Right. So, I mean, they wanted to work with [00:16:40] different vendors of smart home equipment, also with different protocols. Right. So, I mean, you even had the possibility to plug in a USB stick, yeah, to, to also include new or other smart home protocols, for example, right. And so that really went big, I would say, but.
Yeah, Bosch also is now active in this space for, for several years, Bosch smart home, right? And they also use this, the same technology that we provide. And I think what really kicked off a smart home, at least in Europe, I don't know about the US, but in Europe, the fact that the Ukrainian or the war in Ukraine started and the gas price just went up and so everybody was buying thermostats.
to manage the gas consumptions, right? Because in, in, especially in Germany, you have a lot of gas heating nowadays. I mean, you see also, there's also a technology dedicated to this. You see heat pumps coming, right? But also those need to be able to be managed, right? And also they use, there's a technology called EEBus, right?
That you make the different producers of energy and the different Consumers of energy, you connect them, right? And they can talk to each other. And through this, you can gain efficiencies in the energy consumption, right?
[00:18:04] Bill Pfeifer: Okay. Yeah.
[00:18:06] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, there's so much more you can talk about, right? But that's things we did and we are still doing, right?
So
[00:18:12] Bill Pfeifer: even just the different generations of connectivity, I hadn't thought for a long time about that old [00:18:20] idea of connecting everything through power. But it makes sense because there's wires going everywhere.
[00:18:26] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, there used to be X10, right? So, you know X10, right? So, to remotely turn off your light, I mean, that's when, that's 2001, right?
So, it's like 23 years ago, right? So, yeah,
[00:18:38] Bill Pfeifer: and then everything was Ethernet when we built our house. I have more than a mile of Cat5 cable. In my house, every wall has a, has a, has a cable, every light switch so that I can fully automate everything. And now everything's wireless and I'm never going to use any of that stuff.
[00:18:54] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, I started doing this with Powerline, right? So I have, there's this company called Devolo, right? So they have this Powerline modems and you also get like, I mean, depending on the Powerline, I guess up to one gigabit connections, right? So, so you, you can plug it really like, you know, you can plug an ethernet cable to your computer, right?
So, yeah. Saves a lot of trouble with cables, right?
[00:19:16] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah, that's kind of awesome because you have those cables running everywhere, no matter what kind of house you have. That's, that's fantastic. Now, you mentioned the OSGI Alliance. I know you've done some work with them on standards. Are you still involved with them?
And what did you do? What do you do with them?
[00:19:34] Kai Hackbarth: So, I mean, OSGI Alliance, I mean, from a history point of view, right? So, this started in 1999. So, I wasn't active back then, right? So, the idea, and there were a couple of different companies, like Sun, IBM, Ericsson, Motorola, and Prose Software, and so on, that had one vision, um, to sort of help, especially [00:20:00] Java, if you want, or Java users with modularization.
And over the time, we basically learned there are so many different things where you can use this, right? So it started with, I would say, smart home, right? But it also went into. Vehicles, it went into mobile phones to some extent, if you want, right? So it went into many, many different enterprise systems, for example, from IBM.
And I mean, if you ever use the Eclipse IDE, the Eclipse IDE in its core, yeah, it's, it's OCI based. Right. So, so OSGI used to be really, I would say, a very hot technology in the early 2000s years, right? And so I was a co chair of the so called residential expert group, where we did this, you know, standardization with telecom operators together, for example, it was Deutsche Telekom, Telekom Italia, Orange, NTT, and so on.
Right. And like I said, so the, the main effort that we, we, we did was. really around having standard interfaces to manage devices remotely. So, and they are, I mean, especially when we talk about telco operated gateways, right? So they're already, I mean, there were already systems in place and standards in place that we had to adapt, I would call it, to make it work with, with our technology.
Right. We also defined a lot of standards, for example. For example, to support different protocols back then, right? So I mean, and this abstraction layer especially, right? So that I think the biggest thing really, right? So because OSGI was always really about, I [00:21:40] would say a couple of things. So modularization first, right?
Backward compatibility. So I mean, we had, I mean, we had a core framework and then we had many different services, right? Some of them generic, some of them. Domain specific, I would call them, but backward compatibility was always in the core that, you know, if you did an update of a, of a specification, really, that it was backward compatible to, let's say, previous standards also, right?
We spent a lot of effort to ensure this, to say like this, right. And then, like I said, so this domain specific standardization, we had so called expert groups that worked this out. And like I said, so this, this was really fun time because you really saw that the market was, was ready for this. Right.
Nowadays, I mean, OCI Airlines does not exist anymore, right? So we, we, we. I think closed it down in 2020, maybe, and transferred the intellectual property to the Eclipse Foundation so it could continue. And I would say one of the main reasons, right? I mean, the technology is still great. It still serves, you know, its purpose, right?
And there's still a lot of adoption there, right? But you find now a lot of new programming languages, right? So, I mean, Java isn't really as hot anymore as So, so when we, for example, also at Bosch, when we do, yeah, software for edge devices, right? So nowadays you would do this in, in Golang or in, in Rust, for example, right?
So that's sort of where we are and I'm still active in the Eclipse Foundation. I'm in the, or the [00:23:20] OSGI working group of the Eclipse Foundation. I'm still in the steering committee. And I mean. Also, our platforms still use it, use, you know, Java, OSGI in the core. Sure.
[00:23:30] Bill Pfeifer: Makes sense. So, I mean, I, it makes a lot of sense and it sounds like you had some major companies aligned.
To the OSGI foundation, which explains why it moved forward into Eclipse, because you don't want to give up all of that interoperability. That's amazing. You know, it's, it's great for a company to say we have open standards, but if nobody else uses those standards, then they're not very standard. Even if you publish it, you still have to custom write all of your APIs.
Just for that one company. So having kind of a, more of a modular standard that different companies can, can plug in, plug out and programmers can write common code for is huge. So, I mean, tip of the hat for that. That's, that's an amazing effort to, to really make things, to make the modern world work.
Because otherwise it's all vendor lock in, which is just not super fun, especially for programmers. So you mentioned that Eclipse Foundation is really focused on Java. Is that, does that work translate forward into some version that can be picked up by Golang, by Rust, by other languages as we move forward and adopt something new?
Or does it have to be kind of started over?
[00:24:46] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, actually Eclipse, I would say historically comes also from the Java world, obviously, right? So, but you can, I mean, Eclipse has many different working groups doing many different things [00:25:00] really, right? It's not all Java. So, so we also, for example, have one Eclipse project called Kanto, and that's just an edge agent really, right?
But it's written in Golang, it's open source, right? And I think what is important to know about Eclipse really is. It's, it's not only about open source, it's also about standardization, right? So I mean, so the work, the specification work that we did in, in the OSGI Alliance, we continue to do this in the Eclipse Foundation.
It's just now it's made available always as open source, which was not the case in the OSGI Alliance, to call it like this, right? So, so in the OSGI Alliance, you had to be a member. To have access to reference implementations, for example, right. And in the old GI Alliance, in the Eclipse foundation, everything is released at least in one open source project to call it Lexis, right?
I mean, Java plays still a big, big role in Eclipse foundation, right? So, I mean, you find, uh, don't remember. But the implementation now was an open JDK implementation that is driven by IBM. The, the enterprise, let's say Java development is happening to a large extent in the Eclipse foundation, right? Java still plays a big role there, but it's not limited to this.
[00:26:19] Bill Pfeifer: You've played with some really interesting things across your career. This is fun. You mentioned Smart Grid a little while ago, a couple episodes back, we had a really fun conversation about. Instrumenting the high voltage portion of the grid and just modernizing, right? And the, the [00:26:40] massive effort that that takes, but smart grid is another one of those topics.
You know, it connects into houses, it connects into cars, it connects in, it's all over the place. I doubt you were working on the same part that we were talking about. What did you do with Smart Grid? What was Smart Grid to your project?
[00:26:57] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah, I mean, so we did also, there are many different things, but It's
[00:27:00] Bill Pfeifer: really bursty and, and people aren't.
[00:27:03] Kai Hackbarth: Exactly. And so, but the other part, which was also very interesting is really about electric vehicles, right? So, I mean, in Germany, the government really, let's say, pushed the rollout of electric vehicles. Vehicles a lot with also funding from the federal government. When you, let's say bought a new electric vehicle, you've got some funding from, from, from the government, right?
That stopped now. But anyway, the problem that everybody foresees is if you have a lot of electric vehicles on the grids, right? And everybody is charging at the same time. You know, we got again, a problem , so destabilizing the grid, right? Yeah. So, and they wanted to be able to manage the, the load of the electric vehicles remotely from their control center, basically.
Right? So that you basically avoid this, you know, energy peaks, right? And, and, you know, manage it better, right? So, so instead of ing your vehicle was. 22 kilowatt hours, you would maybe then only charge it with 11 kilowatt hours or even less. So, so that was a use case that we realized. I think this is crucial in the near future, right?
So, I mean, electric vehicles are coming, right? And you need to have these, so we call this a home [00:28:20] energy management system. And that's again, this e bus technology that I mentioned, right? So that you connect all your different producers, consumers, for example, in your home, right? And on top of it, you had different use cases, right?
So for example, one use case, coordinated charging, right? So charge your vehicle when you get energy from your photovoltaics system and so on. Right. So, I mean, just, just some examples, right? So there's a lot of movement happening in, in this direction. Also a lot of standardization specifically, right?
[00:28:54] Bill Pfeifer: Okay.
But that brings up two funny things that I was just having a conversation with not too long ago. I can't help, but remember. Years ago, before electric, when they were just starting to come up with hybrids, right? Yeah. The big push was, it's all going to be hydrogen based power. And hybrid cars were supposed to be teaching us how to make electric chassis.
To be powered by hydrogen. And then somehow the hydrogen conversation went away and the somehow is because then people realized, Oh, it takes a lot of power to make clean hydrogen and we don't have the distribution network. So instead they're building an electric distribution network, which is kind of the same problem.
So, so I thought that was funny that, you know, we went from hybrid is the path to hydrogen to let's go all electric and now we're stressing the grid and blah, blah, blah. But then. The biggest problem with hydrogen is, oh, it takes too much power. But now as we get more renewables, we have this bursty power and we have too much power and we have to figure out where to [00:30:00] dump it because it can't just sit there and you can't just stick it in the ground.
It's electricity. What do you do with it? And I can't help but thinking that that burstiness is going to end up making hydrogen, which will take us, take electric cars off the grid and put them back to hydrogen power. And it'll be interesting to see what that journey looks like. But the whole, like, hybrid to electric, but maybe hydrogen, I don't know, it's, it's a funny one.
[00:30:27] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, to be, to be, to be honest, right, so I personally believe, and I think this is also a big bet that Bosch is having right now, right, so I think hydrogen will come, right, so I mean, it's not yet ready for cars, right, but I mean, Nikola is a great example, right, so for trucks, right, so I mean, You, you can already see, uh, Nikola trucks in, in, in Germany, for example.
[00:30:50] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah. It makes sense that they would start with trucks because that's going more, you know, depot to depot and you can have trained people filling them.
[00:30:58] Kai Hackbarth: Right. Bosch also, let's say, invest a lot in hydrogen, right? So also in how to produce hydrogen and so on. Right. So, I mean, Electricity is not the answer for cars to call it like this, right?
So if everybody drives an electric vehicle, no grid can manage this, right? So, I mean, that's, right? And, and, I mean, it's, I mean, also, I mean, I have an electric car, right? So I have a Polestar 2, and I love this car, right? But I see, um, I talked to a lot of people that would never ever buy an electric car because they feel like it takes freedom away, right?
So, I mean, in terms of, you know, I don't want to wait 30 minutes to get my [00:31:40] car charged or I don't want to worry when I need to charge my car and all this, right? So, and I think with, with hydrogen, Whenever this will be, I don't know. Right. All these problems could potentially be, be solved. Right. So, I mean, there's still a lot of investment to be done in infrastructure, in like, you know, making it cheaper to produce and all of this, but I'm very hopeful that, that it will come because it's also clean energy.
Right. So in the end, right.
[00:32:06] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah, there's, there's so much of, so much to think about with that and yeah, but then again, as we add instrumentation and that software layer and the IOT to everything, we can start to get a lot more control and a lot more intelligence. Which, I mean, we kind of went into a vehicle conversation, which takes us to smart vehicles, another, another huge topic.
And I know you've at least touched on that stuff. Have you done much work with smart vehicles? Because that's another. It seems like Bosch is already working on these things that are just starting to really hit the market, which is fantastic. I love it.
[00:32:55] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. My personal journey to call it like this, right?
So with, let's call it smart vehicles for lack of a better word. It was really, I mean, also in 2001. So we went to a German OEM. And we were promoting this Java OSGI technology to them, right? So it's open, it's modular, you can, you know, reuse components across many different [00:33:20] vehicles and so on, right? So there were, there were, In our mind, a lot of advantages to, to use this, right?
So, but the COEMs, they were like, go away, right? So, I mean, there was a reason behind it, right? So, because they were really worried about open technologies, right? In the sense, what happens, yeah, when I have, A third party software component that affects, for example, my braking system, right? Who is responsible, who takes care of warranty and so on, right?
So these conversations didn't go far to call it Lexus, right? So then another thing happened that, I mean, was not with us, but it was, let's say, a competitor of ours who provided for BMW the 5 series. Many, many years ago, don't ask me which year, but they had like an OSGI based infotainment system. And the 5 series was delayed because of the performance of the OSGI infotainment system.
So the boot up time was taking too long, right? So that gave OSGI already like, you know, a mark, too slow and too heavy and so on. There are still, I mean, even today, customers using Java, OSGI, I mean, things have changed, obviously, in terms of CPU, of power, and, you know, all this, right? So we, in the end, you know, can do this performance, to call it like this, right?
And already did many years ago. But this, this, this sort of hindered the adoption in the, in the, in the market, I would call it. Right nowadays, I mean, Bosch obviously, you know, is doing a lot of software for cars, right? But one should, [00:35:00] I'm not directly involved, but indirectly I would call it. There is a software defined vehicle initiative, which is happening also at the Eclipse Foundation, right?
So, and they, I mean, obviously, you know, all tier ones, all OEMs, they have their own, let's say, vision of what a software defined vehicle will be, should be, and so on, right? Bosch believes in the open source approach, right? And this IoT Edge agent, this Eclipse Canto project that I mentioned, is basically the foundation for the software defined vehicle.
And there are many different tier ones, OEMs also involved, right? But it's, I would say it's still. a long journey to go, right? Software defined vehicles, I would say it's still sort of a vision, yeah? An industry vision, right? So nobody really has, I would say, yet the, the full answer to this, right? And you see, I don't know, Daimler has now MBOS, Carriot is working on their own platform and so on, right?
I don't know about the US vendors, what they are doing, right? But I mean, there's going to be a lot of consolidation happening over the next years, I believe.
[00:36:10] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah, I, As I understand it, I'm based in Detroit, so I'm, I'm close to where the U. S. autos are happening. And as I understand it, there's, there's a challenge there because they've pieced out so many of the systems.
So there's, you know, a vendor that does the braking system. There's a vendor that does the acceleration system. There's a vendor, and those systems don't talk to each other. With an electric car, that's a problem.
[00:36:35] Kai Hackbarth: We call this integration hell, right? So, because I mean, you, like you said, right? So you [00:36:40] get systems, right?
And a car has maybe today a hundred plus ECUs from different vendors and the OEM that needs to integrate it into the vehicle and make it work, right? So, and I mean, this is, I would say one. Of the things that we are trying to solve with software defined vehicles, right? So where you have less systems with higher compute.
[00:37:02] Bill Pfeifer: More commonality, more shared systems. Yeah, exactly. And, but then the security and the lifetime of that stuff is, is a whole different way of thinking, right? I was, I was selling into the autos long, long ago and I was talking to them about security and The conversations were, you know, can that security be guaranteed to be good for 30 years with no changes?
I'm sorry, what? Because we didn't have cellular in cars to do over the air updates and things like that. And yeah, the car might be on the road for 30 years and it had to still work and be secure. At the end of its life. Holy cow. That's just a whole different thing.
[00:37:42] Kai Hackbarth: And I think we'll, we'll see with Tesla, right?
With Tesla, see how, how long it goes, right? So, I mean, so far so good, but for how long, right? So, I mean.
[00:37:51] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah, the, the, the traditional autos are three. Thinking about a lifespan of one car that's longer than Tesla has been, which is, I mean, it's going to be interesting to see. And Xiaomi is just releasing their car.
So you know, is, is it going to stand the test of time? But I mean, also there, I
[00:38:07] Kai Hackbarth: think the, let's say the way we develop software for cars will change, right? So, I mean, I, I've also seen this in Bosch, right? So, I mean, where, you know, you move away from a static, piece of [00:38:20] software, right, to a DevOps kind of development, right?
So, I mean, so where you, I mean, really push regularly, yeah, software updates, even to easy use, right?
[00:38:31] Bill Pfeifer: Yep. But then each one of those updates has to be rock solid.
[00:38:35] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah. Right. The entire industry will change dramatically, right? So, I mean, if you also think of autonomous cars, right? So it becomes even more complex.
You have artificial intelligence in the cars, right? Yep. And that By itself requires a lot of updates over the time and I mean, you cannot say, you know, 10 years after, you know, the car is delivered, right? So yeah, that's it, right?
[00:38:59] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah. So houses and power and cars. I think we probably covered a whole lot of ground more, more than we usually do, which is great.
I love it. This was fun. So what excites you about the future of Edge? What do you see coming next?
[00:39:14] Kai Hackbarth: Yeah, I think, I mean, for me, I'm currently heavily involved in, for example, this Eclipse Kanto project, right? So bring connectivity to devices, basically to all devices if you want, right? And like I said, this is open source, right?
There's no vendor login in terms of which IoT platform I want to use, right? So, so that's, that's cool. One thing that really excites me in the sense that, you know, we really can connect any device in the end, right? So whether it's, you know, microprocessor based or microprocessor based device, right? And there's huge opportunities, right?
So, and the other thing, That excites me right now is all around sustainability. That's a hot topic right now, right? So, I mean, we, for example, do this in [00:40:00] factories where we help Bosch, but also external customers to make their factories more energy efficient, reduce CO2 footprint. And there are so many cool use cases.
My favorite use case right now is about chillers. So we have a factory in India, where we have a lot of chillers outside for the HVAC system in the factory. And these chillers, they have a static set point, right? So they always run at the same speed. And so we have a platform with which we can dynamically control this.
And this basically led to 50, almost 50 percent energy reduction, which was 1, 600 kilowatt hours in a year. Wow. This is just one use case. Right? So there's so many other use cases where you can, you know, even gain more efficiencies to call it like this. Right? And I mean, in the end, I don't know how this is in the U.
S., but in Europe, for example, companies need to report their CO2 footprint. Right? So, I mean, for example, the COEMs, they launched a platform. It's called Catena X. And it's, it's one of the use cases really transparently about the supply chain, where the carrier can see the CO2 footprint of all the pieces or all the parts they get for suppliers, right?
And can then, you know, put a CO2 footprint to a car, if you want, right? So much CO2 footprint. was consumed, right, for producing this specific car, for example, right? And there's a lot of enforcement by law, right? And this will hit big and small companies the same [00:41:40] way, right? Okay.
[00:41:41] Bill Pfeifer: Yeah. The U. S. is behind Europe in that respect.
So, we're Paying attention to that stuff now for the most part, but it's not legislated and it's not standardized yet. So, you know, companies report things in different ways or they just stop for a while and there's nothing massive about it. So we will catch up, I think, and it's going to be a big disruptive thing, but we need to, because it's becoming a problem.
And especially as we get more into AI and everyone figures out how much power AI draws, we're going to have to get a lot more intelligent about AI. What we do with the power that we have for sure. So that'll be interesting. Well, this was a lot of fun. I definitely appreciate the time. Kai, how can people find you online, keep up to date with the latest trouble you're causing and find out about all the work you're up to?
[00:42:37] Kai Hackbarth: I mean, LinkedIn is probably the easiest way, right? I'm posting a lot there also on what I'm doing and what we are doing really, right? So that's probably the best source of, you know, getting in touch with me and to follow me.
[00:42:50] Bill Pfeifer: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate it. And it was a pleasure talking to you.
Thank you very much.
[00:42:57] Narrator: That does it for this episode of Over the Edge. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating and a review and tell a friend. Over the Edge is made possible through the generous sponsorship of our partners at Dell Technologies. Simplify your edge so you can generate more value.
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