Self Employed

My Services: 
👉 Configuration Management (SUP.8)
👉 Product Release (SPL.2)
👉 ASPICE process consulting and internal assessments, gap analysis

I‘m supporting automotive suppliers, startups, OEMs and established Tier1s in understanding and tackling the challenges that come with developing, producing, certifying and implementing next generation automotive L3+ (ASIL B+) products such as highly autonomous driving platforms, lidar, radar, camera and HPC systems

Software Quality Process Engineer

scaletech

Check out the scaletech company page ✌🏼

+3M monthly tech content impressions 😮‍💨

Owner and Content Creator

The Lidar Society

👉 Crafting unique engineering grade content that turns heads
👉 Managing the Lidar Society, which is a community (currently LinekdIn Group) of professionals, investors, and enthusiasts working in the field of lidar technology. 
👉 It is a platform for knowledge-sharing, collaboration, and networking among members, with a focus on advancing the field of lidar technology and shaping the future of autonomous transportation. 
👉 Joining the community offers access to expert insights, opportunities to connect with industry leaders and other like-minded professionals, and a chance to be part of a group driving innovation in the field.

Automotive B2B Content Creator (building "The Lidar Society")

Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH

Developing the first serial solid state LiDAR sensor for automotive and industrial applications.
Responsible for Release Management and Production Release of the IbeoNEXT LiDAR sensor going from Prototype to SOP.
* Planning of all Sensor Releases with Product, Application and Production Management 
* Handling all Configuration items along the way
* Responsible for on-time, quality release and documentation of the ibeo Next 4D solid state Lidar sensor

Release & Configuration Manager LIDAR Sensor

Supported the current RTE in daily tasks and took over IT, Project Management/Scheduling and Organizational tasks.
Onboarding time on the ibeoNext Project until I eventually took over Release Management for the project.

Release Train Engineer Lidar Sensor

Development, Planning and Implementation of Culture Space.

Coroporate Culture

Customer acquisition, presentations, project management, strategy and planning.
* Prepared customer presentations for Group Lead
* Supported customer and project acquisition.
* Responsible for L4 AD use case development and evaluation.
* Project Planning and Controlling of research funded AD projects.

Project Manager Autonomous Driving

Responsible for the Vehicle and Sensor Simulation activities and Virtual Testing.
Supported the founding of subsidiary ibeo-nl.de in Eindhoven, NL.
* Initiated the ibeo simulation activities with newly founded company.
* Project lead at ibeo for vehicle simulation and implementation of ray tracing/casting based Lidar sensor models.
* Counterpart to ibeo-nl CEO for all sorts of administrative and project related topics. 
* Goal of the project was to create a sophisticated simulation suite for high quality physics based Lidar sensor models, to create synthetic data for environmental perception model evaluation.

Project Manager Simulation

Simulation framework development and project management for Lidar sensor model development.
Integrated ibeo, IPG Carmaker and Vires VTD SDKs, to create data for environmental perception algorithm development.

Software Developer - Virtual Testing

Continental

Vehicle Simulation Engineer in the Virtual Vehicle Test department. 
IPG Carmaker was facilitated as a virtual integration platform for all kinds of prototype software as well as self developed models. Just to name a few interfaces: Matlab/Simulink, Dymola(Modelica), C, DLL etc. Fully compatible with FMI Standard.
Worked on SIL, MIL and HIL projects as well as supported road testing. Also a framework for automated testing was developed.

Virtual Test Engineer

HWA AG / Mercedes-AMG DTM Team

Intern in Mercedes-AMG DTM Team's Vehicle Dynamics Group

Vehicle Dynamics Engineer

MAHLE Powertrain Ltd.

Torque vectoring controller design to generate desired handling perception of TtR electric hybrid improving fun-to-drive aspect. MIL based performance and robustness validation followed by final implementation and calibration on an actual prototype vehicle. Particular focus on formulating general handling statement for different driving modes and designing sophisticated desired handling generator.

Research Intern

Institute of Automotive Engineering TU Braunschweig

ACC development
longitudinal vehicle dynamics
processing of measured data
developing vehicle models
vehicle dynamics validation

Graduate Research Assistant

IPG Automotive GmbH

Bachelor Thesis

Parameterisation and validation of a Formula Student racecar using on track measured data.

Parametrierung und Validierung eines Formula Student Fahrzeugmodells anhand von Messdaten aus realen Testfahrten.

Research Internship

Transcoject GmbH

IBS, University of Applied Sciences Kiel

Industriebegleitetes Studium (IBS) Fachhochschule Kiel

Integrated Degree Student

You are curious about Lidar? Last 12 Months +1.9M Automotive Experts joined us | Our lidar community is fueled with genuine lidar insights. You won’t find anywhere else | This is your chance to get 1:1 with Lidar Leaders

Everyone wants to match China speed or Tesla agility, but few automotive teams know how to get there. 

The usual suspects—poor developer experience, ASPICE bottlenecks, and cultural misalignment—are holding your team back.

Your developers are overwhelmed. 

Quality managers are frustrated. 

And despite your efforts with Agile-at-Scale and ASPICE consultancies, nothing seems to click.

Here’s the good news: the secret to China speed is simple but not easy. 

With a proven approach, I help automotive software teams achieve happy developers, happy quality managers, and hassle-free ASPICE compliance—all while keeping your existing processes and tooling intact.

I’ve spent the past decade solving these challenges. 

-> I established configuration and release management systems for a startup that became a Tier 1 lidar sensor supplier

-> Isupported a Silicon Valley startup in implementing an ASPICE-compliant process landscape (ensuring developers stayed in flow without being burdened by excessive manual effort)

-> I worked with a major German premium OEM to rethink their software development journey.

Together, we stopped wasting time on nonsense like manual compliance in Excel, Confluence pages, and excessive Jira templates. 

Instead, we focused on automated compliance monitoring, seamless reporting, and developer-level training—allowing teams to live up to their full potential.

If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and finally outpace the competition, let’s talk. 

Limited slots available—message me to learn how.


Hell is breaking lose in automotive Germany 😳
Nexperia chip shortage hitting first Tier1s.

Bosch filed for Kurzarbeit affecting over 1,000 workers at its Salzgitter plant. 

ZF Friedrichshafen notified Germany’s employment agency and filed for Kurzarbeit at multiple sites. 

The reason? 

Nexperia chip deliveries stopped flowing.

This isn’t a supply hiccup. 

This is just-in-time manufacturing meeting geopolitical reality.

The cascading effect:

→ Bosch: 1,000+ employees at Salzgitter entering short-time work

→ ZF: Filed for Kurzarbeit at “individual locations” (numbers “still manageable” but growing)

→ ZF also cut shifts at its 8,000-employee Schweinfurt electric drivetrain plant

→ Volkswagen can’t rule out production stoppages beyond next week

→ IG Metall reports “many companies” across Bavaria and Lower Saxony preparing similar measures


This is a systemic disaster:

Nexperia produces 50+ billion standard chips annually. 
Not advanced nodes. 
Basic transistors, diodes, battery management chips.

The chips that cost 50 cents but can stop a million-euro production line.

When the Dutch government seized control of Chinese-owned Nexperia in late September, China responded with export restrictions. 

Now German automakers can’t get the chips their Tier-1 suppliers need.


It’s disturbing to see how German automotive is built on such a fragile supply chain with single point failures as devastating as this one!

Germany’s automotive sector employs 700,000+ people. 

Multiple suppliers already announced massive job cuts before this crisis:

↳ Bosch cutting 22,000 positions in mobility
↳ ZF eliminating 14,000 German jobs by 2028
↳ Continental planning 1,450 cuts by 2026

The Nexperia crisis hits an industry already weakened by electrification costs, falling demand, and compressed margins.

What makes this even worse. 

Unlike 2020-2021, this isn’t pandemic-driven capacity issues. 

This is a geopolitical conflict creating artificial scarcity in globally integrated supply chains.

Alternative suppliers exist. 

But re-qualification and ramp-up take months if not years.

Bosch, Continental and other suppliers report their inventories last about two weeks.

The IG Metall union’s phones are “running hot” with works councils seeking advice on Kurzarbeit agreements

The brutal reality is this:

Germany built its automotive dominance on precision engineering and reliable supply chains. 

The Nexperia crisis exposes how vulnerable just-in-time manufacturing becomes when geopolitics trump economics.

The question isn’t if more companies will announce Kurzarbeit. 

It’s how many, and how fast the diplomatic resolution comes.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

———

As always… powered by scaletech 

Want to scale your tech founder LinkedIn profile to +1M impressions yearly and 10s of inbound leads every month let’s talk 😊

Lukas Timm

Stop losing deals to competitors with weaker tech but stronger visibility. You already have the expertise — you just need a system to make it seen.

No alternative text description for this image

Automotive owes me 2,920 days of my life back.
And honestly, the industry will never pay that debt.

But those years did one thing for me:
they made the root causes of automotive software failure painfully clear.

Here are the 10 truths nobody wants to say out loud:

1.	Most OEMs don’t build software. They assemble politics.
Every feature is a negotiation, not an engineering decision.

2.	Toolchains aren’t “integrated.” They’re duct-taped by humans.
Engineers act as APIs between DOORS, Jira, Git, Excel, and whatever else someone bought in 2012.
	
3.	Compliance is a theatrical performance.
Evidence is generated after the work, not during it.
That’s why every audit week feels like a crime scene cleanup.
	
4.	Architecture isn’t designed. It evolves accidentally.
Half the ECUs exist because nobody could agree who should own what.
	
5.	Requirements don’t describe reality.
They describe what the process wants to hear.
The real requirements live in Slack, meetings, and tribal memory.
	
6.	Integration hell is not an event. It’s the default operating model.
Missing ECUs, outdated binaries, and year-long delays are treated like “normal.”
	
7.	Leadership thinks software is linear.
Add people → go faster.
Add suppliers → reduce risk.
It does the opposite.
	
8.	Testing is a graveyard of contradictions.
Nobody knows what the “current truth” is.
Half the tests contradict the requirements.
The other half test ghosts.
	
9.	Most delays aren’t technical.
They’re alignment tax.
Weeks lost to meetings where nobody has the same information.
	
10.	Continuous compliance is the only way out.
AI agents that collect evidence as work happens.
Auto-traceability.
No more reverse-engineering documentation.
No more “surprise” findings six months later.

After 2,920 days inside this system, one conclusion is unavoidable:

Automotive doesn’t have a software problem.
It has a reality problem.

And until that’s fixed, nothing changes.

What’s your journey enduring automotive taught you?

Talks about #lidar, #automotive, #perception, #computervision, and #autonomousdriving

Tech Content Strategist & Visibility Advisor | Scaling B2B Tech Leaders from 2K to 100K+ Impressions | Proven Visibility System

Daniel Hommel

The real secret behind “China Speed” isn’t what most Western OEMs think. 🤯

It’s not magic.
It’s not 996.
It’s not some hidden productivity formula.

It’s the complete absence of the European engineering reflex:

“Let’s open a V-model workflow, create 14 alignment meetings, run simulations for six weeks, and write 40 pages of justification before touching anything.”

Here’s how a Chinese engineer explained it:
	
1.	China doesn’t follow the V-model as religion.
If Chinese teams had to run the same process stack as Germany, “China Speed” would disappear instantly.
	
2.	Decisions are made by expert judgment, not committees.
One experienced engineer says: “Do X.”
And the team executes the same day.
Not five weeks later after ten departments “review the impact.”
	
3.	Discovery happens through building, not planning.
Europe: months of simulation → debate → documentation → alignment → maybe a prototype.
China: prototype in hours or days → see what breaks → iterate.
Shorter loops beat perfect planning. Every time.
	
4.	Documentation is a consequence, not a blocker.
Western OEMs generate documents to start the work.
Chinese engineers generate documents after the work, if absolutely necessary.
	
5.	Long discussions are considered waste.
In Europe, long discussions are “due diligence.”
In China, they’re a sign the team has stopped thinking.
	
6.	Minimum Viable Product actually means minimum.
Not “MVP with 19 features to keep management happy.”
A real, stripped-down test that answers one question fast.
	
7.	Expert heuristics replace formal processes.
Direct quote: “If blanking force reaches XXX kN, slow down.”
Not: “Let’s create a cross-functional review board and a 50-step escalation workflow.”

This is why iteration is fast.
This is why projects move.
This is why Western OEMs keep getting blindsided.

China Speed is simply the absence of the friction Europe refuses to let go of.

Until European OEMs stop worshipping process, alignment, and simulation-heavy decision chains, they will always lose to teams who treat engineering as a contact sport, not a committee activity.

Source: largely based on a comment I can’t find anymore. So please reach out if you recognize your insights.

Ish Kumar Bhargava

Stellantis customers are furious: 🤬
intrusive pop-up ads are now appearing directly inside their infotainment systems.

Affected brands are amongst Jeep, Dodge, Ram, Chrysler, and others.

Drivers say the experience is jarring sometimes the ads take over the whole screen, often popping up when the car stops at traffic lights.

Across Reddit, forums, and owner groups, the reaction is blunt:

What drivers are reporting

• Interruptions at every stop. Ads and “offers” appear as soon as the vehicle comes to a halt, blocking navigation or media until dismissed.

• No reliable opt-out. Some links lead only to customer service numbers. Many say the ads simply return the next time the car starts.

• Distracting, low-value content. Owners describe the messages as irrelevant, visually unappealing, and offering no real benefit just clutter in the primary driving interface.

• Trust erosion. A number of long-time Jeep and Dodge owners say this is enough to consider switching brands, feeling the ownership experience is being monetized mid-drive.

• Safety worries. Full-screen pop-ups during vehicle operation raise concerns about driver distraction, especially when no clear “off” switch exists.

Stellantis’ statement

The company frames this as part of a “customer engagement strategy” and claims messages appear only when the vehicle is stationary. 
Owners overwhelmingly dispute the usefulness and transparency of the feature, noting that “recall and service alerts” are buried among far more frequent marketing messages.

The wider debate

This is feeding a broader concern:
Are automakers drifting toward an ad-supported driving experience, similar to smartphones but without the user control?

Many fear this is only the beginning as OEMs struggle to monetize software in the era of Software-Defined Vehicles.


Honest question:
Would you accept ad notifications inside your infotainment screen… especially if they interrupt maps, media, or vehicle status?

Claudio Zizzo

Fisker's second bankruptcy. 😱
Just 4,900 cars delivered from over 10,000 produced. 

It's now been a little over 12 months since Fisker went out of business.
Their filing on June 18, 2024, is far more than just another headline in the volatile EV market. 

It's a painful reminder that even with significant investment and grand vision, the path from concept to commercial success is riddled with unforeseen challenges and brutal realities. 

Many assume ample funding guarantees longevity, but Fisker proves otherwise.

The collapse wasn't a sudden event but a slow burn of operational missteps:

→ In 2023, Fisker aimed to produce over 42,000 Ocean models, yet managed to build only 10,193.

→ Of those 10,193 vehicles produced, fewer than half were actually delivered to customers, indicating severe bottlenecks beyond manufacturing. 
This left thousands of cars undelivered and revenue unrealized.

→ The company listed estimated assets between $500 million and $1 billion during its Chapter 11 filing, a substantial sum that couldn't overcome its liabilities and operational inefficiencies. 

This highlights the crucial difference between assets and liquid capital for operations.

But here's the critical takeaway for every ambitious EV startup:
↳ Focus on sustainable growth and realistic production targets, not just splashy concept cars and initial funding rounds.
↳ Supply chain mastery, mastering automtoive processes and certification as well as efficient distribution are as vital as innovative engineering.
↳ Cash burn rate analysis and agile financial management are non-negotiable.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

Wonder how this hurt Magna International as their contract manufacturer.

Did you know Fisker didn't own the manufacturing part of their business but subcontracted Magna?

Would even go as far as stating Henrik Fisker is one of the "inventors" of Boutique OEMs which own the customer interface, design department and operations but outsource production and manufacturing.

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