Software updates should absolutely be recalls. Ship a complete vehicle or don’t. I absolutely do not want cars to turn in what games are today. I do not want hotfixes on my car because they didn’t test. Fuck an OTA update too, I don’t want that either, if they need an update it’s a recall and the cars have to go back to the shop. I want it to hurt and appropriately damage the company’s reputation.
In my opinion it points to a more dangerous thing, “continuous delivery” software mindset seeping into safety critical systems.
It’s fine, good even, that web developers can push updates to “prod” in minutes. But imagine if some dork could push largely untested control system updates to your car’s ECU… it’s one thing for a website site to get a couple errors, but it’s a very bad thing if it makes your steering wheel stop working.
Unfinished products make more money, and it’s high time a consumer protection law clamped down on this.
Our cars are computers and we are beta testers. They spy on you, need updates and features are behind paywalls. Heated seats anyone? that’ll be $9.99 a month… That’s under 10 bucks!
Put your hate for Tesla aside for a moment. If a car company can fix an issue with a simple OTA software update, it’s way more convenient for both the customer and the manufacturer. Quality control of an update is a separate issue but I don’t imagine there’s a difference whether your car updates itself or gets taken in for the update- the same patch gets applied in either case.
It’s not Tesla that I hate. It’s shipping products too quickly.
The inconvenience is the point. I want people to be inconvenienced, myself included. That means people complain to one another. I’ll know which models suck simply by talking to people around me. I do not want quiet stealthy patches for things like an accelerator pedal. Either do it right or pay the price. We used to make cars without hot fixes, we don’t need to start. It will allow auto manufacturers to further cut corners and push for faster releases with less testing, and we pay the price with our lives.
Think of the inverse though- it used to be that in every case when your car had an issue you needed to either take it in yourself or have the technical knowhow to fix it yourself.
I do agree that it’s a slippery slope for automakers to get lazy and cut corners, but I think stricter regulation is the better solution than forcing an unnecessary inconvenience onto the customers.
it used to be that in every case when your car had an issue you needed to either take it in yourself or have the technical knowhow to fix it yourself.
That knowledge is mostly trivial. 7/10 repairs a regular Joe could do. Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
I’ll take that level of service.
With the Tesla model, you very like end up with a 100k brick that no one can work on except very expensive very specialized very limited service centers.
A Tesla battery is expensive…now look at install costs. And if you’re not using an authorized installer, you’re locked out of the supercharger network.
That knowledge is mostly trivial. 7/10 repairs a regular Joe could do. Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
That’s not true anymore. Modern cars have really complex problems that even mechanics struggle to fix. Especially when it’s a software problem… usually those problems just never get fixed.
As a software developer (not an automotive one) my take is the fix is to have everyone be running the same software, so that fifty thousand dollars diagnosing and fixing a problem for one car will result in it being fixed for all cars. Spread the cost out like that and it’s affordable. Otherwise it just won’t get fixed at all.
Should we go back to basic cars? I think so yes… but then I ride a motorcycle that doesn’t even have water cooling or a battery. But most people aren’t like me. They want lane keeping cruise control/etc.
Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
That’s also what I meant when I said “taking it in.” In either case you’re taking your car somewhere to get it repaired for X hours instead of applying an update at your home.
A Tesla battery is expensive…now look at install costs. And if you’re not using an authorized installer, you’re locked out of the supercharger network.
We aren’t talking about batteries.
I just think there’s more nuance to the situation and saying that cars should be as inconvenient as possible to fix isn’t a good solution to lazy auto software that requires future patching. Rigorous safety testing and regulation around car software sounds like a better plan to me- automakers will be held to really high standards and the consumers will still benefit from simple OTA patches to fix their vehicles when necessary.
I’m amazed how many people here drive Teslas. I think there’s only one Tesla dealership in the entire state. It would take a good 2 hours to get there from here. I guess they’re okay with having to pay for a tow all that way if something seriously goes wrong since there’s no local mechanic who will be able to fix it.
They are dirt cheap around me, which is why I see so many of them. I saw a 2016 Model S with the Ludacris update go for 13k. I kind of wanted it just to drive one, then I looked up the repair prices.
Sure… I’d get a maybe 200 mile range out of it in the summer…but once winter hit I was looking at like 25k-50k to replace the battery and the motors.
I can swap the motor and transmission in my car for less than 10k and have a mostly new car.
I dont disagree with anything you said, I just think there should be a different, but equally severe term for clarity. It’s not hurting Tesla so much as devaluing the word “recall”. Make it hurt, Tesla is reckless with the way they ship unfinished products, but as I said before, I wasn’t even sure what “recall” meant in this sense.
I’m saying upgrade what it’s considered to recall. No OTA hot fix, car goes back to the shop. A proper recall just like any other recall. A software issue is just as dangerous as a hardware issue for something like an accelerator pedal. To be clear, this isn’t Tesla hate, this is modern “sell unfinished products” hate. I’d say the same thing for any other manufacturer.
If the blinker pattern needs to be updated, that’s fine for OTA in my opinion, and shouldn’t be a recall. Problems with the accelerator, brakes, steering, anything safety critical - nah. Recall for that, proper recall.
Recalls still require the customer to take action. They’re much less likely to go into the shop to have it fixed than press a button on their phone and have the car fix itself overnight.
Your suggestion for not allowing safety software fixes OTA is dangerous.
Other way around. Unsupervised OTA updates are dangerous.
First: A car is a piece of safety-critical equipment. It has a skilled operator who has familiarized themselves with its operation. Any change to its operation, without the operator being aware that a change was made, puts the operator and other people at risk. If the operator takes the car into the shop for a documented recall, they know that something is being changed. An unsupervised OTA update can (and will) alter the behavior of safety-critical equipment without the operator’s knowledge.
Second: Any facility for OTA updates is an attack vector. If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer. Because the car is safety-critical equipment — unlike your phone, it can kill people — it is unreasonable to expose it to these attacks.
Driving is literally the most deadly thing that most people do every day. It is unreasonable to make driving even more dangerous by allowing car manufacturers — or attackers — to change the behavior of cars without the operator being fully aware that a change is being made.
This is not a matter of “it’s my property, you need my consent” that can be whitewashed with a contract provision. This is a matter of life safety.
You do realize your entire first point is invalidated by the comment you’re replying to? I just said the customer has to press a button on their phone to initiate the update. On that same phone they can view release notes that clearly outline the recall. Additional on first use, the car will display those same release notes on the screen.
Sure, safety vs convenience is a huge factor in software development. The biggest factor to safety is unpatched software. You know, the kind that requires significant effort to update, such as needing to bring your car into the shop to apply.
Overall your doom and gloom argument against OTA safety updates is pretty weak.
Software updates should absolutely be recalls. Ship a complete vehicle or don’t. I absolutely do not want cars to turn in what games are today. I do not want hotfixes on my car because they didn’t test. Fuck an OTA update too, I don’t want that either, if they need an update it’s a recall and the cars have to go back to the shop. I want it to hurt and appropriately damage the company’s reputation.
In my opinion it points to a more dangerous thing, “continuous delivery” software mindset seeping into safety critical systems.
It’s fine, good even, that web developers can push updates to “prod” in minutes. But imagine if some dork could push largely untested control system updates to your car’s ECU… it’s one thing for a website site to get a couple errors, but it’s a very bad thing if it makes your steering wheel stop working.
Unfinished products make more money, and it’s high time a consumer protection law clamped down on this.
Oh yeah don’t stop.
Our cars are computers and we are beta testers. They spy on you, need updates and features are behind paywalls. Heated seats anyone? that’ll be $9.99 a month… That’s under 10 bucks!
Put your hate for Tesla aside for a moment. If a car company can fix an issue with a simple OTA software update, it’s way more convenient for both the customer and the manufacturer. Quality control of an update is a separate issue but I don’t imagine there’s a difference whether your car updates itself or gets taken in for the update- the same patch gets applied in either case.
It’s not Tesla that I hate. It’s shipping products too quickly.
The inconvenience is the point. I want people to be inconvenienced, myself included. That means people complain to one another. I’ll know which models suck simply by talking to people around me. I do not want quiet stealthy patches for things like an accelerator pedal. Either do it right or pay the price. We used to make cars without hot fixes, we don’t need to start. It will allow auto manufacturers to further cut corners and push for faster releases with less testing, and we pay the price with our lives.
Think of the inverse though- it used to be that in every case when your car had an issue you needed to either take it in yourself or have the technical knowhow to fix it yourself.
I do agree that it’s a slippery slope for automakers to get lazy and cut corners, but I think stricter regulation is the better solution than forcing an unnecessary inconvenience onto the customers.
That knowledge is mostly trivial. 7/10 repairs a regular Joe could do. Or worse comes to worse you can take it to a mechanic of your choosing.
I’ll take that level of service.
With the Tesla model, you very like end up with a 100k brick that no one can work on except very expensive very specialized very limited service centers.
A Tesla battery is expensive…now look at install costs. And if you’re not using an authorized installer, you’re locked out of the supercharger network.
That’s not true anymore. Modern cars have really complex problems that even mechanics struggle to fix. Especially when it’s a software problem… usually those problems just never get fixed.
As a software developer (not an automotive one) my take is the fix is to have everyone be running the same software, so that fifty thousand dollars diagnosing and fixing a problem for one car will result in it being fixed for all cars. Spread the cost out like that and it’s affordable. Otherwise it just won’t get fixed at all.
Should we go back to basic cars? I think so yes… but then I ride a motorcycle that doesn’t even have water cooling or a battery. But most people aren’t like me. They want lane keeping cruise control/etc.
“When it’s a software problem…”
Correct…now we are back to talking about vendor lock in and very specialized techs to install the updates.
That’s also what I meant when I said “taking it in.” In either case you’re taking your car somewhere to get it repaired for X hours instead of applying an update at your home.
We aren’t talking about batteries.
I just think there’s more nuance to the situation and saying that cars should be as inconvenient as possible to fix isn’t a good solution to lazy auto software that requires future patching. Rigorous safety testing and regulation around car software sounds like a better plan to me- automakers will be held to really high standards and the consumers will still benefit from simple OTA patches to fix their vehicles when necessary.
I guess my position is if a car needs an OTA update, it’s a critical failure by the manufacturer. They should be 99.999%.
I’m amazed how many people here drive Teslas. I think there’s only one Tesla dealership in the entire state. It would take a good 2 hours to get there from here. I guess they’re okay with having to pay for a tow all that way if something seriously goes wrong since there’s no local mechanic who will be able to fix it.
They are dirt cheap around me, which is why I see so many of them. I saw a 2016 Model S with the Ludacris update go for 13k. I kind of wanted it just to drive one, then I looked up the repair prices.
Sure… I’d get a maybe 200 mile range out of it in the summer…but once winter hit I was looking at like 25k-50k to replace the battery and the motors.
I can swap the motor and transmission in my car for less than 10k and have a mostly new car.
I dont disagree with anything you said, I just think there should be a different, but equally severe term for clarity. It’s not hurting Tesla so much as devaluing the word “recall”. Make it hurt, Tesla is reckless with the way they ship unfinished products, but as I said before, I wasn’t even sure what “recall” meant in this sense.
I’m saying upgrade what it’s considered to recall. No OTA hot fix, car goes back to the shop. A proper recall just like any other recall. A software issue is just as dangerous as a hardware issue for something like an accelerator pedal. To be clear, this isn’t Tesla hate, this is modern “sell unfinished products” hate. I’d say the same thing for any other manufacturer.
If the blinker pattern needs to be updated, that’s fine for OTA in my opinion, and shouldn’t be a recall. Problems with the accelerator, brakes, steering, anything safety critical - nah. Recall for that, proper recall.
Recalls still require the customer to take action. They’re much less likely to go into the shop to have it fixed than press a button on their phone and have the car fix itself overnight.
Your suggestion for not allowing safety software fixes OTA is dangerous.
Other way around. Unsupervised OTA updates are dangerous.
First: A car is a piece of safety-critical equipment. It has a skilled operator who has familiarized themselves with its operation. Any change to its operation, without the operator being aware that a change was made, puts the operator and other people at risk. If the operator takes the car into the shop for a documented recall, they know that something is being changed. An unsupervised OTA update can (and will) alter the behavior of safety-critical equipment without the operator’s knowledge.
Second: Any facility for OTA updates is an attack vector. If a car can receive OTA updates from the manufacturer, then it can receive harmful OTA updates from an attacker who has compromised the car’s update mechanism or the manufacturer. Because the car is safety-critical equipment — unlike your phone, it can kill people — it is unreasonable to expose it to these attacks.
Driving is literally the most deadly thing that most people do every day. It is unreasonable to make driving even more dangerous by allowing car manufacturers — or attackers — to change the behavior of cars without the operator being fully aware that a change is being made.
This is not a matter of “it’s my property, you need my consent” that can be whitewashed with a contract provision. This is a matter of life safety.
You do realize your entire first point is invalidated by the comment you’re replying to? I just said the customer has to press a button on their phone to initiate the update. On that same phone they can view release notes that clearly outline the recall. Additional on first use, the car will display those same release notes on the screen.
Sure, safety vs convenience is a huge factor in software development. The biggest factor to safety is unpatched software. You know, the kind that requires significant effort to update, such as needing to bring your car into the shop to apply.
Overall your doom and gloom argument against OTA safety updates is pretty weak.
Oh good, hackers can’t bypass button presses. I was worried for a bit, appreciate you helping us out.
Mr hackerman couldn’t get to the car because it crashed first due to a software bug the customer did not have time to take his car to the shop to fix.
The real world is quite different than the idealistic one.
Fair enough.
What should the term be?