[HN Gopher] Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Sub...
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Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback
battery
Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your
location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK
intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that
3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets
stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery
charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step
1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru
Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car
every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it.
Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action
lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight,
given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two
years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable,
mechanical car? Why should 3G towers have anything to do with my
car being able to start?
Author : siftrics
Score : 352 points
Date : 2023-10-21 22:25 UTC (1 days ago)
| mouse_ wrote:
| No, IoT is here to stay. Makes way too much money.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| They offered a free upgrade a couple years ago.
| siftrics wrote:
| I'd rather skip the free upgrade and just have a car that
| works.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I didn't/don't have a "free upgrade?" Are you talking about
| this battery fault or 3G upgrade to 4G+ for people who PAY for
| Starlink, that's only a tiny subset of the owners.
|
| Also, that free upgrade for current Starlink subscribers
| expired two years ago.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| Wouldn't the upgrade fix the battery issue?
|
| Anyway, I didn't upgrade (have an aftermarket radio), and my
| battery works just fine. In fact, the car stayed parked for
| two months in the Texas summer, and started just fine.
| uberman wrote:
| _" Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and
| you won't be able to start it."_
|
| How do you figure this? Seems unlikely to me that a 15 min drive
| would not bring a car batter drained my occasional failed phone
| connections back to full
| siftrics wrote:
| It's a well-documented phenomenon. You can Google it.
|
| The thing drains your battery _precipitously_.
| gruez wrote:
| That still sounds suspect. Surely there are areas that don't
| have 3g coverage? For instance, underground parking garages
| or rural areas (especially in western US). These aren't
| common use cases, but common enough that they surely would
| have garnered press/media attention back when 3G was working.
| I vaguely remember a story about how a rental car was trapped
| in an underground garage because it couldn't get the unlock
| code. Why are we only hearing about it now? Moreover, surely
| those incidents would have caused them to fix the issue?
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I own a Subaru Crosstrek from this same era, it definitely
| has the Starlink bits in the cockpit ceiling.
|
| There must be more to this story. I've parked that car in
| an underground parking garage with absolutely no signal on
| any carrier for at least 2 weeks straight (likely more)
| with no issue. I've parked it for days at trailheads and
| wild camping spots around the High Rockies where there's
| also no signal.
|
| I 100% believe that the Starlink module is poorly
| programmed, reliant on false assumptions of 3G always
| existing, and capable of draining the battery. But I would
| really love to know why that's never happened to me.
| avianlyric wrote:
| It could be that the modem can still see the phone tower,
| but its handshake to create a 3G connection fails, which
| it then retries indefinitely.
|
| That would be different to having no signal whatsoever,
| where modem wakes up, listens for a tower, concludes
| there's nothing there and goes back to sleep again.
|
| That would explain why this issue is only cropping up now
| that 3G is being turned off, and how this scenario was
| missed by engineers. They assumed there was either a
| tower they could communicate with, or nothing. They
| didn't account for a perfectly good tower being
| available, advertising itself as a recognisable network,
| but refusing to handshake.
| siftrics wrote:
| I feel like this is it. I camped hundreds of days in
| areas with no service for miles and never had this
| problem. My battery ended up dying in my driveway in
| town.
| mikeocool wrote:
| I'm in the same boat, the one time I had issues with the
| battery on my 2020 crosstrek was when I accidentally left
| the dome light on for a week. Looking at the class action
| lawsuit seemingly related to this:
| https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ looks like the
| Crosstrek and Impreza aren't included in the class.
|
| Perhaps they are not impacted for some reason.
| siftrics wrote:
| I can back this up. I regularly go car camping in the
| middle of nowhere in the Rockies. Absolutely no service
| for miles.
|
| I hadn't gone camping for ~4-5 weeks, but still drove my
| car every day. Suddenly had the battery issue, pulled the
| plug, and the issue is gone.
|
| I don't really know how to debug this. Something recently
| changed, but I don't know what. You'd think my battery
| would've died during all the time that I was out of
| service.
| uberman wrote:
| I did google it and while there are many stories about dead
| batteries all seem to talk about a problem after leaving the
| car parked for an extended period and no talk about a problem
| when driven daily.
| userinanother wrote:
| Can you pull the breaker or cut the wire. Seems like it would be
| a simple ish hack but maybe access issues
| siftrics wrote:
| I ended up pulling the DCM fuse, but it comes at the cost of no
| microphone for phone calls and voice commands and no front
| speakers (and obviously no STARLINK).
| dprice1 wrote:
| I did the same after having a shop investigate the drain.
| They didn't put all of the pieces together as the OP did, but
| they pointed to the fuse and told me I could pull it.
| janci wrote:
| You can probably easily rewire DCM from always-on to
| ignition-on. No battery drain and working equipment.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| Yep, you just need to move the fuse to a portion that's
| wired through a relay. Some engine bay fuse boxes have
| spare relay and fuse positions to add these kinds of
| things; otherwise you can buy a small automotive fusebox
| and a relay and a couple dollars in cable and crimp
| connectors and then you just need to find somewhere to
| mount it, likely above the outside of the glovebox or such.
| metadat wrote:
| 15 minutes isn't a sufficient amount of time to reliably
| recharge a drained ICE car battery.
|
| Ask any tow truck driver.
|
| Edit: Cool, apparently you've completely changed your comment.
| No worries, it happens. The original comment read something
| like "I don't believe this, a 15 minute drive is more than
| sufficient to recharge my battery."
|
| Edit: Shit, my bad, thank you @clippy, this is the second time
| I've made this mistake in as many days.
| clipsy wrote:
| > Edit: Cool, apparently you've completely changed your
| comment.
|
| It seems much more likely that you intended to respond to
| another post[0] and misclicked.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37971474
| ashirviskas wrote:
| I just found out my country also started deprecating 3G last year
| and will deprecate 2G in 2025. That is a bit sad, as I've just
| powered on some old 2G phones and they seemed to work just fine,
| but I guess it allows us to move forward without the tech debt.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Tech debt in this case seems like artificial scarcity
| toast0 wrote:
| Lack of spectrum and/or tower sites is real scarcity.
|
| LTE and 5G are supposed to be better able to share spectrum,
| to the point where they can share the control channel, and
| multiplex the data channels with either encoding, but 2g and
| 3g can't do that, so you have to dedicate at least minimum
| sized blocks.
|
| Running one min block on 2G does wonderful things for
| ensuring access, but it's expensive in spectrum, especially
| if each network needs to do it. (Because cooperating between
| networks is really only a thing if mandated, or out in rural
| areas where there's little demand)
| bicepjai wrote:
| I had the battery failing recently. Took it to the service, they
| did not know what the reason was and said they would test the
| whole car to find where the drain happens for 500 USD. I was
| about to drop it off next week and I read this. So is there any
| official help from Subaru ?
| tjoff wrote:
| Supposedly just removing the fuse could do it (and recharge the
| battery completely if it hasn't been drained beyond saving).
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829
| CrendKing wrote:
| Maybe you could disconnect the battery cable every time you stop,
| and reconnect before you go?
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| In older vehicles that would reset the clock. No idea what
| impact it'd have on a more modern car than what I drive though.
| gecko wrote:
| It'll reset the engine control unit (ECU), which will cause
| your car to run rough constantly as the computer has to
| relearn how to adjust the engine tuning from scratch every
| drive. You'd be better served using a trickle charger.
| RunningDroid wrote:
| Resetting the ECU will also cause the vehicle to fail
| inspection unless it's driven long enough beforehand. (Here
| in Upstate NY, anyway)
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| that is not how ECUs function Some Transmission Controllers
| will adjust to driver behavior, however engine controller
| default behavior shouldn't cause 'rough' experience I
| worked in automotive testing for over 10 years and
| constantly measured and analyzed vibration data on
| vehicles. Many prototype vehicle batteries die due to early
| release software that causes parasitic drain and I have
| never noticed any rough behavior just because the battery
| died and got replaced. There are many sensors and closed
| loop control systems that monitor strange engine behavior
| and adjust timing. This happens very quickly within few
| engine rotations. If there was an issue you would notice it
| for at the most for couple of seconds.
| mianos wrote:
| Yes, it's a closed loop. The O2 sensor in the exhaust
| rapidly adjusts the mixture.
|
| The whole 'learning' the air fuel mixture to adjust the
| stoichiometric ratio over a longer period of time does
| not make any sense. You have the air mass, O2, fuel,
| temperature and sometimes more, you can calculate the
| mixture near instantly.
|
| Maybe someone way back said you have to warm the car up
| and that takes a few minutes. Modern fuel maps achieve a
| fair idle from near dead cold. It's a solved problem.
| seeg wrote:
| That's pretty lame. What IP you wanted to drive where there is no
| cell connectivity rt all, say Mongolia?
| thriftwy wrote:
| Seems that your battery would fail when you need it the most:
| namely, in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage.
| siftrics wrote:
| Ironically, it seems that this only happens when you are
| within service.
|
| Another commenter speculated that when you're out of service,
| the software correctly identifies that there is no tower to
| connect to and stops trying. But when you're in service, the
| code repeatedly tries to do the 3G handshake because it can
| see a valid tower.
| thriftwy wrote:
| It may happen with a lot of devices if 3G appears browned
| out to them and not just plain unavailable.
| tjoff wrote:
| Or the park in a garage with no coverage?
|
| One can only hope that "smart" will have very bad associations
| in the future (for the general public).
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| If it doesn't already (or 5 years ago...), then I don't have
| much hope for the future.
| siftrics wrote:
| There are huge swaths of areas with no service in the US that
| people regularly visit.
| ksec wrote:
| This is strange. I know a lot of countries are sunsetting 3G and
| 2G in terms of consumer mobile usage. But they leave IoT alone
| for a few more years because of contract and money in it.
| LASR wrote:
| Spectrum is a limited and highly contested resource. There is
| very likely no way for 3G to coexist just for IoT.
| rvdmei wrote:
| It's contract only, mobile carriers are not happy that they
| have to maintain the 3G equipment just for IoT.
| totetsu wrote:
| This seems to be a very common type of software bug. On fail
| retry, without any limits of how frequent or how many time.
| resolutebat wrote:
| If only there was a simple way to exponentially limit your
| retries and back off a bit when the other side is constantly
| failing.
| wincy wrote:
| You mean the concept I learned week three as a junior
| developer (thanks to great mentorship)? Yeah, probably
| absolutely impossible.
| hirsin wrote:
| You're lucky. I've seen entire engineering orgs convinced
| of the opposite, and highly resistant to improvement.
| clnq wrote:
| Exponential back-off is fancy. There are a million repeating
| behaviors in a large automotive codebase. Maybe it's too
| arduous to code up exponential back-off for all. Even if you
| have a simple library to do it, it could introduce some
| complexity.
|
| But it's quite easy to set timers to attempt things at
| regular intervals, rather than in an infinite loop until they
| succeed.
|
| One attempt every 5 seconds (assuming a 5-second timeout for
| the request) is 17,280 attempts a day. One attempt every 5
| minutes is 288 attempts a day. One attempt every 15 minutes
| is 96 attempts a day.
|
| A simple repeating timer is a fantastic solution.
|
| Does the car need to always send telemetry immediately? Can
| there be a 15-minute latency? If so, just put that on a timer
| and enjoy 99.4% power savings for offline cars, with
| basically the same quality of telemetry when they're online.
|
| But what if a car _needs_ to send telemetry at a given
| moment? Just move up the next timer function call.
|
| But what if I want to get telemetry when the 3G signal is
| intermittent and briefly available? Just call the function
| once the 3G signal is available. Do this with a separate
| cool-down for this behavior.
|
| But what if I need telemetry every second? Just dump all
| telemetry events into a buffer between successful sends, slap
| a timestamp on those events, and you can now send data for
| the past X hours all at once. Even from the black spots.
|
| There are so many options (even less fancy than exp back-
| off), but this was probably built by a junior programmer
| without any support network. This feels like a very common
| lack-of-experience mistake that would be caught in code
| review if the reviewer cared.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > Exponential back-off is fancy
|
| It's literally just a left bit-shift? It's as easy as a
| linear back-off. The only thing less fancy is no back-off
| at all.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Ethernet on coax cables did it already after a collision
| (late 70s, thats 50 years ago). Funny how basic things
| are today to much work, but animations everywhere are a
| must.
| clnq wrote:
| Perhaps you are right. Though it seems easier to reason
| about a system with a hundred timers running at a set
| cadence than a hundred exponential back-offs. Maybe I
| just have more experience with the former.
|
| I guess you could always cap off the exponential interval
| increases at some max interval, making it basically a
| repeating timer.
|
| Though there's still the question of why would you need
| this for telemetry. It doesn't feel like this type of
| "marketing" telemetry needs to be quite real time.
| peheje wrote:
| "I guess you could always cap off the exponential
| interval increases at some max interval, making it
| basically a repeating timer."
|
| No you MUST have a max interval cap. Exponentials and
| all, you'll soon be waiting days or months for a retry.
| refulgentis wrote:
| what's a left bit shift ;)
| cyanydeez wrote:
| But I need to unit test each recursion else I won't have
| completed test coverage!
| petre wrote:
| It doesn't need to phone home when the ignition is off and
| could have been programmed to go into standby. You can hardly
| crash a car with the ignition off. Even if you do, it could be
| woken up using an accelerometer and try to phone home just a a
| few times. This is shitty engineering. I am quite amazed,
| because the Japanese normally don't do this. Probably another
| stupid marketing decision.
| selimnairb wrote:
| Most cars I've ever had don't have auto-off headlights
| because the extra parts cost a few dollars and that eats into
| margins and growth must continue infinitely thanks to rent-
| seeking shareholders. Capitalism will corrupt engineering
| whenever it is in the interests of capitalists to do so.
| petre wrote:
| You don't need extra parts, these are no headlights, but an
| IoT modem that already has power saving fearures on chip.
| It just needs an ignition signal and programming to go to
| sleep when it's not there.
|
| You must have had very crappy cars, because I rented a 2022
| Renault Clio this spring and it had very good ergonomics. I
| was quite amazed. Only an older Hyunday i3 that I know of
| had annoying electrical quirks. But hey, there are tiktok
| videos on how to steal current Hyundai and Kia cars.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/23742425/kia-boys-car-theft-
| steal-t...
| slavboj wrote:
| Communist automotive engineering departments by contrast
| are notorious for their near-decadent focus on customer
| satisfaction.
| SanjayMehta wrote:
| A compelling reason to avoid "connected cars."
|
| Better to go with one which pairs with your phone if you even
| need this functionality.
| sshine wrote:
| Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency over
| time.
|
| I work with batteries in the EV industry (not inside cars,
| though, but lithium-iron-phosphate), and the list of planned
| improvements is not short.
|
| There's a gap between when a product is ready to be used and
| when most of the known optimisations are done. And there's a
| big risk factor with the company suddenly deciding to
| depreciate your thing.
|
| I try to only have only "dumb" appliances in my home: kitchen,
| washing, lighting. If I couldn't avoid buying with wifi, it
| doesn't get enabled.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency
| over time.
|
| Then ask for wifi credentials, or ask to connect through a
| phone. _If I don 't connect a device, it's because the device
| is not allowed to be connected._ Any device that thinks it's
| important enough to ship with its own SIM card using an
| account I don't control, rather than putting the user in full
| control of connectivity, is a device I will never purchase.
| lathiat wrote:
| Somewhat related in 2006 I had a Motorola A1000, very early
| iPhone sized full screen smart phone with Stylus.
|
| I took it to New Zealand on roaming and despite having a
| connection it spent so much time looking for the home network
| ("Three" in Australia) the battery would last half a day.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Until car companies are sued to the tunes of hundred of millions
| for something like this, their attitude will never change. Sigh.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Are you sure giving even more money and power to trial lawyers
| is going to solve anything? There are already these people we
| already pay taxes for in DC at the DOT who have the power to
| require a recall.
|
| Call your representative, tell them what's going on, and ask
| them what the DOT is going to do about it. It'll take 30m of
| your time.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Subaru did settle a class action lawsuit:
|
| https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/
|
| The settlement is pathetic. I could never prove the parasitic
| battery drain on my 2017 forester, so I just had the OEM
| audio/starlink system replaced with a cheap Sony CarPlay head
| unit and the problem went away.
|
| But I cannot get reimbursed since I have no proof, even though
| surely every car manufactured with those components has a
| parasitic battery drain.
| Lio wrote:
| I would get the battery replaced at a main Subaru dealer.
|
| Then keep coming back to get the battery replaced when it "fails
| to hold charge".
|
| If every owner did that it would end up like the region
| restriction in DVD players.
|
| i.e. The retailers would force the manufactures to turn it off
| because they don't want to deal with the cost of fixing an
| artificial problem.
|
| Oh and I would start posting to car websites and forums about how
| unreliable my car was. Marketing teams do care about getting that
| reputation.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| You can't, the battery will pass the battery tests every time.
| And who has time to go to a dealership over and over.
|
| There is no money in it for them, and you are wasting valuable
| time. You can fix the problem yourself by getting the head unit
| replaced with any CarPlay/androud audio one at a car stereo
| shop for $1,500 and move on with your life.
| chrisandchris wrote:
| Great solution for this problem: Go fix it with $1'500 -
| which is a lot of money -, for something you paid and someone
| else is responsible for breaking it.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Life isn't fair sometimes. This thing even went though the
| courts and somehow the onus is still on the buyer to prove
| something was wrong, when it is clearly a design issue.
|
| https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/
|
| I guess there is enough noise around the issue these days
| to get the dealer to properly fix it, but back in
| 2019/2020, no one believed you had a tiny power drain, and
| it would have been very costly to prove it (including
| time), and then who knows if you could litigate
| successfully.
|
| Hell, if the power drain was only happening while not able
| to connect to 3G, the issue would be so location
| specific/sporadic enough, that good luck proving it even to
| yourself.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Who can even find an appointment at the dealership? In my
| area, it's like scheduling for a doctor. Months out.
| tredre3 wrote:
| > region restriction in DVD players [...] force the
| manufactures to turn it off
|
| Where did this happen? Some players can be unlocked and others
| are multi-region, but to this day DVD players are still region-
| locked, are they not?
| greenyoda wrote:
| I searched for Subaru Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs)
| mentioning "STARLINK", and found this one:
|
| https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/WQZ-61R
|
| It mentions a "3G Sunset Update".
|
| A further search for "3G Sunset" turned up a few TSBs that apply
| to various Subaru models and years.
|
| You can search for TSBs here: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'll skip ahead and tell you what you'll eventually find:
|
| - Subaru has a fix for this issue.
|
| - Subaru's fix has dealerships use proprietary software to put
| the DCM module into "factory mode" (suspended).
|
| - It will also have dealerships physically disconnect the
| Starlink-related buttons (e.g. SOS), because if they're pushed
| it will "wake up" the DCM.
|
| - There is no assurance the DCM won't wake up again on its own
| (it has its own backup battery which can fail).
|
| - Getting dealerships to conduct the above fix is a giant pain
| in the butt, and they'll charge you hundreds of dollars. Few
| customers have even got that far, most just get an expensive
| "diagnostics" bill with absolutely nothing to show for it. Most
| won't do the repair unless you can "prove" a problem, even
| though it is more work to prove the problem than to proactively
| conduct the repair.
|
| - Subaru won't release the software, so you can do it yourself.
| hinkley wrote:
| Condensed further: there's no recall to fix it during
| maintenance milestones, and they aren't paying for the
| workaround, which is a shitty one.
|
| Therefore, lawyers.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| I work in automotive and I am genuinely surprised there
| isn't a NHTSA helpline of some sort to escalate these kinds
| of issues to force a recall.
| mixdup wrote:
| Would NHTSA even care about this? It's not a purely
| safety issue (I mean, I can see people making the
| argument it can leave you stranded somewhere but I didn't
| think that type of thing is where NHTSA gets involved)
| joshmanders wrote:
| Condensed even further: Join the class action lawsuit.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You are burying the lede - Subaru is reimbursing to dealers
| rootsudo wrote:
| Just pull the fuse and be done with it, not that hard.
| dewey wrote:
| Ah yea, make the consumer go through the pain of keeping that
| in mind and doing that every day and not blame the big
| corporation just silently breaking their product with seemingly
| no repercussions until now.
| rootsudo wrote:
| Not a big deal, you pull the fuse you don't do it everyday -
| you can also just unplug the module. Also not a big deal.
| anonn77 wrote:
| Sod that for a game of soldiers
| dewey wrote:
| The solution to the problem is companies not doing such a
| thing and being made responsible.
|
| Just because it's easy for some people to do you can't
| expect everyone to 1) know about this issue (Remember,
| there wasn't an official announcement or recall) and 2) be
| confident enough to modify something on their car.
|
| Most people never do anything on their care and just bring
| it to the service for every small thing.
| rootsudo wrote:
| literally pop the hood and remove a fuse -
| https://youtube.com/shorts/y8xxT3bVf6I?feature=shared less
| than one minute. and now you aren't trackable. win/win.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This should be the top comment for this post. I wish there
| was a way to do that. Or maybe @dang could help.
| spacebacon wrote:
| Bingo... Possibly losing the in car microphone is another
| added bonus.
| g-clef wrote:
| That can have downstream effects, though. When I talked to them
| about doing it to my more recent Subaru, they told me I'd lose
| the front speakers and the in-car microphone as well, since all
| of them went through the same fuse.
| barrkel wrote:
| The SOS module in my car also has the microphone for hands-free
| calling and voice control.
| tetrti7475 wrote:
| This is called parasitic battery drain. There are two low tech
| solutions:
|
| - install small solar panel behind back window. That will trickle
| charge battery, and will counter ballance drain
|
| - hard switch off on battery, disconnect battery everytime car is
| not used for couple of days (weekend).
| forward1 wrote:
| Easier solution: get a 120V trickle charger and plug it in when
| your car is parked. Batteries love being constantly topped up
| anyway. NOCO is a good brand I use for my stored vehicles with
| AGM batteries.
| dharmab wrote:
| Doesn't solve the problem for anyone who doesn't park in a
| private garage.
| MerManMaid wrote:
| Am I wrong in thinking another potential low tech solution
| might be to just remove the cellular radio?
|
| To be clear, I'm asking more than anything as I have very
| little car knowledge but to me that seems like a more
| preferable solution long term than frequently having to
| physically disconnect your car battery.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, probably a viable solution to just disconnect its
| cellular antenna (though it could easily be a PCB antenna, in
| which case... x-acto knife I guess)
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Another option is a device like a "PriorityStart!" shutoff,
| which I put in my old saturn after it developed a parasitic
| drain somehow and started killing batteries. In my case, it was
| easier to put this device in rather than start working through
| every connection to figure out what changed.
|
| That said, for subaru it seems that pulling the DCM fuse seems
| to stop the drain:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829
| block_dagger wrote:
| This probably explains recent battery issues on my 2022 Outback.
| Took it in, they admitted it happens frequently but didn't
| explain. Replaced with larger battery for free.
| cobertos wrote:
| Oh no, I hope it doesn't extend to that model year. I just
| bought a 2023 and saw posts about battery issues before I
| bought and was a little worried I might end up with the same
| thing.
| swalberg wrote:
| Just bought a 2023 Forester, no problems yet but wondering if
| this problem is just for the Outback?
| alphabettsy wrote:
| 2022 Outback does not use 3G. Subaru have had battery drain
| issues for about a decade now across more than one model and
| generation.
| adambatkin wrote:
| Can confirm. Had 3 or 4 batteries replaced (under warranty)
| before the local dealership informed me that "some DCMs cause
| parasitic battery drain". I brought it in, they ran some sort of
| test, and ordered me a new DCM (also under warranty). It took a
| while for the part to arrive, so they pulled the fuse. As other
| posters have noted, it took out one of the speakers (music
| sounded only mostly normal) and both the mic and speaker for
| Bluetooth comms were dead.
|
| Previously, there were times that I would drive 100 miles one
| day, and I couldn't even open the doors using the automatic locks
| on the following day. It's been about a month on the new DCM and
| so far I haven't had any issues, so here's hoping...
| op00to wrote:
| I have a 2017 Subaru with STARLINK. It works just fine. It does
| run the battery down if the key is close enough to the car to
| wake it up, but far enough away that the signal is broken and the
| car goes back to sleep. Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the
| door instead of next to the door solved that problem.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have a 2017 Subaru forester touring 2.0, and replacing the
| head unit with a cheap Sony CarPlay one fixed my problem. We
| changed nothing with where we place the keys.
|
| Not once has the battery died after that, and it has been ~3
| years. With the OEM starlink head unit, we would need to jump
| start every single week.
|
| Needless to say, Subaru's lack of willingness to compensate us
| lost them a customer for life.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| If the DCM is in the headunit, that seems plausible. What one
| did you get?
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I got this one:
|
| https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-6-2-apple-carplay-built-
| in...
|
| It works fine, but if I were to do it again, I would have
| bought a better quality one with a bigger and more
| responsive touchscreen.
|
| I cheaped out because I did not know if the new head unit
| would fix the battery drain issue, and if it didn't fix the
| issue I was going to get rid of the car.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the door instead of next
| to the door solved that problem.
|
| Do you mean the key? Otherwise how are you moving the battery?
| amatecha wrote:
| "It works just fine"? But you have to keep the key the correct
| distance away to not drain the battery? I mean... that's just
| ridiculous. I can't believe cars are simultaneously so advanced
| and yet so terrible.
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| "You're holding it wrong"
| hulkmusic wrote:
| I have a 2016 Subaru Forester with a seemingly parasitic drain
| issue. Every time I go to start the car, it's like rolling the
| dice whether it has enough battery power to fully start. I have a
| portable jump starter that I've had to use at least 20 times or
| so in the last couple of years. This has been happening even well
| before the 3G sunset period, so that is not the only source of
| the battery drain problem, for which there is a class action
| lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/.
|
| Everything I've read online about the issue points to the
| STARLINK system, and the common wisdom in this thread and
| elsewhere is to pull the DCM fuse. Unfortunately, my Forester has
| no such fuse, so I'm at a loss what to do with my car.
|
| It's so frustrating, because my wife has a Subaru Crosstrek of
| the same year that has never had a battery problem, even with the
| OEM battery. She has a base model without any additional
| "upgraded" electronics, so that's the likely culprit in my case.
| I'm currently on my third or fourth higher CCA battery and had to
| jump it again a few days ago.
|
| I haven't taken my car to the dealer for the parasitic drain
| issue, but previously tried to get dealership service for an
| unrelated entertainment system issue related to USB media
| playback freezing up the entertainment system. That fix was
| unsuccessful, and I have no faith in Subaru mechanics being able
| to diagnose and fix a potentially more nebulous battery drain
| issue. It doesn't help that the dealership is now 45 minutes
| away, so I'm not interested in wasting even more time on a hit
| and miss solution.
|
| Ironically, I bought Subaru because reliability was my number one
| concern when purchasing a vehicle, and I'm not sure I would do
| that again.
| SigmundA wrote:
| I just went through something similar with my vehicle, had a
| relatively new expensive AGM battery about halfway through its
| 3 year warranty. Would not start if left for 4-5 days which
| slowly crept down to 2 days.
|
| Seemed like a parasitic draw but pulling fuses and using a
| multimeter verified idle draw at 30 milliamps which is within
| spec. If you find high like a few hundred milliamps you can
| start pulling fuses to narrow down offending item.
|
| In the end it was a bad a battery, but was difficult to get the
| warranty replacement because it could be charged and work again
| so long as you ran it every day.
|
| It's relatively easy to verify parasitic draw and make sure
| it's in that 30 milliamp range, with even a cheap multimeter by
| disconnecting negative and running through multimeter. Tricky
| part with modern cars is getting it to go fully to sleep,
| anything can trigger wake up (like opening the door) and it can
| take a few minutes for it to fully sleep to idle draw.
| saltcured wrote:
| I learned over the pandemic that a Toyota Camry Hybrid would
| eat its 12V AGM battery very easily. In this case, it is a
| deep-cycle AGM and isn't even used to start the ICE. It's
| "just" to run accessories and boot up the power control
| system that engages the much larger hybrid battery.
|
| One such Camry in our extended family was parked for a few
| months and the battery failed. We got an expensive OEM
| replacement and tried to make sure we drove the car every
| week or two. It failed again in just under three years.
| Meanwhile, we have an entry-level Audi that also often gets
| only a short local trip every week or two. It is still on its
| original AGM battery after 6 years, and this one has to
| actually start the ICE.
|
| So, I am disappointed to find that Toyota engineers could not
| be bothered to apply whatever basic power management logic
| the Audi folks did to protect the battery. Worse, the Camry
| has this big NiMH traction battery, and I would have imagined
| some clever backup strategy to infrequently top-up the 12V
| battery if parked too long, so it would be reliable.
|
| In the end, I gave up and installed an old-school battery
| cut-out switch, so we can just disconnect the 12V battery if
| not planning to use the Camry for more than a few days. Every
| time I operate it, I'm giving the Toyota engineers a rude
| hand gesture in my mind.
| weswilson wrote:
| There is an ECU flash at the dealership that supposedly fixes
| the parasitic battery drain. I've replaced my battery a couple
| of times, but haven't had an issue since the ECU flash.
| cushpush wrote:
| What's the [sustained] financial incentive to produce an
| unbreakable product?
| ironmagma wrote:
| The only way you're going to get this is through pride, be that
| national pride (nationalism) or professional pride. It requires
| care for the opposite party in the buyer-seller transaction,
| which the free market is essentially allergic to.
| dv_dt wrote:
| There is a financial incentive to be reliable enough to at
| least make it to the next sale with your reputation intact.
| Especially if it's on a feature that I would guess was paired
| with a higher end trim which implies higher end customers.
| bsbdbkeks66554 wrote:
| there's another design flaw in the outback where the battery
| drains if you have the rear lift gate open too long. happened to
| me the day i was moving my family out of state and loading up the
| car all day, we were about to leave and the battery was totally
| drained. later looked it up and its apparently a common issue
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| I just paid $98 for a tow last week for a 2015 Outback that went
| so dead the doors wouldn't open. They said my year-old battery
| was mysteriously worn down so I bought a new one.
|
| Is this a different Starlink from the Elon Musk one?
| imadethis wrote:
| Yes, Subaru Starlink is their remote connection platform that
| uses cellular. No relation to Musk.
| nzealand wrote:
| According to Subaru's website & TRB, this only impacts vehicles
| from 2016-2018
|
| https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html
|
| https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/15-291-22
| siftrics wrote:
| Mine's a 2019 and pulling the DCM fuse resolved my problems.
| Could be unrelated, but I feel obligated to share.
| nzealand wrote:
| Did you lose bluetooth or front speakers?
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I'm pretty certain that the battery lawsuit happened before the
| 3g shutdown.
|
| So while I totally believe this is killing batteries, I also
| believe that these cars have more electrical problems than just
| this.
| mjan22640 wrote:
| How difficult is to make a 3g proxy, something like the Stingray?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
| morkalork wrote:
| Kind of crazy that they push the whole outdoorsy camping image in
| all their ads and build something so flawed. How does that work?
| Go explore the great outdoors but don't go too far, or you're
| battery is gonna die if there's no cellphone service? I don't
| know about the US but it's not hard to go that far out in Canada!
| siftrics wrote:
| Yeah this was actually pretty scary for me because I _do_ go
| car camping in very remote places with no service at all.
| Luckily I 'm fully prepared for my car not being able to start.
|
| It's just sad because I bought a Subaru because it's supposed
| to be a reliable, outdoor adventure car. To see it fail this
| way is just sad.
| amatecha wrote:
| Yeah, I live in Vancouver and I can get to a no-cell-service
| location in like, 30 minutes. This is blatantly inexcusable.
| smoyer wrote:
| This is also happening with my (old) Mercedes SUV.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| 3G sunsetting fking over cars is not exclusive to Subaru. My 2017
| lexus was also hit by this.
| otterley wrote:
| Subaru has published a Technical Service Bulletin that appears to
| offer a free firmware update to switch the Starlink system to use
| VoLTE. Affected vehicles are:
|
| 2016-18MY Legacy/Outback 2016-18MY Impreza 2016-18MY Crosstrek
| 2016-18MY Forester 2017-18MY WRX
|
| See https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10189606-0001.pdf
| for details. And, yes, Subaru is reimbursing dealers for this
| work.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| That's actually pretty amazing, and luckily the modules support
| VoLTE.
|
| BMW modules only supported 3G (they were older though).
| londons_explore wrote:
| There isn't really such a thing as a module that only
| supports 3G...
|
| Anything could support the minimum needed to connect to an
| LTE network with the right software update, but modem chipset
| makers don't make any money rewriting old firmware for old
| chipsets, so they refuse to rewrite the firmware to support
| lte.
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| I did not know this.
|
| Now knowing this, could we (theoretically) update the
| firmware of an iPhone 3G so it works on a 4G network?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Yes. But beware that doing so is probably multiple man-
| years worth of effort.
| scruple wrote:
| Mine is a 2014, guess I narrowly dodged that bullet. Thanks for
| posting this.
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Please allow me to suggest engineering fixes:
|
| 1. All vehicles with 12v starter batteries should also have deep
| cycle batteries to power the accessories. Chevy Suburbans had
| that for decades, but some people laughed at vehicles designed to
| actually run and drive. That's fine. Enjoy the vehicle you
| picked.
|
| 2. It's my car darn it. Any and all communication with it needs
| to be easily read by my in plain English. I also need to be able
| to veto any communication, in an easy-to-use, plain English
| system. This second option would require legislation. The new law
| should apply to everything made. If the owner is also the
| operator, then the owner can read and veto all communications.
|
| 3. In the interest of national security, all products made must
| have a minimum of reliance on the outside world. Those
| connections that do exist must be as standard as possible. Once
| against, this requires legislation.Any device that refuses to
| operate without an Internet connection should be illegal. Phone-
| home DRam should be illegal.
|
| We get what we deserve. The only downside to my ancient pickup
| truck is that I have to clean the hybrids out of the wheel wells
| about twice a month.
| hedora wrote:
| We had an older gmc, and it was great. A newer one came from
| the factory with a bug that would zero the battery in under
| eight hours sometimes (it left the ABS on). This happened on
| the first tank of gas. The local chevy dealer refused to fix it
| and claimed our warranty was void at ~ 125 miles because the
| dealer we bought it from new had installed some counterfeit
| electrical components. (There was a factory recall for our
| exact problem)
|
| That was the least of that truck's problems. Never buying a GM
| product again.
|
| Also, the old v8 GMC had a carburetor, but still had better
| fuel economy than the new v8 GMC with fuel injection and that
| turned off half the cylinders when possible.
|
| Our Ram is slightly better, but still pretty damn bad vs the
| old GMC. I'd recommend any other brand over GM or Stellantis at
| this point.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So instead of complaining on HN, it was a simple Google search to
| find out that Subaru has already offered a free repair for
| affected vehicles.
| amatecha wrote:
| You went through the trouble of searching about it, finding
| results, and then commenting here, but not including the
| link(s) you found? o_O
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Someone had already posted links. I just wanted to do the
| grumpy, snarky old man thing...
| netllama wrote:
| Irrelevant. You could have provided the link as a decent
| human being. Instead you decide to get into a petty
| argument?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It was literally the next comment down. They didn't even
| have to Google it. It's that whole "teach a man to fish".
|
| If you have a problem is the first thing you do not go on
| to Google?
| WirelessGigabit wrote:
| How is 3G turning off different from people parking their car
| underground and not driving it for a week?
| EMCymatics wrote:
| Why are we shutting down 3G coverage?
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Outback's of this generation also have an unresolved battery
| drain issue where if you leave the tailgate up, like you might
| while tailgating, the battery will drain even if all lights are
| off.
|
| The solution is to put a carabiner or similar in the latch so it
| believes it's closed.
|
| Completely ridiculous issue with an otherwise great vehicle.
| alberth wrote:
| My guess, it's a safety check in a loop because it's unsafe to
| drive if that hatch is up.
|
| https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/02/2016-Suba...
|
| It's understandable for them to be checking for the hatch to be
| down, given that both your brake lights and reverse lights are
| on the hatch and only seen if down.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| Unlikely.
|
| The brake lights on a 2016 Outback are not on the hatch.
| They're on the portion of the lamp permanently affixed to the
| vehicle.
|
| Also, why would checking if the hatch is open or closed
| completely drain the battery in a couple of hours? Not
| understandable to me.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Crazy reading about this here. I just had this problem. Spent a
| couple hundred bucks for the local mechanic to track it down to
| parasitic drain from the SOS module ("Starlink"). He just
| disconnected it since I don't pay for the subscription anyways.
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