[HN Gopher] A recent software update was not successful. Your ve...
___________________________________________________________________
A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be
driven
Author : lopkeny12ko
Score : 157 points
Date : 2023-12-25 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| DrawTR wrote:
| saying "for the tow truck operator" is horrifying language to put
| in a 'your car is bricked' spot
| rpmisms wrote:
| My Tesla had an update fail, and it didn't break anything, I just
| got a new update package the next day.
|
| I also replaced my own headlight and had to run a software update
| to initialize the new part. I called a service center and had a
| software update in less than an hour. Try that at Audi.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Tesla knows what it's doing. Not these guys.
| rpmisms wrote:
| That's the point I'm making. Fail-safe and good testing.
| gumballindie wrote:
| They know so well that there was a report yesterday showing
| how tesla's a low quality vehicle. Behind the dacia.
| j45 wrote:
| This is the way.
|
| Also the scrutiny Tesla has received at the start of it's
| operations might be quite a bit more than the other makers.
|
| I'm hearing Kia/Hyundai's needing a replacement battery are
| having to wait months if not up to a year, while new ones sell
| away.
|
| Buying a used EV will become like buying a used ICE car - there
| are ways to do it well, and ignoring either is at your peril...
| and no guarantee a brand new one will be reliable, nor the
| warranty performant when needed.
| neither_color wrote:
| Back when it was in news cycles that Tesla's stock couldn't
| possibly be worth more than legacy automakers' because it was
| only a matter of time until they came for Tesla's lunch, I
| couldn't imagine they'd fumble it this badly.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| An Audi doesn't need a software update to replace a light from
| my experience.
|
| Also, my experience with Audi and BMW are that community tools
| exists to let you flash modules and change settings all on your
| own. Try that on a Tesla.
|
| Tesla is way ahead on software imo, but I don't want my car to
| be like modern smartphones where they're dependent on the
| manufacturer to maintain and keep working.
| linusg789 wrote:
| https://nitter.net/danluu/status/1739387245034139692
| anothernewdude wrote:
| What brand of car? So I know what to avoid?
| rsstack wrote:
| Screenshot says Ford.
| shreyansh_k wrote:
| Ford
| _trampeltier wrote:
| In the centre over the phone number is "Ford Customer
| Relationship Center". So I guess it's a Ford.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Looks like the Ford Mach E screen
| jofla_net wrote:
| Found On Road Deactivated
| exmicrosoldier wrote:
| It is a Ford. Either an f150 lightning or a mustang mach e.
| jpollock wrote:
| https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/ford/mustang-
| mach-e/phot...
|
| Looks like the Mach-E
| bastard_op wrote:
| I'm sure it's the Chevy Blazer, or at least same problem as.
| https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-chevy-blazer-ev-launch-has...
| sp332 wrote:
| What kind of car is it?
| thot_experiment wrote:
| I know there's no market for people like me, but I would never
| buy an internet connected car. It just seems so fucking insane to
| me that people are willing to accept relying on something that
| can be bricked remotely. Same goes for any sort of involuntary
| OTA updates to anything, and software as a service in general.
| The thing that matters to me is that my tools still work tomorrow
| when I need them to, and if they break it'd better be my fucking
| fault. We live in fucking clown world. Thank god you can still
| perma disable windows update, having a cell phone that breaks
| itself every few months is bad enough.
| ajross wrote:
| You'll change your mind the first time you turn on the heat
| from across the parking lot while sipping coffee in the ski
| lodge, or need to check the charge status while eating lunch,
| or point stuff out on the satellite imagery on the live map.
|
| I know it's easy to imagine that the product you think is "a
| car" is finished, but product categories evolve. People want
| their devices to do different things today than they did 20
| years ago, and next year will be more changes. Connectivity
| isn't going away, the market has spoken.
| whstl wrote:
| All this is possible without integrating the software into
| the vehicle itself, making it brickable.
|
| Reliability and repairability going down is not "evolution"
| in any sense.
|
| And the market hasn't really said anything when those things
| have been pushed into consumers without much choice. Saying
| "the market has spoken" in this case is like saying the
| market has spoken when someone claims that slapping a fruit
| logo is enough to sell computers. Turns out the choice of
| which car to buy is non-binary, it's not "internet connected"
| vs "non internet connected".
| hgomersall wrote:
| I feel it's not completely impossible to design a system
| that is properly partitioned, such that an update failure
| to the seat heating software doesn't brick the car. Updates
| to core systems should be rare in the extreme.
| benj111 wrote:
| I would say part of the problem is that they want the
| option of updating seat heating software, rather than
| actually properly testing the up and down buttons and the
| thermostat.
| ajross wrote:
| > All this is possible without integrating the software
| into the vehicle itself, making it brickable.
|
| Sure. And Ford messed up. But the request upthread wasn't
| for a vehicle with robust software update semantics, it was
| for a vehicle without connectivity. That's not going to
| sell well.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Tesla does it well with their real time gateway mechanism
| isolating entertainment software from crucial vehicle
| driving software.
| benj111 wrote:
| >the market has spoken.
|
| In the sense that a market is made up of buyers and sellers,
| and the sellers have decided to offer no other option yes.
|
| I think the issue is more of the design and ownership of
| these things. No one wants an update bricking their car. I
| doubt a lot of people here would object to a discrete
| subsystem where you could poll charge status, turn on heating
| etc.
| beau_g wrote:
| You can buy many vehicles today dating all the way back to
| the turn of the last century. Here's some listings for
| steam cars if you insist on no electronics whatsoever
| https://www.steamcarnetwork.com/for-sale
|
| Whatever your line is in the sand for tech integration, you
| have many great options from before that point.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Sure, it's the market that has spoken..
|
| https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/blog/privacy-nightmare-
| on-...
| thot_experiment wrote:
| My car does this and more, so perhaps I chose my words
| unwisely. (I live in a van I have pretty much full remote
| control of save actual driving, I'm out right now and I just
| turned on my espresso machine so it's preheated when I get
| home). I don't mind connectivity, I mind having to trust
| other idiots, I'm happy to trust this idiot. I want to be
| able to approve every change. It's MY car.
|
| I want to have the final say about what happens with the
| things I own. I want to be able to rely on them.
| blueridge wrote:
| You'll enjoy this, should start right where he talks about his
| experience buying a car:
|
| https://youtu.be/hlrv7DIHllE?t=1203
| JCharante wrote:
| I'm fine with having both. A dumb ICE car for emergencies and
| an electric car with bells and whistles for daily use
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wish someone would make a truly dumb car. Sure you can have
| microcontrollers for emissions, safety, etc but beyond that give
| me a 1970s user interface and make the car as independent of
| technology as possible.
| thot_experiment wrote:
| 100% this, an electric car could be so reliable and simple to
| work on and repair if we wanted it to be.
| shwouchk wrote:
| Nissan Versa. It's also one of the cheapest cars available.
|
| Enjoy
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| That's why I have kept my '97 dodge dakota all this time...
| Like you said, dumb, but also using standard components like
| headlamp bulbs for repair-ability.
| pyaamb wrote:
| Absolutely this. Been hoping that this will become a cool trend
| someday. Perhaps when teen-age Gen-Alpha or Gen-Beta kids seek
| to differentiate themselves from their Algorithm-controlled
| over-sharing IG/Tiktok parents.
| markx2 wrote:
| My eldest daughter knows her way around cars, and she refuses
| to buy any car that has any sort of computer in it.
|
| She knows how to change this, repair that, fit whatever and is
| very happy doing that. But she also knows that as a female if
| she goes into any garage for a 'diagnostic' she will be
| overcharged. In fact even for something normal with a 'non-
| computer' car she will be overcharged.
|
| Cars without computers are like gold.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| any car builtin the last 100 years have electrical
| components. Any car built in the last 50 have "computers".
| trentgreene wrote:
| As a fellow "analog" automotive enthusiast, I'm curious how
| she defines computer in this situation?
|
| Given that ECUs / microprocessors have been standard on cars
| since the late 60s / early 70s.
|
| For me it's the network connections and updates that scare
| me. The software on my '99 Benz hasn't changed in 24 years,
| and I don't need it too.
| trentgreene wrote:
| I'll add a small point to this. The computers my old cars
| do have, I'm quite thankful for. Being able to purchase a
| ~100-200 buck code reader and easily plug it in and figure
| out what my warning lights are trying to tell me has been a
| great educational tool and saved me a ton in maintenance.
| userbinator wrote:
| I suspect she may be referring to the stereotypical
| carbureted V8 + manual / hydraulic auto combination that's
| still highly popular amongst US enthusiasts, which
| certainly has no ECU at all.
|
| Microprocessors didn't exist until the early 70s. Late 70s
| / early 80s is when they started becoming common in cars.
| trentgreene wrote:
| Heh, thanks for the info, I have a bit of a gap of
| knowledge about that era of vehicles outside of a type II
| fun experience with an older Ranchero.
|
| I see VW advertising a car with an ECU in 1968, but
| likely just transistors.
| josephcsible wrote:
| https://bollingermotors.com/b1-b2/
| poulpy123 wrote:
| My 2012 Dacia Sandero is as dumb as you can be nowadays I
| think.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It would not be economically feasible to build. CANBUS has
| revolutionized cars; now cars look more like a human body, with
| power and data being distributed to major points and then
| branching out. Before, everything ran from the fusebox. That
| meant a LOT of wiring, among other things. Copper is expensive
| and heavy. Car makers had a lot of incentive to save weight and
| cost so the wiring was as thin as they could get away with, so
| stuff never worked quite right.
|
| It would be dangerous, because various driver warning systems
| and such would not be possible. System that are having a
| significant impact on per-mile safety for vehicle occupants
| (road safety for vulnerable road users has plunged.)
|
| It would not be economically viable to operate, because engines
| are efficient as they are thanks to things like variable valve
| timing, direct injection, and so on. Some ECUs can sense how
| good the combustion was on a particular firing cycle via
| resistance across the spark plug after the ignition event. None
| of that would be possible with a "dumb" car.
|
| It would also not be economically feasible to repair, because
| the diagnostic time would be crazy. Trying to diagnose "dumb"
| cars from the 80's and 90's was a _nightmare._ You could spend
| hours just trying to figure out what was wrong in a maze of
| wiring, relays, resistive packs, analog sensors, vacuum lines,
| etc. Dealerships are staffed by low-level techs, people on
| their way to something else or starting their own shop. Car
| companies couldn 't possibly train them on all the intricacies
| of analog "dumb" car technology anymore.
|
| Now? I plug in a OBD2 wireless module, tap "scan" on my phone,
| drink a cup of tea while it systematically talks to every
| module in the car, and I not only get fault codes, they've
| likely got time and mileage stamps, an indication of whether
| they were intermittent or continuous.
|
| I can trigger a test on a component.
|
| I can see what the ECU or body control module THINKS is going
| on versus what's actually going on.
|
| I can tell the body control module to adapt to a new analog
| sensor.
|
| all without needing to so much as pop the hood, remove a single
| screw, or upholstery clip.
|
| _It 's a fucking dream._
|
| The shittiness in "smart" cars is because legislation in the US
| hasn't kept pace with technology, and that is because
| legislation and regulation in the US is dominated by corporate
| interests.
| Avshalom wrote:
| I know motorcycles are basically just an occasionally-useful
| game of russian roulette but every fucking automotive news
| cycle has me thinking about how they're basically the only way
| to buy _just_ a motor and some wheels anymore.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| You'd better check twice. Some had dial-out networking for
| years, like BMW.
| Avshalom wrote:
| oh, well, shit, there goes the g310gs I had being eyeing
| for noodling around the state.
| otterley wrote:
| It's a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is
| building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren't
| making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of
| the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the
| currently-running image, then a failed software update to the
| alternate image shouldn't have any impact. Think of it like blue-
| green deployments on the cloud; and it's what TiVo was doing with
| software updates to their DVRs all the way back in the late
| 1990s.
| variadix wrote:
| My router has dual firmware partitions, the fact a car doesn't
| is inexcusable
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It should be mandated, but corporations dominate legislation
| and regulations.
|
| "You'll drive up costs for the hard-working American
| consumer"
|
| "We'd have to cut salaries or fire factory workers"
|
| "We wouldn't be able to compete against that car company from
| Nothereistan!"
|
| etc.
| stefan_ wrote:
| I'm sure the infotainment system does, but that is not all that
| is being updated; you have many more processors in ECU,
| assistance systems and so on that are also sometimes getting
| fed new firmware over various wonky buses as part of an
| upgrade. In some instances there might even be multiple levels
| involved in the firmware distribution.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| So? Everything that can update firmware should do the same
| thing.
| stefan_ wrote:
| And then what? A/B update isn't magic dust, if some sub
| component ends up with an incompatible firmware because it
| had to boot to the alternate partition, you might still
| have an incompatible overall system.
|
| (Not like the subsubsupplier of that module even specced
| the extra flash memory for A/B update, hah)
| cedws wrote:
| This is more commonly known as A/B partitioning and as you say,
| is standard practice in embedded devices. It is indeed
| disturbing if automakers have not adopted this, nor a rollback
| mechanism.
| iknowstuff wrote:
| Tesla is. Failed updates are non-destructive, they also have an
| RTOS gateway isolating entertainment software from the software
| needed to drive the vehicle.
|
| https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/reverse-engine...
|
| And this is their decade old architecture. If you watch some
| cybertruck videos you'll see it is much more elegant now.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Tesla is very very good at software engineering. They still
| need to find the balance in their software and process
| engineering, though.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You are talking about the company that wrote logs to the
| fully read-write filesystem of their infotainment system
| and killed the EMMC from raw flash cycles within as few as
| 2 years. Recalled 10 years later.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yes, this happened to me, although it took 10 years. Free
| replacement, and the car still worked fine.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| It's still a major embedded engineering oversight on
| their part. We didn't have this in $5 embedded devices.
|
| Calling out Tesla as a model for excellent software is
| insulting to SW that's actually quality.
|
| What Tesla SW has and others lack, is a great "wow"
| factor, which consumers who don't get to see how the
| sausage is made, mistakenly associate with 'quality', but
| don't know all the skeletons in that closet.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| This isn't a tesla-specific thing or even something they
| innovated. The earliest cars with data networks had this.
|
| It's also not something Tesla does better; numerous security
| researchers have bypassed that gateway.
|
| Since you bring up Tesla: used to be that Tesla control units
| would fail after a certain number of drive time hours because
| they did so much logging to the flash chips they'd wear them
| out.
|
| In a vehicle which is highly connected and basically should
| never lose power most of its life, they were writing logs to
| flash memory. Anyone who has done embedded work can tell you
| how stupid an idea that is.
| xw3089 wrote:
| Yes, that happened to my car. But one could still drive
| their car after the failure and there was a free recall.
|
| https://www.tesla.com/support/8gb-emmc-recall-frequently-
| ask...
| j45 wrote:
| It's really interesting that updates can't revert, or enable
| some limp mode, or disable the offending functionality.
| superkuh wrote:
| Anyone on the 'net back in the 1990s will remember the image
| macro, email forwards, and usenet posts about "If cars were
| made by software companies". It looks like they're finally
| coming true.
| amelius wrote:
| We should have a law for this. In most countries, new vehicles
| need to be tested by govt agencies before they are allowed to
| hit the road. The same should hold after software updates.
|
| Ideally, the update should be done by independent agencies, so
| they can make sure the software is tested and they can properly
| inform the user (something which we already know companies
| don't always do).
|
| The way it is now, it is all too easy for a company to decide
| to push a quick fix for a problem that really needs a more
| careful approach (but which might cost the company money).
| andsoitis wrote:
| You want an agency to validate every single software updates
| to vehicles?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| How could they waste the opportunity of undivided driver
| attention not to display any ads?! Show them nearest Starbucks
| where they can relax, or Lidl where they can buy some Coke. C'mon
| automotive, hammer in the final nail to your coffin.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I can hear the dejected software engineer that wrote or plugged
| in that error message after layers of bureaucracy
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Not at all. Dejection and uncooperativeness render one a bad
| team player. The recruitment pipelines aggressively screen
| against these. Software engineers rarely care or have authority
| to be ethical gatekeepers.
| pharrington wrote:
| Does anyone have an original source for this? The picture is
| reposted from a different social media influencer's tweet
| https://twitter.com/githii/status/1738289618921951296, but with
| less compression artifacts and without that influencer's story.
| sp332 wrote:
| It's not the same photo, but here's one with the same error
| from from July.
| https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/priority-up...
| (about halfway down)
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| Every passing news cycle, I am getting more and more reasons to
| repair and stick with my current vehicle. Perhaps I would be
| better off paying a mechanic to teach me how to do the basic
| maintenance and repairs.
| afn wrote:
| Can't recommend highly enough: https://www.howacarworks.com/
| j45 wrote:
| Problems can be found just as easily with the wrong year and
| make of any ICE vehicle. In those vehicles, software updates
| are generally only done by a mechanic, sometimes loaded from a
| cd or DVD loaded into the car's stereo.
| eastof wrote:
| Except it's not going to ever leave your car inoperable...
| djhope99 wrote:
| FORD- fix or return daily ?
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I see a lot of people asking "How could this possibly happen?" It
| turns out that there's a common failure mode that makes it past
| almost every unit test suite: a lack of disk space.
|
| Running out of disk space pops up time and again. I've often
| wondered why software fails so often in this situation. But it's
| because the basic components of the system start to break --
| things like "Call with temporary file" stop working, because
| creating a tempfile fails. And usually you're writing that code
| precisely in a spot where it assumes it can't fail.
|
| This just happened on my PS5. I thought I'd play a bit of Armored
| Core 6 over Christmas, so I sat down and was greeted by "Can't
| start game." There was a pending update which couldn't be
| installed. So I skipped update; same error. But now the update
| was skipped, so it wouldn't even try to reinstall it. I ended up
| having to reinstall the whole game. Never seen a PS5 game
| completely brick itself like that.
|
| Disk space woes are also one of the primary reasons websites go
| down. Ever forget about a server for two years and suddenly see
| your service break? It's almost always because the process ran
| out of file handles (resource leak) or because it ran out of disk
| space (hello imagemagick tempfiles).
|
| Of course, the bug here could be completely different, but disk
| space errors are so common that it's as good a guess as any.
| Computers don't do well when you're out of disk space. MacOS
| freezes and bluescreens instead of going to sleep, because it
| can't save the hibernation file to disk. PS5 media recording
| stops working, because the hour-long recording backlog no longer
| has room to write the video to disk. This software update
| obviously passed their unit tests, but failed in this particular
| case; disk space is one of the few variables that they probably
| didn't test for.
|
| I wish it were easier to write unit tests for all possible out-
| of-space situations. There are just so many. Even if it
| technically doesn't break, it often craps up the experience so
| much that the user ends up wondering why the software is so bad.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I had a rock solid app that I wrote die on me yesterday because
| it tried to access a folder and Windows returned "Drive is
| corrupt," which of course I hadn't handled because that will
| never happen.
|
| Out of drive space is the worst, though. Like you say, most
| things don't handle it, they just plough headlong into an
| install and then die, leaving the whole drive in a horrible
| unknown mess of files where you might or might not be able to
| retry the operation, and you might or might not have used up
| the last few bytes on the drive and now for some reason when
| you try to reboot it can't even boot the system up because it
| can't write some temp file it needs.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Bricking a device like a car is not on , even my router and PC
| has a recovery option if a firmware update goes south.
|
| Don't they know about A and B images ???.
|
| They cheaped out to ensure their flash memory is adequate for
| restoring from a bad update.
| mikewarot wrote:
| Back in the 1980s I was in the room with a customer who I had
| written an inspection system for, using a hand-held computer.
| After downloading the data from the handheld, it would upload a
| new inspection route.
|
| While demoing the transfer, He asked "What happens if I
| disconnect this right now?".... I didn't know, and said so.
|
| I week later it was bulletproof... you could unplug it any time
| you wanted, and never lose data.
|
| That was the days of MS-DOS.
|
| So, here we are, 30+ years later, and computers are nowhere near
| as constrained as they were back then.
|
| I don't understand how Ford could even allow a screen like that
| to exist. It's a big red flag saying "Never buy a Ford again,
| they're unreliable"
| cs702 wrote:
| Very lame.
|
| My immediate question upon seeing the headline was: Which EV
| brand are we talking about? Evidently it's not Tesla, because if
| it had been, the headline would have mentioned it, no doubt. It's
| a Ford, in case you're wondering. _Shame on Ford!_
|
| Ford and all other automakers are learning the old-fashioned way
| that making _truly great_ user-facing software is... _harder_ ,
| _slower_ , and _costlier_ than they expected.
| fmajid wrote:
| For decades software engineers have moaned "why can't software
| engineering be a real engineering discipline like civil
| engineering". The travails of the legacy car makers, compared to
| Tesla or Rivian, show conclusively mechanical engineering is
| _easier_.
| Retr0id wrote:
| Or maybe there's just a stronger regulatory environment around
| mechanical engineering. If you sell cars whose fronts fall off,
| you're going to get in trouble. If your software updates fail,
| your users are mostly limited to complaining at you on twitter.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Mechanical engineer is in no way easier. However, it is easier
| for a better mechanical engineer to spot issues in your design
| just by eying it, whereas software is for all practical
| purposes a black box unless you spend 100s of hours reading the
| code.
| est31 wrote:
| You take a software engineer's point of view. The people who
| build cars, especially at established car companies are
| mechanical engineers however. And they design consumer
| technology, they don't design military vehicles or ambulances,
| so their main goal is not reliability, never has been.
|
| Cars have constantly gotten harder to repair, more brittle, and
| if a repair is needed, you often have to, instead of being able
| to swap out a $5 component, replace larger components that the
| $5 component is part of. This is by design as replacement parts
| is a high margin revenue source for the car manufacturers.
|
| Why should the software side of things be any different?
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| Some 20 years ago I was asked to prepare OS distribution with OTA
| upgrade capability for some PoS system.
|
| I think I prepared two system partitions and a bootloader which
| would alternate the system partition on every start (uses one bit
| of non-volatile memory on the system).
|
| When the system starts, it does self-test. If it fails the self-
| test it just restarts. If it succeeds -- it writes the result on
| its partition and then looks at the other partition. If the other
| partition did not succeed the test, it reports the fact back to
| HQ and overwrites it with the current system.
|
| The upgrade procedure is extremely simple -- the current system
| writes to the other partition, then restarts. If the upgrade is
| interrupted at any point in time, the other system will know it
| was interrupted and will just restart immediately. In any case,
| after two restarts we are back to the system that initiated the
| upgrade and if it checks the other system did not start and self-
| tested successfully, it can redo the upgrade as many time as we
| want and you still have a working system.
|
| Could it be done better? Probably it could. It took me one day to
| think up and implement.
|
| I would think Ford could do it better (Edited: yes, not a Tesla)
| jnwatson wrote:
| That is very much standard.
| onetimeuse92304 wrote:
| I wouldn't know what the standard is. This seems like
| something my kid could figure out. It is a shame that multi-
| billion dollar company that makes consumer products costing
| hundreds of thousands of dollars can't.
| Kirby64 wrote:
| This is a Ford Mach-E, not a Tesla.
| znpy wrote:
| My router does that. It's the wrt3200 and has two partitions
| and if it fails at booting three times in a row it will boot
| the old partition. I know because i have bricked and unbricked
| it this morning whole updating openwrt ^_^"
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| Do car companies outsource their software to fiverr or something?
| Every single car I rent lately is a buggy piece of shit.
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