It’s just bad code and even worse error handling. The program runs a heartbeat that lets the rest of the car know all is well when things are running smoothly. When the program hangs, the heartbeat stops. When the heartbeat is interrupted for long enough, it’s programmed to reboot. With that in mind, when the owner queues up the podcast the system attempts to decode an unsanitized string (the podcast title) as if it were percent/URL encoded. When it encounters an error because “% I” is not a valid character reference, it hangs.

The worst part is that the car owner was told that a firmware update would “likely” fix it but they would have to pay for it.

I have a different model car and I've been noticing a similar thing since getting a new phone, where sometimes it will just freeze and reboot when bluetooth is being used, and I can't quite figure out why. I thought it was random but am now wondering if there's a pattern I haven't noticed yet.

Now someone like Taylor Swift just needs to title a song with a whole bunch of known exploits to infotainment systems and we're all set.