Hacker News Reader

Comment by WaxProlix | Hacker News Reader

This sounds nothing like my experience, you should get that vehicle serviced.

Service can’t do anything about the state machine being wrong.

The Rivian app does not permit you to send a command to the car while the app thinks the car is processing a command. Trunk opening? You can’t unlock the door. On top of this, if you try to open the trunk while outside Bluetooth range and then Bluetooth connects, you are still stuck waiting for the pending command to complete.

Oh, and the ridiculous “hey let’s always remind you that you own a Rivian” Live Activity seems to synchronize on a schedule that involves being hours and hours out of date.

The Rivian app sucks.

I agree that the app leaves something to be desired - my personal pet peeve is that it shows stale or cached data while waiting to do some async update, leading to just outright fabricated charge or lock state. Never had those kinds of problems with the truck's software proper though

Why can’t they just copy Tesla? Chinese manufacturers do just that and skip the hard steps

Same, I've had mine for a couple of years now with no notable software issues at all.

I have seen issues like that. Rebooting has always fixed it, but it is notable.

I really wish they would hire a strong frontend team. I can almost always figure out what happened just from the signal, and it's usually a state machine getting stuck. Which I have some sympathy for, but also you just can't have that happen in something that is going to feel polished and responsive.

This comment is pretty funny to me, as a car guy. What’s there to service? It’s a software issue.

Presumably, but you don't really known until you pay to take it in for service and they tell you there is nothing wrong but they don't have a fix (gee, great experience). On the "know it's software" side e.g. I had what appeared to be random issues with audio crackling on my PC I assumed was software/driver related, it turned out there was a faulty USB hub causing an issues for the whole bus but it was just most apparent in the audio device.

Stuff like "Doors refuse to open" is vague enough it could be a similar kind of issue which needs physical service/replacement rather than just a software update, especially if other buttons are triggering completely separate actions with the windows. Or it could very well be 100% software issues, which could be more apparent with additional details like "only does it after transitioning from this screen or pressing things in this order" type problems.

As a car guy you should know that there's tech in cars these days. Or do you calibrate everything from tpms monitors to re pointing/tunes in your garage?

If something's wrong with your car's head unit firmware or android auto connection or whatever, of course you'd have a technician look at it?

> Or do you calibrate everything from tpms monitors to re pointing/tunes in your garage?

Pretty much, yeah. I race SCCA and build race cars. Exactly why I want nothing to do with these, you don’t own it. You’re leasing the hardware that’s hogtied to the software.

Oh man, you're in for a bad time then, as pretty much everything - yes even amateur racing cars - has software in it now, and you don't own any of it.

As a car guy, it surprises me you weren't aware of this trend yet but I guess we all find out sooner or later. But hey - maybe that '89 Carrera will keep on trucking for a few more decades though - good luck!

You're not wrong, but I am still sad about this trend. Especially the "you don't own any of it" part. I always think about this:

https://theoutline.com/post/1398/why-can-t-karen-sandler-get...

I love these replies, hahah. You really think I’m not aware of the software that’s running my 2017 Shelby? The difference is (you know this, I think you’re being purposely obtuse) it’s never connected to the internet, it’s never getting updates, and it’s not a complete car OS that locks you out of doing anything.

I think you might be the one needing the luck

Reply on news.ycombinator.com