My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto
imdanielkendall.com
imdanielkendall.com
That would never occur to me. Whenever something produced by a large company breaks, I pretty much assume there's no signal possible back to whomever is responsible for the breakage, and that whatever is broken now is broken forever.
To the author's point, they're A-gile, but forgot that the first step in the process was customer feedback
1. You write release notes thet contain technical details. Less than 1% of your customers understand them. More than 90% probably won't even care, let alone understand the document. And then there are the folks who get confused or scared and reach out to customer support with weird questions. This generates extra workload.
2. You explain nothing. The release simply is. The technically minded people are mildly annoyed. A few customers affected by open issues wonder if it's fixed now. The rest of them doesn't even care that there is an uodate and carries on with their lives. Customer service continues to complain about the usual bunch of random and weird customer issues.
It's quite natural to start doing (2) in a consumer facing business, isn't it?
Like spoilt children. I genuinely don’t know if it’s the decades of SV pandering or what.
MOST OF THE TIME, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU. And they’re probably right not to.
The "tech nerds" is a bullshit term for "people with the background to understand the explanation." If you're not explaining it to them, you're not explaining it to anyone. You're just subjecting everyone to your whims, and really should be regulated into the unemployment line.
That everything has to be about profit is a lot of what's wrong these days. And yes, bitching about this on a YC-owned forum is just as silly as bitching about nerds here, I'm aware.
One of the biggest organizational anti-patterns of the modern SaaS world is the move away from release notes.
It's a question of whether a company has a competent enough change control process to be able to generate a list of changes for a given release.
If a tech product company can't meet the low bar of documenting its changes, then it probably shouldn't be trusted?
Release notes aren't for end users in the same way that the wiring diagram taped to the back of your appliances isn't for end users.
They're for experts to either directly use... or to communicate in simpler language to end users.
It's the nerds that the non-nerds/normies go to for advice on tech-y things. If you can generally make the nerds happy, and earn a good reputation among them, you'll have a customer base from which to expand from.
Or as Tim O'Reilly recommended back in the day, "Watching the Alpha Geeks":
* https://web.stanford.edu/class/ee380/Abstracts/081119-stanfo...
* https://web.archive.org/web/20130000000000*/http://origin.co...
The costs will be recouped by sacking more developers...
Or businesses would close to do inventory.
We made do.
Not my own device on my own machine.
I don't remember a time my CD player on my car would stop working due to an update.
Absolutely.
But also don't break my stuff.
However the very update that says it fixes the blank screen caused the blank screen to happen in the first place. (Never happened before that update.)
Then another silent update not listed on their site undoes that problem, but you have to wait a month or so to get it.
"Bug fixes and performance improvements "
Even worse than the "reformat" commit message that your bisect landed on.
Today there’s no disc, no recall - that cost to shipping broken software is gone. We the users pay the price.
Arguably the peak quality after a few months/years of fixes is better, but that doesn't really matter because usage is front-loaded
The disks were very expensive and if you didn’t update them it wouldn’t know about new roads (slower trip, missed turns, etc).
Jeep already had an OTA the broke the ability for the car to be driven.
There is a "release early, release often" line of thinking.
But I also think there is a risk of "fixing it in post(-production)" thinking: that lack of preparation and care can be patched over after-the-fact.
Also, as an embedded engineer, I know things get tested better the more "final" they are. Faster release cadences always have poor testing as one of the tradeoffs.
This was true for old Microsoft Windows releases. This is not true anymore. Everything is a rolling release. Angry users ? F*k them. They will get an update.
The article is a lovely cathartic rant against agile software development methodologies applied in the wrong place in the wrong way, whether or not the software(s) in question used such methods. On of the worst assumptions, I believe, is that the end-user is willing and able to function as testing/QA without detriment to the product and company.
See also self-checkout etc.
Don't put discrete, isolated HW functions behind a SW powered screen. It's that simple.
It's practically impossible to test every permutation of code against every system. Maybe AI can help, but practically it'll just mean the software gets more complicated, with more features. And to top it all off, more and more features get regulated, so they have to be there. The rear-view camera requirement in particular, since you need a screen to see the output. And if you have a screen... well it's an already paid cost, so, might as well display other things too.
We should kill the reg.
I don't think they're saving that much by ditching them and going to SW.
They also didn't need updates (well, the Bluetooth module may have, but nothing else).
It definitely was nice not to have to worry whether the climate control may stop working because the radio was modified. Or because of any update.
As a driver, dumping everything into one SW system has significantly degraded my experience. What I gain ("Ooh, I can now use Waze on a bigger screen!") is minimal.
> The latter can be done with a CI pipeline for pennies worth of compute in a fraction of a working day.
I'd appreciate the point if they were successful at it. As it is, they're not. It's rare to find a non-buggy car.
I don't know. On balance, the reality is cars are better overall nowadays, but every aspect of our life has gotten more complicated, including cars.
If you had the option of no screen at all, no rear-view camera, and with physical switches, would you? If this Slate truck gets released, that's the closest, but it's still required to have a rear-view camera/screen sadly.
I'd be OK with the screen doing other things, as long as it's not inferior to my just using the phone. Currently, AA is inferior.
You don't need a huge screen for the rear view camera. There's plenty of space to have that screen and have all the usual buttons for climate control and radio/audio. Cars had been doing that for over a decade.
See also: the article linked to this thread.
Many cars have AC controls on the screen only.
Older cars (that still had touch sensitive displays), simply had separate HW modules and HW interfaces (buttons/switches) for the rest. You never had to worry that modifying/repairing/updating one would impact the other.
To exit a climate control modal on the screen you have to find and tap a tiny red "X" box in the furthest corner of the screen from the steering wheel.
While that particular issue isn't solvable, I am open to any advice on coding tools that might allow one to unlock other settings or make changes like "ensure auto-stop is fully disabled across restarts and drivers".
I've driven the 2025 and the 2024. The 2024 not only had all the crappy UI, but the driver assistance features were also alerting you constantly, and they were terrible. I was amazed how much they toned it back and improved it with the 2025.
Still wouldn't buy either of them personally. The constant nags and alerts are so fucking annoying and distracting. The seat belt chimes that don't shut off and get louder and louder make me want to rage so hard. I am religious about wearing my seatbelt, so there's absolutely no reason for it to piss me off so bad.
They are far better.
BYD reliability and support leaves European cars for dead.
So exactly like software licensing? Most apps nowadays don't even require a purchase to download. The download is free but you need to pay $4.99/month subscription to use, or $99.99 for a "lifetime subscription". The code's are all there. The author just doesn't want you to use it.
This is something far more heinous, you bought a thing for a lot of money and just in order to extort even more money from you, they simply disable/lock away a feature that you technically already possess.
A better analogy in software might be that you bought a video game for $60,000 and the only way to beat a lower level boss without spending 2,000 hours trying to, is to pay the developers another $5,000 for a super weapon.
You'd prefer they get nothing for the effort they put into developing the software?
A subscriptions approach allows them to avoid demanding a big payment upfront, and allows them to continue improving the software without you having to pay substantial sums to get new licensed versions. It has pros and cons vs licensing, but is a legitimate monetization strategy.
That the bits already exist on your machine is irrelevant. Your entitlement to use the bits is what is at issue here. Being already in possession of stolen goods does not entitle you to use them.
All the hardware pieces are installed at build time
As a licensed driver who resides in the Sonoran Desert, can you even imagine the horrific visions that just flashed before my eyes?
We often joke around here that wearing oven mitts is a good way to get our cars started in the late afternoons. It's not really a joke.
I personally have several pairs of gloves, and I never fail to don those gloves when I go out, whether I am walking, riding an e-Scooter, or driving, because even as a pedestrian we must touch so many metal objects that bask all day in the direct sunlight.
Heated steering wheels. What a world we live in today!
Man, when it's freezing outside, it's awesome. I wouldn't buy a car without it now.
We also used to have crotch vents beneath the steering column! This was arguably the best idea since it could cool the entire driver area including the wheel.
This is artificial scarcity like the McRib.
I'm always a little frustrated by all the little features that are scattered across car models, that would be so easy to add, but are only available in some cars. I suppose putting absolutely everything in would be expensive and overwhelming, but some of them seem pretty easy. Off the top of my head:
- The button to dim all the dials except the essential ones (in Subarus and Saabs)
- The little flap to block sun above the sun-visor (in Audis and probably others)
- Being able to turn the radio on again after the key has been taken out
- Being able to use the residual heat for a short time after the engine has been turned off (Usually in VW/Audi cars - becoming more common?)
- Being able to hold a button on the remote to shut or open all windows (for a coupe with frameless doors, this could make getting in and out of the car in a tight supermarket parking space massively easier)
- Fuel cap holders inside the fuel flap (have these become universal yet?)
Those all feel like they would cost very little extra to implement. There are a few more that I feel were complicated or expensive, but I still was surprised weren't universal - Having the remote/key recharge while driving (less useful now you rarely need to take the keys out of your pocket, but strangely missing from many luxury cars even when you did need to insert the key). - HUD
I don't feel this is a very good list, but most of the things I only remember when I see them. Most of the items above have gradually become more common. I remember noticing cheap but fantastic features more often with cars like old Peugeots and Volvos (and obviously Saabs), and also somewhat in 90s Japanese cars. Sure Mercedes and BMWs had nice features that other cars didn't, but it's the ones where they've thought of something really useful without it costing a lot that really felt impressive. And then disappointing when you never saw that feature again.
* drove
Which is never, unless something is broken.
Having rolling releases for a CAR is absolutely stupid.
(This software building code is more necessary for software used in critical infrastructure. But it should also be applied to consumer devices as basic protection for consumers against manufacturers breaking functionality the consumer paid for)
At the very least, you can test one single feature end to end, just to get a baseline that nothing is massively, obviously broken (like it was in this case!). This lack of fundamental testing is what caused the CrowdStrike bug that brought down Delta Airlines. This kind of test is extremely easy, quick, cheap, and simple, and catches the worst bugs. In other words, it's the most valuable test.
Companies will continue to let these bugs happen until we mandate a minimum amount of fundamental testing before release.
Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published, follow Tesla's model which has been very reliable within the industry
Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published...
Please don't take this as suggesting any of them are good at software, mind you.
Let's face it, this really is about Tesla, vs the rest of the major players (ford, kia, VW etc)
I've been lately into mobile apps and i am finding that there is no system which combines these 3
1. AOT 2. JIT (for hot paths) 3. Interpreter for non JIT paths or where you explicitly do not want jit.
Imagine, a system which compiles your app to AOT but when you push OTA update, part of the app are selectively replaced to JIT or Interpreted mode.
it's theoretically possible but nobody seems to be doing it. I found react native / expo eas update but i don't think it's like this, it has a Hermes VM which runs bytecode but it has no JIT so you'll write native code for hot path then you'll need to upload a full update to Android. So, only toy level code performance can be can actually be written in JS?
Much better, patch the parts where AOT calls into JIT or interpreter.
Currently i am using react native and flutter. Flutter's UI framework code is in Dart if you load this whole code into JIT, it will consume a lot of resources on mobile device as the framework is big and does lot of work. If all framework code was AOT and your custom patchable code also comes with AOT but upon OTA replaced by JIT or Interpreted code, crazy performance!
But what if we could run the most of the code in AOT and only run changed code in JIT or interpreted mode? arguably it would perform as good as it does not being complete AOT while also providing react native like fast updates.
AOT will be in base app and it will include JIT or Interpreted OTA updates.
For Apple, JIT can simply be disabled and OTA update can run patched part in interpreter.
But JIT works on Android (well), so this Hybrid system is capable of being much faster than React Native where your JS code only runs in Hermes VM which isn't JIT.
In this system, all your crazy math and algorithms (on hot path) stay easily updatable as this small part can be run on JIT with snapshot saved for next load if it has not changed!
JIT on average is 100x faster than dumb interpreter for language like Dart.
Does it already exist? otherwise i am seriously thinking about building something like this.
That said shipping JIT / interpreter with your program to recompile updates / parts of it sounds silly to me.
why is it silly? modern phones can easily do this (they are running local llm, what issue is with jit?), if it's done one time per update what's the problem?
what's the problem with jitting couple of hot paths which have been updated and were not part of base app?
>Apple does not allow running code from internet either (even if interpreted iirc)
And how is React native expo/eas updates are working then? Isn't it downloading a bytecode bundle?
Afaik, interpreter is allowed. JIT isn't?
If you have a big touchscreen put a video usb port on it.
The number of times I've heard someone say 'oh it's disconnected again' is extreme.
To be honest, some court ought to simply demand Google makes it reliable or refunds all money people paid for the phones as the product is not fit for purpose.
They pushed a manual patch to clear out files out over 4 hours. Not sure how i feel that they can directly target my car with license plate but ah well
Nothing happened initially, but after deleting and re-pairing, it’s finally working.
Blocked future updates when I take it in for its next service, I’m thinking of telling them to leave the FW the fuck alone.
If Android Auto stopped working I'd also be livid because I don't use the built in crap.
Amen. If you go to a bakery, you expect them to care. If you hire a photographer, you expect them to care. Software isn’t (usually) a factory line; CRUD may be similar concepts throughout, but everyone is making it themselves.
Give a shit about what you make.
Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.
It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.
> It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.
It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user.
If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
I'd agree if it worked.
Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google.
> If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.
As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two.
My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.
The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.
Why would you get that idea? Do you have to pair your phone every time for all other Bluetooth products?
I'm not speaking in the abstract. I've done this before on older cars.
No, it doesn't. It's a very simple streaming protocol.
It's literally a gRPC-encapsulated stream of h264 frames over a USB connection. With touch events and some car-related telemetry streamed back. You can implement it in a weekend: https://github.com/mrmees/open-android-auto
You can create whatever you want, including just streaming videos onto the head unit or making it play Doom while driving (with steering wheel for input).
What I mean is: When I enable Android Auto on my phone and on my car, and connect the two, I get something that has a poor UI and sucks.
Some of my complaints below may have remedies - please feel free to inform me!
When Android Auto loads up, it shows me a tile with the current weather. In Fahrenheit. I want it in Celsius. Everywhere on my phone I've set it to Celsius. In the Settings (I think multiple ones). In the actual weather app. But AA will show it in Fahrenheit.
And why show me that tile at all? I don't want to see it. I can't disable it. In my Android Auto settings, I removed it from the list of apps. It still shows up. Why can't I control what apps launch?
Why is there always a navigation app loaded? I don't want it on by default if I'm just going to listen to stuff. Nothing should be loaded by default except the launcher menu. I should be able to configure on my phone what I want autolaunched.
It eats up too much battery. Why does it need to eat so much battery if all I'm using it for is to listen to podcasts? With regular Bluetooth, it barely consumes battery.
Waze sucks on AA compared to just plain Android. I can't, for example, send an ETA via AA. I can't even do it on my phone while connected to AA.
Why does the air vent fan speed drop dramatically when I get a call? Why does the climate system even know I'm getting a call?
If I connect my phone via USB cable, why does it insist I connect via Bluetooth? I can go to Android settings, have Bluetooth forget my car, and when I plug in the USB and launch Android Auto, Android will connect to Bluetooth. I Googled and apparently this is intentional. I find it very hostile.
That's all from the top of my head. I'm sure I can come up with plenty more.
I don't think I ever saw this behavior?
> Why is there always a navigation app loaded?
I think this is the default? I have OsmAnd+ instead of Google Maps by default.
> It eats up too much battery. Why does it need to eat so much battery if all I'm using it for is to listen to podcasts? With regular Bluetooth, it barely consumes battery.
This is because your phone needs to encode the contents of its display as h264 stream.
> Why does the air vent fan speed drop dramatically when I get a call? Why does the climate system even know I'm getting a call?
AndroidAuto can notify the car that it wants reduced noise.
> That's all from the top of my head. I'm sure I can come up with plenty more.
This is all fixable in software on Android. Nothing from your list is a problem on the _car_ side.
Given that the protocol is now documented and available, it doesn't even need to be implemented in Android. You can have a KDE desktop running on your car!
I actually played with that about 10 years ago: https://github.com/Cyberax/aauto/tree/master
Ok. How do I make it not load any of them?
> AndroidAuto can notify the car that it wants reduced noise
How do I get it not to notify the car?
> This is all fixable in software on Android. Nothing from your list is a problem on the _car_ side
Which is why my original comment said Android Auto sucks.
My complaint about the car manufacturer is that they allow the driving experience to be degraded with it.
Get the Android Auto app and patch away the notification. It's just an app, after all. Running on your own hardware.
> Which is why my original comment said Android Auto sucks. > My complaint about the car manufacturer is that they allow the driving experience to be degraded with it.
So your default car navigator can do everything in your list, including launching a non-default app from your phone? That's some mighty car navigation system.
So we're in agreement that the official app sucks, right? If the solution is "Well you can just patch it," then there is a problem.
And BTW, how do I patch it and run it on an unrooted phone? Is there a community version I can install and use that sucks less?
> So your default car navigator can do everything in your list, including launching a non-default app from your phone? That's some mighty car navigation system.
Why is the alternative my default car navigation system? [1]
What did people do before they had Android Auto? Not use the phone at all?
One alternative is what I had in my old car: An aftermarket Bluetooth receiver, and a phone holder to hold the phone. The Bluetooth receiver was better for all things audio, and the phone on a phone holder didn't consume so much battery even when not plugged in. And the Waze experience was better. I would have thought a larger screen would make for easier navigation, but I now know it doesn't - the phone screen was large enough. I'll grant that stuff like Pocketcasts on AA is a bit more ergonomic than the bare phone, but when AA comes with so much painful baggage, it's not worth it.
And that's why some people I know actually go this route - disable AA, and use a vanilla phone holder with the in-built car's Bluetooth. Sadly, they cannot (easily) install that Bluetooth receiver - that's an indictment of the car manufacturer.
This isn't a great solution, but it's saying much when it's superior to AA.
[1] Incidentally, the car navigation system is actually quite good!
But this is a red herring. With older cars, you could install a 3rd party system and it was far superior to Android Auto for the basic things I need.
there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.
I don't want an amazing software experience. I want an unsurprising experience, ideally the one I already have.
The only thing better than Android Auto would be to just provide a standardized port (and perhaps a wireless standard) for a combination of video output, audio output, touchscreen input, and charging, with optional standardized sensor inputs. Then you wouldn't need two different standards (Android Auto and Apple Carplay), just one, which would also work with any new device that came along to break that duopoly.
- when you need to re-pair Bluetooth
- when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive
- when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS
- several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random
you name it.
- you listen music and you need to go out to buy something while others in the car
None of these problems exist if you have a decent, dedicated computer in the car that just works, it knows profiles, it does need you to be always on wire, or on the line.
I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is:
1. Plug it in.
2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap.
3. The same cable also supplies power!
Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare.
And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properly pauses my audiobook before announcing a turn, for example.
Why on earth everytime i sit in the car i have to neurotically plug the cable. I had situations i forgot and in the middle of the ride i started to look for cable or try to wire car play, simply because i figure out i don't know where to go .
This type of crap is not convenient and simply dangerous.
what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go;
one of the best tiny features i have. In the morning i drive to work; i can go several ways there depends on traffic, My car knows that in the morning i go to work; GPS is on, traffic is calculated.
I open the door , my music started to play, I press gas and drive; zero cables, zero pairing ; open the door and drive.
Now you're offended by Android Auto making it easy for people to just plug in the phone and start driving?
It's clear that you have not used AA/CarPlay, but they _also_ offer wireless pairing. If you're using the car constantly, you can just pair it with your phone. There are even retrofit adapters available, so even a 10-year-old car can be wirelessly connected.
> what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go;
Nope. Cars should offer one thing only: Android Auto/CarPlay. That's it. Nothing else is needed.
Can your car play audiobooks and pause them when the navigator makes a voice announcement? Can it play a Youtube podcast that you started listening on your computer?
So a web browser loading a page off the phone? :)
Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit.
Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.
Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.
their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.
It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.
I think it's 40%? Most of this screen is utterly useless for me. I don't care about "other items". I want more map, and next several turns in that spot.
The speed limit can stay in a nice carved-out area at the top left.
> Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk.
Oh wow. Being able to opening the trunk is now the pinnacle of usability. How about a glovebox?
How about making the Homelink button always visible, because GPS is not always reliable. How about making Bluetooth icon always available? Ditto for compass.
> I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.
Nope. It's just copium.
you can pin your Bluetooth app with drag-n drop , never used car link so not sure if that's an app or an icon.
glovebox is the real annoying item i can confirm is a 100% weird design choice. I still love pin in valet mode so that my items are not stolen.
Would you mind uploading a picture of this "almost full screen"?
> even in default mode that screen is bigger than 95% of the navigation screens of other brands.
Yeah, sure. "We removed about 40% of the screen, but don't worry, you still have a lot of screen left!"
I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPlay today that Tesla will never add to their infotainment system.
Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)
automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym
send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself
proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.
In any case, thank you for contributing evidence to my assertion that CarPlay is additive, not subtractive, and since you can choose to use it or not, adding it to Tesla's infotainment is strictly a win.
It's my first car with built in satnav, so it was not something I thought to test. A working Android Auto would be great compared to 10+ years out of date maps.
Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?
Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced.
In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.
Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.
This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.
This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved.
It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.
They even fixed once a semi broken hardware for me. Camera power started acting up. I called tesla they said you can come to service to replace or wait a bit we will release OTA that will decrease a power consumption, in 3-4 weeks they fix my custom problem without going to serive
Uh? I can literally count the times my Model 3 2019 software broke something on one hand:
- when they redesigned the AC controls to make them more visually appealing but less functional (no button borders and no fill)
- when they decided to put air recirculation under auto-control and ignore the user's settings
- when they optimized the cellular connectivity and it took them a while to get back proper reconnect on loss of signal (garages etc)
- when they tuned sentry's sensitivity and there was some back-and-forth for a couple cycles between "record everything" and "record nothing"
None of this made the car undrivable or totally useless. I did hear of reports of early HW4 cars bricking their FSD computer, and Tesla replaced it.
In my opinion it's still a much better experience than the absolute guesswork of "what will my screen display today when I connect the phone? and where will I find Maps again?", based on software updates on the car AND the phone.
EDIT: also agreeing with the sibling comments: my 7 year old car got a lot of extra features since release, and most of them working very well at the first try.
Hello, Elon
Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.
An update which advertised, amongst other features, that it "rectifies errors and prevents security gaps" and stated "This update is recommended for everyone."
Borderline insane to refer to the user as "complicit" in that case.
Hooray for OSS, F-Droid is way better ime.
The FAA has historically done a good job on this front with aviation (notwithstanding the 747 MAX debacle, which was a failure implicating flight control software but not a failure of separation of assurance levels). Automotive software and standards and NHTSA is far behind on this front. Cost is certainly a factor; it is not economical to apply aviation safety and engineering standards and processes directly to automobiles. But in the meantime, it is an absolute Wild West for any contemporary drive-by-wire car.
And lest you take issue with my characterization or claim Tesla is a rogue outlier, let me remind you that Volkswagen shipped deliberate software emissions defeat code in 11 million diesel passenger vehicles over eight model years including half a million in the USA, and was only caught by academic researchers.
ISO 26262? Not sure how the enforcement looks, but automotive is pretty serious about ISO 26262.
Still, the infotainment is most likely QM so it wouldn't apply in this specific situation.
The infotainment system itself may be QM but there has to be assurance that it is in fact separated from higher safety level system.
Yes, hence why I said I'm not sure about enforcement mechanisms how they stack up against the aviation standard. Still, in my limited experience, projects that are ASIL x take the thing pretty seriously and they do get certifications from external bodies. Actually, I am supporting an SEooC external certification right now.
> The infotainment system itself may be QM but there has to be assurance that it is in fact separated from higher safety level system.
The separation most likely happens _outside_ the infotainment itself, through a gateway.