> On my drive home I abruptly had absolutely no acceleration, the gear indicator on the dash started flashing, the power mode indicator disappeared, an alert said shift into park and press the brake + start button, and the check engine light and red wrench lights came on. I was still able to steer and brake with power steering and brakes for maybe 30 seconds before those went out too. After putting it into park and pressing the brake and start button it started back up and I could drive it normally for a little bit, but it happened two more times on my 1.5 mi drive home.
If that happened on the highway I could easily see people being killed.
If vehicles always still had to go back to the dealer for any type of recall, I would say that might have maintained a higher standard of what is supposed to pass for finished goods coming out of a factory.
The safety implications in this case really drive that home.
There is absolutely no way an OTA update should be able to impact anything powertrain related, it should be limited to the infotainment system and accessories. PCM updates should require a hard connection to the vehicle's OBD port at the dealership/mechanic (or a home user with the appropriate software and cable). NHTSA should investigate this.
The forum thread is more chilling. It seems they released a fix that they pushed silently. You can't verify if you installed the silent update yourself the support rep needs to use your vin in an internal tool to check if the fix is applied. "Park your car in an area with good cell coverage. Wait 10 minutes and do a reboot." After that I can try driving my car and hope the update went through?
Absolutely insane.
I think most “techies” know in their gut what causes this and where it’s heading - I remember doing PC repair post first dot com crash (first bankruptcy) and the amount of shit shovelled onto consumer PCs (every device manufacturer had its own weird set of drivers, drivers installers, app), every piece of software put something in there, let alone what MSFT started you out with. All of it trying to be “user friendly” whilst achieve it the opposite
We are going to see this play out in every device (car, fridge, TV) that is not locked down by the OEM (apple gets a lot of kudos and knocks for this)
Cars are going to be the front line of this war- it’s not a “right to repair” it’s “a right to have good defaults” and “no upselling opportunities” (I think of it as there are no commercial businesses anymore - just utilities who give clearly defined service that have clear APIs and endpoints.
Sadly I think the world will head towards a point where I will make a fortune selling Augmented vision glasses that remove the adverts reality …
We are going to see this play out in every device (car, fridge, TV) that is not locked down by the OEM (apple gets a lot of kudos and knocks for this)
The problem in this case is because it is Locked down by the OEM. Owners are completely at the manufacturer's mercy, and don't have the option to add aftermarket software.
Ok, this is a little off-topic. I have to say it somewhere.
Yeah, The crazy stuff is that when we are out of warranty, and they push an update... who's problem is it now? Who pays? My TV gets updates I don't necessarily want (I'll have to take that upon myself to get an external device for streaming services) and it's out of warranty. What happens when they push something that causes it to not function properly anymore? I didn't break it, they did. We know who pays: we do. I'm almost fearful of bringing anything online these days. I really don't want most things I own to be connected. I find it sad that we are being sold dishwashers, washing machines, refrigerators, guitar pedals, and just about anything and they somehow need the net. It's gross. We own nothing, we control nothing, and yet we're expected to pay for it when someone else decides they don't want to continue to support, or even offer, the thing you paid for.
No, this is not what causes this. Most ECU's have a BSP package and some drivers bought from vendors, then the tier1's build the whole thing to OEM specifications. OEM's then integrate the whole thing. Stuff starts to break when you put them together. Maybe a diag is slightly different or an ECU has slightly different timing, or one of the gateways doesn't like what a bootloader is doing, or you have some weird race conditions that fail at 1 out of 1000 cases.
I assume this is related to the new feature that lets you start the engine without being able to drive the car (it’s called “lock start” or something like that).
And the Wrangler is the only Stellantis brand that still has some value. Yet somehow, they’re finding a way to ruin even that.
Tried to buy from amazon.fr recently, had feeling like it is designed and developed by people never used online shopping. It's almost impossible to find products.
And if you try to set English language it simply cannot show list with products. Ridiculous for their billions.
Allowing owners to choose when to install updates would address many issues. Most updates are uneventful, but I’d prefer to install them when I’m at home in my driveway rather than while road-tripping in a rural area, 90 miles from the nearest dealer, or rushing to meet a nonrefundable hotel reservation.
Disturbing — this kind of progress sucks! I want reliable things that I own that are under my own control. We should all stop immediately buying this out-of-our-own-control stuff!
I'd like to laugh about this because it's one of the things I love about my 2010 Camaro which wound up in a fairly sweet spot of having the basic tech I want (Bluetooth to the radio) without a lot of the nanny stuff I don't, but I once upgraded the operating system with two USB keys containing a bunch of C# from a stranger on the Internet who said he worked at GM. You had to open the driver side door between the first and second USB keys to make the process work.
57 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 72.4 ms ] threadI drove a CJ for many years until it rusted out from under me and the engine seized, but I thought it was great, I went everywhere with it.
I would like to have a wrangler but it is too expensive, too many bells and whistles and to large, I would never get one.
Now I an driving an 18 year auto and hope to keep it going for another 18 :)
- Vehicle randomly stalls every couple of minutes requiring shutdown and restart
- Shifter doesn't switch out of Park
- Dashboard lights including check engine/drive to dealer etc
> On my drive home I abruptly had absolutely no acceleration, the gear indicator on the dash started flashing, the power mode indicator disappeared, an alert said shift into park and press the brake + start button, and the check engine light and red wrench lights came on. I was still able to steer and brake with power steering and brakes for maybe 30 seconds before those went out too. After putting it into park and pressing the brake and start button it started back up and I could drive it normally for a little bit, but it happened two more times on my 1.5 mi drive home.
If that happened on the highway I could easily see people being killed.
Does the NTSB or whoever have opinions on who gets to write code for safety critical systems and what obligations they have?
(I lemon lawed mine. Got nearly all my money back!)
The safety implications in this case really drive that home.
We are going to see this play out in every device (car, fridge, TV) that is not locked down by the OEM (apple gets a lot of kudos and knocks for this)
Cars are going to be the front line of this war- it’s not a “right to repair” it’s “a right to have good defaults” and “no upselling opportunities” (I think of it as there are no commercial businesses anymore - just utilities who give clearly defined service that have clear APIs and endpoints.
Sadly I think the world will head towards a point where I will make a fortune selling Augmented vision glasses that remove the adverts reality …
The problem in this case is because it is Locked down by the OEM. Owners are completely at the manufacturer's mercy, and don't have the option to add aftermarket software.
Yeah, The crazy stuff is that when we are out of warranty, and they push an update... who's problem is it now? Who pays? My TV gets updates I don't necessarily want (I'll have to take that upon myself to get an external device for streaming services) and it's out of warranty. What happens when they push something that causes it to not function properly anymore? I didn't break it, they did. We know who pays: we do. I'm almost fearful of bringing anything online these days. I really don't want most things I own to be connected. I find it sad that we are being sold dishwashers, washing machines, refrigerators, guitar pedals, and just about anything and they somehow need the net. It's gross. We own nothing, we control nothing, and yet we're expected to pay for it when someone else decides they don't want to continue to support, or even offer, the thing you paid for.
https://www.4xeforums.com/threads/wrangler-4xe-ota-update-10...
And the Wrangler is the only Stellantis brand that still has some value. Yet somehow, they’re finding a way to ruin even that.
And if you try to set English language it simply cannot show list with products. Ridiculous for their billions.