Comment by palata
2 days ago
No OTA updates would be a killer.
What is the need for OTA updates for an EV, once you remove the autopilot and touch screen? Genuinely interested, I would guess there is none, right?
2 days ago
No OTA updates would be a killer.
What is the need for OTA updates for an EV, once you remove the autopilot and touch screen? Genuinely interested, I would guess there is none, right?
Patches and OTA updates just scream "We know ahead of time our product is defective." Arguably OK for software (but I'd argue not), but not even remotely OK for cars.
>"We know ahead of time our product is defective."
All products are defective. Full stop.
Cars are necessarily complex and have a lot of software to get the safety, comfortable, and reliability we expect today.
Most vehicles get some sort of recall; usually minor. I just checked the NHTSA recall website and every car I could think of owned by people I know (~30 vehicles) had some had some recall.
Cars should have an easy way to update. I’m generally against always connected cars (which are the norm today), but there must be some way to patch them.
I don’t like the idea of cars having cellular modems in them (my mind goes to nefarious implications), but having a way to securely update it without having to bring to a mechanic would be nice.
>All products are defective. Full stop.
Nothing can be made to work over an infinite temperature range, or for an infinite period of time, but a product that can meet its specifications, for its design life, is in no way defective. That happens all the time, for example with electronics:
Every component in your computer or phone, down to the smallest resistor and capacitor, has multiple pages of documentation characterizing it's performance, and is individually tested to ensure it meets the stated capabilities. Each trace on the circuit board is tested to make sure it is complete and not shorted to any other trace, and once assembled every component is verified to be correctly installed. This means designs can be proven to always operate within the specifications of every component.
This isn't some fancy military-spec process; it's standard operating procedure for petty much every electronics component or assemblies manufacturer. At the volume manufacturing equipment handles, it's much cheaper and easier to automate qualifying and testing everything, at every step, than dealing with the ramifications of manufacturing a bad batch.
There are occasional bad parts that do get into the mix, but it's usually a pretty big scandal. From botched industrial espionage leading to a plague of defective electrolytic capacitors in the early 2000's to management pressure at Samsung leading to the release of a defective battery design on Note7 phones, there are occasionally products that should be recalled for defective hardware, but with a design consisting of hundreds to thousands of parts, on almost every phone or laptop ever produced, every component has lasted past the useful life of the product and, except for ware items like batteries and displays, would continue working past the useful life of the human using it.
If kept simple, as is doable with an electric drive train, and especially if devoid of non-embedded software (a field which seems to have no interest in error-free designs: https://xkcd.com/2030/) a recall-free and provably capable vehicle is completely doable.
OTA updates are considered bad? What?
OTA updates on my truck have vastly improved suspension response and cruise-control/ lane-assist features. My wife's car has had OTA updates that improve her cars charging curve, and have implemented recalls for stuff like brake light response when regen braking.
Sure one could say these things should have worked perfectly from the factory, but that's not realistic: not with my cars, not with your cars, and not with this new brand either.
The only alternative I see here is the old fashioned way of having to bring it to a dealership. I would rather have an entire foot of ingrown toenails over dealing with dealership service centers of any brand.
What is the need for OTA updates for an EV, once you remove the autopilot and touch screen? Genuinely interested, I would guess there is none, right?
Yes, and no.
I've only started following this recently, but a lot of OTA updates aren't just bug fixes, they're additional features.
My wife's car recently got a free OTA update which upgraded her radio to get HD stations. A previous update allowed her car to start recognizing more types of School Zone and Night Speed signs.
I've read that every year (February, I think) Tesla pushes out a big update that adds features. However, the last two Tesla pushes included a bunch of features that came standard with my wife's (much cheaper) car years ago.
You could certainly argue that her car should have come with HD Radio enabled from the start, and ditto for the Tesla features. But to suppose that all OTA car updates are nothing more than more invasive tracking and bug fixes is not strictly correct.
HD Radio tuning is built into the FM tuner, but was disabled in software. It's patents are still in effect, until 2030, so your wife's car manufacturer likely recently obtained a patent license to tune into HD Radio stations. Why they didn't negotiate a license from the get go may be a mystery, but there's no development reason it wasn't capable on day one.
Tesla, on the other hand, has promised capabilities that haven't been developed yet, something they wouldn't be able to do without OTA updates, which is a sensible reason to feel animosity toward their reliance on them.
Ok but this car doesn’t have an infotainment system and it doesn’t detect road signs.