Comment by kswzzl
7 months ago
My 4xe died in my driveway on Saturday after the update. Let me explain, from the perspective of a 4xe owner, how bad the response has been from Jeep/Stellantis:
- As of Monday 8am ET, zero legitimate communication from any Jeep-related accounts on any social media platform, or any other form of acknowledgement from the company (unless I've missed something?)
- I only found out about the issue after finally searching a few Jeep groups on Facebook (of all places) to see if anyone else was experiencing the weird failure mode I was after the update.
- The only remotely-official info was from a 'JeepCares' account (which is ran by Jeep) on some random off-roading forum? We were seriously all living off of screenshots from this forum, and the advice coming from the JeepCares accounts was contradictory: they claimed that the Uconnect update was separate from the telematics update, and that there was no way to stop the telematics update if the vehicle received it. Later they gave advice to defer the Uconnect update, making it sound like they were coupled.
- Due to the lack of info from Jeep, people were coming up with all kinds of "if you reboot Uconnect while the Jeep's in ACC mode, it clears the check engine light". This probably did clear the CEL but didn't fix the fault.
- There is no way to tell if you received the bad update.
- There is no way to tell if you received the 'fix' either.
- Dealerships have literally no idea what is going on.
- You're basically at risk of your Jeep going limp (power loss, unable to safely make it to the shoulder) and being stranded on the highway, even as I write this.
> - You're basically at risk of your Jeep going limp (power loss, unable to safely make it to the shoulder) and being stranded on the highway, even as I write this.
This seems extraordinary.
I was going to ask: Are you really saying they kill the vehicle's power system, effictively the engine, while the vehicle is being driven on the highway?
But no need to ask, the article says yes, that's what is reported:
> Instead, the failure appears to occur while driving—a far more serious problem. For some, this happened close to home and at low speed, but others claim to have experienced a powertrain failure at highway speeds.
Wow.
Ya, that is shockingly scary. It makes me think we need some new standards about software updates to vehicles in general (or perhaps these already exist but were missed for some reason?). I can totally imagine that software used to be this ancillary selling point that didn't need such tight regulation, but as it becomes core infrastructure for the vehicle this is less of an IoT toy, and deserves stricter standards.
How about: you get to say whether you want to update and when and manufacturers are required to very explicitly list all of the changes in an update? That would seem to be an acceptable minimum.
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There is no need to invent new regulations. We already have criminal liability, endangerement from gross negligence, and manslaughter!
I do not see reason, why CEOs of big companies should be exempt from this!
If bus driver makes mistake, or someone drives drunk.... They get punished. This is the same thing!
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> It makes me think we need some new standards about software
No way. Testing is expensive. /s
Relevant: "Hackers Remotely Kill A Jeep On the Highway With Me In It" (2015)
https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...
>> - You're basically at risk of your Jeep going limp
This has happened to me twice with a Nissan Leaf. I paid money to get a read out from the computer system, and there were no timestamps on the screens of data.
Modern cars "computers on wheels" are dreadful.
Is it possible to disconnect the power from the radios used for "over the air" nonsense? Then at least they would be stable.
In the Leaf, you can disconnect the TCU from the CAN gateway controller located behind the infotainment system to disable its remote connections.
It will throw a perpetual "check engine" light and disable the hands-free microphone, but OVMS users have made a "dummy TCU" that gets around that annoyance.
I have the opposite problem. The specific infotainment system update I need requires a $200 visit to a dealership with a specific model of a USB 2.0 SanDisk Flash Drive (NI-52727-1). Not available OTA despite the Leaf's OTA capabilities.
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Is it possible to disconnect the power from the radios used for "over the air" nonsense? Then at least they would be stable.
I've read online that for some cars, you have to dig deep inside to disconnect the cellular antenna.
I'm a little more lucky. On my car, you can pop out the SIM card from a slot in the ceiling, behind the rear-view mirror.
This assumes you haven't given your car access to your home WiFi. (Some people do this so they don't have to pay for a data plan for their car, and it kinda sorta "syncs" when you get home.)
From a GPS software update... [1] "This is a telematics box module update" Telematics is primarily GPS and on-board diagnostics for location, speed, and fuel usage.
A GPS update kills your entire powertrain. Appears to also engage parking for some users, super dangerous. Catbones, "Almost died on the thruway today ... with an 18-wheeler behind me. ... Jeep died, locked its hand brake and jolted so hard my face almost ended up in the steering wheel at 70mph." [1]
[1] Wrangler 4xe forum, JeepCares and Catbones accounts: https://www.4xeforums.com/threads/wrangler-4xe-ota-update-10...
Personal bet: Jeep accidentally enabled the remote kill switch for repossessing automobiles. [2] Possibly the "impaired driver" kill switch. [3]
[2] Stateline, Late Payment Kill Switch: https://stateline.org/2018/11/27/late-payment-a-kill-switch-...
[3] Trackhawk, Federal Kill Switch Law: https://trackhawkgps.com/blog/kill-switch-law
Incredible that Jeep did not think to have updates only go out to cars which are stationary with engine off.
They did.
> The buggy update doesn't appear to brick the car immediately. Instead, the failure appears to occur while driving—a far more serious problem.
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You know, if Stellantis and other manufacturers can't behave responsibly, OTA updates will be illegal. They really should get their act together.
It is completely insane that this is happening. I did DD on a company in the automotive space a couple of years ago and flagged that they did not check if the vehicle was stationary, motor disabled before updating. They were all surprised at how I thought that this could possibly ever lead to issues.
I have Java code running on commercial aircraft. You can’t actually run Java code on commercial aircraft because the FAA doesn’t (or at least not at the time) know how to certify it.
The entire box it’s on isn’t powered while the plane is in motion (“wheels on ground”). It’s shut off before preflight and doesn’t turn back on until the plane is on the ground. The service my code is part of is responsible for queuing updates and downlinking telemetry. Updates are manual and obviously you can’t run them while in motion if the box they are on doesn’t even have power.
Cars probably don’t have to go this far, but there’s a continuum and they’re clearly in the wrong part.
Even iPhones and windows let you schedule update times. Just the fact that a freaking MOVING MACHINE doesn’t is egregious on itself. Imagine if stellantis would manufacture industrial equipment or nuclear reactors!
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Given the state of the software industry, it's honestly more surprising that this doesn't happen more often. Our industry is a complete joke, and somehow we've been given responsibility over people's lives.
We are really only about 60 years old as a proper profession, and we seem to be trailing behind doctors for professionalism and standard of care by about 100 years.
I don’t know what will turn out to be our penicillin, or our Joseph Lister, but in 1960 the former is something that didn’t exist when older doctors were in school, and latter had only been dead for fifty years. It may not have happened for us yet.
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> Given the state of the software industry, it's honestly more surprising that this doesn't happen more often.
It probably does. We just don't notice.
> Our industry is a complete joke, and somehow we've been given responsibility over people's lives.
Amen to that. kqr made some choice comments the other day in that thread about the airliner that came to within a hair of crashing due to running out of fuel. Thinking about risk is not a skill that we're born with and it is always sobering to read the 'risks digest' for a bit and to see how thin the ice really is.
It does. I have a Ford CMax from 2014. For years, when the SiriusXM radio software update would happen it would get stuck downloading. The geniuses at Ford decided the update should continue trying to complete even if the car was turned off. So once the download got stuck, it would completely drain my battery every single time. I'd rather have a car that moves that the latest SiriusXM update in my radio. The only fix was to pull the fuse if you noticed that it was happening.
I'm willing to see a difference in software standards between (say) Waymo and Jeep. One is a software company, the other is a sheet-metal company. If you just tar the whole industry you lose an ability to learn from those doing it better.
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I’m going on a limb here because i’m not directly on the software industry but my first suspect would be metrics and the fact that you have to deliver a product at certain time “no matter what”.
According to the article, that's not what is happening. The update itself completes fine; it's the updated firmware that is buggy, and seems to cause/require a reset of the ECU while in operation. Not that that makes it any less insane, but the update process does not seem to be implicated here.
Yes, and if the update happened while at home, most people could get the error at safe speeds (most people does not live <1 min from a highway).
they did not check if the vehicle was stationary, motor disabled before updating. They were all surprised at how I thought that this could possibly ever lead to issues.
My anecdata is that my car won't update its software without the owner explicitly requesting it. And then, it will only do it if the car has something like 50% charge, hasn't been used for an hour, and nobody is inside.
I once tried to do the update while I was inside, and it refused.
That's good. You may want to list the brand here.
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I would guess that your car is quite a bit more luxurious and expensive than an american jeep.
That’s not how this problem occurred. The update happened hours before, but the bug only manifested once the driver was on the road.
Sure, but if they aren't checking the super obvious potentially dangerous cases, doesn't that say something about the likelihood of their process detecting something less direct like this?
If a software update can affect the basic functionality of the car to such a degree then the whole car should be recertified after every update, change my mind.
I really want a 4XE Wrangler to replace my aging JK at some point, on paper its amazing, lots of torque and power, decent economy for a brick with large tires, and can actually run a pure electric enough to get around town, plus still takes all the standard Wrangler parts.
However in classic Jeep style they just can't get reliability down, and the PHEV part seems too complicated for them.
If it was just reliable it would still be the best selling PHEV in America, they let that go.
There is no sign of the 2026 Wrangler 4XE it might be canceled like the Gladiator version...
My Wife just got one last year, the electric engine will give you about 17 miles on a full charge that takes about 7 hrs, its pretty much useless on full electric mode, pretty good with the milage on hybrid which is what this really is. And yes do not expect reliability, first day out of the dealership we got a check engine light, apparently one of the workers at the dealership forgot to attach a wire or hose, at least thats the explanation that we got, i told my wife to insist on getting it documented somehow or get a log from the dealer but of course they played it off as human error (total BS). Few months later and her screen started to turn off and on, or just die completely when air play was connected. Stay away from these cars.
I’ve always been surprised that people even buy jeeps given the notorious reliability issues and frankly strange design choices.
The times that I have been given a jeep rental while on vacation or work trips have always left me disappointed with the vehicle.
My Wrangler JK is 10 years old with almost no issues, its a relatively simple vehicle compared to most, easy to work on as well. The Pentastar V6 is well proven engine and the issues with it are well understood.
I really like the vehicle, it has served me well and taken me many interesting places across the country, along with daily driving. I tow it with a RV and its one the few that can do so now days, plus its extremely capable offroad.
The 4XE is very alluring, much more fun to drive (I have rented one) and I could charge it off home solar and still tow with RV (the only PHEV thats possible to do so). If only it was reliable...
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Agreed, it's an expensive but great vehicle. Closing the last mile of the reliability gap is always tough, but they need to figure it out.
It's probably canceled, not only for reliability reasons. EVs and plugin hybrids are probably doomed, at least in the US: The EV tax credit subsidy is gone, fuel economy requirements will be or already have been eliminated, electricity prices climbing (my rate increased almost 50% on my most recent bill) and the Trump administration is extremely hostile towards anything related to renewable energy.
Does the market actually want EVs and hybrids if they require subsidies and regulation to make significant market penetration?
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This sounds like the sort of thing that happens when a team has a deliverable that slips multiple times but everyone had vacations planned for a responsible amount of time after the deadline.
Under time pressure and confirmation bias they signed off on code that was giving off signs of being broken, pushed it, and now key staff are either on airplanes, out of coverage on their phones, or cannot work entirely from memory and don’t have their computers with them because vacation.
I bet they already have communications ready, but everyone Director and above needs to "wordsmith" it to deflect blame and make sure nobody looks bad, and all the lawyers need to bless it so that it's not admitting anything. I bet you there's a Word doc being frantically E-mailed around all day, needing to be approved by 25 people before it reaches the light of day.
How did you verify that a software update can 1. Occur during driving operation of the vehicle and 2. results in vehicle power loss?
I worked in an auto supplier years ago and there where several protections in place to prevent the risk of update corruption on safety related components. One of the simplest one the UDS programming session having entry protections related to vehicle speed, vehicle driving mode, etc.
My update occurred while parked. I hit the failure mode 1-2 hours later pulling out of my driveway.
Thanks for the clarity. Wow this is a big deal.
imho the occasional mixup is going to happen, and eventually it'll be big like this or like Crowdstrike, but pushing these out on Fridays means the critical staff isn't there to help. The people who could have communicated this stuff to customers and dealerships were in bed when people got into their jeeps at 6am on Saturday after an overnight update.
I believe crowdstrike's update was on a Friday night as well.
Unless its a serious security bug, it can wait for not only for better QA testing but also for next Tuesday. Read-on Fridays need to be an industry-wide thing.
To me the bigger issue is that the infotainment system can affect the core function of the vehicle. That seems completely unacceptable, regardless of when an update is pushed out. The two systems should be separate with the infotainment system as the lesser important and unable to actually effect the core system.
That is the result of automakers trying to push everything into the HMI so they can eliminate physical controls.
They are doing to cars what electronics manufacturers did to TVs - taking an already-solved UX problem and destroying it with poorly made software in the name of progress.
Honestly the only thing that's going to change this is criminal liability for safety related software bugs. Otherwise, it's just business as usual and the business for the last 15 years has been cutting QA and asking developers to do testing themselves, which is literally impossible for a lot of software due to lack of proper staging environments and large permutations of configurations.
Lack of QA also tilts the power dynamic with project management. You could have the lead engineer and tester tell mgmt that things are not ready.
I think the nature of capitalism will make this impossible. The capital owning class will not allow criminal action for this and will also fight any common-sense regulations. If the working class gets that regulation in via the democratic process, that's fine, but its unlikely especially since it hasn't happened yet since we've gone digital on near everything starting from the 70s and 80s.
The working class lately seems more focused on 'culture war' issues and not economic or material or consumer or worker's rights issues anyway, so we're probably as far from any kind of regulation reform in software as possible. I remember a couple decades ago FOSS as an ideal seemed stronger and you had people like Lessig pushing hard for IP reform and Swartz and others for 'information must be free' honest-to-goodness mainstream movements and all of that seems to have went nowhere and is somewhat to very unpopular today. When was the last time you saw a populist movement towards liberal tech reform like this? Outside of some edge cases like medicine or power generation, the regulations here are purposely kept weak because that's what the wealthy desire.
Maybe our kids or grandkids will have this after the pendulum swings back, shrug.
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My condolences. I wonder if you qualify for a loss-of-use rental under the warranty.
Personally, I would return the vehicle as defective after an issue like this. No way I'm going to trust the lives of family, friends and myself to a company like this.
Why do you let your vehicle update without supervision and knowing exactly what the update entails (what it does)?
If you knew upates were occurring why didn't you stop them by not allowing internet access and or disabling the web/net hardware?
I find it very odd, I never allow any hardware unfettered internet access let alone update its firmware. Experience has taught me that that's a recipe for trouble.