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A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

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Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#61

Post by userbinator »

trentgreene wrote: post #31
markx2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My eldest daughter knows her way around cars, and she refuses to buy any car that has any sort of computer in it. She knows how to change this, repair that, fit whatever and is very happy doing that. But she also knows that as a female if she goes into any garage for a 'diagnostic' she will be overcharged. In fact even for something normal with a 'non-computer' car she will be overcharged. Cars without computers are…

As a fellow “analog” automotive enthusiast, I’m curious how she defines computer in this situation? Given that ECUs / microprocessors have been standard on cars since the late 60s / early 70s. For me it’s the network connections and updates that scare me. The software on my ‘99 Benz hasn’t changed in 24 years, and I don’t need it too.

I suspect she may be referring to the stereotypical carbureted V8 + manual / hydraulic auto combination that's still highly popular amongst US enthusiasts, which certainly has no ECU at all.

Microprocessors didn't exist until the early 70s. Late 70s / early 80s is when they started becoming common in cars.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#62

Post by eastof »

j45 wrote: post #51
tap-snap-or-nap wrote: post #39

Every passing news cycle, I am getting more and more reasons to repair and stick with my current vehicle. Perhaps I would be better off paying a mechanic to teach me how to do the basic maintenance and repairs.

Problems can be found just as easily with the wrong year and make of any ICE vehicle. In those vehicles, software updates are generally only done by a mechanic, sometimes loaded from a cd or DVD loaded into the car's stereo.

Except it's not going to ever leave your car inoperable...

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#63

Post by KennyBlanken »

bilsbie wrote: post #12

I wish someone would make a truly dumb car. Sure you can have microcontrollers for emissions, safety, etc but beyond that give me a 1970s user interface and make the car as independent of technology as possible.

It would not be economically feasible to build. CANBUS has revolutionized cars; now cars look more like a human body, with power and data being distributed to major points and then branching out. Before, everything ran from the fusebox. That meant a LOT of wiring, among other things. Copper is expensive and heavy. Car makers had a lot of incentive to save weight and cost so the wiring was as thin as they could get away with, so stuff never worked quite right.

It would be dangerous, because various driver warning systems and such would not be possible. System that are having a significant impact on per-mile safety for vehicle occupants (road safety for vulnerable road users has plunged.)

It would not be economically viable to operate, because engines are efficient as they are thanks to things like variable valve timing, direct injection, and so on. Some ECUs can sense how good the combustion was on a particular firing cycle via resistance across the spark plug after the ignition event. None of that would be possible with a "dumb" car.

It would also not be economically feasible to repair, because the diagnostic time would be crazy. Trying to diagnose "dumb" cars from the 80's and 90's was a nightmare. You could spend hours just trying to figure out what was wrong in a maze of wiring, relays, resistive packs, analog sensors, vacuum lines, etc. Dealerships are staffed by low-level techs, people on their way to something else or starting their own shop. Car companies couldn't possibly train them on all the intricacies of analog "dumb" car technology anymore.

Now? I plug in a OBD2 wireless module, tap "scan" on my phone, drink a cup of tea while it systematically talks to every module in the car, and I not only get fault codes, they've likely got time and mileage stamps, an indication of whether they were intermittent or continuous.

I can trigger a test on a component.

I can see what the ECU or body control module THINKS is going on versus what's actually going on.

I can tell the body control module to adapt to a new analog sensor.

all without needing to so much as pop the hood, remove a single screw, or upholstery clip.

It's a fucking dream.

The shittiness in "smart" cars is because legislation in the US hasn't kept pace with technology, and that is because legislation and regulation in the US is dominated by corporate interests.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#64

Post by Avshalom »

bilsbie wrote: post #12

I wish someone would make a truly dumb car. Sure you can have microcontrollers for emissions, safety, etc but beyond that give me a 1970s user interface and make the car as independent of technology as possible.

I know motorcycles are basically just an occasionally-useful game of russian roulette but every fucking automotive news cycle has me thinking about how they're basically the only way to buy just a motor and some wheels anymore.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#65

Post by savagej »

neither_color wrote: post #58
rpmisms wrote: post #4

My Tesla had an update fail, and it didn't break anything, I just got a new update package the next day. I also replaced my own headlight and had to run a software update to initialize the new part. I called a service center and had a software update in less than an hour. Try that at Audi.

Back when it was in news cycles that Tesla's stock couldn't possibly be worth more than legacy automakers' because it was only a matter of time until they came for Tesla's lunch, I couldn't imagine they'd fumble it this badly.

[dead]

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#66

Post by superkuh »

otterley wrote: post #16

It’s a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren’t making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the currently-running image, then a failed software update to the alternate image shouldn’t have any impact. Think of it like blue-green deployments on the cloud; and it’s w…

Anyone on the 'net back in the 1990s will remember the image macro, email forwards, and usenet posts about "If cars were made by software companies". It looks like they're finally coming true.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#67

Post by tibbydudeza »

Bricking a device like a car is not on , even my router and PC has a recovery option if a firmware update goes south.

Don't they know about A and B images ???.

They cheaped out to ensure their flash memory is adequate for restoring from a bad update.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#68

Post by KennyBlanken »

iknowstuff wrote: post #44
otterley wrote: post #16

It’s a bit troubling that automakers (and, well, anyone who is building things that have mechanisms for software updates) aren’t making software updates failsafe. If you have multiple copies of the image on storage, and you take care not to touch the currently-running image, then a failed software update to the alternate image shouldn’t have any impact. Think of it like blue-green deployments on the cloud; and it’s w…

Tesla is. Failed updates are non-destructive, they also have an RTOS gateway isolating entertainment software from the software needed to drive the vehicle. https://www.pentestpartners.com/security-blog/reverse-engine... And this is their decade old architecture. If you watch some cybertruck videos you’ll see it is much more elegant now.

This isn't a tesla-specific thing or even something they innovated. The earliest cars with data networks had this.

It's also not something Tesla does better; numerous security researchers have bypassed that gateway.

Since you bring up Tesla: used to be that Tesla control units would fail after a certain number of drive time hours because they did so much logging to the flash chips they'd wear them out.

In a vehicle which is highly connected and basically should never lose power most of its life, they were writing logs to flash memory. Anyone who has done embedded work can tell you how stupid an idea that is.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#69

Post by thot_experiment »

ajross wrote: post #19
thot_experiment wrote: post #11

I know there's no market for people like me, but I would never buy an internet connected car. It just seems so fucking insane to me that people are willing to accept relying on something that can be bricked remotely. Same goes for any sort of involuntary OTA updates to anything, and software as a service in general. The thing that matters to me is that my tools still work tomorrow when I need them to, and if they bre…

You'll change your mind the first time you turn on the heat from across the parking lot while sipping coffee in the ski lodge, or need to check the charge status while eating lunch, or point stuff out on the satellite imagery on the live map. I know it's easy to imagine that the product you think is "a car" is finished, but product categories evolve. People want their devices to do different things today than they di…

My car does this and more, so perhaps I chose my words unwisely. (I live in a van I have pretty much full remote control of save actual driving, I'm out right now and I just turned on my espresso machine so it's preheated when I get home). I don't mind connectivity, I mind having to trust other idiots, I'm happy to trust this idiot. I want to be able to approve every change. It's MY car.

I want to have the final say about what happens with the things I own. I want to be able to rely on them.

Re: A recent software update was not successful. Your vehicle cannot be driven

#70

Post by trentgreene »

userbinator wrote: post #61
trentgreene wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a fellow “analog” automotive enthusiast, I’m curious how she defines computer in this situation? Given that ECUs / microprocessors have been standard on cars since the late 60s / early 70s. For me it’s the network connections and updates that scare me. The software on my ‘99 Benz hasn’t changed in 24 years, and I don’t need it too.

I suspect she may be referring to the stereotypical carbureted V8 + manual / hydraulic auto combination that's still highly popular amongst US enthusiasts, which certainly has no ECU at all. Microprocessors didn't exist until the early 70s. Late 70s / early 80s is when they started becoming common in cars.

Heh, thanks for the info, I have a bit of a gap of knowledge about that era of vehicles outside of a type II fun experience with an older Ranchero.

I see VW advertising a car with an ECU in 1968, but likely just transistors.

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