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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

#81

Post by alphabettsy »

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.

An Audi doesn’t need a software update to replace a light from my experience.

Also, my experience with Audi and BMW are that community tools exists to let you flash modules and change settings all on your own. Try that on a Tesla.

Tesla is way ahead on software imo, but I don’t want my car to be like modern smartphones where they’re dependent on the manufacturer to maintain and keep working.

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

#82

Post by rpmisms »

stefan_ wrote: post #79
rpmisms wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is very very good at software engineering. They still need to find the balance in their software and process engineering, though.

You are talking about the company that wrote logs to the fully read-write filesystem of their infotainment system and killed the EMMC from raw flash cycles within as few as 2 years. Recalled 10 years later.

Yes, this happened to me, although it took 10 years. Free replacement, and the car still worked fine.

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

#83

Post by fmajid »

For decades software engineers have moaned “why can’t software engineering be a real engineering discipline like civil engineering”. The travails of the legacy car makers, compared to Tesla or Rivian, show conclusively mechanical engineering is easier.

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

#84

Post by onetimeuse92304 »

Some 20 years ago I was asked to prepare OS distribution with OTA upgrade capability for some PoS system.

I think I prepared two system partitions and a custom MBR which would alternate the system partition on every start (uses one bit of non-volatile memory to alternate selection of partitions on each boot).

When the system starts, it does self-test. If it fails the self-test it just restarts. If it succeeds -- it writes the result on its partition and then looks at the other partition. If the other partition did not succeed the test, it reports the fact back to HQ and overwrites it with the current system.

The upgrade procedure is extremely simple -- the current system writes to the other partition, then restarts. If the upgrade is interrupted at any point in time, the other system will know it was interrupted and will just restart immediately. In any case, after two restarts we are back to the system that initiated the upgrade and if it checks the other system did not start and self-tested successfully, it can redo the upgrade as many time as we want and you still have a working system.

Could it be done better? Probably it could. It took me one day to think up and implement.

I would think Ford could do it better (Edited: yes, not a Tesla)

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

#85

Post by Retr0id »

fmajid wrote: post #83

For decades software engineers have moaned “why can’t software engineering be a real engineering discipline like civil engineering”. The travails of the legacy car makers, compared to Tesla or Rivian, show conclusively mechanical engineering is easier .

Or maybe there's just a stronger regulatory environment around mechanical engineering. If you sell cars whose fronts fall off, you're going to get in trouble. If your software updates fail, your users are mostly limited to complaining at you on twitter.

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

#86

Post by jnwatson »

onetimeuse92304 wrote: post #84

Some 20 years ago I was asked to prepare OS distribution with OTA upgrade capability for some PoS system. I think I prepared two system partitions and a custom MBR which would alternate the system partition on every start (uses one bit of non-volatile memory to alternate selection of partitions on each boot). When the system starts, it does self-test. If it fails the self-test it just restarts. If it succeeds -- it w…

That is very much standard.

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

#88

Post by rightbyte »

fmajid wrote: post #83

For decades software engineers have moaned “why can’t software engineering be a real engineering discipline like civil engineering”. The travails of the legacy car makers, compared to Tesla or Rivian, show conclusively mechanical engineering is easier .

Mechanical engineer is in no way easier. However, it is easier for a better mechanical engineer to spot issues in your design just by eying it, whereas software is for all practical purposes a black box unless you spend 100s of hours reading the code.

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

#89

Post by Avshalom »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #72
Avshalom wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You'd better check twice. Some had dial-out networking for years, like BMW.

oh, well, shit, there goes the g310gs I had being eyeing for noodling around the state.

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

#90

Post by xw3089 »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #68
iknowstuff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Yes, that happened to my car. But one could still drive their car after the failure and there was a free recall.

https://www.tesla.com/support/8gb-emmc-recall-frequently-ask...

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