Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not practical to produce a car that never needs updates. That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible. Since they're going to ship updates anyway, a lot of focus is on minimizing the cost and hence OTA. For what it's worth, I work in this industry and the general rule of thumb is that every increase in validation from QM (standard quality) up to the various levels of safety critical code has up to 10x th…
> It's not practical to produce a car that never needs updates. That would be a bug-free system, which is impossible. Since they're going to ship updates anyway, a lot of focus is on minimizing the cost and hence OTA. What was wrong with ECU and ABS etc software prior to the OTA era that we're now apparently entering? I've had plenty of cars--too many--and outside of a few warranty repairs involving re-flashing ECU/A…
One, it's expensive. If your update takes half an hour to apply, under the old model someone's being paid half an hour to apply it. Either the manufacturer cuts the billable hours to the dealer and the dealer loses, or the manufacturer is paying that half hour out of increased prices to the consumer. With an OTA system there's usually no cost to anyone besides network traffic. This amounts to billions of dollars in savings for manufacturers.
Second, owners hate 1) paying for updates and 2) getting notifications about it in the mail. It generates bad press and bad experiences for the manufacturer.
Three, it makes the production line more efficient.
Four, the old systems sucked to maintain and for techs to use. They were also insecure and retrofitting security is impossible in a standards compliant way. The internet people have done a much better job with their standards.
Five, most owners are not like you and I. It's a feature for them that their car gets improvements and fixes automatically.
Six, you can be pretty certain what the rollout distribution is. Regulators don't like it when owners are driving around with years old recalls active because they forgot to schedule a dealer appointment. Manufacturers don't like keeping the inventory around.
Seven, "networked services" can piggyback on the same infrastructure and provide additional revenue streams. Certain corporate types think of this as one of the main benefits. Remember how manufacturers used to sell annual maps updates that no one bought? Some consumers also enjoy these sorts of networked services, which frankly I find a bit baffling.