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Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

electrek.co

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Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#51

Post by ChadMoran »

kevinventullo wrote: post #46

My 2019 car is not connected to the internet. Instead, I use Apple CarPlay for everything. Is there any reason not to do it this way?

Quite a few reasons but primarily CarPlay doesn't know about your vehicle's charge and road trip navigation requires external inputs to determine your charge route.

Apple could potentially offer an API to have "reverse" CarPlay where the car's app can feed information into iOS. I recently rented an Mercedes EV which had Apple CarPlay and it was a weird experience having to manage two sets of experiences.

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#53

Post by SoftTalker »

xgbi wrote: post #23
cs702 wrote: post #13

It's easy to underestimate how hard and expensive it is to build, deploy, and remotely upgrade software that runs reliably on a fleet of diverse cars (different models, different years, slightly different components from batch to batch, etc.). It makes updating a mobile phone OS look trivial in comparison. So far, only Tesla seems to be able to update car software remotely, regularly and reliably. I'm certain it's ne…

From what I read somewhere, Tesla was able to do that because they have remote ssh capability. In at least one instance, they fixed the cars manually by running a massive remote command on all cars after a messed up update: https://lobste.rs/s/v42zil/former_tesla_employee_ssh_d_as_ma... I wouldn’t call that very reliable , but they indeed do it regularly

It sounds like, in this case, the updates clobbered the ssh authorized keys (or equivalent in their system) and so now they cannot access the cars remotely. So they are going to have to go into the shop and have the authorized keys restored.

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#54

Post by cozzyd »

galangalalgol wrote: post #47
cozzyd wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazing. Can't wait for some car software stack to be so poorly designed that an FM transmitter can remote takeover.

It quite possibly could have with a well formed digital fm payload.

We'll hopefully no car manufacturer is dumb enough that the FM radio software can affect vehicle control functions but I wouldn't be surprised ..

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#55

Post by nicolaslem »

This is the kind of thing that keeps my awake at night.

Does anyone here have some practical tips to turn an embedded Linux machine into an appliance? The kind of system that a botched update cannot brick but only momentarily disable until a non-technical user presses a factory reset button of some sort.

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#56

Post by michaelt »

qmarchi wrote: post #5

It's crazy to me that this is possible in the first place. Standard practice is to have a fleet of test vehicles that are effectively production except in an early release group. Or, you know, having an A/B boot partition scheme with a watchdog. Things that have been around for decades at this point. Disclaimer: Former Googler, Worked closely with Automotive.

To me it's all-too-understandable how this is possible.

Maybe they've got a test fleet, but it accepts code signed with the test build key.

Maybe they've got a watchdog timer, but it doesn't get configured until later in the boot process.

Maybe they've got A/B boot partitions, but trouble counting their boot attempts - maybe they don't have any writable storage that early in the boot process.

I wouldn't be surprised if, as a newer company, they'd made a 'Minimum Viable Product' secure boot setup & release procedure, and the auto-fallback and fat-finger-protection were waiting to get to the top of the backlog.

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#57

Post by nkingsy »

dilyevsky wrote: post #38
martin8412 wrote: post #33

Stuff like this is why I don't want OTA updates in my cars. Let the car dealership deal with it during regular maintenance. They'll be on the hook for fixing it before handing the car back to me.

There is nearly zero regular maintenance to be done on EVs though. No oil, no belts, no fuel filter, spark plugs etc. Even the brakes will likely last entire lifetime of the car

Hertz seemed to find teslas cost double ice counterparts to maintain.

Maybe it’s auto company smoke but source: https://fortune.com/2023/10/27/tesla-elon-musk-hertz-evs-ren...

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#58

Post by duped »

willio58 wrote: post #32
wil421 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, only Tesla seems to be able to update car software remotely, regularly and reliably. I'm certain it's neither easy nor cheap. My Jeep Grand Cherokee has OTA for over 5+ years. BMW has been doing it since 2018. I’m almost positive a family member had it with GMC on star back in the late 2000s.

I don't think the Jeep or BMW infotainment systems are nearly as fleshed out or complex as Rivian's, especially not Tesla's. Maybe I'm wrong!

Updating software is orthogonal to the complexity of the software application being updated, unless you have horribly designed your architecture. I know, because I've made that mistake.

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#59

Post by phpisthebest »

willio58 wrote: post #32
wil421 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far, only Tesla seems to be able to update car software remotely, regularly and reliably. I'm certain it's neither easy nor cheap. My Jeep Grand Cherokee has OTA for over 5+ years. BMW has been doing it since 2018. I’m almost positive a family member had it with GMC on star back in the late 2000s.

I don't think the Jeep or BMW infotainment systems are nearly as fleshed out or complex as Rivian's, especially not Tesla's. Maybe I'm wrong!

Well then we need to ask why is their infotainment systems so complex? and does it need to be?

I want my infotainment systems go connect to Android Auto. That is is.

Make it do that, and only that.

This drive to make EV's as complex as possible is one of the reason i am not planning on buying one

EV's are suppose to be SIMPLER than ICE. Make me a Simple Car with simple controls, and just replace the ICE with a battery and Electric Motor, give me an app for my Phone that can do the Charging Trip Calculators and interface with other systems.

I do not want a compplex SaaS app on wheels

Re: Rivian software update bricks infotainment system, fix not obvious

#60

Post by nomel »

gravitronic wrote: post #31

I used to work for a company that built satellite receivers that would be installed in all sorts of weird remote environments in order to pull radio or tv from satellite and rebroadcast locally. If we pushed a broken update it might mean someone from the radio company would have to make a trip to go pull the device and send it to us physically. Our upgrader did not run as root, but one time we had to move a file as r…

> Turns out we had a separate process running that listened on a local socket and would run any command it received as root. Nobody remembered building or releasing it but it made my work quick.

No offense, but what a shit show. It makes me assume no source control, and a really good chance that state actors made their way into your network/product. This almost happened at a communication startup I know, with three letter agencies helping resolve it. State actors really like infiltrating communication stuffs.

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