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We gotta stop calling software updates recalls. Yeah I get that it’s fun to bash on the Cybertruck but this isn’t really that interesting.
Now that sticky accelerator pedal… yikes.
Recall is a legal term for the car industry which includes stuff like reporting obligations. So if the defect meets the severity level of a recall it should be called as such, even if it is ‘just’ a software update. Ambiguous terms for safety violations are dangerous and may cost lives.
Recall is also the plural term for a group of Cybertrucks.
Bruh, if this platform had gold id give.
Take these instead: 🪙🪙🪙
Le thx for the gold, kind stranger! You are a gentleman and a scholar. Updoot for you, fellow narwhal bacon. You are certainly a gem, Anne Frankly I did nazi that coming.
Rear view cameras have been federally required on passenger vehicles since module year 2018 in the US market. So yeah, regardless of the error, it’s a recall because the result makes the vehicle noncompliant.
I still think its stupid that the requirements for that didnt require that they have a seperate screen from the dash, im convinced car manufacturers used it as an excuse to put fucken tablets in the dash. Congrats by trying to solve one problem ya made 50 others, especially since it makes it harder to remove the fucken tablet.
I refuse to use the term infotainment except to say that I hate it and want to pour pitch on whoever came up with it.
I can’t imagine the threshold here isn’t different though. If each of these recalls required hardware modifications Tesla would either hide the data or lawyers would be able to argue they weren’t major safety violations. I think it’s a plus that many things can be fixed expediantly with software updates and the threshold to do so is low.
NHTSA are the ones who investigate safety issues and issue recall notices. Once they have done that then the manufacturer has very specific legal requirements to follow. Hiding data from them would eventually come to light, and that would be very bad. Look at the diesel emissions scandal for one example. Volkswagen payed billions in fines for that, and a dozen or so employees including the CEO have been indicted. A few have pled guilty and been sentenced to jail.
(Apologies for not otherwise contributing to the discussion, you want “paid” instead of the nautical rope-handling term “payed”.)
That is only one method for recalls. Many (maybe most) of the Tesla recalls have been voluntary and not mandated by the NHTSA
Yeah… But these are multi-ton vehicles and when they crash people die. Unlike when your computer crashes.
I don’t think “the backup camera is a little slow to turn on” is the smoking gun you are looking for though.
The Cybertruck has no rear view mirror when the back cover is down.
So any reversing requires the use of the backup camera.
The car also accelerates really fast, and weighs 7,000 pounds.
It’s also an $80,000+ car that was preordered by a lot of people without test driving it. So it’s primary driver is someone who makes risky and impulsive decisions.
So a really fast, heavy car that can’t see behind it without a reverse camera, driven by impulsive people makes me think the reverse camera should definitely come up really fast.
There’s still side mirrors, no? If you’ve ever seen a semi, those are 60 feet long, weigh 80,000lbs and back up without a rear view mirror or backup camera. Acting like this is an issue that’s going to kill people is a bit absurd.
Semi drivers require a commercial license, and special training. They’re monitored way more closely than your average American driver.
And side mirrors only let you see what’s behind the car to the sides and at a distance, not what’s immediately behind the car. I don’t want some idiot in his $80K battering ram to roll over me because I happened to walk behind his death trap and he couldn’t be bothered to wait for the rear view camera to come up.
Not being able to see what’s immediately behind the vehicle is a safety hazard, especially in suburban areas or parking lots where most people are reversing out of a space with other people walking around.
Someone dumb enough could easily flatten someone backing up with that bug.
I’m sure it happens even with perfectly functional cameras.
Sure, it still happens regardless, it just makes it easier and more likely to happen.
I mean… the normal speed for seeing behind your car is the speed of light, so that may come a bit short of expectations.
In any case, I agree that by itself it’s not a big deal. After the broken windshield wiper, the pieces that fall off and the sticky accelerator one may… you know, infer a pattern. Which, really, is the news here.
You consider 6-8 seconds a “little” slow?!
I’ve had software recalls for Toyotas and Hondas, both of which involved physical recall paperwork and required me to visit a dealer to install the new software.
Just because a software recall can be remedied over the air it doesn’t make it any less of a recall. As others have said, there’s a legal definition to a recall. They are issued by the NHTSA and require specific legal responses from the manufacturer.
On the one hand I agree, but also just because it can be fixed over the air doesn’t mean it’s not a major problem.
Plus imagine if a car manufacturer put VERY shitty software into their cars. If a manufacturer has 100 recalls a year, I want to know why. If they have 1, I want to know why.
Just because they are more easily fixed, doesn’t mean the recall isn’t important.
There are also plenty of dumb, nearly inconsequential recalls on regular cars too. Including things like “place this warning sticker in your manual”. That’s a recall.
A manufacturer once had to issue a recall to people who had gotten a recall performed at our dealership because one of the techs was throwing the recall parts away and calling it good. The original recall was for a connector under the seat for the seat belt pretensioner (part of the airbag system.)
A recall for a recall.
If the vehicle was sold broken and has to be fixed, it’s a recall.
If it’s just software, why can’t it be downloaded?
It can be? You literally just download the OTA update and the vehicle installs it from your own home. “Recall” implies that you have to go into the shop but that’s simply not true.
Some can be, some the manufacturer doesn’t want to risk it so they make you take it into a dealership to update from a USB.
A Tesla always updates over the air (I suppose unless that’s the part that’s broken). It’s arguably the most important safety feature on a car mostly defined by its software. I have a ten year old chevy that needs a software update, but like you said I’ll need to make an appointment to have someone else download it and manually install that software for me, which sounds super archaic and dumb when it’s spelled out like that.
Maybe they don’t have an immutable backup firmware and are worried about bricking some part of the car if the update fails, or it’s a hold over from their old car recall process.
Well, it’s because it’s an old car company doing software, something they’re universally bad at. Legacy car companies being bad at software is why Apple Carplay and Android Auto exist.
I recall when I bought my first hybrid that the dealer said there were something like 15 different computers controlling things, from the ICE engine to the transmission to the charging of the battery, etc. They weren’t networked together.
I also once ran afoul of a software bug in the ECU of a Honda CR/V. That’s the embedded system that manages the whole operation of the engine - from fuel injection to timing to emissions etc. As they progress through model years they use different ECUs that require different software. Even though I work in IT, I wouldn’t feel comfortable trying to update it myself, given the different models, firmware revisions, etc. I was more than happy to take that car to a dealer to have them confirm my car had buggy software and to upgrade it to the right new version.
This is the same problem all the legacy OEM’s are having. The car isn’t a cohesive system, so it’s very hard to update the car the way Tesla does.
They are getting better at it, and are able to do more things OTA, but I’m not sure anyone is actually at the level Tesla is yet. If I had to guess, I’d think RIvian might be, but I don’t actually know. VW is going to Rivian for software help.
You know, in some ways, I appreciate Musk. He has gone out of his way to demonstrate, for all to see, how billionaire parasites get to fail upward no matter how irredeemably incompetent and vile they happen to be.
Scumwads like gates and Bezos hides it all behind walls of pr propaganda, but not Musk.
I wonder what a cyberguillotine would look like.
The Cyberguillotine is the door of the Cybertruck’s trunk, which famously has no sensor to block closing it when something is in the way, and is powerful and sharp enough to cut fingers.
It can sense when something’s blocking it from closing all the way. It was just foolishly programmed to only pop back open a few times. Think it was the third or fourth was where it went into guillotine mode.
I’m pretty sure that was after an update and the original release did not give a shit
You can tell Elon is a genius because he gets people to pay to do prototype testing for him.
Software that never gets updated isn’t a good thing. Even the Voyager probes still get software updates.
lol. The guy you were responding to thought you were agreeing with home with this meme.
I don’t think y’all understand. Software is never done, it just becomes abandoned. You have been a “tester” for every piece of software you’ve ever used. And that’s a good thing, because the alternative is you get stuck with whatever the first version is. No one wants dead software.
There is a difference between software getting updated and software getting fixed though. We want the first scenario not the second one
Not a lot of options there. You either go with an old pre-computer car or get an open source car (which isn’t really an option).
I’m not talking about the infotainment system, just to be clear. I’m talking about the software that controls the functions of the drive and safety systems. If you want an infotainment system that you have complete control over, I’d suggest putting an open source tablet on your dash
https://itsfoss.com/linux-tablets/
Sadly, it looks like most of the FOSS car infotainment projects died a few years ago.
Dude I think you have replied to the wrong comment
exactly.
I’ve never owned a car that needed regular software updates. Have you?
Are you sure? There’s a ton of them that do. Unless you have an older vehicle.
I have a 2016 Prius. I’ve never needed to download a software update. Somehow Toyota could handle making a hybrid without it being necessary.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t an update.
So an optional update rather than one you have to do because of a recall, the thing we’re talking about? Because otherwise this seems like a “technically” sort of gotcha.
Counterpoint is that this recall can be done OTA instead of requiring you to make an appointment and visit a dealership which is a million times more convenient. Your car has had recalls too.
Tesla
engineersmanagers treating it like software. “Ship it and we can patch it in production.”You know it’s never the engineers and always the managers even with software, right?
always the managers even with software
You know, I want this to be 100% true, but it’s not.
I’ve been in software development for over a decade and while the managers are definitely high up there on the list of causing problems, I’ve also worked with enough shitty developers that don’t care enough. Then not everyone provides the same level of code review, some people are pretty bad at it and just rubber stamp things, and then a problem gets through.
Isn’t this t the manager’s fault that those shitty developers are there as well though?
In theory a decent QA team will catch things being done by shitty developers. If your dev and QA is shit, management is shit for letting it happen.
Man I wish we had QAs still at my Mega Corp. They removed the role and saddled development with that responsibility (along with getting rid our our business analysts and putting that also on the engineer’s responsibility list).
if they expect you to do a consultant’s work, they should pay you a consultant rate
Maybe over an extended period of time, but that’s not something people get fired for right away. Also bugs are a fact of life in software, and while some developers may ship more bugs than others, work still needs to get done, and it’s often better to try and train and improve an existing employee than fire them too soon.
Kind of but it’s not fair to put it all on the manager. Multiple people decided to hire the person. Somebody else approved that code review. People approved the technical design. Why didn’t the tech lead raise concerns with the manager about someone’s under-performance, etc. it’s unfair to just put all blame on the manager.
The idea of extreme ownership is about not saying “not my problem I won’t do anything” or blaming your reports. It’s about saying I can and should do anything and everything in my ability to fix problems.
Ah you speak the truth. Fixed.
One of these days, an engineer, the best and the brightest of us, will invent a way for it to be technically impossible to fix in production. They will be a hero, and save hundreds of companies from bad decisions, and they will never become famous or wealthy for it.
As much as I think the cybertruck is a stupid vehicle and agree that teslas are built like shit, from what I understand this isn’t an atypical amount of recalls for a new vehicle platform.
Without even paying much attention the two I know of, the gas pedal and the finger slicer are unacceptable however.
Never let critical thought get in the way of our 2 minutes hate. This is about interpreting it in a way to justify our dislike, rather than whether the current thing actually does justify it.
What’s funny to me is there is nothing new in it. It’s trumped up garbage. It still has a chassis and 4 wheels. Nothing new. It’s stuffed with old tech that doesn’t work. These losers are guinea pigs and probably get scammed annually.
Steer by wire is pretty much the only cool thing. It exists elsewhere sure, but not in vehicles of this size
It’s not even cool, it’s scary. What happens when this 7,000 pound brick loses power? There’s now a battering ram flying down the road with absolutely no control.
There’s no failsafe? Jesus.
Nope, the steering wheel has no mechanical connection to the wheels. There’s not even a mechanical emergency brake, that needs to be done electrically too.
Well that’s disconcerting.
*parking brake not emergency brake. Most of these ratchet down and wouldn’t be very useful in an emergency since they’d just cause your rear wheels to lock up and lose traction.
If your main brakes go out, locking up is going to stop you quicker than coasting. Yes you’ll lose traction, and that has its own dangers, but you will come to a stop.
I don’t understand the scenario where it would be flying down the road and not having power.
Non-flat roads do exist.
So do brakes.
Cars die on the road all the time. Imagine you’re on the highway, hit a bump, and knock a connection loose
Wow, surprised I haven’t seen this being discussed more.
Just dropping a link to the relevant, most recent upload from Some More News aka Cody’s Showdy. TL;DW: the cyber truck is an oversized, overpriced, unreliable, terrible design that’s dangerous to everybody in and around it.
Thanks. I’m glad someone did it. I was going to.
Tesla? Making shoddy vehicles?
shockedpicachu.jpeg
I see Cybertrucks all the time. Everything about it is so ridiculous that I am genuinely embarrassed for the driver. I think it is the scale. If it was the size of a Hyundai Santa Cruz, the aesthetic might work…maybe. It just looks silly, gawdy, unfinished, and cheap.
The folks at Some More News made a really great point: The truck segment is ripe for disruption. People who need trucks hate the monstrosities that truck companies are putting out. The Cybertruck, however, isn’t disrupting the market. It just looks weird. It’s just as heavy and big as other trucks.
Imagine if a company put out a small truck. Not too powerful, not too big, good sight lines and a nice, big bed. That would be disruptive.
Then again, I’m a Harbinger of Failure and listening to me is probably a bad idea. I assume people aren’t fucking idiots so maybe just build bigger and bigger trucks that are less and less useful
As a European. Most of the people don’t need a freaking truck. Big or small. In the rare cases you do need to move something, just rent a van. It will save you a lot of gas and money.
Totally agree. This hypothetical company could capitalize on that. The branding “Trucks for people who need trucks” writes itself.
ETA: Get Nick Offerman to be the spokesman.
Oh yeah, here’s Some More News on that.
At this rate, they are better off just scraping the Cybertruck and issue refunds to everyone who was stupid enough to buy one.
or build in a return-to-factory-by-yourself feature into them.
Are you suggesting that they get sent on route with no drivers in them and have the risk of running over pedestrians and cyclists on the way back to the factory?
My new Hyundai did this, sorta, and it also had to be recalled. Shifting into reverse would immediately display the rear view camera (good) but then about 25% of the time it would flash a dialogue box on top of the display with instructions on how to operate the display (bad). You could select “Dismiss” or “Don’t Show This Again”. Selecting “Don’t show This Again” did nothing (worse). With the dialog present you could not see the rear view camera display and if you are one of many drivers with muscle memory, the car was already rolling backwards when you realize you cannot see (unacceptable).
Elon sucks and I would never buy a Tesla but just adding this as a reference point that software in cars generally sucks.
At least your Hyundai had a working rearview mirror so you had another way to see behind you.
Good point
Okay… so I knew this would be posted here when I saw it, and I knew there’d be a circlejerk of people dumping on Tesla/Elon because oh no a recall! One that can even be fixed with software.
How many of these other recalls did you see in the past few weeks though since Sept 18th? How many of these landed on the technology sub at that? These are all also EVs (with 1 PHEV)
VW (100k) - https://electrek.co/2024/09/18/volkswagen-halt-us-id-4-production-100k-vehicle-recall/
-Door handles leaking causing electrical problem, stop production until 2025
KIA (12.4k)- https://electrek.co/2024/09/24/kia-recall-12400-ev9-suvs-faulty-remote-parking-assist/
-Remote parking systems might not stop the car.
Jeep [PHEV] (194k) - https://apnews.com/article/jeep-recall-park-outdoors-fire-risk-d201d4a90b271da96724f77ec034e459
-Battery Fire Risk - STOP CHARGE AND PARK OUTSIDE.
BYD (96.7k) - https://cnevpost.com/2024/09/29/byd-recalls-evs-fire-risk/
-Fire Risk - Bad capacitor on PCB (not a battery specific issue)
Yea those are all shit cars as well. I don’t think many would disagree. It turns out several different cars are shitty.
What’s a good EV?
They all have recalls. Very few vehicles have few recalls. Especially early year models.
I haven’t bought one yet so I’m probably not the right person to ask. Everyone I know with a Hyundai seems happy, though.
People do like Hyundai’s EVs and I would definitely check them out when you’re looking, but don’t kid yourself that Hyundai also doesn’t have it’s own issues.
For example people have been stealing Hyundai/Kia for years now due to faulty security software that makes it trivial. It was even a TikTok challenge.
It wasn’t software though. It was an immobilizer chip, which is hardware, that they didn’t put in the car. They cheaped out on a part, sure, but it wasn’t faulty nor was it software.
Oh shit i thought that was a software gone wrong they couldn’t easily update.
That’s crazy.
Edit: but they are doing software to fix it,
which wasn’t always working at least initially.which still isn’t stopping all thefts. Thefts are still elevated with the update, but less than without.Edit: this might be why
The institute’s report said theft claims may still be elevated for car models with the new software because the software-based immobilizer activates only if the key fob is used to lock the vehicle; if the driver uses the switch on the door handle, the anti-theft software is ineffective.
Do you know how many of those that you linked have had multiple recalls on them? Clearly some are more significant than a malfunctioning backup camera, but one of the reasons the cyber truck story has more bagging on it is because the number of recalls. It’s a larger indicator, imo, or a poorly made product where the others may be one missed QA or engineering issue, not systemic issues.
Well, the ID4 has had 18 since 2021.
Tesla started doing Cybertrucks in late 2023 though, so in that same time frame it’s 4 for ID4, and 8 for all of 2023/2024 (Edit: and the initial start of ID4 in 2021 had 4, and then 6 in 2022)
https://www.cars.com/research/volkswagen-id.4/recalls/?page=1
The EV9 has had 4, all in 2024.
https://www.cars.com/research/kia-ev9/recalls/
The site doesn’t have BYD, and while the site has jeep, I can’t seem to find the specific PHEV variant as nothing shows in 2024,but the Cherokee has 4 in 2023
As a second note to my main post - I was tracking these since the VW recall because I read awhile ago that recalls happen in clusters, and someone did a paper on it once (and i actually found the paper back then to confirm). When a company is working through a recall and knows there might be an issue, they’ll often hold onto it for awhile if they can (there’s probably some statutory limit) and wait for someone else to announce a recall. The person who announces the first recall in a cluster will often get more headlines/news and a greater impact on their stock.
I thought that was interesting when I read it last time and started keeping track on my VW post on the electric vehicles community when I saw the VW one which was the first I’d seen for EVs in awhile and wanted to see how many we’d get clustered together. It’s still going with this new CyberTruck one, but I’m not 100% sure that VW was the first.
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design shoulda gone into the circular filing system at the beginning
