My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

https://imdanielkendall.com/the-great-software-regress-how-move-fast-and-break-things-broke-our-lives/

163 205 6 days ago

maxdo10• 6 days ago

that's a symptom of a bigger problem.

Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software. It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.

It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

JoshTriplett4• 6 days ago

Someone in auto industry decided that plugging device, and dependency on core functionality of the car to 3rd party device, that might be lost, have battery died, used for something else, etc is a good way to save money and not do proper software.

On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.

It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

It's a terrible user-hostile loss when cars do that, typically because they want to maintain more control or try to extract more revenue from the user.

If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.

BeetleB14• 6 days ago

On the contrary, having cars stop trying to provide a bespoke more-proprietary outdated piece of software you have less control over, probably have surreptitious telemetry reporting back from, and might have to pay a subscription fee for, and instead just delegate to the smartphone you already have, is a huge and surprising win.

I'd agree if it worked.

Android Auto sucks. And I don't like that my auto manufacturer can wash their hands off it by pointing at Google.

If you don't want to use it, don't use it; there's nothing forcing you to do so.

As long as the car manufacturer gives me basic functionality (radio, stereo, Bluetooth, etc). Nominally they do, but it sucks in a different way from Android Auto. So I have to ping pong between these two.

My prior car's aftermarket Bluetooth receiver was fantastic. The fact that I can't install something like that on modern cars is a huge regression.

maxdo10• 6 days ago

you settle with one failure story for another failure story.

there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.

parineum2• 6 days ago

It's even more bizare now, mid 2026, when software is solved with AI.

Why doesn't op simply ask AI to write software to fix his problem?

Rebelgecko• 6 days ago

A lot of the time, the head unit only accepts signed updates

afavour2• 6 days ago

It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user.

Absolutely nonsensical. Both Android Auto and Apple CarPlay are better experiences than any first party car interface I’ve experienced.

In many ways the auto industry stumbled when they allowed this connectivity, just like phone networks stumbled when they let Apple dictate the iPhone from top to bottom. Good news is those stumbles worked out great for users. We get iPhones without bundled crapware apps and we get cars that don’t require monthly subscriptions for basic functionality your phone provides.

janalsncm• 6 days ago

software is solved with AI

Presumably every car manufacturer can use AI. Yet there are still bugs. If all bugs are solved with AI, and therefore every car manufacturer with access to AI writes bug-free software, the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.

Reason077• 6 days ago

”the only remaining conclusion is that some car manufacturers don’t have AI yet.”

This suggests the supply of AI is too limited, and there isn’t enough AI to go around. Solution: build more AI data centres.

Telaneo5• 6 days ago

Given that the (user-facing) software that comes with the car is always broken (modulo Tesla and a few other modern exceptions), it's no wonder people want to replace that software with literally anything else that actually works.

This isn't the auto industry deciding that you need to use your phone. On the contrary, GM and others tried hard to push back on Carplay and AA. This is the buyers telling the auto makers that they want Carplay and AA since they know that that actually works, and they know that the software the car actually comes with will be garbage, or at the very least unfamiliar and not really worth dealing with when you can hook up your phone and let that actually solve the problems the user wants to be solved.

It's insane to me that anyone could be of the opinion that it's good that some automakers ban/don't implement Carplay and AA. It's just taking away user choice. It's hard to believe anyone could have this opinion without either never having driven a modern car, or just being an industry plan.

izacus2• 6 days ago

Err, Teslas aren't an outlier - the OTAs break shit all the time and in many ways they're worse than cars not getting OTAs because of that :(

Our_Benefactors• 6 days ago

It's good that there are some companies, that ban android/apple car since that's an ugly experience for the user

Hello, Elon

Seriously this is so wrong. I love being able to carry all my preferences from my phone directly to the car without any additional configuration. Before this, we had to do stupid stuff like entering individual contacts in the cars system.

hunmernop• 6 days ago

Ai will solve it. Car manufacturers are slow to take on new technology but they’ll be forced to

thin_carapace2• 6 days ago

if the giga rich pushing this latest ai wave manage to convince a single safety critical industry to deregulate, we are all boned

wildfireday25• 6 days ago

That’s true, however a properly engineered safety-critical system provides separation between assurance levels, so you don’t need to have the same level of assurance for the infotainment system software that you do for safety-critical displays and controls.

The FAA has historically done a good job on this front with aviation (notwithstanding the 747 MAX debacle, which was a failure implicating flight control software but not a failure of separation of assurance levels). Automotive software and standards and NHTSA is far behind on this front. Cost is certainly a factor; it is not economical to apply aviation safety and engineering standards and processes directly to automobiles. But in the meantime, it is an absolute Wild West for any contemporary drive-by-wire car.

arikrahman• 6 days ago

Not even 13 days ago another article on here was glazing the infotainment system. I even have the article. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48769397 People were attacking the critique I levied towards shallow praise flippantly gravitating to the word consistency, but now I feel vindicated.

michaelje• 6 days ago

Once upon a time, physically shipping faulty software had real costs borne by the organization - production, redistribution and transportation of a physical disc.

Today there’s no disc, no recall - that cost to shipping broken software is gone. We the users pay the price.

hahn-kev2• 6 days ago

You act like there's no benefit to the user either, plenty of software gets better because of updates shipped after the fact.

wyager• 6 days ago

The averaged-over-usage-lifetime software quality for things like cars or video games is worse today than it was before OTA updates

Arguably the peak quality after a few months/years of fixes is better, but that doesn't really matter because usage is front-loaded

foofoo552• 6 days ago

s/better/less bad/

throw0101d2• 5 days ago

You act like there's no benefit to the user either, plenty of software gets better because of updates shipped after the fact.

There is a "release early, release often" line of thinking.

But I also think there is a risk of "fixing it in post(-production)" thinking: that lack of preparation and care can be patched over after-the-fact.

slumberlust• 5 days ago

You act like all the updates benefit the user.

sudobash1• 5 days ago

I would prefer to know what the product will do when I purchase it, and it should continue to do the same things in the same way for its entire lifespan. I would also prefer that vendors be unable to retroactively add ads, tracking, or other user hostile "features".

Also, as an embedded engineer, I know things get tested better the more "final" they are. Faster release cadences always have poor testing as one of the tradeoffs.

hulitu• 5 days ago

plenty of software gets better because of updates

This was true for old Microsoft Windows releases. This is not true anymore. Everything is a rolling release. Angry users ? F*k them. They will get an update.

BeetleB14• 6 days ago

It's not an indictment of modern software. It's an indictment of using SW where not needed.

Don't put discrete, isolated HW functions behind a SW powered screen. It's that simple.

strawhatguy2• 6 days ago

Pretty much this. The less software on the car, the fewer problems.

It's practically impossible to test every permutation of code against every system. Maybe AI can help, but practically it'll just mean the software gets more complicated, with more features. And to top it all off, more and more features get regulated, so they have to be there. The rear-view camera requirement in particular, since you need a screen to see the output. And if you have a screen... well it's an already paid cost, so, might as well display other things too.

We should kill the reg.

10000truths• 6 days ago

It all comes down to cost. At scale, testing hardware is appreciably more expensive than testing software. The former requires specialized machinery that costs the soul of your firstborn, and the logistics overhead for each do-over means long iteration times. The latter can be done with a CI pipeline for pennies worth of compute in a fraction of a working day.

lmz3• 6 days ago

It's Android Auto and Apple Carplay. Not sure how that's an "isolated HW function". That would be an issue if they put the turn signals or AC controls on the screen only.

BeetleB14• 6 days ago

That would be an issue if they put the turn signals or AC controls on the screen only.

Many cars have AC controls on the screen only.

DangitBobby• 6 days ago

My car has AC controls that are only accessible via touch screen. Most new cars do.

tonymet5• 6 days ago

wouldn't that be impossible in this case? since android auto needs to draw to the screen, control infotainment, etc. even a dedicated USB + rocker switch for android auto would still need a software path to do those things

BeetleB14• 6 days ago

Putting things like climate control, car settings, etc on the same screen as Android Auto is not at all necessary.

Older cars (that still had touch sensitive displays), simply had separate HW modules and HW interfaces (buttons/switches) for the rest. You never had to worry that modifying/repairing/updating one would impact the other.

taneq5• 6 days ago

It’s an indictment of business attitudes towards customers. It’s not the software’s fault, the software is doing what it was supposed to. The fault lies with the organisation that decided that’s what it should do.

ww520• 6 days ago

When I bought my car, it had no Car Play or Android Auto. Upon some investigation I found out that both of them were installed on all the current models. It’s just disabled on the cars sold without the option. Some open source software for the car entertainment system flashed on the car was able to turn on the flags to enable various features including Car Play and Android Auto. So a happy story.

ajkjk• 6 days ago

Happy for the individual, sad for society

gruez• 6 days ago

It’s just disabled on the cars sold without the option.

So exactly like software licensing? Most apps nowadays don't even require a purchase to download. The download is free but you need to pay $4.99/month subscription to use, or $99.99 for a "lifetime subscription". The code's are all there. The author just doesn't want you to use it.

Telaneo5• 6 days ago

Ahh, DRM-ed cars. I should have seen that one coming, really.

roysting2• 6 days ago

That’s not exactly the same. You don’t get to have a car for free with basic driving functionality and then pay for additional features once you realize the car is useful and the people do made it deserve to be paid for their work, which they were willing to meet you have for free in its basic form.

This is something far more heinous, you bought a thing for a lot of money and just in order to extort even more money from you, they simply disable/lock away a feature that you technically already possess.

A better analogy in software might be that you bought a video game for $60,000 and the only way to beat a lower level boss without spending 2,000 hours trying to, is to pay the developers another $5,000 for a super weapon.

stringfood• 6 days ago

this reminds me of the old IBM tabulation machines that were sold in 2 different models at different prices, the cheaper one just had a metal tab inserted to limit the processing speed - you could remove the tab to unlock full speed

prmph2• 6 days ago

As it should be.

You'd prefer they get nothing for the effort they put into developing the software?

ninju• 6 days ago

Even hardware features (heated steering wheel, rain sensing wipers, etc...) are now behind software switches which the car maker can control based upon subscription or trim-level purchase.

All the hardware pieces are installed at build time

ButlerianJihad• 6 days ago

heated steering wheel

As a licensed driver who resides in the Sonoran Desert, can you even imagine the horrific visions that just flashed before my eyes?

We often joke around here that wearing oven mitts is a good way to get our cars started in the late afternoons. It's not really a joke.

I personally have several pairs of gloves, and I never fail to don those gloves when I go out, whether I am walking, riding an e-Scooter, or driving, because even as a pedestrian we must touch so many metal objects that bask all day in the direct sunlight.

Heated steering wheels. What a world we live in today!

sunnybeetroot• 6 days ago

You’re telling me it’s not cheaper for them to bundle the hardware but to disable it than not bundle the hardware?

rlpb2• 6 days ago

Please could you share the name of the manufacturer, so the rest of us know who to be wary of?

haunter• 6 days ago

Volkswagen Group for example. Most of their brands are like this, Volkswagen, Seat, Skoda. Carplay/Android Auto is in the head unit but you have to pay 200-300€ to unlock unless it’s part of the trim level you choose.

jeffbee• 6 days ago

Users are complicit. Why did this user install the update? Were they suffering from an issue it supposedly solves? My six-year-old Honda has never had a software update, and in any case "OTA" updates can only be initiated by the user.

FloatArtifact• 6 days ago

The user is not at fault for installing an offered update.

hackerdood• 6 days ago

Some cars will force the update on you after dismissing it.

mukbangpervert• 6 days ago

They described their car as having "auto-installed" the update.

An update which advertised, amongst other features, that it "rectifies errors and prevents security gaps" and stated "This update is recommended for everyone."

Borderline insane to refer to the user as "complicit" in that case.

afavour2• 6 days ago

No win scenario. We need to install updates because of security vulnerabilities. But we shouldn’t install updates because they might introduce bugs.

spaqin2• 6 days ago

Security vulnerabilities get too much credit. It's "think of the children" of the software world. Most updates don't fix any, most vulnerabilities won't get used in the real world against you either, and in many cases the security is for the corporation against the customer instead.

atmavatar• 6 days ago

Of course, we largely only need to worry about the security vulnerabilities because manufacturers increasingly hook our hardware up to the internet so they can exfiltrate data about us.

bigstrat20033• 6 days ago

To be honest, with how poor quality some software has gotten, I refuse to update it, security issues or no. Most products aren't that bad, thankfully, but there does reach a point where the theoretical risk of a security vulnerability is outweighed by the immediate issue of "this crap doesn't work any more".

spaqin2• 6 days ago

While the users are not at fault, this culture has certainly turned me way more careful and deliberate about applying updates - if it's not broke, I usually don't; big corporations are more suspicious of breaking things and open source are usually good about them; and if there's no changelog or it's very generic, I'll stay away as well.

Telaneo5• 6 days ago

Assuming your car has all the functions you care about, and the OTA updates aren't bringing you any bugfixes or feature updates you care about, is there any good reason to update? Or even have it online to begin with? I'm not expecting someone to hack my car; on the contrary, I'd rather have it be impossible for the automaker to reach my car in any way without it being obvious to me (i.e. me flipping a switch to get it online for whatever reason).

oybng• 6 days ago

Agree with the sentiment but the author's brain rotten rant is projection for being part of the problem

hparadiz• 6 days ago

Auto manufacturers need to realize that one bad software experience means lost sales of entire cars. Fail to provide a good experience at the cost of your brand for years to come.

loveiswork• 6 days ago

We just sold our 2025 Subaru Outback specifically because the software experience was bad.

To exit a climate control modal on the screen you have to find and tap a tiny red "X" box in the furthest corner of the screen from the steering wheel.

nicholasjarnold• 6 days ago

Cathartic to read this! Just had a very similar experience with a Subaru from the same generation as yours.

While that particular issue isn't solvable, I am open to any advice on coding tools that might allow one to unlock other settings or make changes like "ensure auto-stop is fully disabled across restarts and drivers".

crimsonnoodle58• 6 days ago

I despise our Outback's climate settings. It seems every time I start the car it picks a random temperature to set each side to. It'll be 30 deg outside and you look down wondering why its getting hotter and the car is set to 30 deg inside.

glitchc2• 6 days ago

That's an absolutely disastrous UI choice!

olyjohn2• 6 days ago

God... Subaru's whole interface is a horrific looking clusterfuck. That big-ass screen and it's just a huge waste.

I've driven the 2025 and the 2024. The 2024 not only had all the crappy UI, but the driver assistance features were also alerting you constantly, and they were terrible. I was amazed how much they toned it back and improved it with the 2025.

Still wouldn't buy either of them personally. The constant nags and alerts are so fucking annoying and distracting. The seat belt chimes that don't shut off and get louder and louder make me want to rage so hard. I am religious about wearing my seatbelt, so there's absolutely no reason for it to piss me off so bad.

hluska2• 6 days ago

I have a lot of trouble understanding how Subaru dashes turned into the modern monstrosity they are. They were very functional and well laid out for years. Now, geez, I’d need to be an octopus to drive a Subaru.

mindfulmark• 5 days ago

Last year I was trying out cars for a new purchase and was excited to try out the Subaru Outback. After one drive I decided I would never buy a Subaru because of their software. Lots of annoying noises, ugly, and no physical buttons. It was terrible.

ryandrake• 6 days ago

Auto manufacturers just don't know how to do software. They don't understand it. They treat it like just another line item on the BOM: Like a bolt or a gasket. Source it from the cheapest provider, give them checkbox requirements, and then spoon it into the car on the assembly line somewhere. They don't think of it as an ecosystem to build off of, or as something to make beautiful to compete with other car makers. It's just another costly assembly that they bolt onto the car and forget about.

Alien1Being2• 6 days ago

Buy Chinese cars instead.

They are far better.

BYD reliability and support leaves European cars for dead.

0xbadcafebee2• 6 days ago

If we had a software building code, it could mandate the testing procedures for consumer devices, like a car's headunit firmware. This building code could be backed by an industry body that could revoke its certification from manufacturers if they don't comply with the code. Super-advanced-testing-procedure #1: plug a phone into a test car and check it works before release.

(This software building code is more necessary for software used in critical infrastructure. But it should also be applied to consumer devices as basic protection for consumers against manufacturers breaking functionality the consumer paid for)

taneq5• 6 days ago

Plug one of every combination of vendor, model, OS, and config into the car and check if everything works. That’s what would be required to actually ensure functionality.

0xbadcafebee2• 5 days ago

Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. In industrial testing automation, you often don't test every feature completely. You calculate the cost-benefit of the complexity, time and cost it takes to test features, and target the most valuable ones. (I used to write automation test suites for industrial appliances with hundreds of thousands of permutations)

At the very least, you can test one single feature end to end, just to get a baseline that nothing is massively, obviously broken (like it was in this case!). This lack of fundamental testing is what caused the CrowdStrike bug that brought down Delta Airlines. This kind of test is extremely easy, quick, cheap, and simple, and catches the worst bugs. In other words, it's the most valuable test.

Companies will continue to let these bugs happen until we mandate a minimum amount of fundamental testing before release.

wildfireday25• 6 days ago

His good points here are undermined by the profane, emotional high-cortisol crashout. There’s a place for well-written, witty diatribes and polemics, but throwing F-bombs and F-yous into complaints is not that.

spankalee• 6 days ago

It's his blog. He can talk however he wants. You, however, don't have to read it.

bigstrat20033• 6 days ago

When the blog post is under discussion, I think comments critical of it are just as fair game as ones which appreciate it. If the parent poster was emailing the author to make the same complaint then I think the "you don't have to read it" criticism applies, but not so much in a discussion forum. The point is to discuss what we think, even if that is a critical opinion.

moogly2• 6 days ago

Did you just come off the Mayflower?

faangguyindia3• 6 days ago

why OTA update OS that frequently?

I've been lately into mobile apps and i am finding that there is no system which combines these 3

1. AOT 2. JIT (for hot paths) 3. Interpreter for non JIT paths or where you explicitly do not want jit.

Imagine, a system which compiles your app to AOT but when you push OTA update, part of the app are selectively replaced to JIT or Interpreted mode.

it's theoretically possible but nobody seems to be doing it. I found react native / expo eas update but i don't think it's like this, it has a Hermes VM which runs bytecode but it has no JIT so you'll write native code for hot path then you'll need to upload a full update to Android. So, only toy level code performance can be can actually be written in JS?

Much better, patch the parts where AOT calls into JIT or interpreter.

Currently i am using react native and flutter. Flutter's UI framework code is in Dart if you load this whole code into JIT, it will consume a lot of resources on mobile device as the framework is big and does lot of work. If all framework code was AOT and your custom patchable code also comes with AOT but upon OTA replaced by JIT or Interpreted code, crazy performance!

But what if we could run the most of the code in AOT and only run changed code in JIT or interpreted mode? arguably it would perform as good as it does not being complete AOT while also providing react native like fast updates.

tcoff912• 6 days ago

You can't update any AOT code due to how code signing works in these OS. And Apple completely bans JIT on iOS and iPadOS.

faangguyindia3• 6 days ago

no, i am not asking for AOT OTA update.

AOT will be in base app and it will include JIT or Interpreted OTA updates.

For Apple, JIT can simply be disabled and OTA update can run patched part in interpreter.

But JIT works on Android (well), so this Hybrid system is capable of being much faster than React Native where your JS code only runs in Hermes VM which isn't JIT.

In this system, all your crazy math and algorithms (on hot path) stay easily updatable as this small part can be run on JIT with snapshot saved for next load if it has not changed!

JIT on average is 100x faster than dumb interpreter for language like Dart.

Does it already exist? otherwise i am seriously thinking about building something like this.

foofoo552• 6 days ago

I am not your QA department

The article is a lovely cathartic rant against agile software development methodologies applied in the wrong place in the wrong way, whether or not the software(s) in question used such methods. On of the worst assumptions, I believe, is that the end-user is willing and able to function as testing/QA without detriment to the product and company.

groby_b• 6 days ago

This is a general belief of our current version of capitalism. As much work as possible is outsourced to the user, the gains are captured by the company.

See also self-checkout etc.

tonymet5• 6 days ago

The practical solution here would be closing the feedback loop with customers. The business does want happy customers, it's important they return to purchase in 5 years. The problem with car companies is that they don't get immediate feedback (telemetry, tickets, etc) when they do push an issue. And they obviously don't have gradual roll outs the way tesla does.

Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published, follow Tesla's model which has been very reliable within the industry

AlotOfReading2• 6 days ago

    Rather than hamstring all software by requiring DOT testing before firmware updates are published...

I don't know how the rules work in the UK or Ireland where the author is, but the US has no such mandatory testing. Also, all manufacturers have telemetry these days and the ones I'm familiar with all do gradual rollouts (to varying levels of competence). You basically can't do immediate rollout given the scales involved.

Please don't take this as suggesting any of them are good at software, mind you.

tonymet5• 6 days ago

You're right the facilities may be there for telemetry & feedback, but none of the Tesla competitors are structured to manage that telemetry and feedback. Often the brands are repackaging software from vendors (e.g. Bosch) that are terrible at fixing things.

Let's face it, this really is about Tesla, vs the rest of the major players (ford, kia, VW etc)

georgeecollins• 6 days ago

The most expensive appliances (particularly stoves) are the ones with no LCD screens. "Smart" TVs are often cheaper then dumb ones. People have learned that software does not always make things better. Anything that has code in it I assume will last for about three years. In practice that's a little less then the average but a safe assumption.

moogly2• 6 days ago

Does MINI make their own software? I thought it was the same as BMWs with another skin. My BMW gets quarterly updates. Only once in the past year I've had it did I notice anything new (new voice assistant), otherwise it just resets my driver screen and sets my interior lighting on full blast every time it updates.

If Android Auto stopped working I'd also be livid because I don't use the built in crap.

fennec-posix• 6 days ago

So glad my car has the dumbest head unit on offer in 2019, does bluetooth, radio, CD, shows a map (slowly) it just does what I need it to.

odysseus2• 6 days ago

Kia just did this with their EV9 update - it broke CarPlay with a blank screen a few minutes into driving, which then reverted itself a minute later. Another OTA mostly resolved it. Neither of these updates explained what happened or what the fix was.

gmueckl2• 6 days ago

Let me be a devil's advocate here: you have essentially two options.

1. You write release notes thet contain technical details. Less than 1% of your customers understand them. More than 90% probably won't even care, let alone understand the document. And then there are the folks who get confused or scared and reach out to customer support with weird questions. This generates extra workload.

2. You explain nothing. The release simply is. The technically minded people are mildly annoyed. A few customers affected by open issues wonder if it's fixed now. The rest of them doesn't even care that there is an uodate and carries on with their lives. Customer service continues to complain about the usual bunch of random and weird customer issues.

It's quite natural to start doing (2) in a consumer facing business, isn't it?

lifeisgood99• 6 days ago

It would be very simple to write out details but make them harder to access. Motivated users will find them.

sitkack• 6 days ago

i remember when the TV station would shut down in the middle of the night.

Or businesses would close to do inventory.

We made do.

paulddraper• 6 days ago

It's quite natural to start doing (2) in a consumer facing business, isn't it?

Absolutely.

But also don't break my stuff.

senorqa• 6 days ago

I know people who aren't nerds and actually like to know what's in the update. Just ask a LLM to write a high level human-friendly description of the changes. That's it. Just be good to your customers or in general to others. Ignorance, whataboutism & Idontcareism spreads like plague. Don't make it worse.

m4rtink• 5 days ago

Looks like some regulation is in order to prevent companies releasing dubious software updates with no release notes.

odysseus2• 2 days ago

The thing is, Kia does tell you what’s going on in some of their release notes, for example: https://owners.kia.com/us/en/ota-software-update-release-not...

However the very update that says it fixes the blank screen caused the blank screen to happen in the first place. (Never happened before that update.)

Then another silent update not listed on their site undoes that problem, but you have to wait a month or so to get it.

mathstuf• 6 days ago

Neither of these updates explained what happened or what the fix was.

"Bug fixes and performance improvements "

Even worse than the "reformat" commit message that your bisect landed on.

clickety_clack• 6 days ago

Sounds like someone isn’t doing their load-bearing smoke tests.

naturalmovement• 6 days ago

Glad to own a car that will only update via USB and even then only when I want it to.

Which is never, unless something is broken.

Having rolling releases for a CAR is absolutely stupid.

m0llusk• 6 days ago

Wasn't LLM tech supposed to fix this?

bigstrat20033• 6 days ago

Most people with experience in the tech industry would say that LLMs will make it worse. They make more mistakes than a human, faster than a human, but get treated (by management) as preferred to a human. The end result was never going to be more reliable software.

sgarland• 6 days ago

Everything you create should be an artistic endeavour aiming for perfection.

Amen. If you go to a bakery, you expect them to care. If you hire a photographer, you expect them to care. Software isn’t (usually) a factory line; CRUD may be similar concepts throughout, but everyone is making it themselves.

Give a shit about what you make.

dmitrygr• 6 days ago

You still did not learn the lesson? Once you take possession of a fixed-function appliance, NEVER EVER EVER take any updates, and do not connect it to the internet (CarPlay does not require internet connectivity in the car). Do not buy fixed-function appliances that require internet, that is what computers are for.

ElijahLynn• 6 days ago

Author blames the two week sprint. But that isn't this issue. It's testing gates. Plenty of teams can ship high quality software with two weak sprints. They just have great testing gates.

charles_f• 6 days ago

I have to call MINI at some point and demand they fix this garbage

That would never occur to me. Whenever something produced by a large company breaks, I pretty much assume there's no signal possible back to whomever is responsible for the breakage, and that whatever is broken now is broken forever.

To the author's point, they're A-gile, but forgot that the first step in the process was customer feedback

chrisandchris• 5 days ago

Tell that to Volvo. They even state on their feedback form that they don't respond to feedbacks, which IMHO is a polite way of saying that they don't read the feedback but still need a form, because no form would be bad publicity.

Pxtl• 6 days ago

At this point I'm just annoyed that Google discontinued the Android Auto app. Just give me a mount for my phone and gtfo.

If you have a big touchscreen put a video usb port on it.

exabrial• 6 days ago

My car has an engine and tires. There’s literally 0 reason why it needs a cell phone. Stop buying these stupid cars

padjo• 6 days ago

I've stopped installing software updates to my car. They never seem to do anything useful and often will cause things to break or get reset. I no longer see the upside.

NoGravitas• 5 days ago

To be fair, Android Auto breaks when you look at it funny.

londons_explore• 5 days ago

Both Android Auto and Chromecast are great ideas, but so incredibly flakey.

The number of times I've heard someone say 'oh it's disconnected again' is extreme.

To be honest, some court ought to simply demand Google makes it reliable or refunds all money people paid for the phones as the product is not fit for purpose.

Expletive4138• 2 days ago

Spoke to MINI, cleared security, and gave them my license plate.

They pushed a manual patch to clear out files out over 4 hours. Not sure how i feel that they can directly target my car with license plate but ah well

Nothing happened initially, but after deleting and re-pairing, it’s finally working.

Blocked future updates when I take it in for its next service, I’m thinking of telling them to leave the FW the fuck alone.

My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

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