Jeep Pushed Software Update That Bricked All 2024 Wrangler 4xe Models
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A software update pushed by Jeep bricked all 2024 Wrangler 4xe models, causing safety concerns and frustration among owners, highlighting the risks of over-the-air updates in connected cars.
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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGY6JWhHiU
I drove a CJ for many years until it rusted out from under me and the engine seized, but I thought it was great, I went everywhere with it.
I would like to have a wrangler but it is too expensive, too many bells and whistles and to large, I would never get one.
Now I an driving an 18 year auto and hope to keep it going for another 18 :)
This is a rabbit hole that beckons.
In the case of this Jeep bug causing engine shutoff and power failure, it was an update to the infotainment system! It's easy to compute that these infotainment systems run software; what's crazy is updates to them can cause catastrophic failure to powering the car and ability of the car to drive.
https://www.tapkat.org/american-heritage-museum/lkaKb5?promo...
- Vehicle randomly stalls every couple of minutes requiring shutdown and restart
- Shifter doesn't switch out of Park
- Dashboard lights including check engine/drive to dealer etc
> On my drive home I abruptly had absolutely no acceleration, the gear indicator on the dash started flashing, the power mode indicator disappeared, an alert said shift into park and press the brake + start button, and the check engine light and red wrench lights came on. I was still able to steer and brake with power steering and brakes for maybe 30 seconds before those went out too. After putting it into park and pressing the brake and start button it started back up and I could drive it normally for a little bit, but it happened two more times on my 1.5 mi drive home.
If that happened on the highway I could easily see people being killed.
Which it isn’t. What production passenger vehicles have no steering column? (EDIT: oh, yeah, forgot about Cybertruck.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steer-by-wire
Thinking of this somehow reminded me of the most harrowing aircraft disaster that I've ever read about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
It's both tragic because half of the passengers were killed but also miraculous that anyone survived at all.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-cr...
Also people say "oh what if fly-by-wire fails" well what if traditional hydraulic controls fail, which has happened plenty in the history of commercial aviation
Everything can and will fail at some point
No redundancy is redundancy enough in some %0.xx of cases. You can always reduce the number, but never make it 0
Most planes have been fly-by-wire for decades and aren't regularly falling out of the sky
Not for cars tho. Cars can be expected to be as reliable as the average windows PC unless there are regulations made and accountability assigned
https://corecursive.com/066-sqlite-with-richard-hipp/#testin...
"Richard Hipp: Getting that last 5% is really, really hard and it took about a year for me to get there, but once we got to that point, we stopped getting bug reports from Android.
"Richard Hipp: Yes, so we’ll do billions of tests."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQS9SECCp1I
Completely unlike the safety standards for cars.
The (as of a this year) second-most popular airliner, the Boeing 737, has fully mechanical controls for the ailerons and elevator (with hydraulic boosting). Elevator trim is also mechanical.
The pilot needs to be built like a gorilla to fly it, but primary flight controls continue work, even with a total failure of all electrical and hydraulic systems.
Sioux City Approach: "United Two Thirty-Two Heavy, the wind's currently three six zero at one one; three sixty at eleven. You're cleared to land on any runway."
Haynes: "[laughter] Roger. [laughter] You want to be particular and make it a runway, huh?"
And here's a truly excellent long form article on the crash by the always excellent Admiral Cloudberg: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-cr...
It really is "The Homer" of cars isn't it.
One isn't the same as the other - the regulatory regime/testing and redundancies on a plane are completely different to a car and not inconsequentially the person operating the plane is rather better trained on what to do when things go "oopsie" than the person loose behind the wheel of the average car.
Also aircraft are serviced in a way far beyond what cars are.
If you let the steering wheel go it would spring back to the middle even with the car at a standstill because of the resistance cam.
If it lost hydraulic pressure while you were driving there was still generally enough in the system to allow you to pull over safely, and you could drive for much longer distances if you could cope with about a quarter of a turn of "play" in the steering wheel. With no pressure at all, turning the steering wheel would move the shuttle valve in the steering controller until it bottomed out and then the linkage would just turn the pinion on the steering rack, which was normally used for servo feedback. Uncomfortable, but acceptable for "get off the road" situations.
The hydraulic system also worked the self-levelling suspension, the fully-powered braking system (similar to the WABCO systems on a lot of more modern vehicles), and on some manual gearbox models the clutch.
Not really "drive by wire", because it's not electronic, but it really is a system where the steering rack could be fully decoupled from the steering wheel.
"Steer by wire" means there is nothing but copper signal wires between your steering wheel and the front wheels. Your steering wheel is essentially a video game controller.
This has nothing to do with the car's mode of propulsion though, and both EVs and ICE cars can have steer by wire controls. So far, it's only the cybertruck that has this paradigm, all other EV's all have normal power steering.
For normal power steering systems there are two types: hydraulic and electric. Both types have a solid steel shaft between your steering wheel and the front wheels. You can remove the engine/motor completely, and you'll still be able to steer the car. The hydraulic or electric motor merely helps you turn the wheel, nothing more. Hydraulic is being phased out for electric in both EVs and ICE vehicles.
For whatever reason, manufacturers aren't trying to make fully autonomous ICE vehicles.
[1] J. C. Knight and N. G. Leveson, “An experimental evaluation of the assumption of independence in multiversion programming,” IIEEE Trans. Software Eng., vol. SE-12, no. 1, pp. 96–109, Jan. 1986, doi: 10.1109/TSE.1986.6312924.
And then these manufacturers wonder why people just want them to have a dumb head unit with carplay/android auto. Because they absolutely suck at software and have shown no desire to improve outside of charging people subscriptions for hardware features that are already in the car.
This isn't exceptional design on the part of Tesla. It is absolutely baseline common sense. I can't believe it isn't the defacto rule. I guess it might need to be regulated because apparently some companies are THAT untrustworthy.
All regulations are written in blood.
Indeed, the risk is far too large to ignore.
I will never own a car that has steer-by-wire or braking-by-wire. Those are two controls that absolutely must have a mechanical linkage that cannot be altered by software. Other things I can handle, but if all goes haywire, I must be able to steer and brake.
Its all controlled by electronics now.
Honda: "all Honda models use Drive-by-Wire technology" (for the accelerator pedal).
https://www.hondainfocenter.com/Shared-Technologies/Engines/...
Subaru's used it in a bunch of vehicles for decades: https://www.ultimatesubaru.org/forum/topic/70486-what-year-d...
Most new Toyotas, Ford, etc.
While throttle/acceleration isn't steering, if you're uncomfortable with the underlying concept of a potentiometer and a microcontroller and a small motor on the other end being used to control a vehicle and consider it unproven technology, then you'd need to avoid most new cars in order to be logically consistent.
Car manufacturers have just never bothered to do it right. If they cheapened as much on steering bars, it would break all the time too.
That said, OTA updates for basic functionality is an immediate blocker. Updates are by definition not mature technology.
Or are you just posting just for engagement?
The Infinity Q50, QX50, QX55 and QX60 (with backup that connects upon electric failure).
Without backup, but triple redundancy, can be found in the Tesla Cybertruck. But I'd take that redundancy with a grain of salt as they don't have the best track record telling you the truth.
That said, I really with companies would go back to the good old hydraulic steering. I don't need self-parking. But self-parking needs at least electric steering (with our without steering column).
You can control a hydraulic system automatically. That's literally what ABS braking is on the same cars already.
I guess you could argue that it wasn't a reasonably well constructed car.
[0] Almost identical. The steering has some flex, and the amount it flexes is related to how much torque you apply. But this is a tiny effect.
It's amazing how much more reliable cars have gotten. You used to be always on the alert for some critical function to fail spontaneously, and also listening for warning signs.
In general, this wasn’t especially hazardous, since I rarely needed to move the wheel very far while moving at very low speed in a place where other cars could be a hazard.
(Yes, I got this fixed. And the old LS400 cars were extremely well designed and built.)
There's construction on the Interstate highway in my area with lanes that have no "breakdown" space ("contraflow" lanes). I would be terrified to lose power in that lane. I would be worried about getting rear-ended and / or causing a pile-up.
So can someone who owns a modern car please help me understand why you would buy a car that has the mere capability to be remotely shut off?
A vehicle is a personal safety device, that allows for independent travel away from bad things and towards safe things. That is one of the most critical aspects of a vehicle.
Assuming that one of the most critical times you might need a vehicle is fleeing oppression, having a remote switch off as a possible vector to impede your escape is an existential threat and basically makes one of the core reasons to have a vehicle moot.
My assumption is that most people are not thinking about their vehicle as one of the most critical tools for freedom.
Having traveled the world and lived in war zones, vehicles are life savers and it’s insane to me that anyone would allow a possibility for someone else, specifically corporations and governments with major power levers, to even have the ability to stop that remotely.
The only way I can think of is “don’t buy a car made within the last 25 years”
Notably, you have to go back to 70’ish era to get that kind of equipment. Almost everything else has some kind of ECU.
Cellular connections didn’t start becoming somewhat common until the late 90’s-early 2000’s though.
E.g. 5th gen Toyota 4Runners: https://www.4runners.com/threads/how-to-disconnect-the-track...
If one wants to buy a modern car, and one cares about preserving disconnected functionality, one just needs to research if there's a workable fallback mechanism.
Or, you know, deal with the 20mpg but a vehicle that will last until the heat death of the universe #2uzfeClub
FWIW while cars are essentially backdoored nowadays with all the cellular/OTA updates BS you can still disable it. I suspect this won't be an option in the near future, the way things are going.
I can't wait to see Hacker News comments in 2035 lamenting how they used to be able to "just use a bypass cable" to make their cars not phone home, by the time EVs and even general ICE vehicles have telemetry so deeply integrated with the vehicle it's impossible/illegal to be disabled.
https://dieselpumpuk.com/
I also have 2008 mazda3. Great reliable car. Also no connectivity whatsoever.
Buying a car from 2010 is a guarantee that you won't be able to drive it in 5-10 years..
Regarding driving aids, some cities in my European country are looking to make them mandatory in the city centre.
Overall this is being done to keep poor people from driving.
Annoyingly in post-Brexit Britain I need to wait two years until is *is* 30 years old to drive in ULEZ zones. It was fine until Brexit kicked in - yet another Conservative disasterpiece.
Ford Transit Connect, for example, which could just about do 60mpg on a steady 70mph motorway run.
I assume the questioner is asking about US mpg? The Prius was there for sure in US mpg (just, at 51mpg), not sure about others.
Not 2010, which makes this so infuriating..
A 1986 Honda CRX HF was rated 51 MPG highway. That was an engine with stone-age technology, and it was possible.
Just imagine +40 years of incremental development with modern materials and modern engine control systems. What could a 2026 Honda CRX HF do in MPG if that development had been allowed to continue all these decades? Certainly above 60, probably above 80 MPG? Maybe above 100MPG.
Instead society is selling us 6000+lb monsters with worse mileage than back in the mid 80s.
Diesel vehicles now have SCR and AdBlue, which fixes the problem properly, but they still have the EGR defect.
I will not buy a post patriot act vehicle
If you're driving such old cars, I have to assume you're mechanically inclined. At which point, a simple bypass cable or literally just removing the telematics unit out of a modern vehicle should not be too much to ask for.
Bonus points for gaining moderate security with immobilizers that way, so any random guy can't just start your car with a set of wafer jigglers.
My 2001 Tundra is a beast that will never die, has amazing AC/Heat radio etc…
There are fleets of garage specials out there with low miles and tons of spare parts or are easy to maintain with a Chilton guide
I started my working life fixing cars and obce they started putting in electronics it became impossible.
So I stick with things I can fix
You don't need to go that far back. None of my cars have any kind of connectivity, the newest one is 2014. I'll never own a car with any kind of remote connectivity, the risk is far too large to ignore.
I particularly hate the 'modern' trend of have a large touch screen tablet instead of all the knobs and buttons.
My own group of car buddies, pretty much all we do is shop and trade 2010s vehicles now, rather than buy new.
But can I please have an electric car, all the bells and whistles, that I take to a dealer/mechanic to get upgraded?
Maybe once a year?
If that, and at my choice....
That or earlier, yes.
My last car will probably be my current car from 2013, which I have replaced the engine in, and plan on replacing the transmission in when that goes, as well as other parts as needed. Rust is basically what is going to kill it and I can stave that off for a long time.
When that day comes, it won't really matter. I live near a quarter mile from a train station, 200 feet from a bike trail that connects to my city's bike network, and 50 feet from a bus stop. No need for a car really ever. Rentals exist for car needs every few months, but there are usually other options.
The key for me was to not be dependent on any singular mode of transportation and to have redundancy so that if any single option isn't working, I have at least one other option to go places.
Most people push button, aim steering wheel, and voila.
One answer to this I would presume is: there are no other new cars for sale without this flaw.
Why there aren't regulations or forced options in the market without these functions (as well as with physical control knobs instead of touch surfaces) is a good question too. There is huge demand for cars without most of this nonsense, yet I don't see that demand being met.
I doubt anyone wants a car whose infotainment system can be improperly updated to cause catastrophic power and engine failure while driving, if given this information and a choice to avoid it.
Of course they're not mass-market and will be lacking on some other bullet point features, but if you really care about your TV not turning into an ad billboard in 2 years, they're the way to go.
That’s not what is going on here. These cars are not being intentionally shut down remotely. Instead, a software update for some computerized components of the car was pushed down to the cars and installed with the owners permissions, but that update apparently has severe bugs that should have been caught by QA.
Even if the owner gave permission to install the update, I would strongly wager that they did not give concurrent permission for the update to change the behavior of the vehicle.
Of course, I sincerely doubt the EULA offers any way to separate those permissions; you are all in, or you are all out. Assuming that you even have an option to opt out.
And that’s exactly why these cars can never be trusted under any circumstances, ever.
"Do you want to update? Yes or later". And blocks semi-critical stuff so you must address it.
"Do you want to update? Yes or later". And blocks semi-critical stuff so you must address it.
"Update now. You cannot refuse since you said no 3 times"
Or, other parodies, "Just say MAYBE LATER to drugs"
That's a hell of an assumption.
If we're talking about population distributions, I would argue that "having lived in war zones" puts you well outside the center of the curve.
Because afaik, all the modern cars have this as a 'feature', but there's lots of other nice features they have.
The best of both worlds right now is an earlier modern car where the 2g/3g modem can no longer connect to the outside world. Even better if you can pull the modem, but they're usually up behind a lot of trim.
Most people have a variety of things they are looking for in a car they want to purchase, and other factors are more important to them than this one, which they figure probably won't happen anyway. There may be few options that aren't updateable over the air, and those options don't meet their other criteria -- if they even get that deep into considering it, which they probably don't, they just aren't really thinking about it. But even if they did. you don't have the option of buying your perfect fantasy car. I'd like to buy a car with manual mechanical controls instead of touch screen controls, but there aren't that many options for that either, and they may not meet my other needs.
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