Fisker may have been especially vulnerable to this (my understanding from some very brief searching is that core vehicle functionality required cloud check ins without fallback), but nothing about this is inherent to EVs (this is response to Weisenthal's tweet early in the article). An ICE vehicle could (and many manufacturers are increasingly pushing in this direction) have the exact same problems.
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
> We had reviewed the Ocean in late 2023 and found the hardware genuinely attractive — but the software was simply not ready for prime time. The irony of that headline — “Coming soon, in a future software update” — now reads like an epitaph. Those future updates never came from Fisker. They came from the owners themselves.
It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.
How involved is the software in the car, any while driving features? I'd be a little bit afraid of getting in that car even with the best efforts of the community, maybe it's not really for driving, i'd be even more nervous to get in a car with no updates, but still.
More than anything I am nervous about having a car running priority code that can have mandatory updates pushed at any time that change the cars behavior -- not just throttle response and adjusting the emissions here, they could be updating thresholds for when the auto-pilot cancels and return to manual control, what level of cruise the car defaults to (GM BlueCruise IMO is terrible about this, it cancels hands free mode often, without any auditory alert) and so on.
That's my issue. You could drive the car one day, go to bed, and the next day the car does not perform the same way it did yesterday. That's ridiculous. Any update needs to be approved by the user. Even if that means doing like Apple does where the user has to enter their password to approve the update scheduled for the middle of the night.
A few days back, the breaks of my car suddenly stopped working. By stopped-working I mean they just got jammed. No matter how much I press, they just wouldn't budge. The reason: my car had abruptly turned-off by itself, jamming the breaks with it. HOW TF are breaks NOT connected directly to the tyres? Why the tf they have to be software controlled? This is the "critical" path, and SHOULD be 100% under driver's control, at all times.
And then just 3 days back, the same thing happened with steering wheel while I was reversing the car. But this time, the car hadn't even turned-off... the wheel just got jammed. Restarted the card, and it worked. What the absolute fck man!! What tf!
Electronics and the corresponding software should stay 100% out of all critical paths inside of the car. Sure if it "helps", it's fine, but, that should NOT turn into such outcomes.
What model? Is it possible that you accidentally had the car in a power-on mode, but without the engine started? I've done that by accident in my Mitsubishi Outlander Sport. The symptoms are similar to what you describe. Actually, it was at a car wash -- attendant left the car power on and I thought the engine was running so tried to drive away. Got the car to move a bit (happened to be downhill) but it was super scary because the brake pedal was taking more and more force to push down and I could barely turn the steering wheel. Luckily I was smart enough to put it in park, check everything, and realize the engine wasn't running!
The brakes (n.b., spelling) and steering will feel increasingly stiff or "locked up" if your engine is off because the engine is not powering the vacuum system that powers the brake booster, and the steering will be extremely difficult to operate without the assistance of power steering.
I remember watching a youtube video where the one guy who has become The Fisker Whisperer said that screwing up an update will total the vehicle because several of the control modules just can't be had anywhere, at least until another ends up in a junkyard.
There is literally nothing about any Fisker automobile that makes it worth all this effort. But a handful of rich boomer tech execs think there's nothing else in the world that could possibly meet their expectations for a hybrid or electric vehicle, have more wealth than they know what to do with, and so here we are.
Saabs are much the same way. Some nonsense about a completely overengineered security system in the newer vehicles that makes losing a key a "well, now you're fucked" event, I believe?
I'd buy any Tesla, even the big truck, if it came with open source software! I don't want a car that's spyware like a phone. Let me be in control of it, let me mod it, let me own it.
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
Not exactly what you are asking for, but did you see that Rivian recently provided a way for owners to disable the vehicle's LTE connection? It's straight In Canada. In the US, you have to ask a dealer.
Uh no, we need significantly less software in the auto industry. Software sucks. It excels at taking relatively simple (if inconvenient) problems and in exchange for some notional convenience introduces problem spaces so baroque they border on the occult. An example: between all of the seat controls on the driver's seat of my wife's car I've counted 16 individual switch positions and something like six motors, all wired into the CAN bus so the central console can save user preferences.
Without bothering to check the OEM parts cost to replace that seat I am absolutely dead ass certain that it by itself costs more than my first three cars combined. And all of this pageantry replaces the two traditional dumb mechanical levers to control seat distance from the pedals and back tilt. This and real-time cell network surveillance is all the proof I need that executive depravity in the auto industry is functionally unlimited, and the reason why I wouldn't accept a "modern" car as a gift, much less buy one.
So a leasing company bought the source code for $2.5 million and then cut off owners after they refused an additional deal. What was the point, then? Is there anything rational about this market interaction?
This is a much bigger problem that requires a bigger solution. I'm pretty intrigued by the mention at the end that several european manufacturers are collaborating on an opensource automotive software platform, although their track record on software isn't that encouraging.
[0] Not perfect, but I think as good evidence as any: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2501.15654 [1] https://www.pangram.com/history/44cd07d3-ba94-4331-8c7f-a626...
It’s sad to see a good site put out bad AI writing like this.
> The irony of that headline...
> [reflective pause]
> "Coming soon, in a future software update" [shorter pause] now reads like an epitaph
Give me a car without internet uplink any day!
And then just 3 days back, the same thing happened with steering wheel while I was reversing the car. But this time, the car hadn't even turned-off... the wheel just got jammed. Restarted the card, and it worked. What the absolute fck man!! What tf!
Electronics and the corresponding software should stay 100% out of all critical paths inside of the car. Sure if it "helps", it's fine, but, that should NOT turn into such outcomes.
The brakes (n.b., spelling) and steering will feel increasingly stiff or "locked up" if your engine is off because the engine is not powering the vacuum system that powers the brake booster, and the steering will be extremely difficult to operate without the assistance of power steering.
There is literally nothing about any Fisker automobile that makes it worth all this effort. But a handful of rich boomer tech execs think there's nothing else in the world that could possibly meet their expectations for a hybrid or electric vehicle, have more wealth than they know what to do with, and so here we are.
Saabs are much the same way. Some nonsense about a completely overengineered security system in the newer vehicles that makes losing a key a "well, now you're fucked" event, I believe?
Who's going to sell me one?
https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2019/oct/30/calling-all-tesla... https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/dec/21/tesla-no-source-c...
See also this interesting slide deck about the GPLv3 and cars, I expect that regulations would mean you could not drive cars with modified software (similar to what happens with solar inverters):
https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
Uh no, we need significantly less software in the auto industry. Software sucks. It excels at taking relatively simple (if inconvenient) problems and in exchange for some notional convenience introduces problem spaces so baroque they border on the occult. An example: between all of the seat controls on the driver's seat of my wife's car I've counted 16 individual switch positions and something like six motors, all wired into the CAN bus so the central console can save user preferences.
Without bothering to check the OEM parts cost to replace that seat I am absolutely dead ass certain that it by itself costs more than my first three cars combined. And all of this pageantry replaces the two traditional dumb mechanical levers to control seat distance from the pedals and back tilt. This and real-time cell network surveillance is all the proof I need that executive depravity in the auto industry is functionally unlimited, and the reason why I wouldn't accept a "modern" car as a gift, much less buy one.
LLM slop. Why does the author believe he is entitled to our attention if he cannot even bother to use his own words?