Fiat Chrysler Is Being Sued Over a Software Flaw (ieee.org) 30
"Last week, a California judge decided to allow a class action lawsuit filed in December 2017 against Fiat Chrysler to proceed," reports IEEE Spectrum. "The lawsuit, which could have major ramifications for car makers, was filed in response to stalling issues with 2017 Chrysler Pacifica minivans that the plaintiffs allege were caused by known software defects." From the report: The plaintiffs allege that Fiat Chrysler, despite numerous owner complaints about the Pacifica stalling out, concealed knowledge of defects in Pacifica's powertrain control module (PCM) to keep customers from having concerns about buying the vehicle. Fiat Chrysler attempted to get the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that consumer complaints don't prove that a vehicle defect exists, or demonstrate that the company knew about the alleged defect a priori and concealed it.
The judge agreed with Fiat Chrysler on those points, ruling that the plaintiffs could not use consumer complaints alone as evidence of a defect. However, he pointed out that Fiat Chrysler had issued two technical service bulletins relating to Pacifica's PCM software before the plaintiffs had purchased their vehicle, and two more following their purchase. The judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to believe it was "at least plausible" that Fiat Chrysler knew that there was a stalling problem with the vehicles before the plaintiffs bought them.
The judge agreed with Fiat Chrysler on those points, ruling that the plaintiffs could not use consumer complaints alone as evidence of a defect. However, he pointed out that Fiat Chrysler had issued two technical service bulletins relating to Pacifica's PCM software before the plaintiffs had purchased their vehicle, and two more following their purchase. The judge ruled that there was sufficient evidence to believe it was "at least plausible" that Fiat Chrysler knew that there was a stalling problem with the vehicles before the plaintiffs bought them.
Only read the summary, but (Score:2)
wouldn't it make sense to subpoena Fiat Crysler's records?
IANAL
Who knows what FC knew and covered up?
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There os such a thing as a Civil Subpoena
There are also problems with Nissan 2.5L (Score:1)
All 2.5L 4 cylinders engines without the EGR also fail because of the eroding bits of the Pre-Cats similar to sand get sucked back into the cylinders and damage the engine.
There isn't a 2.5L 4 cylinder engine recently made by Nissan that will make it past 80,000 miles, without being damaged. And if driven farther, a complete failure of the engine. Nissans solution is to reprogram the ECU to ignore the O2 sensor failure and not turn on the Check Engine light so it makes it to the 100,000 mile mark before com
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The bigger issue is that the EGR takes exhaust gas from the headers, which is pretty far from any cat converter
Wrong. Lots of cars have a "pre-catalyst" attached directly to the exhaust manifold, including the later-model (40V) Audi A8 D2. ("Headers" are tubular exhaust manifolds, which you will rarely see on a modern vehicle, even one designed for performance. For example, my 32V D2 A8 has cast stainless Tri-Y manifolds, though amusingly a header is shown in the parts diagram.)
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A Little Early (Score:2)
Why waste time here? (Score:2)
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I'm not sure how the fanbois managed to explain away Tesla's recent problem [wired.com] with the software for the braking system on the model 3 as a feature.
Oh yes, now I remember:
They focused on how "brilliant" it was that Tesla could write a patch for the faulty software and apply it 'over the air' in a couple of days.
They ignored the fact that Tesla had managed to release software for
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They ignored the fact that Tesla had managed to release software for a critical subsystem of their cars, the brakes, into production which had bugs which significantly impaired it's performance. Seemingly, a fairly trivial bug as they managed to test and apply the patch in a couple of days.
This is pure speculation. You don't know there was a bug. The difference could be explained entirely by tuning. They made the stopping distance longer because sometimes when it was shorter, the car would shudder (or similar) during panic stops and they felt that would affect customer confidence.
Or, you know, maybe there was a bug. But you're going to have to provide a citation for that.
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Hardly. The performance impairment was well documented by CR and admitted by Tesla. Therefore this is not "pure" speculation.
He knows that there was a "fix" [twitter.com], which
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You've been posting to /. for a long time but I don't ever remember you declaring your expertise at dancing on the head of a pin before. Thanks also for sharing that you are a committed Tesla/Musk fanbois and are prepared to suspend any grasp of logic when it comes to defending that crooked outfit.
You might want to consider that when the 'House of Musk' comes tumbling down within the next year,
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You suddenly seem to have found great confidence in NTHSB's competence. You are over estimating powers of NTHSB to force automakers to do anything. The threshold required to force a recall is pretty high. The automakers have huge lobby operations and even before NTHSB starts the prelim investigation a friendly senator or a congressman will make sure the investigation is handled by "proper and trustworthy" officials. Forced r
fix it again tony! (Score:2)
fix it again tony!
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fix it again tony!
In Fiatian Chrysler, Tony Soprano fixes you!
No good deeds go unpunished (Score:1)
Chrysler minivan (Score:2)