Software Update Bricks Some Jeep 4xe Hybrids Over the Weekend (arstechnica.com) 85
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Owners of some Jeep Wrangler 4xe hybrids have been left stranded after installing an over-the-air software update this weekend. The automaker pushed out a telematics update for the Uconnect infotainment system that evidently wasn't ready, resulting in cars losing power while driving and then becoming stranded. Stranded Jeep owners have been detailing their experiences in forum and Reddit posts, as well as on YouTube. The buggy update doesn't appear to brick the car immediately. Instead, the failure appears to occur while driving -- a far more serious problem. For some, this happened close to home and at low speed, but others claim to have experienced a powertrain failure at highway speeds.
Jeep pulled the update after reports of problems, but the software had already downloaded to many owners' cars by then. A member of Stellantis' social engagement team told 4xe owners at a Jeep forum to ignore the update pop-up if they haven't installed it yet. Owners were also advised to avoid using either hybrid or electric modes if they had updated their 4xe and not already suffered a powertrain failure. Yesterday, Jeep pushed out a fix.
Jeep pulled the update after reports of problems, but the software had already downloaded to many owners' cars by then. A member of Stellantis' social engagement team told 4xe owners at a Jeep forum to ignore the update pop-up if they haven't installed it yet. Owners were also advised to avoid using either hybrid or electric modes if they had updated their 4xe and not already suffered a powertrain failure. Yesterday, Jeep pushed out a fix.
How are they updating the bricked models? (Score:3, Insightful)
Are they being picked up by towtruck and brought to the dealership for free so they can be re-flashed and activated again?
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A classier company would come out to the customer's car.
Do those even exist anymore?
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Ford does if you buy a King Ranch. They will do oil changes at your residence.
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Ford Mobile Service isn't just for a King Ranch, it applies to anything--it doesn't even have to be a Ford vehicle. They also do concierge pickup/drop off service--when I need an oil change, I just call the dealership, they schedule a pickup, come get the truck out of the parking lot while I'm at work, and bring it back. I typically don't even talk to the the driver, it's full no contact.
They do not charge for this service, and the drivers don't even ask for/expect tips.
Re: How are they updating the bricked models? (Score:2)
They can't do thay - they need special programming equipment with limited availability and reliable internet connection to reflash the ecus.
I'm just waiting for an update to go bad causing someone to die.
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it seems "bricked" was an overstatement. It makes the car stop and then refuse to drive very far... but it's not bricked in the traditional sense.
And the fix is already going out OTA as of yesterday and it works for some but not for others, so far
https://www.4xeforums.com/thre... [4xeforums.com]
misuse of the word "bricked" (Score:2, Insightful)
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While true, I'd argue that getting stranded on the side of the highway through absolutely no fault of your own until someone can come grab your car, take it to a dealership, and fix it there, pretty much counts as bricked in the moment. You can do nothing with your car for a long time thanks to an update from the producer.
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I'm thinking of the people that may have actually used the vehicle for its advertised purpose. Not sure a tow truck could get to them. Airlift maybe?
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I'm thinking of the people that may have actually used the vehicle for its advertised purpose.
that'll be nobody then. These poor Jeep owners will now have to walk home from Walmart with their bread and milk.
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I had rented a 4xe a few months back, and according to the tow truck driver it was a frequent issue-- 1-3/week on their contract. The dealer went to the rental company once a week to work on them. Fortunately mine just wouldn't start in my garage at home and not dying on the road.
Woopsie. Sorry about that Chief. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your car stopped working because some tech pushed out an untested software update?
Your car is fully dependent on software?
I swear I'm going to get junker exactly like the car I'm driving to take parts off of. Should keep me going til the big dirt nap.
Who the fuck wants this?
OH, WAIT. I forgot, it's probably compatible with iPhone.
that might explain it.
<shakes cane at sky>
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Well, chief, it's not actually your car. You signed a license to use it, but it does not belong to you.
If that argument ever applied to vehicles, that would be the end of buying cars. Granted, that may be the direction we're headed anyway, with the way the prices on them continue to climb. But if you don't actually own the automobile you purchase, one of the largest expenses outside of a house any individual will ever contemplate, then there's no point in throwing that money at it. We'll all be leasing, or buying "points" for some form of ride-share for self-driving vehicles, or something similar. I suppose
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... if you don't actually own the automobile you purchase, one of the largest expenses outside of a house any individual will ever contemplate, then there's no point in throwing that money at it.
Yet that's pretty much the reality of many of today's cars. If I can't disable all OTA software updates and still have a fully functional, maintainable, warranty-supported car, then I don't really own the car. I may have paid for it, I may hold title to it, but it's not fully under my control.
You can't really drive a junker (Score:1)
This assumes you can do all the part changing yourself and maintenance and your willing to spend about one weekend a month replacing parts.
It's going to be that often because you're either using very very old parts o
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And that's why "updates" are nothing to fancy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And that's why "updates" are nothing to fancy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Didn't Jeep already show ads on the dashboard screen? I think they did.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It's the network that connects the various microcontrollers in your car. Yes, they are all connected. You didn't think a simple rocker switch directly controlled your window, did you?
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Microsoft has entered the discussion.
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Microsoft has entered the discussion
Reminds me of an old joke - if Microsoft made cars, they'd crash twice a day for no reason.
Stellantis is struggling financially...and with the reliance of their vehicles on these ongoing updates, I'd be hesitant to buy one knowing that if Stellantis fails, who will provide "updates" that will keep my car running?
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At a computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."
In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release (by Mr. Welch himself) stating:
If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:
1. For no reason at all, your car would
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And the car industry took that as a challenge, apparently.
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If Stallantis falls, there won't be anyone to push more bugs OTA.
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The original Jeep engineers are rolling over in their graves!
This is the exact opposite of what made the Jeep great.
Move fast and break everything. (Score:3)
Testing? What testing?
This shit is going to continue until these companies are getting sued into oblivion for killing people due to buggy updates. This one probably came the closest. I wouldn't think a powertrain failure at highway speeds would be a fun thing to deal with, and if it were bumper to bumper traffic, it could have led to some real shenanigans. I wonder if there were any fender benders?
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My 2008 Hyundai Elantra had electronic steering (felt like Gran Turismo), it's got nothing to do with the drivetrain.
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AFAIK the only vehicle in the US with 100% drive by wire steering is the Cybercuck. All of the other drive by wire cars have a linkage with a clutch that fails closed so if you have a complete power failure, you still wind up able to control the steering.
My 2008 Versa also has EPS (electric power steering) and it took me a long time to get a feel for it. Now I no longer even notice that the steering feel is different from hydraulic except for very, very fine adjustments. Those still feel kind of sloppy. In
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It will continue as long as our consumer protection laws are worthless.
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It will continue as long as our consumer protection laws are worthless.
I don't really think we'll ever have decent consumer protection in the United States again. At least, not in the lifetime of anyone here today. People seem hell-bent on electing business-first politicians, regardless of how much evidence we've seen that this does, in fact, make the country worse for anyone not part of the C-Suite and up. For some strange reason, the worse things get, the more easily people seem to be swayed that only by protecting the business class can we make things better. It's baffling
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LOL, they wouldn't have set up a system that was prone to failure if they thought they would have to pay any serious penalties... and going back through history, they have not ever had significant penalties for poor behavior.
Modern cars suck and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Try buying parts for older cars. LOL, you are so fucked. Enjoy America being Great.
The real question... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is why does an infotainment system update brick the entire car? More and more manufacturers are tying a whole bunch of shit into the radio, that should never have been part of the radio. This shouldn't even be possible.
Re:The real question... (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is most people are driving their cars when the main system is powered... So now it does the update while in motion? That's a very bad design. And now you see why.
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The problem is several.
First, OTA updates allow many recalls to take p
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Once the update is downloaded the infotainment board waits for the car's main systems to be available and then updates those as well - it's the whole 'Over The Air Update' that marketing loves to push - and why many think it's doomed to cause failure or safety issues.
That is not a satisfactory explanation. My phone uses an A/B system where if an update doesn't boot, it can simply boot the prior version. Why is Stellantis too incompetent to do the same thing with PCMs, which are much more important? Who the fuck is still buying vehicles from these clowns?
Actually, I know who, otherwise smart people who just have insufficient experience with modern cars to know what's going to be shit. One of my coworkers bought a Mach-E, I've discussed it before, he returned it because i
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^this!!
critical driveline software should be separate and autonomous from accessories. My ID.4 which I love but admittedly does not have the smoothest accessory software used to crash the heads-up display and with it the air conditioning system. So, while driving in summer rush hour hear I am performing a hard boot on the system swearing my but off.
Playing devils advocate we have a slew of users who want to be able to drive there car with there iphones.
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Because the entire car is built to depend on the infotainment system so that you can not remove it and replace it with something of your own choice. That is how they get more money, by only letting the more expensive vehicles have the more desirable infotainment systems.
Long story, it is all about money. Always has been. Always will be. Have money or be a slave to those who do.
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The days of going to Crutchfield and getting a nice new radio for the car are long gone, unfortunately.
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The days of going to Crutchfield and getting a nice new radio for the car are long gone, unfortunately.
That was the catalog I was thinking of. Thank you. An entire industry wiped out, not because nobody would buy the products, but because some people wanted to get wealthier. This isn't Freedom.
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It's called crapware. As in applications running in a visualized environment in the Cloud over a Software Defined Network (SDN). What could possibly go wrong (Jaguar Land Rover).
It's a Jeep (Score:1)
They stop working all the time.
You own a Jeep to feel hip and sometimes take it off road. You do not own a Jeep for an efficient, reliable mode of transportation.
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taking the doors and top off
Doors? Top? What part of Just Enough Essential Parts [dreamstime.com] did they miss?
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If an car auto updates with you losing control cra (Score:4, Interesting)
If an car auto updates with you losing control crashing into and killing people who at Stellantis will be doing hard time.
also how far will Stellantis go to keep their shity code out of the court room.
Re:If an car auto updates with you losing control (Score:5, Insightful)
If an car auto updates with you losing control crashing into and killing people who at Stellantis will be doing hard time. also how far will Stellantis go to keep their shity code out of the court room.
If it happens in America? The driver will be doing the time, and the company will get to have a public congressional hearing where there will be lots of grumbling and yelling, and then those executives will have a nice catered meal with the same senators that were just publicly haranguing them for running such a shitty company while they write checks to their campaign funds.
Other countries may have better results.
Re:And that's why I don't update *any* software (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, most of the machinery is run by Windows-based software.
I happened to buy my CAM software back in the day of perpetual licenses, in the Win7 era, but I could see which way the wind was blowing, so I virtualized that machine and keep a pristine copy of it as it was circa 2007.
I consider that image effectively priceless now. For obvious reasons it will never get a software update. I run it without network access.
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Only problem is old software is also vulnerable to hacking.
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Only if it's on a network...or from direct physical access.
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Obviously. And what kind of machinery, that has the capability of being upgraded with software updates, is not connected to the internet? These days, that combination is very, very rare.
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Three of my computers. I update them usually with CDRom disks that I build from one of my computers which IS connected to the internet...but the data only flows in one direction.
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This is a very unusual scenario. Few computers have CD-ROM drives, and few computers are not internet-connected. For most people, the main purpose of having a computer, is to connect to the internet. But since yours don't, that's great!
I have seen pinball games with bad updates at leas (Score:2)
I have seen pinball games with bad updates at least some have restore images. Also they don't auto update mid game.
Essential vs Nice to have (Score:5, Insightful)
The industry should start separating their csr software into two separate systems: core and nice to have. Core being the critical, essential software that runs the car, safety systems and such like. Everything else being nice to have. OTA should then NEVER be allowed to touch the core software so that the car can drive at all times. If you needed to modify core software, it should be done either the old way, at the mechanics/garage, or with a prior, conscious permission of the car owner.
Re:Essential vs Nice to have (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'm hearing is that enough people are demanding phone-based control of every vehicle function that they've prioritized that over safety and reliability. Particularly the new version of Apple CarPlay seems to let iOS take over everything, including rendering the instrument cluster, drivetrain functions, car unlocking... Why they want that, I could never figure out, other than someone told them it was "the future", and they probably enjoyed the demo at the dealer.
Apple (the company) and iPhone users seem to be disproportionately behind this BS. Those users seem particularly obsessed with their "CarPlay" toy, whereas I rarely hear about "Android Auto" at all. And I think it was the leadership at Ford who recently spoke out about Apple pressuring them to make architectural changes allowing their cars to be controlled via iOS. He didn't mention any such pressure from Google.
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on a pacific north west ferry we watched as an owners car alarm was going off due to the vibrations. He could not use his phone to enter the car nor turn off the alarm (cell service?)
I assume he did not have a physical key either as it was never witnessed by us.
after a lengthy phone call with someone (car vendor?) he was able to turn the alarm off.
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There's another attack vector I hadn't thought of - social-engineering a support droid to gain access to someone else's car. Probably not as reliable as some of the technological exploits out there, though. My mechanic recently had his 2025 trophy truck stolen from his driveway. Didn't sound like they had to break anything or spend a particularly long time hotwiring it, either. The thieves probably had the truck cranked up before they even touched it.
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If sounds like they don't have their duck in a row.
Adding more complexity is going to make things worse.
The bigger problem is that, like many businesses, they don't take the software seriously. Most of it is invisible and too abstract to grasp so it just gets ignored.
Years of mediocre (at best) MS software has turned people complacent. "I'm not good at computers", No the manufacturer could not be bothered to make the computer good at you. It's crappy product.
Tesla is essentially and IT company that deliveri
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The industry should start separating their csr software into two separate systems: core and nice to have.
They literally can not. If they did, you would be able to purchase an aftermarket replacement that they have no control over. That can not be allowed under any circumstances. Their insane profits depend on it. You don't want to steal a second yacht from a nepo baby do you? After all, they deserve that second yacht because it is too painful to move their original yacht from the west coast to the east coast. They might have to wait... God forbid.
Why isn't it reversible? (Score:2)
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You are thinking like a techy, not a MBA marketer. Who cares if a few people die, Jeep has money to make!
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I'm only 41, so I don't think I can say I do remember HP not being run by MBAs. Sadly.
Okay, I feel better ... (Score:2)
This kind of stuff makes me feel better about keeping, and spending $$ to repaint, my 2002 Honda CR-V Ex, which only has 60k miles and is in excellent mechanical condition -- and has a manual transmission, which is almost impossible to get now. Same goes for my 2001 Honda Civic Ex, with only 130k miles. As a bonus, them being only a year apart, all the interior controls are nearly identical.
Newer isn't always better.
The more I hear of this happening (Score:3)
I am even less inclined to get a new car. I don't want to wait for a computer to boot up before I can drive away. I don't want a computer deciding what gear I should be in. I don't want a computer getting an update to my radio which bricks my ability to drive.
KISS is officially dead.
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I don't want to wait for a computer to boot up before I can drive away. I don't want a computer deciding what gear I should be in.
All cars since the late eighties have had the former and all cars with automatic transmissions since the nineties have the latter. Even where they have a linkage to a valve on the throttle body, there are still computer-controlled solenoids.
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Sucks to be you. In the coming year, not only is the computer mandated, but it also must slam on your brakes whenever it thinks the brakes should be applied regardless of the conditions around you. At least they are ABS slams, so you won't lose control most of the time; however, you are likely to get rear ended by older cars with drivers on their cell phones because of the unexpected stop.
It's not just the update (Score:1)
It seems like Jeep made a lemon even by their standards. Honestly I'm surprised anyone still buys the things. I guess they are coasting on the old reputa
My 2001 (Score:2)
My 2001 vehicle has been running flawlessly with the same software for 24 years now, no updates needed. Horrible to see that car manufacturers have entered their Windows 95 phase. Can't wait for their Windows Me phase. Holy hell.
Tesla Owner Rule #317 (Score:2)
Only install software updates when at home and you can be without the car.
Maybe not quite "bricked" (Score:3)
When a device is "bricked" that means it can't be repaired. I'm pretty sure these Jeeps will be possible to repair.
K)eep I)t S)imple S)tupid (Score:2)
What compensation will be paid ? (Score:2)
The car owners could be out of pocket for all sorts of reasons; will they be paid ?
* Did not get to the theatre, so unused tickets - not just the owner but others in the car. ...
* Missed a flight, so:
** booked & paid for hotel accommodation lost
** missed cruise ship leaving port
** missed your 60th birthday party to which 100 friends attended, most having travelled a long way, stayed in hotels,
* frozen food spoiled as it thawed on the way back from the shop
* 5 y/old daughter stranded at school, sh
Easy fix.... (Score:2)
Close all the windows, then reopen them. Repeat a few more times until the engine starts.
! A new definition appears! (Score:2)
Didn't "brick" used to mean "kill without any chance of recovery"? The key difference of "bricking" was the irrecersability , no?