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I've never seen a car stereo get a firmware update. Manufacturers seem to treat these as throwaway components. They're made once and forever sealed. Kind of

I've never seen a car stereo get a firmware update. Manufacturers seem to treat these as throwaway components. They're made once and forever sealed. Kind of crappy from the perspective of consumers and the environment. I guess what I've heard about eg. Tesla is a counterexample.

kodah 5y ago
My 2017 Ford Fusion does over wifi.
xxpor 5y ago
My ford focus did! For free! Shocking, I know. They added Android Auto and CarPlay support. There's at least a little bit of a spectrum between Tesla and the total dinosaurs.
bmelton 5y ago
Jeep Cherokee does so periodically, but Mopar is relatively well known for having a high quality infotainment system. This may be generally true for any infotainment systems running Android Auto / Apple CarPlay because they need to keep up with the features there, which almost necessitates having a developer team which will almost necessitate putting them to use sometimes
m463 5y ago
tesla doesn't have wonderful software updates though... The fixes they make are controversial and many times make things worse especially wrt the infotainment system. for example, the current system is just SO broken I don't know where to start. Ok, the USB audio system. You can listen to audio off of a USB flash drive. This is great because they came out with an expensive high fidelity sound system a few years back, and allowing FLAC or ALAC supported high quality uncompressed audio. otoh the USB software is horrendously broken, and updates have frequently made things worse. reference: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bug-list.77775/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bu... (a thread with > 2000 comments)
davewritescode 5y ago
This is really not true at all anymore. Mazda definitely does update their infotainment system. I actually upgraded my wife's 3 year old Mazda with CarPlay.
tclancy 5y ago
Well hang on there! When the Camaro v5 first came out (2009) there was a pretty decent online community and what we discovered was dealers were completely unready to handle software updating and versioning. At the time, iPod/ iPhone/ general mp3 player software kept having breaking updates, so being able to obtain car stereo updates was important but impossible for large portions of the user base. Which is how I wound up downloading 2 files from a person who apparently wrote the C# code for the radios and was saddened by the situation. The weirdest part was doing the upgrade: stick the files on two usb keys, turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key. I've thought about that level of ... security every time I read about some malicious car hack.
- runlevel1 5y ago
  > turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key I'm reminded of the farcical firmware reset procedure for C by GE Light Bulbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo Though, in GE's defense, light bulbs do have a pretty limited interface.
  - dwaltrip 5y ago
    Such a crazy process heh. I'm guessing it would cost too much to add a physical button for factory resetting?
  - xmprt 5y ago
    That video made me laugh. It almost sounds like a parody of a reset procedure. Every time you expect it to be done, he comes back with another cycle of off for 2 seconds and on for 8 seconds. It's also unfortunate that the dislike button stopped working on YouTube because I'd love to see how many people disliked that.
    - Noturos 5y ago
      Using the Return Youtube Dislike extension tells me that it is sitting at 12k dislikes to the 11k likes.
yupper32 5y ago
> Kind of crappy from the perspective of consumers and the environment. This is also how you get subscription services to keep it updated.
sleepybrett 5y ago
I worked at a place that did headunit software for like 15m. My understaning, most of the headunit software updates happen over cellular and aren't covered under the customers billing, the company eats those costs so they like those updates to be as small and as infrequent as possible. Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting.
- flutas 5y ago
  > Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting. Tesla uses Wi-Fi when possible, but for urgent updates they will push them over cellular at their own expense. Also, they somewhat have users paying for this by having the monthly $9.99 "premium connectivity" feature package. Though, it isn't required for the cellular connection to function for basic maps.
shadowofneptune 5y ago
I just got a firmware update, actually. It was categorized as a recall, which spooked me before I realized what it actually was.
quanticle 5y ago
My Subaru has received at least two OTA firmware updates. I think the reason most people don't think their cars get firmware updates is because a lot of cars hide the wifi connection dialogs and update download controls behind three or four layers of menus, so if you don't know to look for it (and aren't especially interested in poking around through the menus of your head-unit), it's off by default and you don't know it's there.
- judge2020 5y ago
  The side effect of this is that many people won't set up the Wi-Fi, so OTA would be reliant on LTE releases, if the car has one.
chrisseaton 5y ago
My Land Rover got an over-the-air update to add support for Amazon Alexa just the other day, completely out of the blue. It's not just luxury or tech cars that do this kind of thing these days.
- hhh 5y ago
  FWIW, I would consider all Land Rover vehicles luxury vehicles.
  - pmontra 5y ago
    The Defender is an off road work machine. I don't know if they have some new shiny model to drive where a normal car would do.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    I guess if you're in the UK they're just domestic vehicles you see everywhere, and they're treated as workhorses not luxury.
  - Grazester 5y ago
    Wouldn't that be the Range Rover now?
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Range Rover is a type of Land Rover.
      - Grazester 5y ago
        I get that but I don't think of Land Rovers as luxury oriented. It's specifically their Range Rover line of vehicles
        michaelt 5y ago
        Well, they're undoubtedly marketed differently, but IMHO it's a double-bluff. Range Rover markets directly to upper-middle-class suburbanites, and show off the leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels of shiny, clean cars. Land Rover markets 'adventure', shows cars fording rivers and crossing deserts, and offers optional winch, expedition roof rack and ladder. But they still offer leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels; and mostly sell to upper-middle-class suburbanites. To me they seem like extremely similar products, predominantly targeting the same demographic, just with different marketing.
mortenjorck 5y ago
My Kia's infotainment system got a firmware update, but it was not OTA. I actually had to pay to order an SD card with the update - but it was well worth it as it added CarPlay support.
- tentacleuno 5y ago
  What size was the SD card? Was it read only, or could you format it and use it for something else later on? Just curious :)
joshu 5y ago
my focus RS had an infotainment upgrade. it even dropped a file back on the USB stick which i then sent back to ford and it registered that the unit had been upgraded.
windows2020 5y ago
Wow, hold on a second... This also means random changes won't be forced upon you and they need to make the effort to get it right the first time.
- edude03 5y ago
  You’d hope that’s what it means but in practice they ship whatever they have by the deadline and often whatever they have means… “obscure bugs”
deelowe 5y ago
Can't or won't? Is it really impossible for them to develop a process to do a firmware update at the dealer? Even if that involves removing the radio... How do they program the radios at the factory?
joezydeco 5y ago
Mazda owner here. When I go in for standard maintenance the firmware will get updated if there's something available. What Mazda seems to discourage is owners bringing in their cars for the update only. They also can't really diagnose issues with the Connect hardware (they didn't build it) so doing a complete unit swap was their only established procedure for a system problem. They eventually added more diagnosis when all of the people hacking their units were bricking things and then asking for a free replacement.

kodah 5y ago

My 2017 Ford Fusion does over wifi.

xxpor 5y ago

My ford focus did! For free! Shocking, I know. They added Android Auto and CarPlay support. There's at least a little bit of a spectrum between Tesla and the total dinosaurs.

bmelton 5y ago

Jeep Cherokee does so periodically, but Mopar is relatively well known for having a high quality infotainment system. This may be generally true for any infotainment systems running Android Auto / Apple CarPlay because they need to keep up with the features there, which almost necessitates having a developer team which will almost necessitate putting them to use sometimes

m463 5y ago

tesla doesn't have wonderful software updates though... The fixes they make are controversial and many times make things worse especially wrt the infotainment system. for example, the current system is just SO broken I don't know where to start. Ok, the USB audio system. You can listen to audio off of a USB flash drive. This is great because they came out with an expensive high fidelity sound system a few years back, and allowing FLAC or ALAC supported high quality uncompressed audio. otoh the USB software is horrendously broken, and updates have frequently made things worse. reference: https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bug-list.77775/ https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/comprehensive-usb-bu... (a thread with > 2000 comments)

davewritescode 5y ago

This is really not true at all anymore. Mazda definitely does update their infotainment system. I actually upgraded my wife's 3 year old Mazda with CarPlay.

tclancy 5y ago

Well hang on there! When the Camaro v5 first came out (2009) there was a pretty decent online community and what we discovered was dealers were completely unready to handle software updating and versioning. At the time, iPod/ iPhone/ general mp3 player software kept having breaking updates, so being able to obtain car stereo updates was important but impossible for large portions of the user base. Which is how I wound up downloading 2 files from a person who apparently wrote the C# code for the radios and was saddened by the situation. The weirdest part was doing the upgrade: stick the files on two usb keys, turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key. I've thought about that level of ... security every time I read about some malicious car hack.

runlevel1 5y ago
> turn the car on, stick the first key in the one port, remove it, open the driver side door as an indicator and then finish with the second key I'm reminded of the farcical firmware reset procedure for C by GE Light Bulbs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BB6wj6RyKo Though, in GE's defense, light bulbs do have a pretty limited interface.
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  Such a crazy process heh. I'm guessing it would cost too much to add a physical button for factory resetting?
- xmprt 5y ago
  That video made me laugh. It almost sounds like a parody of a reset procedure. Every time you expect it to be done, he comes back with another cycle of off for 2 seconds and on for 8 seconds. It's also unfortunate that the dislike button stopped working on YouTube because I'd love to see how many people disliked that.
  - Noturos 5y ago
    Using the Return Youtube Dislike extension tells me that it is sitting at 12k dislikes to the 11k likes.

yupper32 5y ago

> Kind of crappy from the perspective of consumers and the environment. This is also how you get subscription services to keep it updated.

sleepybrett 5y ago

I worked at a place that did headunit software for like 15m. My understaning, most of the headunit software updates happen over cellular and aren't covered under the customers billing, the company eats those costs so they like those updates to be as small and as infrequent as possible. Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting.

flutas 5y ago
> Tesla maybe gets around this by using wifi when it's in the garage? Or perhaps the contracts on the tesla says that customers bare the cost of firmware updates that happen outside the service center setting. Tesla uses Wi-Fi when possible, but for urgent updates they will push them over cellular at their own expense. Also, they somewhat have users paying for this by having the monthly $9.99 "premium connectivity" feature package. Though, it isn't required for the cellular connection to function for basic maps.

shadowofneptune 5y ago

I just got a firmware update, actually. It was categorized as a recall, which spooked me before I realized what it actually was.

quanticle 5y ago

My Subaru has received at least two OTA firmware updates. I think the reason most people don't think their cars get firmware updates is because a lot of cars hide the wifi connection dialogs and update download controls behind three or four layers of menus, so if you don't know to look for it (and aren't especially interested in poking around through the menus of your head-unit), it's off by default and you don't know it's there.

judge2020 5y ago
The side effect of this is that many people won't set up the Wi-Fi, so OTA would be reliant on LTE releases, if the car has one.

chrisseaton 5y ago

My Land Rover got an over-the-air update to add support for Amazon Alexa just the other day, completely out of the blue. It's not just luxury or tech cars that do this kind of thing these days.

hhh 5y ago
FWIW, I would consider all Land Rover vehicles luxury vehicles.
- pmontra 5y ago
  The Defender is an off road work machine. I don't know if they have some new shiny model to drive where a normal car would do.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  I guess if you're in the UK they're just domestic vehicles you see everywhere, and they're treated as workhorses not luxury.
- Grazester 5y ago
  Wouldn't that be the Range Rover now?
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    Range Rover is a type of Land Rover.
    - Grazester 5y ago
      I get that but I don't think of Land Rovers as luxury oriented. It's specifically their Range Rover line of vehicles
      - michaelt 5y ago
        Well, they're undoubtedly marketed differently, but IMHO it's a double-bluff. Range Rover markets directly to upper-middle-class suburbanites, and show off the leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels of shiny, clean cars. Land Rover markets 'adventure', shows cars fording rivers and crossing deserts, and offers optional winch, expedition roof rack and ladder. But they still offer leather seats, fancy touchscreens and alloy wheels; and mostly sell to upper-middle-class suburbanites. To me they seem like extremely similar products, predominantly targeting the same demographic, just with different marketing.

mortenjorck 5y ago

My Kia's infotainment system got a firmware update, but it was not OTA. I actually had to pay to order an SD card with the update - but it was well worth it as it added CarPlay support.

tentacleuno 5y ago
What size was the SD card? Was it read only, or could you format it and use it for something else later on? Just curious :)

joshu 5y ago

my focus RS had an infotainment upgrade. it even dropped a file back on the USB stick which i then sent back to ford and it registered that the unit had been upgraded.

windows2020 5y ago

Wow, hold on a second... This also means random changes won't be forced upon you and they need to make the effort to get it right the first time.

edude03 5y ago
You’d hope that’s what it means but in practice they ship whatever they have by the deadline and often whatever they have means… “obscure bugs”

deelowe 5y ago

Can't or won't? Is it really impossible for them to develop a process to do a firmware update at the dealer? Even if that involves removing the radio... How do they program the radios at the factory?

joezydeco 5y ago

Mazda owner here. When I go in for standard maintenance the firmware will get updated if there's something available. What Mazda seems to discourage is owners bringing in their cars for the update only. They also can't really diagnose issues with the Connect hardware (they didn't build it) so doing a complete unit swap was their only established procedure for a system problem. They eventually added more diagnosis when all of the people hacking their units were bricking things and then asking for a free replacement.