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Ask HN: Should an auto's warranty period apply to the car's software?
After using Apple Car Play for almost seven years it my VW Golf, it stopped working, with a message that said: "If you wish to use App Connect, please purchase an access code from your VW Dealer".
This was something I had never heard of, so I called the dealer, and they said "it's a glitch, bring the car in". It was due for a service anyway, so I took it in. When I got the bill, there was a $99 item for labor to "fix" App Connect. The rep said the car was no longer under warranty. I refused to pay: in my mind this is a software bug, not ware and tare, and so warranty rules do not apply. Luckily, they waved a bill.
So here is the ask: If a car's software is buggy, and the bug only manifests itself after the warranty has expired, should the owner have to pay for the repair?
- Tanoc 4y agoI see it as no different from maintaining old software. Either keep it going yourself (by breaking the copyright protection or bypassing user restrictions), or you pay to get it fixed or find another working copy. I wouldn't expect free help from the company for a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 considering CS6 is ten years old at this point. This seems less like a warranty issue and more like a lemon law issue. The problem is there's no easy way into this software like there is with personal computers. And most annoyingly most of it's in a proprietary ROM. Unlike an old copy of VLC that someone can download off the internet and modify, pulling and modifying the music playback software running on their car's infotainment system is nearly impossible. Because it's not on the CANBUS or OBD-II so they can't get to it via the car's main systems, it's some strange standalone with unique implementations that they would need to spend months learning how to engineer a replacement for, and they have no way of reflashing the ROM or performing the even simpler task of just saving the new software to onboard storage.
- suddenclarity 4y agoWhat are you proposing? That software should be up to date and working for all eternity without the user paying a cent past the purchase price? EU rules state that software is included in the warranty but it doesn't extend seven years.
- herodotus 4y agoFair enough, except that nothing in the onboard computer has changed since I bought the car. So one possibility is that there was some random error in storage, or I hit a time bomb that was part of the original software.
- jaclaz 4y agoI don't think that it is "completely" random, in the sense that the message is telling something (maybe the exact way it is worded may make a difference), if it is actually "If you wish to use App Connect, please purchase an access code from your VW Dealer" it implies some form of intention to make the user pay (before or later) for use of the feature. The "normal" error message should be more like "App Connect malfunction, please visit your VW dealer".
- herodotus 4y agoI think when they designed the software they left in the option for the possibility of charging for App Connect, but in practice decided not to do that.
- Tanoc 4y agoYou might've also run into the end of the free trial period. I know Toyota and Lexus give you two years of Sirius free from the time of purchase, and GM gives you OnStar Advanced Features for one year. Ford's 3G package in the Escape, F-150, and Flex was for three years, and I think their 4G package is for two. Alternatively there might've been a firmware update that accidentally set a trial period that previously went unactivated. It's not unheard of, like when GM accidentally introduced a bug that kicked people out of Spotify and wouldn't let them log in because the car didn't think the user had active data.