20 ms·

Tell HN: 3G sunsetting is remotely killing every Subaru Outback battery

454 points by siftrics 3y ago

Subaru partnered with a service called STARLINK which shares your location in the event of collisions, among other things. STARLINK intermittently tries to phone home by hitting 3G towers. Now that 3G is shutting down, the digital communications module (DCM) gets stuck in an infinite loop of 1. Phone home, expending battery charge 2. Fail, because 3G doesn't work anymore 3. Go back to step 1 This effectively remotely drains the battery of every Subaru Outback built between 2015 and 2020. Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it. Other models are probably affected, too. There was a class action lawsuit. But this is a pretty egregious engineering oversight, given they were still producing defective cars in 2020, hardly two years before 3G flipped off. Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Why should 3G towers have anything to do with my car being able to start?

kenaz 3y ago
Is this just Outback, or other Subaru models with STARLINK?
mouse_ 3y ago
No, IoT is here to stay. Makes way too much money.
manuelabeledo 3y ago
They offered a free upgrade a couple years ago.
- siftrics 3y ago
  I'd rather skip the free upgrade and just have a car that works.
  - wmf 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - adastra22 3y ago
      I don't think you know what that word means.
- Someone1234 3y ago
  I didn't/don't have a "free upgrade?" Are you talking about this battery fault or 3G upgrade to 4G+ for people who PAY for Starlink, that's only a tiny subset of the owners. Also, that free upgrade for current Starlink subscribers expired two years ago.
  - manuelabeledo 3y ago
    Wouldn’t the upgrade fix the battery issue? Anyway, I didn’t upgrade (have an aftermarket radio), and my battery works just fine. In fact, the car stayed parked for two months in the Texas summer, and started just fine.
uberman 3y ago
"Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it." How do you figure this? Seems unlikely to me that a 15 min drive would not bring a car batter drained my occasional failed phone connections back to full
- siftrics 3y ago
  It's a well-documented phenomenon. You can Google it. The thing drains your battery precipitously.
  - gruez 3y ago
    That still sounds suspect. Surely there are areas that don't have 3g coverage? For instance, underground parking garages or rural areas (especially in western US). These aren't common use cases, but common enough that they surely would have garnered press/media attention back when 3G was working. I vaguely remember a story about how a rental car was trapped in an underground garage because it couldn't get the unlock code. Why are we only hearing about it now? Moreover, surely those incidents would have caused them to fix the issue?
    - vanilla_nut 3y ago
      I own a Subaru Crosstrek from this same era, it definitely has the Starlink bits in the cockpit ceiling. There must be more to this story. I've parked that car in an underground parking garage with absolutely no signal on any carrier for at least 2 weeks straight (likely more) with no issue. I've parked it for days at trailheads and wild camping spots around the High Rockies where there's also no signal. I 100% believe that the Starlink module is poorly programmed, reliant on false assumptions of 3G always existing, and capable of draining the battery. But I would really love to know why that's never happened to me.
      - avianlyric 3y ago
        It could be that the modem can still see the phone tower, but its handshake to create a 3G connection fails, which it then retries indefinitely. That would be different to having no signal whatsoever, where modem wakes up, listens for a tower, concludes there’s nothing there and goes back to sleep again. That would explain why this issue is only cropping up now that 3G is being turned off, and how this scenario was missed by engineers. They assumed there was either a tower they could communicate with, or nothing. They didn’t account for a perfectly good tower being available, advertising itself as a recognisable network, but refusing to handshake.
userinanother 3y ago
Can you pull the breaker or cut the wire. Seems like it would be a simple ish hack but maybe access issues
- siftrics 3y ago
  I ended up pulling the DCM fuse, but it comes at the cost of no microphone for phone calls and voice commands and no front speakers (and obviously no STARLINK).
  - dprice1 3y ago
    I did the same after having a shop investigate the drain. They didn't put all of the pieces together as the OP did, but they pointed to the fuse and told me I could pull it.
  - janci 3y ago
    You can probably easily rewire DCM from always-on to ignition-on. No battery drain and working equipment.
    - aaronmdjones 3y ago
      Yep, you just need to move the fuse to a portion that's wired through a relay. Some engine bay fuse boxes have spare relay and fuse positions to add these kinds of things; otherwise you can buy a small automotive fusebox and a relay and a couple dollars in cable and crimp connectors and then you just need to find somewhere to mount it, likely above the outside of the glovebox or such.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- metadat 3y ago
  15 minutes isn't a sufficient amount of time to reliably recharge a drained ICE car battery. Ask any tow truck driver. Edit: Cool, apparently you've completely changed your comment. No worries, it happens. The original comment read something like "I don't believe this, a 15 minute drive is more than sufficient to recharge my battery." Edit: Shit, my bad, thank you @clippy, this is the second time I've made this mistake in as many days.
ashirviskas 3y ago
I just found out my country also started deprecating 3G last year and will deprecate 2G in 2025. That is a bit sad, as I've just powered on some old 2G phones and they seemed to work just fine, but I guess it allows us to move forward without the tech debt.
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  Tech debt in this case seems like artificial scarcity
  - toast0 3y ago
    Lack of spectrum and/or tower sites is real scarcity. LTE and 5G are supposed to be better able to share spectrum, to the point where they can share the control channel, and multiplex the data channels with either encoding, but 2g and 3g can't do that, so you have to dedicate at least minimum sized blocks. Running one min block on 2G does wonderful things for ensuring access, but it's expensive in spectrum, especially if each network needs to do it. (Because cooperating between networks is really only a thing if mandated, or out in rural areas where there's little demand)
  - imtringued 3y ago
    Do you still use dial up?
clnq 3y ago
This is because large corporations must provide infinite growth to their investors, or a good number of them will dump the stock and raising investment might become very hard. For the sake of infinite growth, many lines have been crossed and many decisions that make no sense if not looked through the lens of money have been made. I think companies will start doing truly unethical things in the pursuit of this in the future. What if the dashboard could show ads before the car starts? It’s just a second of your time. What if a gas station network like Circle K could sponsor your car so it tells you to get a specific type of gasoline? Why not subscription for “optional” safety features that were standard? Why not a way to remotely disable cars with a warning light on the dash “for your own safety” until they visit a certified dealer? Why not coded car parts so the customer gets a “genuine product” and doesn’t “accidentally” install a cheaper generic counterpart? Why not pay as you go features instead of paying upfront? Why not track places you drive to with your car, the conversations you have in it, the people you call, and whether you drive with your wife and/or kids for behavioural advertising elsewhere? What about an eco mode subscription that saves you money when compared to not buying it, despite that it is always free with cars today? Maybe we could also disable some people’s cars to align with certain political demographics and identities, like we cancel, deplatform, and get people fired for slights online now? Could that paint us in a positive light in certain demographics? One client lost for a thousand gained! Maybe an auto-911 crash detection subscription? You wouldn’t want to be the mother whose kid dies in a car crash so you’d save $19.99 a month, would you? Anything if it moves more cars or at a higher marginal revenue, right? And let’s not forget marginal costs - what could be cheaper? Maybe some parts are too durable. A lot of things could be digital - break lines, steering, the accelerator, door locks, seat belt mechanisms, mirrors and so on. And we could save doubly by outsourcing all this work to the cheapest bidder, whether they specialize in automotive safety or web design. Anything for the sake of growth. And it’s coming. Sooner or later, there won’t be a company in the auto industry providing appealing returns unless they charge their users more, exploit them more, or save up for a nicer dividend by cutting some corners. Not today, not this year, maybe not in the immediate future. But this is the natural conclusion of the flavor of capitalism we do. I don’t blame capitalism for everything. It’s good for a lot of things. But it totally fails humanity when large corporations are involved. We should change it before a bunch of our industries collapse under their self-destructive behaviors driven by greed. Because right now, a good investment strategy is to constantly keep investing in companies who irreparably harm themselves and their customers long-term for a quick buck. You just need to build your portfolio of these and dump them once their sell-out is over. And this makes money. An investor would be unwise not to pick a money-making strategy. It is in everyone’s best capitalistic interest to exploit others to the max. And when all that could be exploited is, well… no one managing companies thinks about this. The investors want returns now, all the time. The executives know how to sell-out for this and golden-parachute into the next company to do it all again. The employees are laid off and customers are mistreated, but hey - capitalism is to acquire capital. It’s not called moralism.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
bicepjai 3y ago
I had the battery failing recently. Took it to the service, they did not know what the reason was and said they would test the whole car to find where the drain happens for 500 USD. I was about to drop it off next week and I read this. So is there any official help from Subaru ?
- tjoff 3y ago
  Supposedly just removing the fuse could do it (and recharge the battery completely if it hasn't been drained beyond saving). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829
CrendKing 3y ago
Maybe you could disconnect the battery cable every time you stop, and reconnect before you go?
- DavidPeiffer 3y ago
  In older vehicles that would reset the clock. No idea what impact it'd have on a more modern car than what I drive though.
  - gecko 3y ago
    It'll reset the engine control unit (ECU), which will cause your car to run rough constantly as the computer has to relearn how to adjust the engine tuning from scratch every drive. You'd be better served using a trickle charger.
    - RunningDroid 3y ago
      Resetting the ECU will also cause the vehicle to fail inspection unless it's driven long enough beforehand. (Here in Upstate NY, anyway)
    - garyfirestorm 3y ago
      that is not how ECUs function Some Transmission Controllers will adjust to driver behavior, however engine controller default behavior shouldn't cause 'rough' experience I worked in automotive testing for over 10 years and constantly measured and analyzed vibration data on vehicles. Many prototype vehicle batteries die due to early release software that causes parasitic drain and I have never noticed any rough behavior just because the battery died and got replaced. There are many sensors and closed loop control systems that monitor strange engine behavior and adjust timing. This happens very quickly within few engine rotations. If there was an issue you would notice it for at the most for couple of seconds.
      - mianos 3y ago
        Yes, it's a closed loop. The O2 sensor in the exhaust rapidly adjusts the mixture. The whole 'learning' the air fuel mixture to adjust the stoichiometric ratio over a longer period of time does not make any sense. You have the air mass, O2, fuel, temperature and sometimes more, you can calculate the mixture near instantly. Maybe someone way back said you have to warm the car up and that takes a few minutes. Modern fuel maps achieve a fair idle from near dead cold. It's a solved problem.
seeg 3y ago
That's pretty lame. What IP you wanted to drive where there is no cell connectivity rt all, say Mongolia?
- thriftwy 3y ago
  Seems that your battery would fail when you need it the most: namely, in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage.
  - siftrics 3y ago
    Ironically, it seems that this only happens when you are within service. Another commenter speculated that when you're out of service, the software correctly identifies that there is no tower to connect to and stops trying. But when you're in service, the code repeatedly tries to do the 3G handshake because it can see a valid tower.
    - thriftwy 3y ago
      It may happen with a lot of devices if 3G appears browned out to them and not just plain unavailable.
- tjoff 3y ago
  Or the park in a garage with no coverage? One can only hope that "smart" will have very bad associations in the future (for the general public).
  - arcanemachiner 3y ago
    If it doesn't already (or 5 years ago...), then I don't have much hope for the future.
- siftrics 3y ago
  There are huge swaths of areas with no service in the US that people regularly visit.
ksec 3y ago
This is strange. I know a lot of countries are sunsetting 3G and 2G in terms of consumer mobile usage. But they leave IoT alone for a few more years because of contract and money in it.
- LASR 3y ago
  Spectrum is a limited and highly contested resource. There is very likely no way for 3G to coexist just for IoT.
- rvdmei 3y ago
  It’s contract only, mobile carriers are not happy that they have to maintain the 3G equipment just for IoT.
totetsu 3y ago
This seems to be a very common type of software bug. On fail retry, without any limits of how frequent or how many time.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  If only there was a simple way to exponentially limit your retries and back off a bit when the other side is constantly failing.
  - wincy 3y ago
    You mean the concept I learned week three as a junior developer (thanks to great mentorship)? Yeah, probably absolutely impossible.
    - hirsin 3y ago
      You're lucky. I've seen entire engineering orgs convinced of the opposite, and highly resistant to improvement.
  - clnq 3y ago
    Exponential back-off is fancy. There are a million repeating behaviors in a large automotive codebase. Maybe it's too arduous to code up exponential back-off for all. Even if you have a simple library to do it, it could introduce some complexity. But it's quite easy to set timers to attempt things at regular intervals, rather than in an infinite loop until they succeed. One attempt every 5 seconds (assuming a 5-second timeout for the request) is 17,280 attempts a day. One attempt every 5 minutes is 288 attempts a day. One attempt every 15 minutes is 96 attempts a day. A simple repeating timer is a fantastic solution. Does the car need to always send telemetry immediately? Can there be a 15-minute latency? If so, just put that on a timer and enjoy 99.4% power savings for offline cars, with basically the same quality of telemetry when they're online. But what if a car needs to send telemetry at a given moment? Just move up the next timer function call. But what if I want to get telemetry when the 3G signal is intermittent and briefly available? Just call the function once the 3G signal is available. Do this with a separate cool-down for this behavior. But what if I need telemetry every second? Just dump all telemetry events into a buffer between successful sends, slap a timestamp on those events, and you can now send data for the past X hours all at once. Even from the black spots. There are so many options (even less fancy than exp back-off), but this was probably built by a junior programmer without any support network. This feels like a very common lack-of-experience mistake that would be caught in code review if the reviewer cared.
lathiat 3y ago
Somewhat related in 2006 I had a Motorola A1000, very early iPhone sized full screen smart phone with Stylus. I took it to New Zealand on roaming and despite having a connection it spent so much time looking for the home network (“Three” in Australia) the battery would last half a day.
SanjayMehta 3y ago
A compelling reason to avoid “connected cars.” Better to go with one which pairs with your phone if you even need this functionality.
- sshine 3y ago
  Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency over time. I work with batteries in the EV industry (not inside cars, though, but lithium-iron-phosphate), and the list of planned improvements is not short. There’s a gap between when a product is ready to be used and when most of the known optimisations are done. And there’s a big risk factor with the company suddenly deciding to depreciate your thing. I try to only have only “dumb” appliances in my home: kitchen, washing, lighting. If I couldn’t avoid buying with wifi, it doesn’t get enabled.
  - JoshTriplett 3y ago
    > Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency over time. Then ask for wifi credentials, or ask to connect through a phone. If I don't connect a device, it's because the device is not allowed to be connected. Any device that thinks it's important enough to ship with its own SIM card using an account I don't control, rather than putting the user in full control of connectivity, is a device I will never purchase.
simonebrunozzi 3y ago
Until car companies are sued to the tunes of hundred of millions for something like this, their attitude will never change. Sigh.
- tomohawk 3y ago
  Are you sure giving even more money and power to trial lawyers is going to solve anything? There are already these people we already pay taxes for in DC at the DOT who have the power to require a recall. Call your representative, tell them what's going on, and ask them what the DOT is going to do about it. It'll take 30m of your time.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  Subaru did settle a class action lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ The settlement is pathetic. I could never prove the parasitic battery drain on my 2017 forester, so I just had the OEM audio/starlink system replaced with a cheap Sony CarPlay head unit and the problem went away. But I cannot get reimbursed since I have no proof, even though surely every car manufactured with those components has a parasitic battery drain.
Lio 3y ago
I would get the battery replaced at a main Subaru dealer. Then keep coming back to get the battery replaced when it "fails to hold charge". If every owner did that it would end up like the region restriction in DVD players. i.e. The retailers would force the manufactures to turn it off because they don't want to deal with the cost of fixing an artificial problem. Oh and I would start posting to car websites and forums about how unreliable my car was. Marketing teams do care about getting that reputation.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  You can’t, the battery will pass the battery tests every time. And who has time to go to a dealership over and over. There is no money in it for them, and you are wasting valuable time. You can fix the problem yourself by getting the head unit replaced with any CarPlay/androud audio one at a car stereo shop for $1,500 and move on with your life.
  - chrisandchris 3y ago
    Great solution for this problem: Go fix it with $1'500 - which is a lot of money -, for something you paid and someone else is responsible for breaking it.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      Life isn’t fair sometimes. This thing even went though the courts and somehow the onus is still on the buyer to prove something was wrong, when it is clearly a design issue. https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ I guess there is enough noise around the issue these days to get the dealer to properly fix it, but back in 2019/2020, no one believed you had a tiny power drain, and it would have been very costly to prove it (including time), and then who knows if you could litigate successfully. Hell, if the power drain was only happening while not able to connect to 3G, the issue would be so location specific/sporadic enough, that good luck proving it even to yourself.
  - SkyPuncher 3y ago
greenyoda 3y ago
I searched for Subaru Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs) mentioning "STARLINK", and found this one: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/WQZ-61R https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/WQZ-61R It mentions a "3G Sunset Update". A further search for "3G Sunset" turned up a few TSBs that apply to various Subaru models and years. You can search for TSBs here: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru
- Someone1234 3y ago
  I'll skip ahead and tell you what you'll eventually find: - Subaru has a fix for this issue. - Subaru's fix has dealerships use proprietary software to put the DCM module into "factory mode" (suspended). - It will also have dealerships physically disconnect the Starlink-related buttons (e.g. SOS), because if they're pushed it will "wake up" the DCM. - There is no assurance the DCM won't wake up again on its own (it has its own backup battery which can fail). - Getting dealerships to conduct the above fix is a giant pain in the butt, and they'll charge you hundreds of dollars. Few customers have even got that far, most just get an expensive "diagnostics" bill with absolutely nothing to show for it. Most won't do the repair unless you can "prove" a problem, even though it is more work to prove the problem than to proactively conduct the repair. - Subaru won't release the software, so you can do it yourself.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hinkley 3y ago
    Condensed further: there’s no recall to fix it during maintenance milestones, and they aren’t paying for the workaround, which is a shitty one. Therefore, lawyers.
    - joshmanders 3y ago
      Condensed even further: Join the class action lawsuit.
    - garyfirestorm 3y ago
rootsudo 3y ago
Just pull the fuse and be done with it, not that hard.
- dewey 3y ago
  Ah yea, make the consumer go through the pain of keeping that in mind and doing that every day and not blame the big corporation just silently breaking their product with seemingly no repercussions until now.
  - rootsudo 3y ago
    Not a big deal, you pull the fuse you don't do it everyday - you can also just unplug the module. Also not a big deal.
    - anonn77 3y ago
      Sod that for a game of soldiers
    - dewey 3y ago
      The solution to the problem is companies not doing such a thing and being made responsible. Just because it’s easy for some people to do you can’t expect everyone to 1) know about this issue (Remember, there wasn’t an official announcement or recall) and 2) be confident enough to modify something on their car. Most people never do anything on their care and just bring it to the service for every small thing.
  - rootsudo 3y ago
    literally pop the hood and remove a fuse - https://youtube.com/shorts/y8xxT3bVf6I?feature=shared https://youtube.com/shorts/y8xxT3bVf6I?feature=shared less than one minute. and now you aren't trackable. win/win.
    - giantg2 3y ago
      This should be the top comment for this post. I wish there was a way to do that. Or maybe @dang could help.
tetrti7475 3y ago
This is called parasitic battery drain. There are two low tech solutions: - install small solar panel behind back window. That will trickle charge battery, and will counter ballance drain - hard switch off on battery, disconnect battery everytime car is not used for couple of days (weekend).
- forward1 3y ago
  Easier solution: get a 120V trickle charger and plug it in when your car is parked. Batteries love being constantly topped up anyway. NOCO is a good brand I use for my stored vehicles with AGM batteries.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    Doesn't solve the problem for anyone who doesn't park in a private garage.
- MerManMaid 3y ago
  Am I wrong in thinking another potential low tech solution might be to just remove the cellular radio? To be clear, I'm asking more than anything as I have very little car knowledge but to me that seems like a more preferable solution long term than frequently having to physically disconnect your car battery.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    Yeah, probably a viable solution to just disconnect its cellular antenna (though it could easily be a PCB antenna, in which case... x-acto knife I guess)
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      How will that help the issue that the module keeps waking up and trying to send data until it succeeds?
      - 3y ago
block_dagger 3y ago
This probably explains recent battery issues on my 2022 Outback. Took it in, they admitted it happens frequently but didn’t explain. Replaced with larger battery for free.
- cobertos 3y ago
  Oh no, I hope it doesn't extend to that model year. I just bought a 2023 and saw posts about battery issues before I bought and was a little worried I might end up with the same thing.
  - swalberg 3y ago
    Just bought a 2023 Forester, no problems yet but wondering if this problem is just for the Outback?
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  2022 Outback does not use 3G. Subaru have had battery drain issues for about a decade now across more than one model and generation.
CrankyBear 3y ago
It's not just Subaru. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39301678/3g-internet-sunset-cars/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39301678/3g-internet-suns...
adambatkin 3y ago
Can confirm. Had 3 or 4 batteries replaced (under warranty) before the local dealership informed me that "some DCMs cause parasitic battery drain". I brought it in, they ran some sort of test, and ordered me a new DCM (also under warranty). It took a while for the part to arrive, so they pulled the fuse. As other posters have noted, it took out one of the speakers (music sounded only mostly normal) and both the mic and speaker for Bluetooth comms were dead. Previously, there were times that I would drive 100 miles one day, and I couldn't even open the doors using the automatic locks on the following day. It's been about a month on the new DCM and so far I haven't had any issues, so here's hoping...
op00to 3y ago
I have a 2017 Subaru with STARLINK. It works just fine. It does run the battery down if the key is close enough to the car to wake it up, but far enough away that the signal is broken and the car goes back to sleep. Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the door instead of next to the door solved that problem.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I have a 2017 Subaru forester touring 2.0, and replacing the head unit with a cheap Sony CarPlay one fixed my problem. We changed nothing with where we place the keys. Not once has the battery died after that, and it has been ~3 years. With the OEM starlink head unit, we would need to jump start every single week. Needless to say, Subaru’s lack of willingness to compensate us lost them a customer for life.
  - Kon-Peki 3y ago
    If the DCM is in the headunit, that seems plausible. What one did you get?
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      I got this one: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-6-2-apple-carplay-built-in-bluetooth-in-dash-digital-media-receiver-black/6283607.p?skuId=6283607 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-6-2-apple-carplay-built-in... It works fine, but if I were to do it again, I would have bought a better quality one with a bigger and more responsive touchscreen. I cheaped out because I did not know if the new head unit would fix the battery drain issue, and if it didn’t fix the issue I was going to get rid of the car.
- resoluteteeth 3y ago
  > Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the door instead of next to the door solved that problem. Do you mean the key? Otherwise how are you moving the battery?
  - 3y ago
hulkmusic 3y ago
I have a 2016 Subaru Forester with a seemingly parasitic drain issue. Every time I go to start the car, it's like rolling the dice whether it has enough battery power to fully start. I have a portable jump starter that I've had to use at least 20 times or so in the last couple of years. This has been happening even well before the 3G sunset period, so that is not the only source of the battery drain problem, for which there is a class action lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/. Everything I've read online about the issue points to the STARLINK system, and the common wisdom in this thread and elsewhere is to pull the DCM fuse. Unfortunately, my Forester has no such fuse, so I'm at a loss what to do with my car. It's so frustrating, because my wife has a Subaru Crosstrek of the same year that has never had a battery problem, even with the OEM battery. She has a base model without any additional "upgraded" electronics, so that's the likely culprit in my case. I'm currently on my third or fourth higher CCA battery and had to jump it again a few days ago. I haven't taken my car to the dealer for the parasitic drain issue, but previously tried to get dealership service for an unrelated entertainment system issue related to USB media playback freezing up the entertainment system. That fix was unsuccessful, and I have no faith in Subaru mechanics being able to diagnose and fix a potentially more nebulous battery drain issue. It doesn't help that the dealership is now 45 minutes away, so I'm not interested in wasting even more time on a hit and miss solution. Ironically, I bought Subaru because reliability was my number one concern when purchasing a vehicle, and I'm not sure I would do that again.
- SigmundA 3y ago
  I just went through something similar with my vehicle, had a relatively new expensive AGM battery about halfway through its 3 year warranty. Would not start if left for 4-5 days which slowly crept down to 2 days. Seemed like a parasitic draw but pulling fuses and using a multimeter verified idle draw at 30 milliamps which is within spec. If you find high like a few hundred milliamps you can start pulling fuses to narrow down offending item. In the end it was a bad a battery, but was difficult to get the warranty replacement because it could be charged and work again so long as you ran it every day. It's relatively easy to verify parasitic draw and make sure it's in that 30 milliamp range, with even a cheap multimeter by disconnecting negative and running through multimeter. Tricky part with modern cars is getting it to go fully to sleep, anything can trigger wake up (like opening the door) and it can take a few minutes for it to fully sleep to idle draw.
cushpush 3y ago
What's the [sustained] financial incentive to produce an unbreakable product?
- ironmagma 3y ago
  The only way you're going to get this is through pride, be that national pride (nationalism) or professional pride. It requires care for the opposite party in the buyer-seller transaction, which the free market is essentially allergic to.
- dv_dt 3y ago
  There is a financial incentive to be reliable enough to at least make it to the next sale with your reputation intact. Especially if it’s on a feature that I would guess was paired with a higher end trim which implies higher end customers.
- KirillPanov 3y ago
  You get to be the largest and most-profitable carmaker, aka Toyota. I only buy used cars, and past the ~7-year-old range used Toyotas routinely cost about twice as much as any other brand for equivalent model/mileage/condition. Yet I still pay the markup because every time I work on mine I am astonished by the fanatical obsession they have with reliability. I'm sure this value retention is reflected in the profit margin on new Toyotas.
bsbdbkeks66554 3y ago
there’s another design flaw in the outback where the battery drains if you have the rear lift gate open too long. happened to me the day i was moving my family out of state and loading up the car all day, we were about to leave and the battery was totally drained. later looked it up and its apparently a common issue
Noumenon72 3y ago
I just paid $98 for a tow last week for a 2015 Outback that went so dead the doors wouldn't open. They said my year-old battery was mysteriously worn down so I bought a new one. Is this a different Starlink from the Elon Musk one?
- imadethis 3y ago
  Yes, Subaru Starlink is their remote connection platform that uses cellular. No relation to Musk.
nzealand 3y ago
According to Subaru's website & TRB, this only impacts vehicles from 2016-2018 https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/15-291-22 https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/15-291-22
- siftrics 3y ago
  Mine's a 2019 and pulling the DCM fuse resolved my problems. Could be unrelated, but I feel obligated to share.
  - nzealand 3y ago
    Did you lose bluetooth or front speakers?
    - siftrics 3y ago
      Front speakers and microphone are lost. Bluetooth audio still works. I can still stream music over Bluetooth.
Kon-Peki 3y ago
I’m pretty certain that the battery lawsuit happened before the 3g shutdown. So while I totally believe this is killing batteries, I also believe that these cars have more electrical problems than just this.
mjan22640 3y ago
How difficult is to make a 3g proxy, something like the Stingray? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker
morkalork 3y ago
Kind of crazy that they push the whole outdoorsy camping image in all their ads and build something so flawed. How does that work? Go explore the great outdoors but don't go too far, or you're battery is gonna die if there's no cellphone service? I don't know about the US but it's not hard to go that far out in Canada!
- siftrics 3y ago
  Yeah this was actually pretty scary for me because I do go car camping in very remote places with no service at all. Luckily I'm fully prepared for my car not being able to start. It's just sad because I bought a Subaru because it's supposed to be a reliable, outdoor adventure car. To see it fail this way is just sad.
- amatecha 3y ago
  Yeah, I live in Vancouver and I can get to a no-cell-service location in like, 30 minutes. This is blatantly inexcusable.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  For real. The real scandal here isn't that this is happening as 3G is phased out -- it's that it was always a problem whenever you drove anywhere without cell coverage. Which is precisely when keeping a working battery is most important, since you can't call for help, being in an area without cell coverage!
- cf100clunk 3y ago
  2018 Outback owner here. A truly outdoorsy driver will always carry booster (a.k.a. jumper) cables and/or a boosting-charging pack if the vehicle doesn't have a manual transmission and no other vehicles are likely to be around. I would never go even slightly off road in my Outback without a boosting-charging pack amongst my other gear. A manual transmission has allowed me to bump-start dead vehicles many times over the years, but not this automatic model. Anyways, Subaru needs to get this all cleared up.
smoyer 3y ago
This is also happening with my (old) Mercedes SUV.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
3G sunsetting fking over cars is not exclusive to Subaru. My 2017 lexus was also hit by this.
otterley 3y ago
Subaru has published a Technical Service Bulletin that appears to offer a free firmware update to switch the Starlink system to use VoLTE. Affected vehicles are: 2016-18MY Legacy/Outback 2016-18MY Impreza 2016-18MY Crosstrek 2016-18MY Forester 2017-18MY WRX See https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10189606-0001.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10189606-0001.pdf for details. And, yes, Subaru is reimbursing dealers for this work.
- WirelessGigabit 3y ago
  That's actually pretty amazing, and luckily the modules support VoLTE. BMW modules only supported 3G (they were older though).
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    There isn't really such a thing as a module that only supports 3G... Anything could support the minimum needed to connect to an LTE network with the right software update, but modem chipset makers don't make any money rewriting old firmware for old chipsets, so they refuse to rewrite the firmware to support lte.
    - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
      I did not know this. Now knowing this, could we (theoretically) update the firmware of an iPhone 3G so it works on a 4G network?
      - londons_explore 3y ago
        Yes. But beware that doing so is probably multiple man-years worth of effort.
      - dublin 3y ago
        Probably not. In general, this sort of thing is buried in the often unchangeable microcode of an RF ASIC. (Which makes sense, after all, the vendor is selling an RF modem for a specific band/modulation capability - they don't expect it to change, certainly not after they've built/configured it.) If that's the case (as is common), then there is really nothing to update, short of scraping off that chip or module and replacing the hardware.
RecycledEle 3y ago
Please allow me to suggest engineering fixes: 1. All vehicles with 12v starter batteries should also have deep cycle batteries to power the accessories. Chevy Suburbans had that for decades, but some people laughed at vehicles designed to actually run and drive. That's fine. Enjoy the vehicle you picked. 2. It's my car darn it. Any and all communication with it needs to be easily read by my in plain English. I also need to be able to veto any communication, in an easy-to-use, plain English system. This second option would require legislation. The new law should apply to everything made. If the owner is also the operator, then the owner can read and veto all communications. 3. In the interest of national security, all products made must have a minimum of reliance on the outside world. Those connections that do exist must be as standard as possible. Once against, this requires legislation.Any device that refuses to operate without an Internet connection should be illegal. Phone-home DRam should be illegal. We get what we deserve. The only downside to my ancient pickup truck is that I have to clean the hybrids out of the wheel wells about twice a month.
- hedora 3y ago
  We had an older gmc, and it was great. A newer one came from the factory with a bug that would zero the battery in under eight hours sometimes (it left the ABS on). This happened on the first tank of gas. The local chevy dealer refused to fix it and claimed our warranty was void at ~ 125 miles because the dealer we bought it from new had installed some counterfeit electrical components. (There was a factory recall for our exact problem) That was the least of that truck’s problems. Never buying a GM product again. Also, the old v8 GMC had a carburetor, but still had better fuel economy than the new v8 GMC with fuel injection and that turned off half the cylinders when possible. Our Ram is slightly better, but still pretty damn bad vs the old GMC. I’d recommend any other brand over GM or Stellantis at this point.
scarface_74 3y ago
So instead of complaining on HN, it was a simple Google search to find out that Subaru has already offered a free repair for affected vehicles.
- amatecha 3y ago
  You went through the trouble of searching about it, finding results, and then commenting here, but not including the link(s) you found? o_O
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    Someone had already posted links. I just wanted to do the grumpy, snarky old man thing…
    - netllama 3y ago
      Irrelevant. You could have provided the link as a decent human being. Instead you decide to get into a petty argument?
      - scarface_74 3y ago
        It was literally the next comment down. They didn’t even have to Google it. It’s that whole “teach a man to fish”. If you have a problem is the first thing you do not go on to Google?
WirelessGigabit 3y ago
How is 3G turning off different from people parking their car underground and not driving it for a week?
- Ographer 3y ago
  It seems that the battery only drains when it is within range of a cell tower. Another commenter speculated that when you're out of service, the software correctly identifies that there is no tower to connect to and stops trying. But when you're in service, the code repeatedly tries to do the 3G handshake because it can see a valid tower.
  - throwawayfour 3y ago
    This would explain why mine's been mostly fine since I moved to a place with an underground garage. Now I park 4 floors underground and the battery has only died once in the last two years.
EMCymatics 3y ago
Why are we shutting down 3G coverage?
- acdha 3y ago
  Wireless spectrum is limited, and older protocols were less efficient so the same spectrum can handle more devices. This made a massive improvement in places like subway stations, stadiums, airports, etc. where you have a ton of clients in a limited area, often all activating at the same time. It would be interesting to know how much of the efficiency improvements were only in software – a lot of waste could be avoided if your old Subaru could speak enough 4G to be on the network even if it couldn’t do the higher data rates. Obviously improvements which are just due to clients completing their transfers wouldn’t be an option but I wonder whether any of the more efficient background activity, notification, back off, etc. logic could be backported.
  - EMCymatics 3y ago
    Seems like a monumental waste to me.
alphabettsy 3y ago
Outback’s of this generation also have an unresolved battery drain issue where if you leave the tailgate up, like you might while tailgating, the battery will drain even if all lights are off. The solution is to put a carabiner or similar in the latch so it believes it’s closed. Completely ridiculous issue with an otherwise great vehicle.
- alberth 3y ago
  My guess, it’s a safety check in a loop because it’s unsafe to drive if that hatch is up. https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/02/2016-Subaru-Outback-25i-Limited-rear-end.jpg?fit=around%7C875:492 https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/02/2016-Suba... It’s understandable for them to be checking for the hatch to be down, given that both your brake lights and reverse lights are on the hatch and only seen if down.
  - alphabettsy 3y ago
    Unlikely. The brake lights on a 2016 Outback are not on the hatch. They’re on the portion of the lamp permanently affixed to the vehicle. Also, why would checking if the hatch is open or closed completely drain the battery in a couple of hours? Not understandable to me.
    - 2toxic 3y ago
      >>Also, why would checking if the hatch is open or closed completely drain the battery in a couple of hours? modern shitty engineering approaches. nobody cares about optimisation, about the power consumption, etc.
doktorhladnjak 3y ago
Crazy reading about this here. I just had this problem. Spent a couple hundred bucks for the local mechanic to track it down to parasitic drain from the SOS module (“Starlink”). He just disconnected it since I don’t pay for the subscription anyways.
sasaf5 3y ago
> Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Take a look at Dacia.
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Even Dacia has to follow the rules. Here in the EU a cell uplink (eCall) is mandatory since 2018 so even Dacia has about the same integrated radio/satnav/3g unit as every other Renault. Catalog price has also about doubled over the last 10 years too.
johnklos 3y ago
This is an excellent example of how large corporations can't plan products normally any longer. You could take a college class in embedded systems design and you could ask all the students to come up with examples of edge cases where an SOS system in a car could have issues, and you're pretty much guaranteed that someone will mention both being out of range of cell towers and being old enough to be incompatible with cell towers. Discussion would then lead to what to do about it, and busy-waiting in a loop trying to contact cell towers again and again would certainly not be a solution. But can a corporation do this? Apparently not. I honestly wonder if designers are actively discouraged from caring about anything beyond the projected life of a product, because it could negatively impact later sales.
- sockaddr 3y ago
  Your comment is funny to me and I agree. It reminds me of the "Can LLMs think?" comments. Now I'm left wondering what other "classes of reasoning" are impossible for corporate entities, what they may be blind to simply due to their structure.
  - BizarroLand 3y ago
    That makes me wonder at what point does a business lose the ability to think? You and your friends in the garage are nimble and hard working, thinking of some way to make it, but at some point a company crosses a transition line and stops being capable of autonomous thought and becomes a machine both greater and lesser than any human. I would hazard a guess that this transition happens at the point where the company would continue to operate even if all of the founders suddenly died.
    - singleshot_ 3y ago
      Second guess: the moment that something starts happening in the business that the founder does not know about or understand. Corollary: it’s inevitable
- MisterTea 3y ago
  > You could take a college class in embedded systems design and you could ask all the students to come up with examples of edge cases where an SOS system in a car could have issues, and you're pretty much guaranteed that someone will mention both being out of range of cell towers and being old enough to be incompatible with cell towers. Those people are not in management.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
egberts1 3y ago
Why do people continue to buy poorly-engineered vehicles? -- Slick marketing. Always pay attention to Consumers Report ratings.
- faebi 3y ago
  Consumer report is not that good
  - egberts1 3y ago
    Consumers Report still saves us money on reduces auto-repair bills for over 35 years.
faebi 3y ago
These days you can buy a battery bank which can jump start a car a few times. They are not so expensive (70USD), at least cheaper than road aide assistance.
onewheeltom 3y ago
My daughters’ 2014 Volt that had a bug that would trigger a warning system that would turn off charging until it was reset. Paid a dealer $400 to reprogram (and didn’t do it right the first time and follow the service bulletin. Had to take it back). Write crappy code, get paid over and over.
bobchadwick 3y ago
I never got confirmation that it was related to 3G sunsetting, but I had this issue when I stopped driving my 2017 Outback regularly at the beginning of the pandemic. The first trip to the dealership resulted in a "software update" that didn't seem to do anything. On the next visit, with photos I'd taken of my voltmeter showing parasitic drain, they replaced the DCM. I think they charged around $800 for that and a new battery since the original was toast from too many total discharges. I reached out to Subaru of America and as a one-time "goodwill gesture," they refunded me for the cost of the DCM.
DLA 3y ago
I have a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek. Just this weekend I stopped for lunch and had XM on until it timed out ~ 10 minutes after key off. I’ve done this since I got the car. But when I went to start the car the battery was low voltage (which really freaks the computer out) and would not start. This story fits the fact pattern!

454 points by siftrics 3y ago

kenaz 3y ago

Is this just Outback, or other Subaru models with STARLINK?

mouse_ 3y ago

No, IoT is here to stay. Makes way too much money.

manuelabeledo 3y ago

They offered a free upgrade a couple years ago.

siftrics 3y ago
I'd rather skip the free upgrade and just have a car that works.
- wmf 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - adastra22 3y ago
    I don't think you know what that word means.
Someone1234 3y ago
I didn't/don't have a "free upgrade?" Are you talking about this battery fault or 3G upgrade to 4G+ for people who PAY for Starlink, that's only a tiny subset of the owners. Also, that free upgrade for current Starlink subscribers expired two years ago.
- manuelabeledo 3y ago
  Wouldn’t the upgrade fix the battery issue? Anyway, I didn’t upgrade (have an aftermarket radio), and my battery works just fine. In fact, the car stayed parked for two months in the Texas summer, and started just fine.

uberman 3y ago

"Even if you drive your car every day, its battery will die and you won't be able to start it." How do you figure this? Seems unlikely to me that a 15 min drive would not bring a car batter drained my occasional failed phone connections back to full

siftrics 3y ago
It's a well-documented phenomenon. You can Google it. The thing drains your battery precipitously.
- gruez 3y ago
  That still sounds suspect. Surely there are areas that don't have 3g coverage? For instance, underground parking garages or rural areas (especially in western US). These aren't common use cases, but common enough that they surely would have garnered press/media attention back when 3G was working. I vaguely remember a story about how a rental car was trapped in an underground garage because it couldn't get the unlock code. Why are we only hearing about it now? Moreover, surely those incidents would have caused them to fix the issue?
  - vanilla_nut 3y ago
    I own a Subaru Crosstrek from this same era, it definitely has the Starlink bits in the cockpit ceiling. There must be more to this story. I've parked that car in an underground parking garage with absolutely no signal on any carrier for at least 2 weeks straight (likely more) with no issue. I've parked it for days at trailheads and wild camping spots around the High Rockies where there's also no signal. I 100% believe that the Starlink module is poorly programmed, reliant on false assumptions of 3G always existing, and capable of draining the battery. But I would really love to know why that's never happened to me.
    - avianlyric 3y ago
      It could be that the modem can still see the phone tower, but its handshake to create a 3G connection fails, which it then retries indefinitely. That would be different to having no signal whatsoever, where modem wakes up, listens for a tower, concludes there’s nothing there and goes back to sleep again. That would explain why this issue is only cropping up now that 3G is being turned off, and how this scenario was missed by engineers. They assumed there was either a tower they could communicate with, or nothing. They didn’t account for a perfectly good tower being available, advertising itself as a recognisable network, but refusing to handshake.

userinanother 3y ago

Can you pull the breaker or cut the wire. Seems like it would be a simple ish hack but maybe access issues

siftrics 3y ago
I ended up pulling the DCM fuse, but it comes at the cost of no microphone for phone calls and voice commands and no front speakers (and obviously no STARLINK).
- dprice1 3y ago
  I did the same after having a shop investigate the drain. They didn't put all of the pieces together as the OP did, but they pointed to the fuse and told me I could pull it.
- janci 3y ago
  You can probably easily rewire DCM from always-on to ignition-on. No battery drain and working equipment.
  - aaronmdjones 3y ago
    Yep, you just need to move the fuse to a portion that's wired through a relay. Some engine bay fuse boxes have spare relay and fuse positions to add these kinds of things; otherwise you can buy a small automotive fusebox and a relay and a couple dollars in cable and crimp connectors and then you just need to find somewhere to mount it, likely above the outside of the glovebox or such.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
metadat 3y ago
15 minutes isn't a sufficient amount of time to reliably recharge a drained ICE car battery. Ask any tow truck driver. Edit: Cool, apparently you've completely changed your comment. No worries, it happens. The original comment read something like "I don't believe this, a 15 minute drive is more than sufficient to recharge my battery." Edit: Shit, my bad, thank you @clippy, this is the second time I've made this mistake in as many days.

ashirviskas 3y ago

I just found out my country also started deprecating 3G last year and will deprecate 2G in 2025. That is a bit sad, as I've just powered on some old 2G phones and they seemed to work just fine, but I guess it allows us to move forward without the tech debt.

cyanydeez 3y ago
Tech debt in this case seems like artificial scarcity
- toast0 3y ago
  Lack of spectrum and/or tower sites is real scarcity. LTE and 5G are supposed to be better able to share spectrum, to the point where they can share the control channel, and multiplex the data channels with either encoding, but 2g and 3g can't do that, so you have to dedicate at least minimum sized blocks. Running one min block on 2G does wonderful things for ensuring access, but it's expensive in spectrum, especially if each network needs to do it. (Because cooperating between networks is really only a thing if mandated, or out in rural areas where there's little demand)
- imtringued 3y ago
  Do you still use dial up?

clnq 3y ago

This is because large corporations must provide infinite growth to their investors, or a good number of them will dump the stock and raising investment might become very hard. For the sake of infinite growth, many lines have been crossed and many decisions that make no sense if not looked through the lens of money have been made. I think companies will start doing truly unethical things in the pursuit of this in the future. What if the dashboard could show ads before the car starts? It’s just a second of your time. What if a gas station network like Circle K could sponsor your car so it tells you to get a specific type of gasoline? Why not subscription for “optional” safety features that were standard? Why not a way to remotely disable cars with a warning light on the dash “for your own safety” until they visit a certified dealer? Why not coded car parts so the customer gets a “genuine product” and doesn’t “accidentally” install a cheaper generic counterpart? Why not pay as you go features instead of paying upfront? Why not track places you drive to with your car, the conversations you have in it, the people you call, and whether you drive with your wife and/or kids for behavioural advertising elsewhere? What about an eco mode subscription that saves you money when compared to not buying it, despite that it is always free with cars today? Maybe we could also disable some people’s cars to align with certain political demographics and identities, like we cancel, deplatform, and get people fired for slights online now? Could that paint us in a positive light in certain demographics? One client lost for a thousand gained! Maybe an auto-911 crash detection subscription? You wouldn’t want to be the mother whose kid dies in a car crash so you’d save $19.99 a month, would you? Anything if it moves more cars or at a higher marginal revenue, right? And let’s not forget marginal costs - what could be cheaper? Maybe some parts are too durable. A lot of things could be digital - break lines, steering, the accelerator, door locks, seat belt mechanisms, mirrors and so on. And we could save doubly by outsourcing all this work to the cheapest bidder, whether they specialize in automotive safety or web design. Anything for the sake of growth. And it’s coming. Sooner or later, there won’t be a company in the auto industry providing appealing returns unless they charge their users more, exploit them more, or save up for a nicer dividend by cutting some corners. Not today, not this year, maybe not in the immediate future. But this is the natural conclusion of the flavor of capitalism we do. I don’t blame capitalism for everything. It’s good for a lot of things. But it totally fails humanity when large corporations are involved. We should change it before a bunch of our industries collapse under their self-destructive behaviors driven by greed. Because right now, a good investment strategy is to constantly keep investing in companies who irreparably harm themselves and their customers long-term for a quick buck. You just need to build your portfolio of these and dump them once their sell-out is over. And this makes money. An investor would be unwise not to pick a money-making strategy. It is in everyone’s best capitalistic interest to exploit others to the max. And when all that could be exploited is, well… no one managing companies thinks about this. The investors want returns now, all the time. The executives know how to sell-out for this and golden-parachute into the next company to do it all again. The employees are laid off and customers are mistreated, but hey - capitalism is to acquire capital. It’s not called moralism.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

bicepjai 3y ago

I had the battery failing recently. Took it to the service, they did not know what the reason was and said they would test the whole car to find where the drain happens for 500 USD. I was about to drop it off next week and I read this. So is there any official help from Subaru ?

tjoff 3y ago
Supposedly just removing the fuse could do it (and recharge the battery completely if it hasn't been drained beyond saving). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37973829

CrendKing 3y ago

Maybe you could disconnect the battery cable every time you stop, and reconnect before you go?

DavidPeiffer 3y ago
In older vehicles that would reset the clock. No idea what impact it'd have on a more modern car than what I drive though.
- gecko 3y ago
  It'll reset the engine control unit (ECU), which will cause your car to run rough constantly as the computer has to relearn how to adjust the engine tuning from scratch every drive. You'd be better served using a trickle charger.
  - RunningDroid 3y ago
    Resetting the ECU will also cause the vehicle to fail inspection unless it's driven long enough beforehand. (Here in Upstate NY, anyway)
  - garyfirestorm 3y ago
    that is not how ECUs function Some Transmission Controllers will adjust to driver behavior, however engine controller default behavior shouldn't cause 'rough' experience I worked in automotive testing for over 10 years and constantly measured and analyzed vibration data on vehicles. Many prototype vehicle batteries die due to early release software that causes parasitic drain and I have never noticed any rough behavior just because the battery died and got replaced. There are many sensors and closed loop control systems that monitor strange engine behavior and adjust timing. This happens very quickly within few engine rotations. If there was an issue you would notice it for at the most for couple of seconds.
    - mianos 3y ago
      Yes, it's a closed loop. The O2 sensor in the exhaust rapidly adjusts the mixture. The whole 'learning' the air fuel mixture to adjust the stoichiometric ratio over a longer period of time does not make any sense. You have the air mass, O2, fuel, temperature and sometimes more, you can calculate the mixture near instantly. Maybe someone way back said you have to warm the car up and that takes a few minutes. Modern fuel maps achieve a fair idle from near dead cold. It's a solved problem.

seeg 3y ago

That's pretty lame. What IP you wanted to drive where there is no cell connectivity rt all, say Mongolia?

thriftwy 3y ago
Seems that your battery would fail when you need it the most: namely, in the middle of nowhere with no cell coverage.
- siftrics 3y ago
  Ironically, it seems that this only happens when you are within service. Another commenter speculated that when you're out of service, the software correctly identifies that there is no tower to connect to and stops trying. But when you're in service, the code repeatedly tries to do the 3G handshake because it can see a valid tower.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    It may happen with a lot of devices if 3G appears browned out to them and not just plain unavailable.
tjoff 3y ago
Or the park in a garage with no coverage? One can only hope that "smart" will have very bad associations in the future (for the general public).
- arcanemachiner 3y ago
  If it doesn't already (or 5 years ago...), then I don't have much hope for the future.
siftrics 3y ago
There are huge swaths of areas with no service in the US that people regularly visit.

ksec 3y ago

This is strange. I know a lot of countries are sunsetting 3G and 2G in terms of consumer mobile usage. But they leave IoT alone for a few more years because of contract and money in it.

LASR 3y ago
Spectrum is a limited and highly contested resource. There is very likely no way for 3G to coexist just for IoT.
rvdmei 3y ago
It’s contract only, mobile carriers are not happy that they have to maintain the 3G equipment just for IoT.

totetsu 3y ago

This seems to be a very common type of software bug. On fail retry, without any limits of how frequent or how many time.

resolutebat 3y ago
If only there was a simple way to exponentially limit your retries and back off a bit when the other side is constantly failing.
- wincy 3y ago
  You mean the concept I learned week three as a junior developer (thanks to great mentorship)? Yeah, probably absolutely impossible.
  - hirsin 3y ago
    You're lucky. I've seen entire engineering orgs convinced of the opposite, and highly resistant to improvement.
- clnq 3y ago
  Exponential back-off is fancy. There are a million repeating behaviors in a large automotive codebase. Maybe it's too arduous to code up exponential back-off for all. Even if you have a simple library to do it, it could introduce some complexity. But it's quite easy to set timers to attempt things at regular intervals, rather than in an infinite loop until they succeed. One attempt every 5 seconds (assuming a 5-second timeout for the request) is 17,280 attempts a day. One attempt every 5 minutes is 288 attempts a day. One attempt every 15 minutes is 96 attempts a day. A simple repeating timer is a fantastic solution. Does the car need to always send telemetry immediately? Can there be a 15-minute latency? If so, just put that on a timer and enjoy 99.4% power savings for offline cars, with basically the same quality of telemetry when they're online. But what if a car needs to send telemetry at a given moment? Just move up the next timer function call. But what if I want to get telemetry when the 3G signal is intermittent and briefly available? Just call the function once the 3G signal is available. Do this with a separate cool-down for this behavior. But what if I need telemetry every second? Just dump all telemetry events into a buffer between successful sends, slap a timestamp on those events, and you can now send data for the past X hours all at once. Even from the black spots. There are so many options (even less fancy than exp back-off), but this was probably built by a junior programmer without any support network. This feels like a very common lack-of-experience mistake that would be caught in code review if the reviewer cared.

lathiat 3y ago

Somewhat related in 2006 I had a Motorola A1000, very early iPhone sized full screen smart phone with Stylus. I took it to New Zealand on roaming and despite having a connection it spent so much time looking for the home network (“Three” in Australia) the battery would last half a day.

SanjayMehta 3y ago

A compelling reason to avoid “connected cars.” Better to go with one which pairs with your phone if you even need this functionality.

sshine 3y ago
Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency over time. I work with batteries in the EV industry (not inside cars, though, but lithium-iron-phosphate), and the list of planned improvements is not short. There’s a gap between when a product is ready to be used and when most of the known optimisations are done. And there’s a big risk factor with the company suddenly deciding to depreciate your thing. I try to only have only “dumb” appliances in my home: kitchen, washing, lighting. If I couldn’t avoid buying with wifi, it doesn’t get enabled.
- JoshTriplett 3y ago
  > Connecting an EV means getting better battery efficiency over time. Then ask for wifi credentials, or ask to connect through a phone. If I don't connect a device, it's because the device is not allowed to be connected. Any device that thinks it's important enough to ship with its own SIM card using an account I don't control, rather than putting the user in full control of connectivity, is a device I will never purchase.

simonebrunozzi 3y ago

Until car companies are sued to the tunes of hundred of millions for something like this, their attitude will never change. Sigh.

tomohawk 3y ago
Are you sure giving even more money and power to trial lawyers is going to solve anything? There are already these people we already pay taxes for in DC at the DOT who have the power to require a recall. Call your representative, tell them what's going on, and ask them what the DOT is going to do about it. It'll take 30m of your time.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
Subaru did settle a class action lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ The settlement is pathetic. I could never prove the parasitic battery drain on my 2017 forester, so I just had the OEM audio/starlink system replaced with a cheap Sony CarPlay head unit and the problem went away. But I cannot get reimbursed since I have no proof, even though surely every car manufactured with those components has a parasitic battery drain.

Lio 3y ago

I would get the battery replaced at a main Subaru dealer. Then keep coming back to get the battery replaced when it "fails to hold charge". If every owner did that it would end up like the region restriction in DVD players. i.e. The retailers would force the manufactures to turn it off because they don't want to deal with the cost of fixing an artificial problem. Oh and I would start posting to car websites and forums about how unreliable my car was. Marketing teams do care about getting that reputation.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
You can’t, the battery will pass the battery tests every time. And who has time to go to a dealership over and over. There is no money in it for them, and you are wasting valuable time. You can fix the problem yourself by getting the head unit replaced with any CarPlay/androud audio one at a car stereo shop for $1,500 and move on with your life.
- chrisandchris 3y ago
  Great solution for this problem: Go fix it with $1'500 - which is a lot of money -, for something you paid and someone else is responsible for breaking it.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    Life isn’t fair sometimes. This thing even went though the courts and somehow the onus is still on the buyer to prove something was wrong, when it is clearly a design issue. https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ I guess there is enough noise around the issue these days to get the dealer to properly fix it, but back in 2019/2020, no one believed you had a tiny power drain, and it would have been very costly to prove it (including time), and then who knows if you could litigate successfully. Hell, if the power drain was only happening while not able to connect to 3G, the issue would be so location specific/sporadic enough, that good luck proving it even to yourself.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago

greenyoda 3y ago

I searched for Subaru Technical Service Bulletins (TSBs) mentioning "STARLINK", and found this one: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/WQZ-61R https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/WQZ-61R It mentions a "3G Sunset Update". A further search for "3G Sunset" turned up a few TSBs that apply to various Subaru models and years. You can search for TSBs here: https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru

Someone1234 3y ago
I'll skip ahead and tell you what you'll eventually find: - Subaru has a fix for this issue. - Subaru's fix has dealerships use proprietary software to put the DCM module into "factory mode" (suspended). - It will also have dealerships physically disconnect the Starlink-related buttons (e.g. SOS), because if they're pushed it will "wake up" the DCM. - There is no assurance the DCM won't wake up again on its own (it has its own backup battery which can fail). - Getting dealerships to conduct the above fix is a giant pain in the butt, and they'll charge you hundreds of dollars. Few customers have even got that far, most just get an expensive "diagnostics" bill with absolutely nothing to show for it. Most won't do the repair unless you can "prove" a problem, even though it is more work to prove the problem than to proactively conduct the repair. - Subaru won't release the software, so you can do it yourself.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hinkley 3y ago
  Condensed further: there’s no recall to fix it during maintenance milestones, and they aren’t paying for the workaround, which is a shitty one. Therefore, lawyers.
  - joshmanders 3y ago
    Condensed even further: Join the class action lawsuit.
  - garyfirestorm 3y ago

rootsudo 3y ago

Just pull the fuse and be done with it, not that hard.

dewey 3y ago
Ah yea, make the consumer go through the pain of keeping that in mind and doing that every day and not blame the big corporation just silently breaking their product with seemingly no repercussions until now.
- rootsudo 3y ago
  Not a big deal, you pull the fuse you don't do it everyday - you can also just unplug the module. Also not a big deal.
  - anonn77 3y ago
    Sod that for a game of soldiers
  - dewey 3y ago
    The solution to the problem is companies not doing such a thing and being made responsible. Just because it’s easy for some people to do you can’t expect everyone to 1) know about this issue (Remember, there wasn’t an official announcement or recall) and 2) be confident enough to modify something on their car. Most people never do anything on their care and just bring it to the service for every small thing.
- rootsudo 3y ago
  literally pop the hood and remove a fuse - https://youtube.com/shorts/y8xxT3bVf6I?feature=shared https://youtube.com/shorts/y8xxT3bVf6I?feature=shared less than one minute. and now you aren't trackable. win/win.
  - giantg2 3y ago
    This should be the top comment for this post. I wish there was a way to do that. Or maybe @dang could help.

tetrti7475 3y ago

This is called parasitic battery drain. There are two low tech solutions: - install small solar panel behind back window. That will trickle charge battery, and will counter ballance drain - hard switch off on battery, disconnect battery everytime car is not used for couple of days (weekend).

forward1 3y ago
Easier solution: get a 120V trickle charger and plug it in when your car is parked. Batteries love being constantly topped up anyway. NOCO is a good brand I use for my stored vehicles with AGM batteries.
- dharmab 3y ago
  Doesn't solve the problem for anyone who doesn't park in a private garage.
MerManMaid 3y ago
Am I wrong in thinking another potential low tech solution might be to just remove the cellular radio? To be clear, I'm asking more than anything as I have very little car knowledge but to me that seems like a more preferable solution long term than frequently having to physically disconnect your car battery.
- amatecha 3y ago
  Yeah, probably a viable solution to just disconnect its cellular antenna (though it could easily be a PCB antenna, in which case... x-acto knife I guess)
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    How will that help the issue that the module keeps waking up and trying to send data until it succeeds?
    - 3y ago

block_dagger 3y ago

This probably explains recent battery issues on my 2022 Outback. Took it in, they admitted it happens frequently but didn’t explain. Replaced with larger battery for free.

cobertos 3y ago
Oh no, I hope it doesn't extend to that model year. I just bought a 2023 and saw posts about battery issues before I bought and was a little worried I might end up with the same thing.
- swalberg 3y ago
  Just bought a 2023 Forester, no problems yet but wondering if this problem is just for the Outback?
alphabettsy 3y ago
2022 Outback does not use 3G. Subaru have had battery drain issues for about a decade now across more than one model and generation.

CrankyBear 3y ago

It's not just Subaru. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39301678/3g-internet-sunset-cars/ https://www.caranddriver.com/news/g39301678/3g-internet-suns...

adambatkin 3y ago

Can confirm. Had 3 or 4 batteries replaced (under warranty) before the local dealership informed me that "some DCMs cause parasitic battery drain". I brought it in, they ran some sort of test, and ordered me a new DCM (also under warranty). It took a while for the part to arrive, so they pulled the fuse. As other posters have noted, it took out one of the speakers (music sounded only mostly normal) and both the mic and speaker for Bluetooth comms were dead. Previously, there were times that I would drive 100 miles one day, and I couldn't even open the doors using the automatic locks on the following day. It's been about a month on the new DCM and so far I haven't had any issues, so here's hoping...

op00to 3y ago

I have a 2017 Subaru with STARLINK. It works just fine. It does run the battery down if the key is close enough to the car to wake it up, but far enough away that the signal is broken and the car goes back to sleep. Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the door instead of next to the door solved that problem.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I have a 2017 Subaru forester touring 2.0, and replacing the head unit with a cheap Sony CarPlay one fixed my problem. We changed nothing with where we place the keys. Not once has the battery died after that, and it has been ~3 years. With the OEM starlink head unit, we would need to jump start every single week. Needless to say, Subaru’s lack of willingness to compensate us lost them a customer for life.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  If the DCM is in the headunit, that seems plausible. What one did you get?
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I got this one: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-6-2-apple-carplay-built-in-bluetooth-in-dash-digital-media-receiver-black/6283607.p?skuId=6283607 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/sony-6-2-apple-carplay-built-in... It works fine, but if I were to do it again, I would have bought a better quality one with a bigger and more responsive touchscreen. I cheaped out because I did not know if the new head unit would fix the battery drain issue, and if it didn’t fix the issue I was going to get rid of the car.
resoluteteeth 3y ago
> Keeping the battery 5 feet away from the door instead of next to the door solved that problem. Do you mean the key? Otherwise how are you moving the battery?
- 3y ago

hulkmusic 3y ago

I have a 2016 Subaru Forester with a seemingly parasitic drain issue. Every time I go to start the car, it's like rolling the dice whether it has enough battery power to fully start. I have a portable jump starter that I've had to use at least 20 times or so in the last couple of years. This has been happening even well before the 3G sunset period, so that is not the only source of the battery drain problem, for which there is a class action lawsuit: https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/ https://www.subarubatterysettlement.com/. Everything I've read online about the issue points to the STARLINK system, and the common wisdom in this thread and elsewhere is to pull the DCM fuse. Unfortunately, my Forester has no such fuse, so I'm at a loss what to do with my car. It's so frustrating, because my wife has a Subaru Crosstrek of the same year that has never had a battery problem, even with the OEM battery. She has a base model without any additional "upgraded" electronics, so that's the likely culprit in my case. I'm currently on my third or fourth higher CCA battery and had to jump it again a few days ago. I haven't taken my car to the dealer for the parasitic drain issue, but previously tried to get dealership service for an unrelated entertainment system issue related to USB media playback freezing up the entertainment system. That fix was unsuccessful, and I have no faith in Subaru mechanics being able to diagnose and fix a potentially more nebulous battery drain issue. It doesn't help that the dealership is now 45 minutes away, so I'm not interested in wasting even more time on a hit and miss solution. Ironically, I bought Subaru because reliability was my number one concern when purchasing a vehicle, and I'm not sure I would do that again.

SigmundA 3y ago
I just went through something similar with my vehicle, had a relatively new expensive AGM battery about halfway through its 3 year warranty. Would not start if left for 4-5 days which slowly crept down to 2 days. Seemed like a parasitic draw but pulling fuses and using a multimeter verified idle draw at 30 milliamps which is within spec. If you find high like a few hundred milliamps you can start pulling fuses to narrow down offending item. In the end it was a bad a battery, but was difficult to get the warranty replacement because it could be charged and work again so long as you ran it every day. It's relatively easy to verify parasitic draw and make sure it's in that 30 milliamp range, with even a cheap multimeter by disconnecting negative and running through multimeter. Tricky part with modern cars is getting it to go fully to sleep, anything can trigger wake up (like opening the door) and it can take a few minutes for it to fully sleep to idle draw.

cushpush 3y ago

What's the [sustained] financial incentive to produce an unbreakable product?

ironmagma 3y ago
The only way you're going to get this is through pride, be that national pride (nationalism) or professional pride. It requires care for the opposite party in the buyer-seller transaction, which the free market is essentially allergic to.
dv_dt 3y ago
There is a financial incentive to be reliable enough to at least make it to the next sale with your reputation intact. Especially if it’s on a feature that I would guess was paired with a higher end trim which implies higher end customers.
KirillPanov 3y ago
You get to be the largest and most-profitable carmaker, aka Toyota. I only buy used cars, and past the ~7-year-old range used Toyotas routinely cost about twice as much as any other brand for equivalent model/mileage/condition. Yet I still pay the markup because every time I work on mine I am astonished by the fanatical obsession they have with reliability. I'm sure this value retention is reflected in the profit margin on new Toyotas.

bsbdbkeks66554 3y ago

there’s another design flaw in the outback where the battery drains if you have the rear lift gate open too long. happened to me the day i was moving my family out of state and loading up the car all day, we were about to leave and the battery was totally drained. later looked it up and its apparently a common issue

Noumenon72 3y ago

I just paid $98 for a tow last week for a 2015 Outback that went so dead the doors wouldn't open. They said my year-old battery was mysteriously worn down so I bought a new one. Is this a different Starlink from the Elon Musk one?

imadethis 3y ago
Yes, Subaru Starlink is their remote connection platform that uses cellular. No relation to Musk.

nzealand 3y ago

According to Subaru's website & TRB, this only impacts vehicles from 2016-2018 https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html https://www.subaru.com/support/3g-network-retirement.html https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/15-291-22 https://www.tsbsearch.com/Subaru/15-291-22

siftrics 3y ago
Mine's a 2019 and pulling the DCM fuse resolved my problems. Could be unrelated, but I feel obligated to share.
- nzealand 3y ago
  Did you lose bluetooth or front speakers?
  - siftrics 3y ago
    Front speakers and microphone are lost. Bluetooth audio still works. I can still stream music over Bluetooth.

Kon-Peki 3y ago

I’m pretty certain that the battery lawsuit happened before the 3g shutdown. So while I totally believe this is killing batteries, I also believe that these cars have more electrical problems than just this.

mjan22640 3y ago

How difficult is to make a 3g proxy, something like the Stingray? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker

morkalork 3y ago

Kind of crazy that they push the whole outdoorsy camping image in all their ads and build something so flawed. How does that work? Go explore the great outdoors but don't go too far, or you're battery is gonna die if there's no cellphone service? I don't know about the US but it's not hard to go that far out in Canada!

siftrics 3y ago
Yeah this was actually pretty scary for me because I do go car camping in very remote places with no service at all. Luckily I'm fully prepared for my car not being able to start. It's just sad because I bought a Subaru because it's supposed to be a reliable, outdoor adventure car. To see it fail this way is just sad.
amatecha 3y ago
Yeah, I live in Vancouver and I can get to a no-cell-service location in like, 30 minutes. This is blatantly inexcusable.
crazygringo 3y ago
For real. The real scandal here isn't that this is happening as 3G is phased out -- it's that it was always a problem whenever you drove anywhere without cell coverage. Which is precisely when keeping a working battery is most important, since you can't call for help, being in an area without cell coverage!
cf100clunk 3y ago
2018 Outback owner here. A truly outdoorsy driver will always carry booster (a.k.a. jumper) cables and/or a boosting-charging pack if the vehicle doesn't have a manual transmission and no other vehicles are likely to be around. I would never go even slightly off road in my Outback without a boosting-charging pack amongst my other gear. A manual transmission has allowed me to bump-start dead vehicles many times over the years, but not this automatic model. Anyways, Subaru needs to get this all cleared up.

smoyer 3y ago

This is also happening with my (old) Mercedes SUV.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

3G sunsetting fking over cars is not exclusive to Subaru. My 2017 lexus was also hit by this.

otterley 3y ago

Subaru has published a Technical Service Bulletin that appears to offer a free firmware update to switch the Starlink system to use VoLTE. Affected vehicles are: 2016-18MY Legacy/Outback 2016-18MY Impreza 2016-18MY Crosstrek 2016-18MY Forester 2017-18MY WRX See https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10189606-0001.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/tsbs/2021/MC-10189606-0001.pdf for details. And, yes, Subaru is reimbursing dealers for this work.

WirelessGigabit 3y ago
That's actually pretty amazing, and luckily the modules support VoLTE. BMW modules only supported 3G (they were older though).
- londons_explore 3y ago
  There isn't really such a thing as a module that only supports 3G... Anything could support the minimum needed to connect to an LTE network with the right software update, but modem chipset makers don't make any money rewriting old firmware for old chipsets, so they refuse to rewrite the firmware to support lte.
  - WirelessGigabit 3y ago
    I did not know this. Now knowing this, could we (theoretically) update the firmware of an iPhone 3G so it works on a 4G network?
    - londons_explore 3y ago
      Yes. But beware that doing so is probably multiple man-years worth of effort.
    - dublin 3y ago
      Probably not. In general, this sort of thing is buried in the often unchangeable microcode of an RF ASIC. (Which makes sense, after all, the vendor is selling an RF modem for a specific band/modulation capability - they don't expect it to change, certainly not after they've built/configured it.) If that's the case (as is common), then there is really nothing to update, short of scraping off that chip or module and replacing the hardware.

RecycledEle 3y ago

Please allow me to suggest engineering fixes: 1. All vehicles with 12v starter batteries should also have deep cycle batteries to power the accessories. Chevy Suburbans had that for decades, but some people laughed at vehicles designed to actually run and drive. That's fine. Enjoy the vehicle you picked. 2. It's my car darn it. Any and all communication with it needs to be easily read by my in plain English. I also need to be able to veto any communication, in an easy-to-use, plain English system. This second option would require legislation. The new law should apply to everything made. If the owner is also the operator, then the owner can read and veto all communications. 3. In the interest of national security, all products made must have a minimum of reliance on the outside world. Those connections that do exist must be as standard as possible. Once against, this requires legislation.Any device that refuses to operate without an Internet connection should be illegal. Phone-home DRam should be illegal. We get what we deserve. The only downside to my ancient pickup truck is that I have to clean the hybrids out of the wheel wells about twice a month.

hedora 3y ago
We had an older gmc, and it was great. A newer one came from the factory with a bug that would zero the battery in under eight hours sometimes (it left the ABS on). This happened on the first tank of gas. The local chevy dealer refused to fix it and claimed our warranty was void at ~ 125 miles because the dealer we bought it from new had installed some counterfeit electrical components. (There was a factory recall for our exact problem) That was the least of that truck’s problems. Never buying a GM product again. Also, the old v8 GMC had a carburetor, but still had better fuel economy than the new v8 GMC with fuel injection and that turned off half the cylinders when possible. Our Ram is slightly better, but still pretty damn bad vs the old GMC. I’d recommend any other brand over GM or Stellantis at this point.

scarface_74 3y ago

So instead of complaining on HN, it was a simple Google search to find out that Subaru has already offered a free repair for affected vehicles.

amatecha 3y ago
You went through the trouble of searching about it, finding results, and then commenting here, but not including the link(s) you found? o_O
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Someone had already posted links. I just wanted to do the grumpy, snarky old man thing…
  - netllama 3y ago
    Irrelevant. You could have provided the link as a decent human being. Instead you decide to get into a petty argument?
    - scarface_74 3y ago
      It was literally the next comment down. They didn’t even have to Google it. It’s that whole “teach a man to fish”. If you have a problem is the first thing you do not go on to Google?

WirelessGigabit 3y ago

How is 3G turning off different from people parking their car underground and not driving it for a week?

Ographer 3y ago
It seems that the battery only drains when it is within range of a cell tower. Another commenter speculated that when you're out of service, the software correctly identifies that there is no tower to connect to and stops trying. But when you're in service, the code repeatedly tries to do the 3G handshake because it can see a valid tower.
- throwawayfour 3y ago
  This would explain why mine's been mostly fine since I moved to a place with an underground garage. Now I park 4 floors underground and the battery has only died once in the last two years.

EMCymatics 3y ago

Why are we shutting down 3G coverage?

acdha 3y ago
Wireless spectrum is limited, and older protocols were less efficient so the same spectrum can handle more devices. This made a massive improvement in places like subway stations, stadiums, airports, etc. where you have a ton of clients in a limited area, often all activating at the same time. It would be interesting to know how much of the efficiency improvements were only in software – a lot of waste could be avoided if your old Subaru could speak enough 4G to be on the network even if it couldn’t do the higher data rates. Obviously improvements which are just due to clients completing their transfers wouldn’t be an option but I wonder whether any of the more efficient background activity, notification, back off, etc. logic could be backported.
- EMCymatics 3y ago
  Seems like a monumental waste to me.

alphabettsy 3y ago

Outback’s of this generation also have an unresolved battery drain issue where if you leave the tailgate up, like you might while tailgating, the battery will drain even if all lights are off. The solution is to put a carabiner or similar in the latch so it believes it’s closed. Completely ridiculous issue with an otherwise great vehicle.

alberth 3y ago
My guess, it’s a safety check in a loop because it’s unsafe to drive if that hatch is up. https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/02/2016-Subaru-Outback-25i-Limited-rear-end.jpg?fit=around%7C875:492 https://www.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/02/2016-Suba... It’s understandable for them to be checking for the hatch to be down, given that both your brake lights and reverse lights are on the hatch and only seen if down.
- alphabettsy 3y ago
  Unlikely. The brake lights on a 2016 Outback are not on the hatch. They’re on the portion of the lamp permanently affixed to the vehicle. Also, why would checking if the hatch is open or closed completely drain the battery in a couple of hours? Not understandable to me.
  - 2toxic 3y ago
    >>Also, why would checking if the hatch is open or closed completely drain the battery in a couple of hours? modern shitty engineering approaches. nobody cares about optimisation, about the power consumption, etc.

doktorhladnjak 3y ago

Crazy reading about this here. I just had this problem. Spent a couple hundred bucks for the local mechanic to track it down to parasitic drain from the SOS module (“Starlink”). He just disconnected it since I don’t pay for the subscription anyways.

sasaf5 3y ago

> Will a brand ever produce a reliable, mechanical car? Take a look at Dacia.

bzzzt 3y ago
Even Dacia has to follow the rules. Here in the EU a cell uplink (eCall) is mandatory since 2018 so even Dacia has about the same integrated radio/satnav/3g unit as every other Renault. Catalog price has also about doubled over the last 10 years too.

johnklos 3y ago

This is an excellent example of how large corporations can't plan products normally any longer. You could take a college class in embedded systems design and you could ask all the students to come up with examples of edge cases where an SOS system in a car could have issues, and you're pretty much guaranteed that someone will mention both being out of range of cell towers and being old enough to be incompatible with cell towers. Discussion would then lead to what to do about it, and busy-waiting in a loop trying to contact cell towers again and again would certainly not be a solution. But can a corporation do this? Apparently not. I honestly wonder if designers are actively discouraged from caring about anything beyond the projected life of a product, because it could negatively impact later sales.

sockaddr 3y ago
Your comment is funny to me and I agree. It reminds me of the "Can LLMs think?" comments. Now I'm left wondering what other "classes of reasoning" are impossible for corporate entities, what they may be blind to simply due to their structure.
- BizarroLand 3y ago
  That makes me wonder at what point does a business lose the ability to think? You and your friends in the garage are nimble and hard working, thinking of some way to make it, but at some point a company crosses a transition line and stops being capable of autonomous thought and becomes a machine both greater and lesser than any human. I would hazard a guess that this transition happens at the point where the company would continue to operate even if all of the founders suddenly died.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Second guess: the moment that something starts happening in the business that the founder does not know about or understand. Corollary: it’s inevitable
MisterTea 3y ago
> You could take a college class in embedded systems design and you could ask all the students to come up with examples of edge cases where an SOS system in a car could have issues, and you're pretty much guaranteed that someone will mention both being out of range of cell towers and being old enough to be incompatible with cell towers. Those people are not in management.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

egberts1 3y ago

Why do people continue to buy poorly-engineered vehicles? -- Slick marketing. Always pay attention to Consumers Report ratings.

faebi 3y ago
Consumer report is not that good
- egberts1 3y ago
  Consumers Report still saves us money on reduces auto-repair bills for over 35 years.

faebi 3y ago

These days you can buy a battery bank which can jump start a car a few times. They are not so expensive (70USD), at least cheaper than road aide assistance.

onewheeltom 3y ago

My daughters’ 2014 Volt that had a bug that would trigger a warning system that would turn off charging until it was reset. Paid a dealer $400 to reprogram (and didn’t do it right the first time and follow the service bulletin. Had to take it back). Write crappy code, get paid over and over.

bobchadwick 3y ago

I never got confirmation that it was related to 3G sunsetting, but I had this issue when I stopped driving my 2017 Outback regularly at the beginning of the pandemic. The first trip to the dealership resulted in a "software update" that didn't seem to do anything. On the next visit, with photos I'd taken of my voltmeter showing parasitic drain, they replaced the DCM. I think they charged around $800 for that and a new battery since the original was toast from too many total discharges. I reached out to Subaru of America and as a one-time "goodwill gesture," they refunded me for the cost of the DCM.

DLA 3y ago

I have a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek. Just this weekend I stopped for lunch and had XM on until it timed out ~ 10 minutes after key off. I’ve done this since I got the car. But when I went to start the car the battery was low voltage (which really freaks the computer out) and would not start. This story fits the fact pattern!