and then it goes into canary testing, "pre flight tests" and rollback
When I first got the Volvo the GPS and LTE connection would periodically stop working for a day or two. They pushed a fix for it. Later they added CarPlay, which wasn't there when I got the car. Good updates. But not as frequent at Rivian.
Was Volvo able to fix it with another OTA or did people have to go in for service?
I tried to buy one, but the dealer in Montana was such a pain about it! How did you like it as a car?
Sounds to me like they certainly could have a canary fleet, but if they do, they didn’t have sufficient process controls to only allow updates to the public after having gone through canary testing.
For example:
apt-listchanges: Changelogs
---------------------------
bind9 (1:9.16.48-1) bullseye-security; urgency=high
* New upstream version 9.16.48
- CVE-2023-4408: Parsing large DNS messages may cause excessive CPU
load
- CVE-2023-5517: Querying RFC 1918 reverse zones may cause an assertion
failure when "nxdomain-redirect" is enabled
glibc (2.31-13+deb11u8) bullseye; urgency=medium
* debian/patches/any/local-qsort-memory-corruption.patch: Fix a memory
corruption in qsort() when using nontransitive comparison functions.
imagemagick (8:6.9.11.60+dfsg-1.3+deb11u2) bullseye; urgency=medium
* Fix CVE-2021-3574: memory leak was found in TIFF coder
* Fix CVE-2021-4219: a special crafted file could lead to a DOS.
* Fix CVE-2021-20241 / CVE-2021-20243: divide by zero in
some coders (Closes: #1013282)
For the install I would rather download a signed image onto a USB drive and flash from that versus letting my car communicate with the mothership indiscriminately. I also want to downgrade at any time with a previous known-good image when there's something about the update that I don't like. For example, if it sends my car's console unit into a bootloop.
For me, I don't want to have to tinker too much, but I want to be able to. I think the ideal would be something like SteamOS on Steam Deck where you can get into the system, and you can change or add things. But the default is just having it all take care of for you.
That said, cars have all sorts of regulations about how certain things work. I have no idea how any of the above ideas would interact with those regulations.
Bricking am expensive smart phone is infuriating, but bricking an expensive household appliance or even more expensive automobile is a non starter.
The signed image on USB seemed to be the norm from maybe 2010-2020 but it seems cellular connectivity has gotten too cheap and telemetry too valuable...
I got my R1T in June 2023 and since here are a few things they've improved, just off the top of my head, not bothering to look it up:
1. Significant improvement to ride quality via different / better suspension tuning.
2. Ability to schedule warming the cabin and pre-condition the battery
3. Completely redesigned the UX for setting drive modes and suspension height (for the better IMO)
4. Added a ton of car info, like battery temp, motor temp, and other info like altitude, various angles the vehicle is at (for off-roading), degrees the front wheels are turned
5. Added additional settings for ride softness / firmness (I got this update yesterday and haven't tried it yet)
When an update is ready I get a notification in the car and from the Rivian app on my phone. I can just hit apply and it installs it.
IMO a USB install would be a substantially worse experience and it would be much less likely that customers would actually install it.
But, for the type of person who just wants the car to stay the same as it was the day they bought it, and never change, it's not the vehicle for them. Personally I really like that it's continually improving and I don't have to go in for service or even go out to the truck to do an update.